Board of Supervisors Adjourned Meeting (Budget Work Session #7)   5/11/2020

One, I call the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors to order for May 11, 2020, 4 p.m.

work session.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with Ordinance 20, number 20-A6, an ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

The supervisors who are electronically present at this meeting are Supervisor Liz

Palmer, the Samuel Miller District, Supervisor Donna Price of the Scottsville District, Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District, Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, and myself, Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Riley District.

The persons responsible for receiving public comment are the Board of Supervisors of Albemarle County.

The opportunities for the public to access and participate in the electronic meeting are posted on the Albemarle County website, on the Board of Supervisors homepage, and on the Albemarle County calendar.

Also logged on and other staff as we go through will introduce themselves when it's time.

We do have our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our County Attorney, Mr. Greg Kantner, our Board Clerk, Ms.

So good afternoon everyone.

I know that we're here together for outstanding issues before adoption of the fiscal year 21 budget.

I'd like for you to go ahead and hand off to Lori and she will go through the agenda and framework of what we're trying to accomplish this afternoon.

Thank you, sir.

Very good.

Good afternoon, Lori.

I just joined the meeting, so I'm assuming it's ready.

Yes, ma'am.

All right.

Thank you.

Can you let me know if you are seeing it right now?

Terrific.

So hopefully I can move it through and we do have backup if I cannot.

So I've had technical difficulties in the past.

So thank you very much for having me here today.

I'm with members of the OMB staff are also available that will be joining us for questions along the way.

We will go through several slides.

I'll lead you through the conversation.

And this meeting is primarily for your discussion and your dialogue.

So I'll go ahead and begin.

Alright, so here we go.

Can you see the moving of the slide?

Yes.

Okay terrific I'm doing it.

So today's meeting is one in a series of meetings that we've been having on the revised recommended fiscal year 21 budget.

You can see that we have a meeting today and then on Thursday May 14th we will ask you to approve the fiscal year 21 budget and there will be a June 3rd appropriation that follows that.

to start the year.

You'll also see along the bottom of the screen that we're working closely with the school division.

They also will be adopting on the same day as we will on the 14th and we'll stay in close contact with them.

The desired outcomes for today's work session, we have a two-hour work session

This meeting is for the board to discuss outstanding items and make adjustments if you desire to the proposed revised fiscal year 21 budget prior to your adoption of the budget on the 14th.

I just wanted to mention that in this new structure that we're in and we'll mention it again in a moment of 366, we will use fiscal year 21 budget as really a starting point.

Budgeting is a plan and it will be the starting point as we enter fiscal year 21.

We're going to continue to carefully monitor revenues and expenditures along the way and adjustments can be continued to be made throughout the next year.

So here's how the day will go.

After an overview, the first item on the agenda is a consideration of a request by the sheriff.

Then we will move into a conversation on transit.

We will provide you with some updates and present you with some items to consider.

At around 5.20,

Our plan is to also share with you some information about an upcoming smart scale applications and its association with the timing of the capital improvement plan update.

And then we will have a summary.

This is just for information, a summary of the recommended uses of general fund balance in this recommended budget so you can see it all on one page.

And then we'll have the wrap up.

So as we begin, we wanted to share with you again that we are building this budget based on principles.

We are adhering to the Albemarle County's financial policies first and foremost.

We are continuing to respond to the essential service needs of our community.

We want to position our organization to lead the recovery efforts.

This budget is really based on the opportunity to remain flexible and adaptable along the way.

We think that's the most important thing we need to do with this budget in this particular situation.

And we're starting this budget off while we maintain our strategic reserves.

We've talked a lot as a board and staff of something we are using as shorthand, the 366 model.

As you know, we are monitoring carefully how this current fiscal year ends.

You know the fiscal year will end on June 30th, so we are carefully watching it, carefully watching the expenditures and revenues.

The goal is to maintain essential services.

for discretionary spending.

We are freezing positions through attrition.

We have 15 frozen as of the beginning of this budget, reviewing capital projects, and we are coordinating very close with our school division.

So as we enter into the first six months, we're thinking about our next fiscal year into two parts.

The first half will be a real focus on responding and recovering and recalibration.

And then the second six we will revisit, we will be revisiting all along the way, but we will really take a look at how the year is going, respond accordingly, and implement any longer term structural changes that we all believe is necessary based on how the economy is working out.

So also I just wanted to bring this slide in.

You've seen it before.

There was a lot of impacts as we revised our budget and moved into this new revision to present to you for your consideration from the fiscal year 21 budget that we were doing earlier.

There are many items we removed from the budget.

So we removed our

Plan to go to the $15 minimum wage, we removed the salary increase, we removed a portion of our salary reserve, we removed a portion of the training and professional development, equipment, furniture, fleet replacement delays, funding from our business process optimization fund, and as we mentioned earlier we have 15 frozen positions as we entered this budget process and our goal is to get to 35 frozen positions again through attrition.

So we're going to move right into one of the first issues for today's work session.

And this is the Office of the Sheriff's Request.

And Sheriff Bryant will be joining us for questions during this part of the presentation.

So I wanted to start out with providing you some background information.

First of all, the Office of Sheriff has many responsibilities.

You can see over the left on the screen, they do courtroom security, they process and serve civil and criminal court authorized documents, they transport prisoners, they do select enforcement activities and search and rescue.

They also provide transportation for those who have been issued a mental health related

temporary detention order.

And we'll refer to this through the next several slides as TDO.

And then over to the right side, this provides some information to you of what's included in the proposed budget for the Sheriff's Office.

It totals $2.9 million.

It is a decrease of $189,000 or 6.1% from fiscal year 20.

The salary savings in this recommended budget are due to retirements, turnover, and replacements of positions that started a lower base pay.

This is our standard process in OMB to look at all departments and divisions in this standardized way.

It also removes one-time costs that were in the prior year and decreases the contribution to the vehicle replacement fund.

Again, that's similar to what we're doing in all the other departments.

So by law, when the sheriff's budget was reduced by 6.1%, we are required to provide a notice, a written notice to the sheriff.

So the staff notified the sheriff that their proposed budget reduces their office's budget by the 6.1%, and this is a higher reduction than the average rate of total agency funding reductions.

and the sheriff has a right to respond to that notice within a certain number of days and the sheriff did provide a notice of objection to the county.

The sheriff has indicated in the notice of objection letter that she disagrees with the removal of the 89,511 in salary savings and she requests to utilize those funds to hire a deputy and to promote a deputy to supervisor or to sergeant.

And this is the reason she is also required to state the reason in her notice of objection and she said this is a key pace with increases in courts, prisoner, and the temporary detention orders or TDOs.

So here's a little bit more of information about the notice of objection.

She states that two new judges have taken office on July 1, 2019.

and each judge requires two to four deputies to provide security.

The general district court judge has requested a change that civil dockets have bailiffs and that there's man metal detectors.

There's also been an increase in mental health TDOs during normal business hours, which impacts the sheriff's ability to provide courtroom coverage.

and at the bottom of the screen is again a little more information about the Sheriff's Office.

The Office of the Sheriff has 26 approved FTEs and the state provides partial funding for 12 FTEs.

The county has provided funding for three additional FTEs since 2018 and the cost for an additional deputy position is $74,223

And in conversations that we've had over the last week or so, the cost to promote a deputy to sergeant is available in the office of the sheriff's salary line item in the revised recommended fiscal year 21 budget.

So there is funding for stipends and promotions built into the salary line that could be utilized if the sheriff determines that she would like to promote a deputy to sergeant.

So now I'd like to go in and provide you a little more detail about the temporary detention orders.

So I did research, I talked with representatives from the state and from region 10, and of course, Sheriff Bryant and others.

And here's my understanding.

The magistrate is required to specify a law enforcement agency to provide transportation of a person to a location for evaluation or temporary detention.

The Magistrate may consider an alternative transport service if that alternative transport service that's non-law enforcement is identified by the Community Services Board, or CSB, evaluator.

And on our local area, Region 10 serves as our local CSB.

In May 2019, the Department of Behavioral Health and Development Services awarded an alternative transportation service contract to an organization called G4S.

And so there is an opportunity for transport to occur without using law enforcement in situations when it's approved by Region 10.

and our region's ability, they rolled it out slowly throughout the state and our region's ability to begin utilizing this alternative transport began the end of January in 2020.

And so it was just recently that our region was able to change in how we transport those that need TDS.

So region 10, the Department of Behavioral Health and Development Services and the Sheriff's Office

All of them shared with me the desire to utilize this alternative transportation option just as much as possible.

There's been challenges, as some of you know, with getting this off the ground.

Also, the pandemic hit just recently and it was just begun working in our region.

and there's also a change in Virginia law that's effective July 1 that we think will increase our region's ability to utilize G4S.

So there were some details in the law before that made it a little difficult but we all collectively feel like those changes will loosen up the ability to utilize the alternative transportation.

So I know I provided a lot of information and I know there's probably questions that you have.

I will go ahead and finish this slide and then we can back up and look at anything that you'd like to talk in greater detail.

You have some options.

You have an option to not provide the additional funding at this time.

Sheriff Bryant and I spoke on the phone and she is no longer saying that she requests the full $89,000 but her need is just her needs and it's how we can find the needs that they have.

And so the option you have is to provide $74,223 to the Office of the Sheriff for this position

An alternative option that we're putting out just for your consideration is you could provide 35,146 for a part-time temporary

Deputy position to support the sheriff's workload.

And in alignment with our framework that we talked about a few moments ago, we would monitor the impact of the usages of this alternative TDO transportation system the first half of the fiscal year and we can make modifications along the way.

Great board.

We're going to continue the same order.

So the order has been set with the way I call on supervisors, just FYI, as follows the vote of the board meetings, which won't change again until later in the month.

Thank you very much.

And Lori, thanks for all this information.

It's great.

Just just for clarity now.

So

and we're just talking about right now a new deputy for, and that wouldn't occur until July anyway.

And July is when we are expecting the transport service to come into full service.

This is our expectation.

And that is,

when the sheriff's office is also expected to have new deputies for the general district court.

Is that correct on the timing of that?

Or maybe that's a question for Chan.

I'll just say one more thing before I end my question.

I think that

I know none of us knows what's going to happen and we all want to hold on to every dollar until we have a better understanding of what's going on.

So I'm just trying to figure out the timing of when they need extra people for this for general district and also what for the civil court and I probably didn't say that correctly for the civil court and

and also for Chan, what does she expect this new transport service to, if they were gonna take over half of the TDOs or however many TDOs, that obviously is gonna free up deputies.

And I'm assuming at this point, we're just not sure how many deputies are gonna be shored up.

I assume the judgeship in Albemarle County.

When he was in the city, the city provided him a bailiff for civil court.

He's requested us to do the same thing in the county and he started hearing cases in the beginning of May before

the previous judge retired.

We provide him, not all the time, when staffing allows, we provide him a bailiff in circuit court, I mean, general district court, and we actually take a deputy off of the road from service civil process to when he thinks there's going to be an issue in court with civil cases, then we provide him

Tom, but he has requested one every time he sits on the bench no matter whether it's a criminal docket or a civil docket for his safety.

That's since last May 2019.

Ms.

Barkley retired.

So he's our new general district judge now.

He's been hearing cases in Albemarle County because Judge Barkley was using his leave up, so he was actually sitting the bench February and April.

So when G4S all through the process, when the state awarded the contract, the G4S, that was to help with the transports.

It was never a process to take over TDOs from primary law enforcement.

And for those board members that don't know, Virginia says that the primary law enforcement transports temporary detention orders, which is at our police department.

entered into a MOU with the County Police Department that we will transport for those TDOs so it could keep their officers in the county as opposed to sending them across the Commonwealth on a mental health transport.

P4S is never going to take over full responsibility of TDOs.

speaking with other sheriffs throughout other regions that this has went into effect, it cuts it in about a third to be an accurate number.

They said 40%, but most of them are doing a third.

But it basically depends on the patient being transported, whether they fit a certain criteria, whether it's alternative or whether law enforcement has to take them.

Yeah, and I guess there's no real way at this point to predict what that's going to do, how many that's going to take off your

your responsibilities?

Yes.

I mean, we don't know.

We don't know how many we're going to have a year.

We don't know when they're going to happen.

But the majority of our transports now are happening during daylight hours or when court's in operation.

So that's the way it's affecting staff now.

We don't know.

We don't know.

Okay, thank you.

That's my questions for right now.

Pretty good.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Ms.

Alshouse, thank you for your presentation.

Could you put that last slide back up, please?

And I appreciate some of the additional data that you included in terms of the reduction in employment labor costs.

So I appreciate that.

Thank you very much.

Sheriff Bryant, thank you for being here this afternoon.

It's a pleasure to have you here and I look forward to reviewing this.

Looking at this slide, I would just simply ask from your professional standpoint,

If the bottom option, the funding for a part-time temporary deputy position while we figure out what this impact is going to be, would be sufficient to meet your needs based upon the information that you have at this point, understanding that with the changes both in the potential transport of about 30% of these TDOs as well as the impact of the

I can take anything that I can take is more than what I have now.

So my only concern with the third option of hiring a part-time deputy

the pool of candidates to hire that deputy.

I mean, it's gonna be extremely difficult to fill a part-time deputy's position for a short period of time.

That's my only concern, but if I have to do it, I will do it.

But I don't know how many currently certified deputies, because if you don't hire a certified deputy, then you're gonna have to send them to the academy to become law enforcement certified.

So for that period of time we're losing them for four to six months anyway just to get them certified.

Yes, thank you Chair Bryant for being here today to answer our questions.

I'm also asking about the last option.

Would it be possible?

Because I understand you would want to have someone even if they're part-time is certified.

would it be possible to perhaps for a short period of time have someone that is retired or recently retired to be able to have someone in that position and figure out budget wise what is going on in the county.

I think we all want to support you.

We're looking at we don't know what's going to be happening in the future.

so that's why we're all a little bit cautious here and I do know the TDOs I mean that'll hopefully I think I when I spoke with region 10 they said less than half of the TDOs actually have to be transported and a lot of that has to do with whether or not UVA has beds and

That we don't know either.

We're going to have sufficient beds because is the COVID-19 going to continue?

People aren't getting, what I understand in April, the numbers were down.

However, in March, or in March they were down, in April they went back up because

even with mental health problems or delaying going into the hospital or delaying going to the doctor so there's actually an uptick in a problem.

So we just don't know what's going to be happening that's why we're kind of trying to hedge our bets and I'm wondering if that would work maybe someone who's recently retired who would come back for a short while till we can figure everything out.

I'm willing to check into it.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

I appreciate that very much.

And the other question is, I noticed that the judges, the two new judges, that they're requiring two to four deputies.

Could you explain?

Okay.

Okay.

So all the judges have two deputies, civil and criminal.

That's correct.

Right and and I because I've been being a cosmologist I've been through the metal detectors where there's someone standing there as you go in.

Is that something that you would ever consider in the future of

Actually the majority of the time we use a reserve volunteer deputy to man the metal detector so it's not costing us or the taxpayers any money at all because they're volunteers.

Are the volunteers certified?

Yes, majority of the time.

If they're available right now, we used to have 60, but because of life changes, we're down to 37 at the moment.

Okay.

Thank you, Sheriff.

Thank you.

Supervisor Malek?

Yes, thank you.

My computer told me, you're muted.

Pay attention.

So now I'm back.

My overriding concern is about turnover and the time it takes to get somebody on trained into service and how quickly that extra person becomes a full staff because of other people's injury or life getting in the way.

So I actually personally would support the full time hire

because I know that it has been, over many, many years, the Sheriff's Department has been creeping, crawling along, trying to get to a better staff level.

When we have someone who really takes all hands on deck, sometimes things don't go well.

and it was actually a Louisa deputy who lost to transport.

A fellow who decided to kick out the window and jump out of the car and they didn't catch him until Chief Lance caught him up in Crozet.

So these are high risk interventions and I would feel very badly about sending our sheriffs out without proper backup and without the proper team.

And the other thing is we don't really know how this

G5, whatever it is, is going to perform.

So I would much rather be taking care of ourselves and if it turns out that we have a little extra time during a work week when someone can be put toward serving warrants instead of doing TDOs, that's terrific because it takes a really long time for the few people we have to be able to take the workload that they have to carry that out and

So that's basically where I am on all of that.

The other thing that people have said a lot is that they expect the mental health consequences of the virus to be large, and that things are basically tamped down now because of all the restrictions, but this is also increasing the stresses on families, on individuals, and I certainly personally don't think that this is going to be going

into a smaller demand.

I think it will be a much greater demand going forward.

Donna, do you want to take over?

Yes I have um thank you very much Donna um these questions may be more for um Lori I'm not sure Chan thank you for being here and let me ask a couple of questions.

Lori I'm trying to wrap my head around

A couple of things that I saw somewhere in the documents about this concern.

And I just remember seeing that the sheriff was indicating that she would like to keep her lapse factor.

Does that play into this discussion?

I believe maybe some of the confusion might be that there is $89,000 in funding available.

And so we made that adjustment and so that adjustment removed $89,000 from the budget.

Okay.

All right, so Lori, what I'm trying to separate out is that I understand Chan's need and the new judges and the requirements and I get that.

I'm just concerned that if all of our departments, everyone else is

is not able to, I guess the right word is not able to keep or hold on to their funds from their lapse factor.

I just am trying to separate out these issues because I wouldn't want one department to be able to do something that the other departments or the other, for example, the police or whatever.

Can you help me a little bit with this?

Is there a way we can separate that out?

I'm worried about getting into changing our policy I guess or the precedent of one group, one entity being able to keep lapse factor when no one else can.

I think that what might be different here and I'll ask Mr. Kempner to weigh in if he would like to.

The sheriff has a right to write a written a letter of objection

and the other departments do not.

So I think that's really why it's before you today is that you're required to consider the shares.

information that she shared with you in the letter.

You're exactly right, our policy for all departments is the same, so we do not allow any departments just to keep additional funding when a change is happening personnel one way or the other.

So I guess my concern is if there was a way we could address this in a different way maybe, but what I don't want to do is to start a whole other precedent, for lack of a better word, that all of a sudden the sheriff's department's lapse factor is handled very differently than everybody else's.

Now maybe the board would decide that that's acceptable, but we haven't had that discussion.

I understand your concern.

Can Greg address this?

Maybe is Greg there?

I'm here.

The reason why the sheriff's office received this letter, it was a letter was sent to the sheriff into the clerk's office because the state law requires us to do so when any constitutional offices reduction exceeds the average that is

being reduced to all of the agencies.

It gives the constitutional offices the opportunity to make an objection, and the board is obligated merely to consider the objection that's made.

But Greg, I understand all of that.

I'm trying to get at something.

So all of those, I'm just trying to figure out how this process works.

So all of those officers, I mean those constitutional officers,

could or would be able to send us a letter if in fact their reduction, I guess for lack of a better word, is based on a certain amount.

So if we look at it from the viewpoint, I'm just concerned that all of a sudden we're going to have multiple groups or multiple departments coming to us and saying, well,

We want to be able to maintain our fund balance if in fact that's the decision we're making here today, then we need to recognize that that's a decision that we're making that has larger implications.

Or am I way off base on this?

Maybe I'm just.

Can I ask a quick clarifying question in this conversation of Lori?

Just so I understand what Diantha is asking.

You described to us the difference in giving the one deputy a raise and promoting that deputy to a supervisor position.

So Sheriff Bryant's original request was to use the salary lapse for both of this position and the increase to the supervisor permission.

Is that correct?

That's correct.

And so right now the raise for the deputy to the supervisor is off and that's at a different pocket.

And right now if we considered this new position,

It doesn't necessarily have to come out of the salary lapse.

It can be a position that they need and we say yay or nay whether it's out of the salary lapse or not.

Okay so we could take the salary lapse away and still grant this particular position.

so that we're not being you know inconsistent from department to department.

That's correct.

And before I give up Mike I just want to say one really quick thing because I asked to make another comment that the other the new supervisors probably don't know from past um with the with the um discussion of the 35,000

for the Office of the Sheriff for a part-time person.

It was explained to us last year that if you put an individual through the training, they automatically, even with the salary increases from the changes that we've made in their salaries in recent times,

the police department automatically, those people go through the same training and then they go through the training and a good portion of the time they realize they could make more as a police officer and they end up going to the police and so the sheriff explained to us a year ago that that is sometimes an issue and I just wanted to throw that out for the part-time position and

with Ann's comment about that.

And I'll turn my mic off now.

Thank you.

I'm confused Donna.

Donna, I never was able to finish my comments because Liz was able to jump in.

I apologize, Supervisor Mallek.

It's all right.

Liz, thank you for the clarification, dear.

I just wanted the mic to be able to come back to me for a minute.

So, Lori, so what I'm hearing is and what you and Liz had the discussion about was that if we did this, it would not be confusing the lapse factor funding that all the other departments are expected to return.

That's correct.

okay all right let me ask and since i had the mic let me just ask one more question and then i apologize donna and liz that i really had another question as well um

Have we ever established a ratio of some sort?

We have a ratio for our police officers of how many officers we feel like we should have per population.

Have we ever looked at that for our sheriffs and is it possible to do that?

Yeah, and I'm not for right now, but I'm really suggesting, I think when you make decisions based on data, it really is so much better.

It really took a lot of the guessing out of our police officer hires.

makes it much more straightforward and data driven.

And I'm not saying in this case, I'm expecting that to happen.

But I do think it's something that we might want to think about going forward as a board.

So this was helpful.

Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor McKeel.

I apologize for not getting back to you.

Just a follow up to Diantha's good question and I had assumed that the constitutional officers were in a different category and basically I'm fine with wherever the money comes from if it comes from reserves instead of the lapse factor and the lapse factor is all put back into the pot.

I'm happy with that.

I think that

It looked like the sheriff was trying to be frugal with the budget and found a location where there were some funds to be able to accomplish this extra task for the new judges.

All right.

Do any other supervisors have any other questions?

If not, I don't.

That's all right.

I was just going to kind of make a comment because I guess we're getting close to a decision on this.

A lot of what we're doing, we're making this decision based on, we really don't know how it's going to play out.

It seems like to me that as we're doing with many of our other budget decisions, the 366

allows us to come back and see what actually has happened with the workload.

But I do understand the concern for part time.

I guess, anyway, just a comment.

All right, thank you.

Any other questions by any other supervisor?

Yes, real quick.

This is for Chan.

How much overtime are you using to make

to make sure you're covering the courts now for the new judges and what you're doing.

Extremely maxed out our, and Lori can answer this because I don't have the budget in front of me, but we're pretty much maxed out our overtime that was in our budget in April, beginning of April.

So yes, we're extremely used to overtime every day, not only for TDO transport, but for courts running late.

I'll just throw it out that

I'm leaning towards just going ahead and giving the deputy position and gave good reasons for that.

I just don't know what the availability of retired sheriff's folks are.

I know you have volunteers now.

No, I know the three that retired from us in 2019, two of them left for medical reasons.

Okay, thank you.

Yes, I have a question of Sheriff Ryan.

It will, one aspect it will cut down the person doing the overtime.

I don't know if it's going to cut down on the overall overtime budget in itself because the overtime budget is used for late courtrooms.

So we call it holdover.

So we use two bailiffs in the court and then one to transport the prisoners back to the jail.

So if courts are running late, it's still going to incur overtime based on the courts running late.

And right now we used to have just circuit running late, but now we have a couple J&D court judges that go past 4-30.

If there's more than three prisoners, two deputies, just for safety reasons, return prisoners.

No, because court starts, they actually increase courts and now we're starting court at 830 in some of the courtrooms and checking the prisoners and it just comes down to safety of the deputies, safety of the judges, so I can't have one deputy in the courtroom and then two hours later another deputy comes in.

All right.

So finish up.

And we try to utilize reserve deputies as much as possible for even TDO transport as well as court.

Thank you.

Chair Galloway is back and Chair Galloway you were the last one to ask any questions that you may have and then I was just going to continue to go through the list to get a consensus of where the different supervisors are.

Are there any remaining questions from supervisors or comments?

I guess my question is if the if the full-time position was there and this played out based how we're doing our three six six this may be a question for Jeff or Lori

If we approved the full-time position and the transportation piece played out, are we, where it worked a little bit more to our advantage, didn't take as much costs as, you know, once we realized what the actual costs are, would that money then move over to help support that 74?

I think I could address your question, Chairman Galloway.

The funding, when we go to the transit conversation, the funding that we may be able to not

have to expend due to the CARES Act is one time in nature.

And our policies in general are if you hire a position, we consider that an ongoing cost for the budget.

And for example, if you chose to either provide funding for a part time or a full time deputy,

Your funding, we would recommend, come from your reserve for contingencies.

A certain portion of that is what we call ongoing funding.

And so we would suggest an ongoing source for an ongoing cost.

Alternatively, if it was a part-time temporary position, that could be considered more temporary and be more appropriate for one-time costs.

Yeah, it does.

I mean, I get it, but it's just an idea of with where we're at.

I can see where the court order here is complicating this.

It's kind of putting us into a position where we're going to, you know, you need to do it.

I heard Ann's point about going ahead and I see the advantages even though it's an extra expense to just hiring a full-time position up front.

I think it just gets complicated down the road otherwise.

That was really my only question.

I guess my comment would be to just want to hear from Jeff just because of our

because he is our county executive and I always feel more comfortable if I've heard from him when we have decisions.

I don't know if Jeff is available because sometimes he can provide some insight into things that I haven't thought about and so I just have a comfort level when I hear from our county executive.

I do appreciate the budget office working closely over the last several weeks with the sheriff's office.

From my vantage point, the backdrop here is that we're in a cut budget.

were cutting approximately $6.4 million across the board.

Initially, the budget office worked closely with every department in the county, including the sheriff's office.

And the way we handled the cuts in the sheriff's office was consistent with the things that we're doing across the county.

The sheriff has duly noted what her challenges are

with day-to-day operations with providing for courtroom security.

And she's articulated that today to the board.

In addition to that, the state is moving through a new process for how the Region 10 transports are handled.

I think our staff in the county executive's office and in the budget office

There are unanswered questions there.

We don't really know how that's going to play out.

The sheriff's articulated what she thinks her needs are.

And all I can tell the board is that this is a really tough budget.

We have cuts across the board.

We have other needs in other departments that did not make it this far because we just knew we couldn't afford it.

I'm not trying to suggest that the sheriff has done anything other than just tell the board, hey, here are my challenges and here are my needs.

It's just a tough budget and it's tough to administer $6.4 million in cuts in really about a 30-day timeframe.

And so I like the third bullet in the sense that it does not bind the board and it does not bind the staff as we go into the fall and it allows us to see how the Region 10 contracting is going to work.

I think the sheriff indicated earlier that if she received that she would make it work.

If we went that route there's nothing to prohibit the board later in the year to consider new information.

We also could look at data from across the state if there's data to suggest how things are going there.

So the third bullet

aligns with 366.

Some of the board members have suggested that they would like to take maybe a more permanent step now with the sheriff's office and certainly as board members have indicated it's the board's prerogative to do that and if that's the board's prerogative we can take that money out of contingency ongoing

to align that accordingly.

Thank you, Jeff.

I really appreciate you helping out.

Supervisor Mallek?

Thank you very much.

I agree with all that has been said.

It is a terrible year, but the one place where we have, for very good reason, chosen to expand our workforce has been in public safety.

with the 12 firefighters and rescue people.

And starting that off to begin to train, it takes a long time to get things going.

So that is why I'm supporting getting this going sooner because I know it's going to be months until the person is ready on the street and ready to go.

So that's sort of what's in my mind.

One of my concerns is I know how

Folks are worried about shootings and disruptions and whatnot in public spaces.

And I also, I feel for the new judge, even though it is a civil court and the previous judge didn't do this, that they really would feel more comfortable if there is a bailiff there, or there's two bailiffs to help out if there is a problem.

and if that judge and those in the courtroom are concerned, which I'm sure they are, I just have a really hard time not answering that need so that they can go through and do their job and feel comfortable about it.

I am worried about the ability to hire a temporary part-time position

unless somebody could come back that's retired for a few months.

I would like to understand if the board majority wants to go with the third option, when would we be able to come back if that person is not able to be found?

and we have to go through this other, like Ann said, if you don't have, you have to put somebody through a process, it takes a long time.

And I also don't know if there's people about to retire in the sheriff's office.

So, you know, I'm just, I'm curious about what our timing would be, Jeff or Lori, if we, if

Sheriff Brian found that this temporary position, she just couldn't find anybody.

And she needed to get started on the full-time deputy position.

Jeff, I also want to chime in.

When we think about this 366 approach to our decisions, we will be thinking in chunks of time, like what's going on in the first six months of the year, and then we'll be monitoring it along the way to see if there's adjustments in the second six months.

I understand your question and the concern of bringing someone up to speed and then making adjustments, but given the times that we're in,

We feel like that's really a nimble approach to not make real permanent decisions until we know more how the economy is going.

So that's what we're thinking about with the incremental approach.

Would we be revisiting this potentially in three months?

We certainly could.

I will say I could go with the third option if we could revisit it if Chan found that she could not find somebody.

And I know she will work as hard as she can to try to find a retired person to come back.

Yes, I am very comfortable with option three at this point.

I understand Chan's concerns and I understand the judge's request and how it all works together.

I think I have a comfort level with three

that we'll be able to come back.

Chan could make a case pretty quickly in three months if she needs some help, but we really don't know at this point how this is gonna play out.

And I just think to give us some time is really, I think we're trying to support Chan and her sheriffs and the deputies, but at the same time, basing our decision on actually what ends up playing out, we just don't know at this point.

Very good and I'm getting different chats in so let me get the questions that are still coming up and then I'll come back through.

Yes, I definitely support Sheriff Chan.

and everything she's trying to do.

I like our 366 approach and it was always my intent in supporting that and in supporting number three to come back and revisit this.

I didn't want to wait a long time, that's why I like the 366 approach, but definitely to come back and revisit this as we see

Thank you.

When could the search for the part-time deputy begin?

Could it begin immediately to see where the market looks before we get to July 1st?

Or does everything have to wait until after July 1st, in which case it's October before we know whether we have anybody possible or not?

I could, oh, go ahead.

I'm sorry.

Or is it who's appropriate to answer here?

Laurie, Sheriff Brian, both.

Laurie, why don't you go ahead?

Okay, I'll go ahead and start by saying that when the board approves and adopts the budget on Thursday, it has been situations in the past that we can start our advertising knowing that the funding, you know, is coming.

Very good.

Sheriff Bryant, any additional comments on that?

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

I want to thank everyone for your presentations, comments, and questions.

I am a firm believer in the 366 framework.

However, in this instance, I do not think it's workable.

I think it places an unreasonable burden on Sheriff Bryant to meet the need.

As a former prosecutor, defense counsel, and trial judge, I think it's imperative that we have the sufficient manning in our court system

I think Sheriff Bryant has clearly articulated the need for that to try and go with the part-time position based upon the certification requirements, eligibility of someone who can actually fill that role.

I don't think it's reasonable.

I agree with Supervisor Malek's comments earlier that given the economic situation, I think that the courts are likely to be used more.

that financial issues are one of the biggest problems in domestic relations and that also often leads to violence.

I think if anything we must ensure that our first responders, law enforcement, the sheriff's department is included and I fully support the full $74,223 so that the sheriff can actually get a full-time permanent deputy

in that position, because if anything, I think we're going to need more manpower, not less.

And I simply don't think 366 will work in this particular situation, which is different than most of the jobs that the county has.

Very good.

So I don't want to overly complicate this by, I mean, I would be supportive of the full amount.

That's going to complicate things today in terms of this, but if we were able to get started, I mean, let's face it, if the part time position becomes problematic and can't be done, we're going to be back here looking at option two and option two alone.

We're going to know so much more in the next 30 to 60 days.

I think it would be reasonable to do the option three and then come back and revisit where we're at.

If option three just isn't an option because of what's out there, then we'll be faced with option two or nothing.

and I think we can deal with that.

It gives some certainty, I know it's not exactly what you want, Sheriff Bryant, but it gives you some certainty of how to move forward, knowing that there will be further conversation and that conversation won't be put off for six months.

So I would, in the interest of moving the conversation along, be supportive of option two at this time.

And then we'll see where we're at with the part-time option.

I think everybody has stated their positions.

I'm a little bit confused.

I mean, I'm interested.

I would think we just, I mean, this is something the courts are going to need it.

If the judge has asked for it, it's something that's going to be there and it's going to be a continued need and request.

We're going to have to deal with this.

So we might as well just find out how to make it work.

I'm okay with making a motion for two, if you want.

Excuse me a minute.

Can I just?

Yeah, and I'm sorry.

Let me just tell them in a minute.

When COVID-19 hit,

We have automatically doubled what we're doing with our video conferencing in courts.

And I see that as something that is really going to change the dynamic to some degree.

I could be wrong, but I would really, and that's another reason why I would just like to give us some time to see how some of this plays out.

I'm not sure going forward, I don't know how long it will take, but I think we're going to see less and less court appearances and more video.

If nothing else, it's going to be one of the outcomes of this pandemic.

And we have already increased our capacity, doubled our capacity.

And we really haven't seen how it's going to play out.

And I'm sorry I interrupted, but I really did just want to kind of throw that out there as a fault.

You know, I'm going back and forth and I apologize.

I'm really okay with two or three.

And I can make a motion for two if it sounds like we may have four votes for that.

But I'm willing to go along with the three.

So, you know, I agree with Ann.

I just think that's where we're going and Ned and I'm just very concerned about court safety.

In talking to some of the judges, I don't think that a lot of these, some of the video is definitely going to increase.

But not the actual courtroom, you have the right to, you know, face your accuser and all that sort of thing.

So I don't think that's going to change anytime too soon.

We can take additional discussion.

I mean, the way I was reading this was obviously nobody was objecting to number three.

If you were objecting to number three, you were doing so just because you felt strongly about option two.

So the worst case here is everybody's supportive of option three.

I'm happy to take a vote for option two to see if the votes are there.

It's just a matter of we know we have to do one or the other and then option three could turn into option two down the road.

That's why I was just saying that taking the 30 or 60 days is a good idea just so that we know where we're at on two fronts, both resources and on potentiality if the part-time position is a viable option.

Chair Galloway, I'd like to go ahead and make a motion for three.

May I speak to that?

Ned, you just suggested revisiting this in one to two months, 30 to 60 days.

That was a little different than what we had talked about before.

I have no problem with giving Sheriff Bryant the opportunity to try to see if she can find somebody to fill the part time in the next month or two.

My issue is I don't want to take too long.

And that's where I am.

It's just that when we started talking about 366, it was a month ago.

You know, the three months was the last quarter of each year, and the six months is the first half of the next year, unless I've misunderstood that.

So the first three months has been ticking away.

But if we're going to take motions, it's probably a good idea to see support for two, knowing full well we don't have objections to three.

I second that, Bea's motion.

I think if they want to, if you all want to go for 60 days, that's fine.

I think 30 days is probably way too soon.

Okay, first or second meeting in July then?

First meeting in July?

So the motion has been made by Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

It has been seconded by Supervisor McKeel.

Is there any further discussion?

Yes please.

Well first off I would just say procedurally I agree with the comment that Chair Galloway was making a moment ago to ask us to vote for something that we all agree at least as a secondary option if not our primary option before discussing option number two the full position puts us in a difficult position.

I will vote against this motion not because I'm opposed

to supporting the sheriff because by voting for this motion I don't get a chance to have a vote on the full-time position which is what I really support.

I believe it would make more sense to vote on option two first see if we have enough for that if not then as you mentioned just a moment ago Chuck Galloway and as all of the board members of the supervisors have mentioned

I think we all support the sheriff.

Well, no, I agree, but it's not giving an option.

It doesn't even give us the opportunity to discuss option number two if we if we all end up voting yes on number three.

Is there any further discussion?

All right, so the motion again was for option three made by Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

It was seconded by Supervisor McKeel.

Ms.

Palmer?

No.

Ms.

Price?

No.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

No.

Ms.

McKeel.

Did I hear, was that a 3-3?

3-3 vote.

So the motion fails.

Yes.

I would move that we support option number two

It may end up being a 3-3 tie and then we can go back to the other one.

I believe this was this really should have been the first one to vote on.

All right so the motion was made by Supervisor Price.

I heard Supervisor Palmer with the second.

Is there any further discussion before this vote?

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

Right, that motion carries.

Option two has been voted on and approved.

Thank you, Lori, for taking us through that.

All right, Board, we got some work to do.

That one took a little longer than we were expecting.

I guess we'll move on to

There you go.

Thank you.

Going to the next slide.

I'll say that I will be the primary presenter through this section, but should the board get into more detailed questions.

I believe we have on the call Mr. Brad Sheffield, the Director of John, Mr. Robert Williams, the Director of CAT, and Mr. Chip Boyles, the Director of the South Jefferson Planning District Commission.

It was two months ago today on March 11th.

The board had a session dedicated to transit.

We had some additional conversation on this at the April 29th work session and this will be another update from the information I shared on April 29th and this will also not be the last update for the support to come.

So there are three topics I plan to provide an update on today.

And I'll touch on it in more detail, but it would be an update of the Thomas Jefferson Planning and Discommissioned Plan and Feasibility Grant.

This was something that Chip Boyle spoke about at the March 11th work session.

And also the board had asked about it at the April 29th work session.

We'll have an update on that.

And there will also be some options for the board to consider at the end of each of these updates.

The second is probably more time consuming just because of the complexity and that is an update of the fiscal year 21 impact of the federal CARES funding that was discussed at the April 21 session.

We have been working with county and city staff together over the last week and a half and at this point have identified a one-time fiscal year 21 savings of $619,000.

I'll go into much more detail in terms of why that is and how we got there and what the future may look like.

And then I'll also touch on an update for Jonta.

We do not have a dollar amount at this time.

That continues to be in the review, but I can share a little more information.

Then finally, third, in the last work session, the board had requested some additional information for consideration around junk driver salaries.

So with that, I'll go on to the next slide, which is the update on the Thomas Jefferson Planning and District Commission planning and infusibility grants.

Thank you.

So as Chip shared March 11th, earlier this year the Planning and District Commission submitted a grant to the Department of Rail and Public Transportation for $107,000 planned feasibility grant.

This would look at a study that is specific to defining expansion routes in Talmara County

The grant was approved.

The work would begin around July.

Upon completion, it would provide information assuming favorable results.

They could then allow for a second grant application in February 2021.

They could look at a grant to begin to expand service in those areas.

At the time this was submitted, there was no local match.

There was hope that it would be able to be covered with no local match.

Based on the conversation I had with Chip last week, DRPT has indicated they would be recommending funding for the award, but the one-time match required is $53,500.

I don't have any more technical details of that.

If there's questions about that, we can refer to Chip.

Because there are going to be some one-time savings identified through the county's contribution to catch-21, if the board desired to include the local match for that, that would be one option to amend the revised recommended budget to incorporate that, or the board could also choose not to provide the local match.

Those would be the two options for board consideration.

All right, any questions here?

I can go through the order if you like or we can continue.

No, I'm eager to get to the funding.

Sure, it would help.

Okay, I just think it's really important everybody understands where that money is going to come from.

I will say for us in Albemarle County,

If we spend the next year figuring out right now what transit should look like in Albemarle County, that's what this will do for us.

We will be ahead of the game coming out of the pandemic.

So for me, this is really critical.

But we do have to figure out where the money is going to come from for everybody to have a comfort level.

But this one is the grant that really looks at

transit in our own community in Albemarle County and it's really, I think, important for us.

Andy, you can go ahead.

Yeah, we'll go ahead to the second item on the CARES funding update.

On April 29th, I shared with the board, I'm actually just waiting one moment for the slides to change,

Thank you.

So at the April 29th work session, I referred to the CARES Act, which is the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security Act of 2020.

There is a federal small urban allocation that will be $5.36 million for CAT and $1.79 for John.

That is the total funding that is available to be applied across fiscal year 20 and 21.

So that amount refers to the amount eligible from January through the end of the year if it will cross two fiscal years.

That is the amount that is for the total system that does not represent the county share and that funding may be used for operating capital or planning expenses or lost revenue retroactive to January.

The top slide is the same information I shared with the board so I went through that pretty quickly.

What has happened since the April 29th work session is I've been in coordination with both Mr. Williams and Mr. Sheffield to try and assess what is that true impact for 21 as best we know.

and I think in the 366 framework that we've talked about in previous items with the sheriff and also the overall budget message is that same approach will need to be applied to transit as we begin to get more information.

I said that we had a lot of Q&A with both agencies back and forth and I would share that we had what I thought was a very good collaborative discussion with myself and also County Executive Trevor Henry and Lori, our OMB director,

We met with Mr. Williams, the deputy city manager, Patricia Shelton, my counterparts in the city, it would be to kind of all have the data in front of us, talk through the assumptions that Cat was making, how they would be applying funding, just have it go through all that Q&A, and really also speak to the uncertainty that is really coming ahead to us in the pandemic.

And I think if I didn't emphasize this, I'm sure Mr. Williams and Mr. Sheffield, who both want me to say this, is right now, at least for Cat and for John, we're developing a plan

That plan will be based on what we know of today, and it's certainly a better plan than we could have come up with a few weeks ago.

But as we begin to learn more about the impacts of the pandemic at both the macro level as the state moves into phases of reopening,

a lot of requirements that may be out there as well as a micro level around how to use transit in the kind of recovery and transition phases of the pandemic.

This will be something that I think there's a mutual agreement with our meeting with city staff last week as we would just continue to stay in touch with this every step of the way recognizing this is a plan, it will continue just as we just continue to learn more.

So with that, I'll get to the plan on the next slide.

It's a donut chart that shows how the 5.4 million for CAT is being allocated across fiscal year 20 and fiscal year 21.

This is a new slide the board has not seen before and so I definitely want to take a few minutes to slowly talk through how this will work and where there's an impact to the county that will impact the 21 and where it's

So I'm gonna start, if you kind of imagine a face of a clock around about one o'clock and that dark green piece of the donut is referring to revenue loss.

And the important thing to notice, going around this donut, there are different colors of text.

So the first two pieces of donut are black text.

When I'm referring to that black text, this is a category of funding that is benefiting the city and the county proportionally based upon their share of sources.

The benefit is not a reduced share in fiscal year 21.

What instead is happening is offsetting funding increases that would otherwise be required but are not necessary due to the CARES funding.

So the first category is revenue loss.

And right now during the pandemic as part of social distancing and cancer revised lifeline service ridership is down because of that.

CAP is also experiencing a decline due to the pandemic in their advertising costs based on the budget that was reviewed with the board at the March 11th work session.

And this will be an impact in both fiscal year 20 and 21.

And so this piece of pie speaks to the revenue that would be lost that would otherwise be increasing the city and the county shares.

The next piece of the pie in blue is referring to I'd say the kind of dark royal blue next to the dark green one.

That is referring to additional operating costs that were not contemplated as part of the budget that was reviewed on March 11th from the board.

CAT is engaged with a professional services professional cleaning company to provide services to clean their buses on a much more deep cleaning and thorough schedule than was being done before, before the pandemic I should say.

CAT has costs for their personal protective equipment for their employees.

CAT is also engaged with public service announcements to communicate

the changes, procedures for riding the buses, cats gone fare-free, and just the other changes in service that are in effect right now.

And that is obviously in effect now and will continue at least for some portion of 2021.

So that covers that first category of black tax.

Now the next piece or I'm going to kind of talk about together are these three pieces of the pie and green tax that together I believe make up about 71% of the total plan of the 5.36 and funding.

These numbers are highlighted in green and they all will be contributing to reducing the county's share in fiscal year 21 for what was previously planned to be provided to CAT.

So to talk through these one at a time, the orange piece of the pie is a credit that we provide to the county and city, recognizing that we are in a different economic situation than we were a few months ago.

and that, as Mr. Richardson referred earlier, we're in a cut budget in the city and the county as all departments and agencies, for the most part, are seeing level funding or decreases.

Certainly there are exceptions to that, but for the most part, that is true.

And so, CAT would apply that federal funding to remove any requested increase from the city and county, again, proportionally based on service hours.

So that is the orange piece of the pie.

The next and largest piece of the pie in yellow refers to personnel cost.

and these are many services in the county.

The largest portion of the budget is for personnel and so CAT will be applying 40% of this funding to reimburse personnel costs to NCAT and the county will share in that just the city again based on service hours and that again will apply to fiscal year 20 and 21.

So finally, of the green text pieces of the donut, there is a contingency to allocate for to be determined impacts.

This is a kind of light blue color on the left hand side of the donut.

This is recognizing that we're continuing to learn more now than we knew a few weeks ago, and that will continue to change.

The plan said we'll allocate this more as we continue to know more of what those impacts will be.

But Mr. Williams did assure us that we will be able to fully draw down that 5.4 million

is that the contingency was not allocated to one of the other categories at this time.

And the county and the updated fiscal year 21 number will receive a credit of that $877,000 of about 28%, which is the county share of service hours based on the MOU.

So that covers the green category.

And again, those are the items that are going to, when I get to the next slide will show the decreased funding in fiscal year 21.

So the final piece of the donut is this piece up around 11 o'clock of the kind of orange or reddish text in capital.

And this refers to funding that has been applied to make up for lost state match and also additional capital costs that CAB has incurred right now.

As the board may be aware from the March 11 work session, the county does not contribute to any of CAB's capital costs.

So the county does not receive the benefit or just any impact of that funding being provided.

And I'll clarify on those additional costs is we think about, you know, often capital, at least I think about capital as kind of multi-year projects, long-term major equipment purchases.

A lot of that funding is going to be applied right now to retrofitting buses to provide barriers between drivers and riders to make them safer to ride than they would be otherwise.

And so it's not for, it's not only just for those kind of larger equipment bus replacements, it's for some of those kind of retrofitting that's happening right now.

So I expect I may need to come back to this slide because there may be questions because this is a lot of information.

This is complex and there's uncertainty.

But I'll go ahead for the moment and jump to the next slide to show the conclusion of this.

And what we'll see is the results of those in fiscal year 21 of those three areas of text highlighted in green.

And I'm pausing just for a moment.

I guess here we go.

We see a revised recommended contribution to CAT of $516,000 approximately.

That creates a one-time savings of $619,000 or 55% compared to where we were at the revised recommended budget of 1.1.

And I think the final comment I'll make before I get to the board consideration is actually the third bullet on the slide that I should probably speak to.

It probably makes sense to have this board as the second bullet and third.

So right now what I'm referring to is fiscal year 21.

there certainly will be a fiscal year impact to CARES as well because some of those costs will be applied into fiscal year 20.

And right now where we have a plan and that will continue to be monitored as the board may be aware there under the new MOU that was approved in July there's a process through the regional transit partnership to provide a kind of a reconciliation or true up of a kind of county and city shares based on whatever actual revenues and expenditures may actually happen.

So certainly the CARES will be one thing that we would consider

there would be additional funding from DRPT that would be provided to CAT that would be considered as well as just any other changes that have happened in CAT's budget through the course of the year.

Certainly when the RTP and all the MOU work was done this they were contemplating the pandemic and so the potential for adjustments of that will be probably more than we thought about in terms of process when this MOU was created roughly a year ago.

I'll say that that process in the MOU is spoken to very generally

I've reached out to Chip Boyles last week to kind of say as we're beginning to close the year we really do need to specifically lay out with the RTP and with the city what are the steps and the timing of that process that we can just have a clear path going forward as we now are going to be closing the fiscal year in the in the coming months and so with that I expect there are probably board questions but for more consideration of those one-time savings

The first item, and of course I'll say this one time savings does not have any strings attached to it other than the fact that it is one time.

So the board does have some flexibility in the air based on their desires and how this funding would be allocated.

For the board's consideration there would be the $53,500 that was referred to a couple slides ago that can be placed in reserve from the local match for the TJPDC planning and feasibility grant.

Another item for the board's consideration

There could be 245,000.

What that amount refers to is about the county's portion of that contingency that was referred to that would be placed in a transit reserve that could be used under the 366 framework.

Should all of the federal CARES funding be utilized by CAT?

Should the impacts of COVID-19 worsen and be more than we would expect?

And that's not to say they would happen, but just as a contingency, just given the amount of uncertainty we're working with right now in transit and CARES.

and the COVID-19 situation.

That could provide a reserve for the board should things be worse to address any mid-year adjustments as we continue to track this.

And then the final consideration for the board would be to take that remainder of $320,000.

That could be added to the one-time reserve for contingencies and just be considered as we work through the 366 framework.

All right, thank you, Andy.

Thank you.

I have two questions.

Thank you, Andy.

On this slide, the $320,000 in change for reserve for contingencies, just to be clear, that is reserve contingency for anything that's affected by this COVID pandemic.

So it could be used somewhere else.

rather than just in transit-related things.

And on the previous slide, could you go back to that?

I'm sorry, I cut off my video because in hopes that it would help me hear you better because you cut out a lot during this slide, but at the top the capital loss state match and additional costs

Could you explain that just briefly one more time?

Sure, I'll be glad to.

I'll lean a little more and if it helps I can just turn my video off in case any of the issues on my end.

So for this piece of the capital pie, the county does not contribute anything to CAT's capital costs under the MOU.

So it does not receive any impact of any change in capital funding.

So what this is applying to is CAT is projecting a lost state match for some of their capital expenses they were otherwise anticipating.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Mr. Bowman, thank you very much for your presentation.

Thank you, everyone.

Some of these questions you may be answering later, Andy, so please feel free to put me off until you get to that point in your presentation.

So starting at the top, or I guess it was the top on my list, you had mentioned the capital is something we haven't been contributing to, but the city has been maintaining for a decade that they're using revenue sharing money for that.

So we are buying buses.

And so just to keep that out there so people remember that.

and I saw carefully the pie charts and all that business.

So when we're talking about fiscal year 20, how much money did we pay them and how many intervals of true up have we had so far?

So because I know six months ago when we met with city council, we talked about how things couldn't wait a whole year because then everybody forgot.

So we were going to be getting much more frequent true up statements about the numbers of bus runs that didn't happen and what those reduced amounts were.

So maybe you can send us that information at another time.

So I'm glad you mentioned about the timetable for the study needing to be nailed down, because I don't want it to just slide off into the future.

But I am concerned that we're still paying $550,000 when this cat is getting $5.5 million.

So that's my concern is that we are paying through our revenue sharing.

So I guess I would like to have a whole lot more information about what we're getting even to continue on at the 55% reduced amount.

The CIP discussion.

The city capital improvement plan for years has clearly indicated in that document that the city is using our revenue sharing dollars to buy capital, which means buses.

So that's the source of what Ann and I are referencing is the city's capital improvement plan which clearly states that.

Just Andy so that everybody understands.

And I do want to say thank you to Andy and Lori and everyone to Garland and everyone because I believe that this was probably the first budget cycle that we had the county and the city folks, the CAT folks and the city folks in the same room talking about this.

and I applaud everybody for their willingness to do that.

That's a great model going forward to have everybody hearing the same thing at the same time.

So I thank you for that.

on John.

Right.

Because what, while I like

what you have presented from way above I still remain concerned I think as Ann has expressed some concerns too.

Would it be possible and I'm just saying for right now if we agreed to the $245,000 in reserve

and the 245,000 in reserve.

Is there a way that we could look at this from a the lens of a 366 because I don't think we have at this point with CAT completed our 220.

Schorrop, you know, looking at all the details.

And then going forward, I was wondering if we could look at this payment to CAT as a quarterly payment and then come back quarterly and talk about where they are.

Transat, I recognize, is in a very precarious situation right now.

We really don't know how transit is going to come out of this and what it's going to require.

We don't know what the state and the federal are going to do.

And we haven't really had our reconciliation with CAT over 2020 yet, much less moving into 21.

So I'm thinking that our 366 framework really holds.

And I'd like to see us look at

making it clear that our payments to CAT 421 would be quarterly and we would be discussing where we are in the data at that time.

So we could certainly take as an action with OMB.

Right now that we do currently process payments to CAT quarterly, but it's quarterly based on the budget.

I think what I hear just a simple question is that we do just a more regular follow-up and so I can take as an action to get again together with city staff, with CAT, finance, city manager, everyone really and I think also CHIP through the RTD and say you know what does that process look like in terms of the timelines

And I guess what I'm saying is that's exactly more of a comeback to the through the RTP.

Excuse me, I'm sorry.

That's it.

Andy, could you go back to the, oh, Supervisor Malek, you have a comment?

Oh, that.

The quarterly payment, as Andy just said, should be based upon delivery of services as an invoice for here's the service we've provided to you in the last quarter and here's the money that that should cover so that there is the detail and it should come to the payer who is the county OMB staff and the board.

I don't think we need a middleman in this payment business.

So that's just my view.

Could you go to the slide with the pie with the breakout of everything?

So I just I mean first off and I hear this 5.4 million dollars and like where what does that cover so I'm appreciative of this slide to understand where this money is going to.

So then just

me reacting to this and make sure my train of thought is correct.

I take this 5.4, all this totals up.

Is it fair to say then that the amount for fiscal year 21, that five, what was that, 500, that number's not, I didn't write it down, that in fiscal year 20, the current fiscal year, that 600 and some thousand of all these costs would be our share?

Is that why we're

doing five something next year?

I think the biggest impact to the county in fiscal year 20 is going to be this yellow piece of the donut and personnel costs where the county would see a benefit.

Of course the county benefits up in the text in the black text in the upper right hand corner of the donut but it benefits not through reduced cost but rather through an offset increase that would otherwise be without the CARES funding.

All right, I get that.

I'm just struggling with drawing the line from 5.4 down to the county share of that per the MOU split.

Am I thinking about that right?

Yeah, so I could maybe talk through this at a high level if it helps.

I can provide more details.

If you think of 5.3, roughly 28% of that would be 1.4 or 1.5 million.

Yeah, so there would be an impact that the county, the county is benefiting from a portion of the

to do in the back of my head here, about 1.1 million of the numbers in the black text.

That's really, the county's getting a benefit of that that is offsetting what would otherwise be an increase.

That's why we're not seeing a decrease for those.

And then the remainder would be an amount in fiscal year 20 in addition to the 600,000 that we would anticipate the county would receive a credit for.

Well, it's just a matter of, you know, if I had a spreadsheet, I'd want to put this on a spreadsheet and try to back into the number of what we're paying out for next fiscal year.

I'm having trouble doing that.

And I honestly don't know if we keep hearing this amount.

This is really the first time I've had a chance to see the categories of what the 5.4 goes to, so I'm appreciative of that.

We're all figuring it out, so this information wasn't available before.

But then I just want to take the amount that's the portion that's the county's

that's available to us, pays for the current fiscal year, pays for some of next year, and then the amount that we're being asked to put in.

And I just want to see all that lined up and understand it.

Right now, I'm just having trouble drawing the through line.

So I don't think that's going to necessarily get cleared up on this meeting.

Yeah, I could provide a spreadsheet that would summarize this in a different way.

And I certainly appreciate it.

I wouldn't have expected you to put a spreadsheet up.

You know what I mean?

So this slide is a very good slide.

I appreciate this, but you wouldn't have put a spreadsheet up here anyway.

That's where I'm at.

Just a follow up to what was just said.

So 1.5 million approximately is the county share of the CARES Act.

We're getting credit for 600,000 of it for this current year.

So we should be getting access to 900,000 for fiscal year 21 in some fashion.

And so when you're doing the wonderful spreadsheet going forward, which will help me too,

having the details about those categories and also what's happening with this current year.

How much we paid already before the fiscal year 20, what our overall budget was and then how that has been reduced with non-delivery of services.

So I think there's a whole lot of money offsetting that

that I haven't seen allocated.

And this slide, while very pretty, what jumped into my mind the first time I saw it was it looks like the report for the revenue sharing.

It's let's pick some categories where we can stick the money and maybe they'll go away.

So I want to encourage our county staff to ask all the detailed questions because the questions are coming back.

And I don't understand this enough to be comfortable that we're

working out okay for our taxpayers.

Very good.

So are we ready?

Andy, do you need us?

I mean, this is a lot of information to take in right now.

We could do that.

That would clarify.

Let's go back to the donut chart.

So I realized after I said it, I misspoke quite a bit.

Of the 5.4, I referred to some quick math of 28% of that, but the county wouldn't get the 28% of that 5.4 because a portion of that is being tied to capital of that 400,000 and so that would not be.

I would say the other clarification earlier that may have been spoken on was around the county's contribution to capital costs for buses.

When I was referring to that I was referring through the county's approximately 1.1 contribution that is made through the operating budget to CAD.

Right so the additional info then yeah the spreadsheet because that you know you start getting these numbers

lined up in my head a certain way, and then that just jostled that a little bit.

So it's going to be real important for me to have a pretty thorough understanding of just drawing the line from the 5.4 to the county's portion to what's getting played out the way it's broken down here for fiscal year 20 and 21.

Please.

So to move on to Jaunt now, Jaunt will receive just under $1.8 million in small urban cares funding.

That is now, how that is supplied is still under review.

I do not at this time have the kind of same plan or level of detail.

Being in contact with Mr. Sheffield, one thing I would share is that, you know, revenue loss just as it is for CAT is going to be an important impact to Jaunt as well.

Jaunt, as of just trading emails on Friday, they're preliminary estimated fiscal year 20.

So about 450 to 550 is just the estimated revenue loss that will be needed of that 1.8.

Certainly there would be a substantial portion of fiscal year 21 that would be needed to run the numbers on.

Many of the same things impact CAT will impact Jaunt and Jaunt may be also a little different because they're structured a little differently with more local governments who are participating in that.

and just also just the general the different nature of some of their services a fixed route versus a demand response model.

I'm remembering an email that Mr. Sheffield sent to you, I guess, Andy, and you forwarded, or maybe he sent it to all of us, I can't remember, but it said that there was some indication that

that this CARES money is going to possibly take the place of the state contributions in the coming year.

Is that still an expectation?

Did I interpret that incorrectly?

Could you just comment on that?

I think just knowing that things are changing fast is probably the best person to speak to the state budget and CARES impact.

Yeah, so first of all, in later June, there will be a transit service delivery advisory committee meeting.

I suspect part of that agenda will be to discuss how CARES Act funding, state operating assistance, and all that gets bundled together.

By this time, last year, the state has released its six-year improvement plan, which from DRPT, from the state transit office, that outlines how much money Jaunt is getting, whether it's state funding, federal funding, any special grants and so forth, that has yet to be released.

And it's been stated that it'll probably be in the fall before that even gets released.

So backing into that,

there's every indication that the state of course is struggling with their own revenues and transit operating assistance is one of those areas of revenues that will be susceptible to reductions.

And I believe with the CARES Act funding coming in, it provides the state the ability to adjust where those revenues need to land according to the CARES Act funding that's helping kind of offer a kind of a supplantment of that.

but there's nothing definitive um I don't think it's the place of the state to really say anything just yet until a lot of that stuff gets uh formalized um but everything is indicated that direction if we get any state funding it uh for jaunt it'll be to reflect the services it's already committing to put on the road um and kind of taking that leap of faith that we get some of that state funding to as expected but at this point um

Very good.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

I have no questions right now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Chair, Supervisor Mallek, the rural side of the equation is beyond this $1.79 million.

There is a Rural CARES Act funding that's been provided to the state to allocate out to the rural transit systems, which John will be getting a piece of that.

There is a percentage of that that is being held back.

And talking with the state, it's largely because

There's 41 transit systems in the state, not one of us are alike.

To take that rural funding and try to evenly disperse it amongst all the systems was next to impossible and so they try to use a fairly basic approach and then look at how that's impacted systems and kind of backfill the needs as such as John gets closer to the fiscal year 21

implementation.

So there is funding that's still there and it is primarily and pretty much only intended to support transit systems on the rural side.

Yes, I have more of a comment around a concern.

I just want to make sure that we position Albemarle County as related to Jaunt, that we have some contingency funds for Jaunt because Jaunt is really carrying our folks that are most at risk

in the rural areas as well as the development area and certainly folks that have the highest risk based on COVID and they're using them in providing that transportation on demand model which I think most people feel most comfortable with right now.

because it's not the big bus with lots of people and I understand everybody's trying to work that as best they can but I really just a comment in my head is that I want to make sure that we have the ability with John to continue to work on the pilot that we were looking at for On Demand.

and have some contingency funds in place that we may very well want to access so that we can provide transportation for some of our most vulnerable citizens.

Very good, thank you.

Supervisor Malek alluded to a question I had directed at staff or comments perhaps that Brad just addressed on the rural side, because all the presentation has shown us is the 5307, which was direct monies down, but the 5311 is not direct.

And I mean, it was not a small amount that they held back.

It was 35% of the total.

And reading the CTV's minutes, there wasn't a lot of conversation about it.

and there wasn't a whole lot of process defined about how that $35 million would be spent other than at the discretion of the director of the DPRT.

And that he would just report back or she would just report back to the board after the fact, after it was spent.

$35 million they spent, they put 50% out to the sub-recipients and then they put us 15% to another section, which is a system I believe down in

Blacksburg somebody can correct me if I'm wrong and then the remaining the 18 million dollars or 35 percent of the total I mean if John had received the monies that would have been doled out to them at the same percentage level that they were given the 50 how the 50 percent was broken down that would have been another two or three million dollars so that the fact that there was just no real conversation as to process of how that reserve would be spent during this time and it's just a discretionary fund

is a little bit disconcerting to me.

And I think worth further conversation, whether that's at the RTP or if that's at the MPO or both, or if TJPDC has a conversation with this, it's just something that, that's a big chunk of money to a system that impacts our rural system.

And if moving forward, if that 35 million or that 18 million is designed to be helping for

this crisis, then we want to understand how it can be accessed and how it's going to be released and what's the defined process.

So it's a conversation I'll be interested in having and probably continuing it in the different places.

Like I said, the Regional Transit Partnership, I'm sure, could have a further conversation.

The MPO potentially could be a venue for that.

So just raising it here because it is something that's concerning.

It was just mainly when you mentioned that other service, Blacksburg, that's the Virginia Breeze, that's an inner city bus service.

That funding will also go to that service that's being planned to come up from Danville into Charlottesville and up to DC.

We were actually on a call this morning with DRPT Garland, myself and Chip about that type of service.

So keep in mind that

some of that money that you had spoken about is in place to ensure that particular new route that's coming will be put in place in a timely manner and not have to wait.

The other is just that we'll be formulating our budget around what our expectations of needs are.

We'll share that with Albemarle as far as whatever advocacy we may need to help let the state know what additional rural funds we need.

Supervisor Malek, I was, sorry, I was reading the chat about my backlight.

It's a sunny point of the day for my office.

I apologize.

Just to follow up on, for years we've had a discussion about this Johnson being a sub-recipient, which I heard that term just now.

That may be something that Brad could lead us on going forward because if we're continually getting

short changed on the percentages because of the category, then I'd love to learn more about that.

Chair, if I may weigh in on that.

It is something that Supervisor McKeel has worked on actually.

She's met with DRPT a couple of times about this as well as with CHIP.

It's something that's still ongoing.

I think it's a separate conversation not as relevant to funding that we're facing with COVID and even the CARES Act funding.

It's more relevant to, I think, other future opportunities that may be out there.

But I think we've had a fairly healthy conversation.

And I'll be glad Trevor was involved in those discussions, but we've made several tracks down to Richmond to talk to DRPT about this.

My apologies, Trevor.

Well, nonetheless, I still think it is important for us in the venues where it makes the most sense, whether it's with our local person who's appointed to the CTP to understand thoroughly how this discretionary fund, I mean, it's a large cash of money, and I think localities should understand how it's going to be utilized and more than just a report back to the CTP board.

There's got to be some sort of process to find, in my opinion.

So, just point of order.

Okay, here we go.

This is probably what I'm going.

We're not completely through.

I was just trying to figure out where we were going to go with this in decision making, but I see we have more slides.

That's great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

This slide is just a recap and I'm not going to go through the details because the board saw this at the April 29th work session or at least most of the slide.

They walked you to the top line of where we were at the March 11th transit work session, how we got to the revised placeholder that was included in the revised recommended budget, and then these numbers just reflect the updated CARES intact with jaunt to be determined, and then with absolute cap the number we shared before.

So with hearing no other questions I'm going to move on to the third topic,

So this was an item that is added based on the board's question at the April 29th budget work session.

Just for more discussion around jaunt driver salaries.

In the revised recommended budget for both CAT and jaunt, consistent with county local government, county schools, the city, the state, and many other partner agencies, all salary increases were backed out.

The total impact for jaunt was around $104,000 that was backed out of the budget.

of that amount that was attributable to the driver salary increase that was $60,000 that is not included in the revised recommended budget and the board would just have options for consideration of this which is an ongoing cost to not provide funding to provide funding or a third option would be to revisit this at a later date that could be done in the context of the full CARES update

The other thing I would comment on this, and this is credit to Mr. Sheffield for pointing this out in his response to the board, is that obviously any changes in drivers whether they be in Catridge or John also do have an impact to the county school system.

And so given the collaboration that has happened at the Board of Supervisors level with the school board and also school leadership and county leadership, I think we wanted to kind of understand through HR department's analysis of what impact, if any, would there be to the school division just as we continue to try and be aligned on compensation.

So that's just the rationale for what the revised recommended budget was, three options for the board, and unless there's any questions, I would just turn it back to the board to kind of weigh through these options.

Okay, should I go through each person, see if they have comments or questions?

Supervisor Price?

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Sorry, no questions at the moment.

I'll hold off on comments if that's what we're supposed to do.

Sorry you're asking Ned for comments or questions around the driver's salaries?

Right.

I think with the board is scheduled to adopt the budget on Thursday so no final decisions are needed today.

Certainly as much as we could get or if there was additional questions or follow-up staff needed to be prepared for to put the board in a position to take action to adopt the budget on the on Thursday we would certainly want to that.

We have some options for consideration for both the TJPDC funding grant, the CAT CARES update, and then this jaunt driver salaries.

So it would really just be the pleasure of the board to kind of chime in to the extent they would like to today.

Oh yes, Andy and Chairman Galloway.

What would be helpful for us is for any recommendations from the board on all three of these issues, as we come to your meeting on the 14th, which is Thursday, you'll be adopting the budget.

So any guidance you'd like to provide to us on any of these transit issues today would be very helpful to us as we put together your final paperwork for Thursday.

So I can give a comment, Ned, if you would like.

I was thinking questions before.

With respect to the jaunt salaries, I certainly supported it fully in the last budget.

I think for consistency right now with the rest of the budget, I think we should take the revisit later, revisit at a later date in context of the full CARES Act update.

and I do appreciate Mr. Sheffield pointing out about the schools division, so I would wanna know the impact there.

But I do fully understand the situation with hiring drivers and so I would appreciate the update.

I would suggest that we have three issues and it would be great and I don't know if you want me to go back in the slides and back it up and I could do that but if we could receive guidance on the jaunt driver salaries on this slide and then maybe we can go back to the CAT slide and then back to the one on the grant it would be very useful if you are ready to provide us any guidance as a board but we could delay that till Thursday.

Why don't we go yeah when we go through this slide and get everybody's kind of feel on this one um and then we can go to the other ones and just deal with them each item at a time.

Supervisor Price?

I concur.

Bullet number three.

I will argue for bullet number two because the training for safety and the training which John Drivers has is huge and having gone through it, it is very demanding.

So for them to invest all of that time and training to then lose their drivers to somebody who is paying them 50% more is really making it harder for them to be able to deliver the services which we really need them to bring, which everyone has talked about today.

Thank you, Ned.

I would very much like to support bullet number two, but what I'm wondering is, I think it does relate to having some more information.

Is there a way that by the first meeting in June, maybe, in order before we

I guess, and this is probably a question maybe for Lori, but I'm looking to see, I understand that there's a differential for jaunt in the salaries, the cat salaries of 12 to 15 percent.

That is huge, as Ann says.

But I need to see the actual, I need staff to come back to me with a report about what the actual differential is that's been accumulating over the years.

because John, I go back to this, John is critical for our folks most at risk.

And it is a service that people feel the most comfortable using, whether it's in the rural areas or the development areas.

And I think it's critical to figure this out.

So is there a way that we could get a report back

It's not as much about the CARES update, although I really agree with that, but I'd like more information around the jaunt drivers and the differential between the drivers.

and Kat and John.

And I recognize that it affects the school division.

Believe me, Jim Foley has been very adamant about that during our RTP meetings.

sorry um thank you yes what we could um what i was thinking as you were speaking that when when we get to thursday and we have an adoption on the recommended fiscal year 21 budget the next step in the process is the appropriation of that budget and at that even at that appropriation place you have an opportunity to make a budget amendment so you could say we would like to amend this

as part of

You can amend your budget.

The budget's a plan.

If we can get the budget pretty well settled on Thursday and then we can hit June with more information and we can continue to make adjustments as we move through fiscal year 21.

And thank you, Lori, that helps me because what I don't want to do is just discount completely bullet number two, because I really feel like before the end of the year, I'd like to have more information about the salary differential, right?

And we do have the monies that we've saved from CAT.

Oh, wait a minute.

No, there are they one time?

I'm sorry.

Yes, ma'am.

Yeah, never mind.

That won't work for salaries.

I take that off the table.

I just wondered if people needed an update on the percentage, could Brad supply that?

Or maybe he's gone.

Oh yeah, I'm here.

I think what Supervisor Malek may be referring to is in my email I mentioned that when we talk about consistency this is more than just a one year kind of thing.

John was proposing 4% this year because last year it proposed 2%.

That was what was adopted.

but CATS budget adopted a slightly more than 4% increase.

And so it proposed a 4% increase in response to that to try to close just that two-year gap between FY20 and FY21.

So I think that's what she was referring to.

Last year we had an approved budget of 2%, CATS was reflecting more 4%,

I guess to get back, and I'm sorry, I guess it's probably not my turn to be talking, but that's why I'm trying to get back to June and figure out exactly if we could have a discussion about where that is right now.

Or maybe we just got the report, I don't know, but it seems like to me that we could deal with that in the context of appropriations in June based on maybe some

Just thinking back to 2009 and how our local businesses, Chris,

Lee talking about how facing the loss of contracts that he was going to lose his staff, lose his skilled contractors, his master craftsmen, and he was desperate to keep them working.

It is the same situation for these jaunt drivers who have such a different level of care and so I would support, I hope that we'll be able to get a more definitive answer even though it doesn't

show up as an appropriation until June.

I hope we will be able to get a more definitive answer on Thursday so that then there would be a message that could be conveyed to these drivers about what is coming.

Otherwise, I wouldn't blame them at all for jumping.

This is going to be a very tight market for the most skilled people, hard for employers as well.

We've been there before and we just need to understand how important the staff is who are in place at all these agencies.

Very good.

I think I'm in agreement with Supervisor McKeel, Mallek on the revisit.

I guess, Ned, what I'm trying to say, though, is I don't want to wait for six months.

I'm looking at June for a revisit, if necessary.

Thank you.

Every 30 days is going to bring so much information to us at this point.

I would expect so.

Okay, I'll go ahead and it's okay.

I'll back up the slides to the previous issue.

Let's go back and see, whoa, it's going the wrong way

Thank you, Chuck Galloway.

Thank you.

I look forward to the greater detail about all the current and proposed expenses and I hope there will be more savings in that $619,000 figure.

I concur, but I just want to be clear.

So we're going to be coming back and looking at the payments to CAT on a quarterly basis.

The board is going to be receiving an update and a discussion around these.

That was my understanding from our earlier discussion.

Is that right?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yes please.

Sure that's fine if you find out something we would want to know.

And Mr. Chair, this is Jeff.

I wanted to clarify, there was a discussion that you had specifically with Andy Bowman earlier about a spreadsheet format that would provide more detail on Thursday.

Yes, sir.

I'm just, what I'm having trouble with is, like I said, the chart that broke down the CARES Act money.

That was great.

That was probably the first bit of info that really helped me wrap my head around how this CARES Act money is going to play out.

But I'm still having trouble drawing the line to what we're being asked to pay for next year relative to that.

I think it's there.

It's starting to track in my brain.

I just need to see it.

then for like I said for your purposes you can go with this as there's consensus to move forward with this for the planning and provided nothing changes you'll be all set up thank you okay um board we are running uh well behind schedule do we need to take a five-minute break for anybody

or shall we continue to move move ahead.

Just wanted to check in on the match.

I have a one comment.

I do not object to it.

I think it's great.

But I do wonder when it's going to get started.

I just wonder if, given everything that's happening now with the pandemic, would the study look any different before or after?

And so that's just a comment as to timing of the study.

and I guess you can't really answer that.

Mr. Boyles, are you on?

I can give you a

A quick comment on that.

I do think though, Supervisor Palmer is exactly right.

COVID and the changes right now will affect it to some degree, but there is a real urgency to move this forward very quickly because the goal is to initiate it in July once funding is approved so that the study could be completed in time to put together an application by February 1st.

Even in the best of circumstances, that's a pretty quick turnaround.

But if we don't pull that off, it's the following February before applications are taken again for service grants.

Got it.

Yes.

to hire the person.

That's what I want to make sure we're not going down the path with one of the failed consultants.

Sure.

No, we would definitely want input, probably input from both the RTP and the MPO on this.

Yes, yes.

The biggest one you're already a part of and would be glad to forward to you is the study from Stanton to Charlottesville.

The Afton Express is a very similar project.

Okay.

Very general.

All right.

I'm looking for specifics.

Any other comments?

Just a quick comment because while Chip's on, we talked at one point about two planning documents.

One was a regional chip with the city.

That one the city has determined that they don't want to participate in right now.

Is that correct?

Because I know this one is specifically for Albemarle.

Yes, that was the much bigger regional visioning plan.

While the application is still submitted, that was one of the items that had been cut out of the city's budget, their portion of the match, over a two fiscal year period.

Okay, I think that's a shame, but that's not, I mean, it is, that would have been wonderful because it would have allowed, that was a two year process for a regional plan, but I just wanted to clarify, that was my understanding, it's gone.

Well, there are other players in the region, maybe they'll read it and want to join up.

Okay board we do have two additional items that staff needs us to address and then we have another conversation lined up so we're running behind.

I'm going to bring up the break again.

We need to take a five minute break roughly.

Very good.

Five minutes would be great.

All right we'll be back at 6 40.

Thank you.

Hi, thank you.

This is Lori.

I'm going to lead you through a few more slides.

We're really at the end of the presentation.

There's no decisions that need to be made through this next part of the presentation.

This is just to share information with you so that you are aware of some things coming to you on transportation leveraging.

Okay, so basically, this is going to take you to thinking about your CIP.

As you know, CIP is not a budget, it's a long-term plan.

Your initial CIP that we did pre-COVID, pre the pandemic and the redo of our budget,

included some funding in the out years fiscal year 23 and 25 to support some smart scale funding applications that are going to be coming your way soon.

So the community development department will be putting these applications in soon and we'll be bringing some information in front of you.

So you might recall that our capital improvement plan that plan will be revisited and reconsidered in the fall due to our current economic situation.

However, the applications for the SmartScale funding requests are due in August.

And if awarded, again, the local support, your local funding would not be required until fiscal year 23 or later.

So this is all more of a planning approach.

Staff is going to be coming to you, asking you to approve the SmartScale applications in June, on June 17th.

So to make your applications competitive, noting that the county has an intent to provide local match in the future years will improve competitiveness.

So we just wanted to share this with you so you're just aware of the timing of this and an approach we are recommending as staff.

So staff is recommending that these applications that will be brought back to you for your approval note that they intend to include local funding dollars in the future and that smart scale, the smart scale applications would also include the notation that the county's CIP is not finalized at this time.

It will be considered in the fall due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

So it's a way to manage our time, manage with this new world that we're living in while still doing the very best we can to be as competitive as possible on the smart scale grant applications.

And so just to mention to you

I wanted to mention to you that the high priority project applications that may benefit from this notation about the future capital improvement plan includes the items on the bulleted items about 25 east corridor improvements, Fontaine Avenue 29 bypass, a diverging diamond,

the Old Lynchburg Road, Fifth Street extended intersection improvements, Route 20, Route 53 intersection, the Rio Road, Belvedere Drive intersection improvements.

And I did also want to note it's very important to note that the Eastern Avenue Bridge preliminary study which is

would equate to 30% of the design is currently underway and the plan to apply for VDOT revenue sharing funding will be after that study is complete so it'll be in the following calendar year.

So just wanted to make that notation for you as well.

So literally these last few slides were just to share with you our approach to the smart scale applications that will be coming in front of you next month.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

No, I have no questions.

Ms.

Thank you very much and thank you, Laurie, for the note about Eastern Avenue.

You read my mind.

And just as a suggestion to consider going forward that while we have the comments about we're going to find the funding to draw down this extra money for SmartScale to do our matches, a similar phrase should be used in these revenue sharing projects so they take us seriously and they know that we're moving forward with this.

We'll avoid the big, big mistake made 10 years ago when we just gave up on the whole project and wasted, threw away $20 million in state input over five or six, seven years.

I hope that you all will think of a nice way, Kevin is good at that, to put words in about the ongoing projects as well.

Because this was a smart scale project, I understand why it was diverted to get the price under control and not have it be vulnerable to misrepresentation.

So I'm appreciative of that and cannot wait for the

Final details to come forward so we can get this thing going.

It's been since the early 90s that this thing's been on the list, and literally thousands of people drive 10 miles around to get what this bridge would accomplish.

I'm fine.

I guess the only comment is I understood that we're going to make the notation that it's not final due to the COVID-19.

Is that

I don't want to get Mr. McDermott may be able to answer that question.

I certainly understand.

I just don't want it to be, you know, the match is there.

It still has to go back through a

Some sort of political process when they're looking at projects.

I just understood.

Yeah, I can quickly respond to that.

I don't believe this would hurt us.

And the timing of it, actually, if we're reevaluating this in the fall, the applications will still be in consideration at that time.

So we may be able to provide additional information before the state starts making any of these decisions.

I think that if we clearly state that it's our intent to put this money

to these projects and then just have it as a little note inside that we do have to reevaluate this.

All right, thank you, Kevin.

Okay, I'll just move forward.

So the very last item today is a slide that we just want to bring forward to you just for transparency.

The slide that we shared in the prior recommended budget is information that you often get as year ends when you look at the year-end funding and how you apply that as part of your next year's budgeting process.

So this next slide is just a summary

of if you remember back to the end of the fiscal year when we have unobligated general fund fund balance and we apply it to different pieces it's one-time money that we apply to categories we just felt like it would be useful to you to see this summary because if you approve your budget

on the 14th and we move forward there are certain items we are going to come to you with an appropriation in our current year based on this decision so you can see in the top part of this slide it says fiscal year 20 so some of these recommendations we will go ahead and bring you an appropriation request

prior to July 1.

And then the ones below that are in the fiscal year 21 category will be appropriations that will come to you as part of what we call the resolution of appropriations that you see in June.

Yes, I think I've forgotten something here.

The climate action AHIP weatherization money, the $250,000, that's in the 2020 budget now.

Is there any additional of that recommended in the 2021?

Or is that been

Is that not there?

Great, a great question.

Basically, anything on the top of this list is not in the fiscal year 20 budget yet.

They're not there.

We're going to bring it to you to ask you to actually apply it in fiscal year 20 to get it started.

We are going to actually bring these first four back to you prior

to the end of the fiscal year for 21 and say let's go ahead and apply these now to get any of these items going ahead of time before July.

So that's just to have them in place that is just our process and it's just a matter of you will see these as an appropriation request and we just wanted you to be aware of it but we would not have brought these to you without first you approving these activities as part of this budget process.

Supervisor Price?

No questions, thank you.

No questions, thank you.

Yes, thank you.

These are the ones which are you're at the very top of the page you say these are things which are going to perhaps move forward before July 1st and I would just like a chance to have the board understand all of us understand which ones those are.

And someone can also send it to us you know here's the list of the things that we expect to move forward in email that's perfectly fine.

I just am not prepared to just go sure 1.5 million without revisiting exactly what it's getting.

Okay, so I'll just move on.

This is the last slide.

I want to say that I appreciate you staying longer with us this afternoon to work through the outstanding issues.

We've got really good guidance from you today and we really appreciate it and we know what we have to do, what other tasks you'd like us to work on.

So the next step, we'll see you again very soon.

We will bring you the resolution of approval, the adoption of the fiscal year 21 budget

on May 14th for your approval.

And we will have information for you as we requested before that on the spreadsheet and other things.

So we're then moving on after that we go right to the June 3rd appropriations.

You can see that the schools will be adopting on the same day this week.

Questions from anyone?

I can offer some opening remarks just to provide some context for this discussion.

This is a revisiting of the board's suspension of matters from the public and the current rules that the board has adopted allow

members of the public to speak to the board on any topic of public interest and that is a very broad topic and because of some concerns from the board transition to virtual meetings the board suspended that rule and since then there have been requests from some members of the public for the board to consider reinstituting that particular agenda item.

Perhaps I can go around.

The board just came up last Wednesday, so there may have been additional questions or things that have come up since then that you might want to put out there for other supervisors to hear.

So I'll just

And so the concern, just to be clear, is that anybody in the whole world can come in and say obscenities and do dreadful things and we have no ability to stop them for those three minutes.

So the whole rest of the world that's there for good reasons has to listen to the obscenities and whatnot for those three minutes.

Under the current rules, yes, that is a good summation.

So what I've been looking at, I don't have a final answer yet, but what I'm looking at is narrowing the scope.

If the board is inclined to revisit the rules while we are meeting virtually, to narrow the scope of that opportunity for the public to speak.

to something that is, for example, limited to pending or recently considered county matters or recently or pending board actions, something like that, so that the area of

Well, we'll use the word profanity.

People are actually using the term

And if we were to go forward, and I think everybody is very concerned about what could come into the public space in this situation, how would that be controlled?

Would you make that determination and then somebody would cut them off?

I mean, we'd have the clerk

just cut them off?

Well, what it does is it puts a burden on the chair and the vice chair who, you know, it's the same as imagine somebody who's at the

in front of the board, and they're actually disrupting the meeting.

And that's the call that is left for the chair and the vice chair if they are actually disrupting the meeting.

And then the guidance we've provided to the board, if, for example, use the example of a public hearing on a rezoning application, somebody comes in and speaks to something completely

has nothing to do with that rezoning application.

They're disrupting the public hearing and the chair can cut that person off.

So it would be the equivalent of that happening under these circumstances.

I'm sorry to hog up all the time here, but the

When we are going to get back into the county office building to our old situation, we're going to know a little bit more about that later this week.

You know, with respect to phase one and two, or do we have any idea about this?

Since the governor is opening up, we have to make, we've declared an emergency.

But at what point is us coming into the county office building?

It depends.

The way the board's continuity of government ordinances worded is that it is much more than just phase one or phase two that needs to happen before that ordinance would be lifted under the budget amendment that it allowed localities, actually any county public bodies,

to conduct virtual meetings.

That continues for as long as the state of emergency, and the state of emergency as the declaration by the governor is in effect.

So there is time, but it is possible at some point where the board may allow the public to come into lane to speak.

The board may still be meeting virtually, but those who feel more comfortable coming in and

And engaging with the board could come into the county office building as long as we determine that it's perfectly safe to speak to the board, even though the board may still be meeting virtually.

There are just so many possibilities for

how these meetings and how they're conducted to unfold as we work through the phases.

And as Doug reminded us this morning at our 8 a.m.

meeting that phase three is not the end of it.

There are things that will happen before and phase three is not an indication that we've returned to normalcy.

Okay, so to get my opinion out of the way, I'm very interested in opening up whatever public comment we can, but I am not interested in subjecting the general public or ourselves to uncontrolled comments that may be extremely offensive.

So I don't know where that balance is, but I would vote no if you were telling us that it would be very, very difficult to control.

You know another option if the board feels that members of the public don't have a voice right now is that they can submit written comments.

That's always been available to the board.

We just need to make sure that those written comments get into the public record also.

I mean I've had that comment.

Yes, yes.

Supervisor Price.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Mr. Campner, thank you very much.

I have expressed my concerns about this previously in recent emails to Mr. Campner asking for some legal analysis.

of exactly what we can and can't do.

And the reason I have concerns is that during our very first virtual meeting on April 1st using a live web chat, in less than six minutes, we had nine pages of racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, you name it, that was spewed, including six or seven pages simply of racial denigrating language.

The problem I have with the virtual access is that we have no way of knowing who the individual is who may actually be engaging in that sort of conduct.

And we are not alone in these concerns.

Just the other day, the University, Oklahoma City University had their virtual graduation ceremony disrupted with racist taunts that were, you know, transmitted that way.

When someone comes live

in Lane Auditorium and stands before us, we have a much greater sense of who that individual actually is, whereas virtually someone anywhere in the country or around the world

could create a false identity and get themselves lined up.

And then not only do we as members of the board, but as Supervisor Palmer just mentioned, our constituents are then having to face that sort of inappropriate conduct.

I recognize that there's a difference between a public forum and in a court situation, but I know that as a prosecutor, defense counselor, trial judge, we would never

have allowed that sort of conduct that unfortunately you know it's it's road rage on the super highway of the internet

which allows people through anonymity to just spew hateful language.

So as much as I would like for our constituents to be able to communicate with us, unless we have a mechanism that ensures that we can maintain decency and civility, I too would be opposed to simply opening it up to general conversation.

I have a couple questions for Mr. Kamen.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

We do have the ability now that, as if someone was standing in front of us, we do have the ability to turn off the mic and we could also do that in this instance.

Well, we have the ability to turn off the mic if they are determined to be disrupting the meeting.

So, for example, if they

The board would have the I'm sorry the chair would have the ability to do that correct?

only if it is irrelevant.

Right now the board's matters from the public is pretty wide open.

It's any matter of public interest.

So as long as it has to do with board business, someone could comment.

Also, I have a question.

Is there, usually when someone comes before the board, they state their name, what district they're from.

Are we able to do that?

We could probably arrange something like that.

I'd have to talk to