Board of Supervisors Adjourned Meeting (Adopt FY 20-21 Capital and Operating Budgets)   5/14/2020

in order for our Thursday, May 14th, 2020 meeting.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with ordinance 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 Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett district, supervisor Ann Mallek of the White House, Ann is actually not logged on yet, we're expecting her.

Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District, Supervisor Donna Price of the Scottsville District, Supervisor Liz Palmer of the Samuel Miller District, myself Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rio District.

And looks like Supervisor Mallek has joined us.

She represents the White Hall 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.

I should also mention that with us this evening, our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson,

our County Attorney, Mr. Greg Campner, our Clerk, Claudette Borgeson, and our Senior Deputy Clerk, Mr. Travis Morris.

We will have other County staff members participate throughout.

And good evening, everyone.

Lori, I think I'm handing off directly to you the first item tonight, number two, discussion and adoption of the Fiscal Year 21 operating and capital budget.

Good evening Chairman Galloway and members of the board.

My name is Lori Alshouse.

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

With me this evening are other members of the Office of Management and Budget team.

I want to thank all of them for getting us to this point this evening.

We are going to share a screen with you in a moment.

That is a short PowerPoint to get us through to the adoption of the budget.

Okay, thank you.

Ms.

Laura Van Zant is doing the slides, of course.

I want to thank her for her work on that.

So tonight's desired outcome is the approval of the fiscal year 21 budget resolution.

And as I mentioned before, this fiscal year 21 budget serves as your starting point.

This is a special year.

We're going to continue to monitor and update the budget along the way using your 366 budget management structure that we've been discussing.

We have an hour meeting tonight.

This is the agenda, the working agenda as we scheduled this for this evening.

We're going to start with a brief overview, just a couple slides.

We're going to follow up then on some CARES funding information for the Charlottesville area transit.

This is a follow up from your last work session.

And then we're going to share with you some updates to the revised recommended fiscal year 21 budget.

And then will be time for your adoption of the fiscal year 21 budget.

And then just a slide at the end on our next step.

Hi, Laura.

I think there might be a little delay in the slides moving.

There they go.

So this is where we are in the schedule.

We have gone through many steps to get us to this point.

On April 22nd the county executive presented a revised fiscal year 21 recommended budget to the board.

We had a work session on the 29th.

There was a public hearing on May 6th.

May 11th you had another public hearing and we're here on May 14th for your approval.

I do want to bring to your attention that the school board is also meeting this evening and they'll be approving their budget tonight as well.

Next slide please.

So these are the budget development principles that have guided us along the way.

We've adhered to the county's financial policies.

We continue to respond to the essential service needs of our community.

We are positioning our organization to lead the recovery efforts.

Our goal is to remain flexible and adaptable throughout the whole fiscal year.

We started out by maintaining our strategic reserves going into this budget.

Next slide.

This is just a quick slide on our 366 budget management process.

Again, this is the beginning.

The adoption of the budget is the beginning tonight and we will be continuing to monitor all along the way.

We're going to monitor the end of this fiscal year and then respond accordingly as things change and evolve throughout the year.

Thank you, Lori.

My intent as we can go ahead and move to the next slide is to follow up Monday's discussion around transit and specifically the CARES update funding that's been provided to CAT.

to try and better connect the dots from how we have $5.4 million in CAT CARES funding.

That's $5.4 million for both Fifth Leader 20 and 21, and that's $5.4 million for both the city share and the county share.

How do we apply that and go from a number we have in the revised recommended budget for contribution to CAT, $0.1 million, decreasing approximately $600,000 to the number we shared on Monday of around $516,000?

So I'll go into some numbers to kind of recap that on the next slide.

I provide this one just to provide a framework of where we were on Monday showing that 5.4 across two years and all the categories that made up that in the plan.

So on this slide and some of the numbers on the slide the board has seen before and some will be new.

We looked all the way back on March 11th, more than two months ago now at the transit work session, we had a county share of existing services for CAT, 1.25 million approximately.

Based on the Q&A and the work and scrubbing numbers that came out of that and also the work that was happened to revise or prepare the revised recommended 21 placeholder that we put in the budget that was reviewed in April 29th for the session, we ended up with the number the board has seen before of a little over 1.1.

Now what's been changing since that time as we've worked as county staff with city and count staff I'm sorry city staff and cat city staff is to look at the revised county share its first number as number the board has not seen before what this represents is number just under 1.5 million and this is a what if to say if you know if there was no CARES funding that was available what would be the county share given all the COVID-19 impacts

So this number would reflect all of the additional expenses that CAT is incurring right now, additional buses, additional overtime, personal protective equipment, and public service announcements.

All of those expenses would not have been considered in the prior budget that was reviewed on March 11th.

As we discussed on Monday, there's also the impact of all of the revenue loss that is going on right now as CAT is running fare-free.

revenues such as advertising are down as well in just kind of this new economic environment we're in.

Now both that additional expense and the revenue loss increases both in county share of CAT which would come up to a number of just under 1.5 million where any CARES funding is applied.

Now the good news is that 1.48 number is just hypothetical because we do apply the CARES funding to the next line and for fiscal year 21 of that 5.4 million

they have a share of about $965,000.

And when that $965,000 is applied to the $1.48 million, that calculates the updated contribution cap of $516,000 approximately with the board on Monday.

Now that $964 is not the total county credit because there will be an amount that would be applied in fiscal year 22, this slide is only looking at fiscal year 21.

and if we could go to the next slide I think we're making questions in their mind but I think one would be well what makes up that 965,000?

What we have on this slide is the donut chart similar to the one that we looked at before but rather than look at the total 5.4 which was city and county this looks at only county and rather than look at fiscal year 20 and 21 this only looks at fiscal year 21.

So this will include similar categories to what we saw on the slide on Monday that was we also referenced two slides ago

the categories such as revenue loss, additional operating, and the credit for to remove the requested increase from the county personnel costs that would be reimbursed that we discussed on Monday.

So these components that make up that 965,021 the number in 2021 for tonight given the board's agenda 2021 budget is what I'm discussing in this summary.

Now, while the board is scheduled to adopt a budget tonight, which currently has a number for CAT of $516,000, again, approximately, it's on the next slide that will continue as OMB's work will continue just as it has the last few weeks.

Based on the board direction, OMB is following up with the Regional Transit Partnership to continue to develop a plan that will look up both at fiscal year 20 and the specific details of how that process in the MOU plays up reconciliation or drew up.

We'll also be looking at fiscal year 21 in terms of how we monitor the cap budget as we get into information.

Whether it be from the city's budget process, under COVID-19 or whatever it may be.

The 366 plan is more of kind of a framework or mindset.

I'll be waiting six months to come back with additional information.

You'll get information sooner than we can then prepare to the board and the board of course may always revise the budget during the year as they choose to.

The second follow-up that was discussed on Monday is additional information around just driver increase.

We'll bring that back to the board on June 3rd and the board can then take consideration of that at that time.

So this concludes the comments I have and I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Yes.

Andy, just for... Sounds like I have a bounce back.

When you talk about the album, go back to the page that you had with all the numbers on it, if you don't mind.

There you go.

That's great.

You talk about the revised county share.

That would be based on the MOU where the county has approximately 28% of county share based on the service hours.

And the other question or clarification that I had, if you want to go back to the recommendations at the end.

Yeah, there you go.

I was very hopeful when we talk about, of course, the

The matching up for the year that we're in for 20 is going to be, when you say playing with the Regional Transit Partnership, that really, that's great, but that really includes chip boils from the TJPDC as well.

And then I just want to make sure that those quarterly reconciliations and payments

are going to come back to our board as a report.

They need to come back to the entire board of supervisors because that's one of the things that we have been missing for years is the reports back to the board of supervisors regarding transit from CAT.

Not from you all, but from CAT.

Yes, that is correct.

And I'll say I was actually, in addition to that, I was on the phone with Garland Williams, CAT Director, earlier this afternoon.

And if there's additional information or other reporting that would be helpful to the board, he would certainly be willing to reach out.

And if he's done for the last two, he's willing to do that.

We just want to make sure that we actually get, that the entire board gets those quarterly reconciliations and reports.

Okay, great.

I'm fine then.

Supervisor Mallek.

We switched the order up tonight, Ann, from what's on your sheet just to give people a chance.

Well, thank you.

Thank you.

I'm glad I was ready with my list.

So we talked a little bit in the last work session about how capital had not been counted in our 28%.

And there seemed to be some concern about that.

And it looks like it has not been changed.

So I just want to see if that's correct.

and then my comment is about the payments is that it should be an invoice with service provision in my mind and then an allocation not a payment and then oh by the way here's what we paid to the board I would like to see something much more formal developed so that we start off the new year number one with the true done for 20 and then number two that we have

We have the quarterly payment going forward that will help us to understand about how this federal money all shakes out.

I was a little concerned when I saw the revised number of that big number that you were talking about because it almost seems as if it's taking the money in the grant and then

If that were there, assigning that whole amount of money to the county when that doesn't take into account any operational changes or other things that would be needed by any responsible business.

Sure, I'll speak to the capital item first.

Under the MOU with the city, the county does not contribute anything to capital.

And so I guess any, the county does not contribute anything to capital.

It's very clear that the county contributions were only operating services only.

I think what CAT is challenged by as they apply this CARES funding is that a portion of that, I believe approximately 400,000 over the two years is being applied to capital.

And that is related to two reasons.

First of which is those capital, it's really about keeping current buses going and services during the pandemic to make sure that we're providing protective barriers between drivers and riders to have a safer environment for everyone.

And then the second item is to offset the revenue loss for the state is going to provide to CAT for just the local match that would be provided to their capital anyway.

So because the county was not contributing to that in the first place, we're not seeing the benefit that we would or I guess any loss if it was the other case on capital.

I think on the second question around the MOU is that would certainly be a process we could engage with CHIP and the PDC about.

The current MOU does spell out a process for payments and when they happen, but there's also an amendment process that's spelled out to the MOU and I think certainly the intent of before this fiscal year, there never was an MOU and this was sort of the best attempt at that time.

Well, in conclusion, I would like to formally request that these two items of recognition of the county contribution to capital and the invoice and payment quarterly process be taken up by the two jurisdictions for the MOU modification as its calendar comes up.

And I assume that is this spring before any fiscal year starts.

Thank you.

So I think to clarify, kind of came up Monday, so the county is, like I said, new $560,000 does not contribute to capital.

Understand in the city's documentation of how they allocate the revenue sharing payment

to they receive every year a portion of that is for capital.

Okay, thank you.

Supervisor Price.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

I have no questions at this time.

No, I have no questions.

I don't have any questions.

I do, just a couple comments.

I know that as I brought up the question on Monday about having a spreadsheet and understanding that 964 number and how we got to the 516 and the spreadsheet, there is a, they did do a spreadsheet as well.

I think Andy, it would be good to go ahead and send that out to the board.

It was very complicated for me to draw the lines without what we just saw, that previous slide.

But what it does is it also has a similar breakdown for the current fiscal year.

And I think just as an FYI or an information, it would be helpful for all the supervisors to have that.

If you haven't already, send it out, Andy.

I'd be happy to provide that.

I'm sorry?

I can provide that.

I think once you see it with after having the explanation that was here tonight, it's got the description of all the kind of more of an itemization, if you would.

and it'll be a little easier to understand after having the explanation here.

When I saw it yesterday, just for complete transparency, it threw my head.

I couldn't figure it out.

And we went and redid a whole different format that ultimately ended up in this PowerPoint slide.

And the PowerPoint slide goes back and now it makes it

to be able to understand this spreadsheet, if that makes sense.

So versus creating a lot of questions leading into tonight, I thought it'd be better to get the explanation out, then send the detail.

So it's all there.

It's just more of a descriptive and in a spreadsheet format.

And then since it has 20 in it as well, I think folks would find that it was useful for me, but it was quite the exercise to get my head to understanding how the 1-4

deducting the CARES money to get down to the 516.

So for what it's worth, that was the approach.

Just a comment maybe for Andy.

When we come back in June to discuss the driver compensation,

I'm going to have to understand better why we're looking at the school division bus driver compensation right now.

And I appreciate that the school division obviously has lots of bus drivers and their compensation is tied in as with part of the budget itself.

Right now, though, I believe my understanding from Jim Foley, the director of transportation for the school system, he's very comfortable where he is right now with his compensation.

What he's thrilled about was that the General Assembly

added school bus drivers to the list of employees or critical employees that are hard to find and he is thrilled that as of July 1 he's going to be able to do some make some changes on hiring retirees

that he says he has two waiting in the pipeline right now and more to come.

And that's what he was after.

I'll address that.

Supervisor McKeel, one of the reasons, and it sounds like you've got much more information about this than the staff does at this point, you may have had a conversation with Mr. Foley with tools that the staff's really not had at this point, so you may be ahead of the staff on this, but there are really two reasons.

The first is that when the director of Jaunt, Mr. Sheffield, communicated with the board on April the 23rd,

He flagged that issue as an issue of control.

He said that the county public school bus drivers is something that we need to be aware of as well.

and so just out of courtesy with us working hand in glove with the school system through the budget process on all compensation issues we were working with the school staff every step of the way when we put our budget together both times when we did the budget the first time which included a strategy for the $15 an hour implementation and a feathering throughout both the school pay plan and the local government pay plan it was a

shared strategy between schools and local government.

And this board was brought up to speed and kept up to speed all through that process as was the school board.

And then when we had to go back and redo the budget from scratch, the first thing we did to balance our budget or to try to move in a direction of balancing the budget was we stripped

our budget of all pay raises for county employees, so did the schools.

So at this point, Mr. Sheffield flagging that when he communicated with the board on April 23rd, we flagged that just as a courtesy to go back to schools and make sure

that the schools knew what was being contemplated and that can easily be accomplished through our Human Resources Department since they serve both local government and schools just as a matter of courtesy back to schools.

So I can honestly say that if it had not been flagged by the email from John, we may not have thought to do it, but we were just doing it as a courtesy.

Sounds like by your information this evening that it may be a very quick conversation with schools that there are no issues that they see.

And I think this was a great discussion for the board to hear and Jeff you're exactly right because we always want to touch base with the other side of the house with the schools and you're exactly right.

What I'm referencing really is information that Andy and I and those of us that are

attend the Regional Transit Partnership meetings.

Jim Foley talked about this General Assembly bill a good deal because he was wanting support for it and then was thrilled when it passed and Governor Northam signed off on it.

So that's why I'm bringing it up at this time.

And so this is good.

And I understand exactly what you're saying and really appreciate all the work.

I just wanted to add that when it showed up on our last slide presentation, I appreciated that and I actually asked the staff to get us some information on that.

I don't attend the RTP meetings.

Now that Diantha has said what she just said about what Mr. Foley said, I would very much like to understand why

the bus drivers do not, the school bus drivers don't need to be brought up to the same level because I thought the reason why John needed it was because of the problem with hiring and I have always heard in these discussions that the schools are having a similar problem.

So not to belabor this anymore but I just wanted to say that I specifically asked for it

and that I would like that additional information if it's not needed.

Thank you.

My response to why is that there are different categories of employment, I think.

One being an eight or nine or ten hour day and the other more

a different clientele of people who want to work the blocks of time that school bus people are able to work.

So I do hope that we will not that we will proceed with dealing with the Jaunt request which was to keep them trying to this is a several year process that's been underway here to try to get our contribution to Jaunt to be able to keep them

keeping their well-trained drivers for the work that they have to do that's very special compared to all the other transportation companies.

So I hope we will continue to move on to consider this jaunt thing and not wait for any more analysis.

All right, I think that is the end of the questions or comments for the transit item.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bowman, for your work on that and all the work that you've been doing on transit throughout the year.

What I'd like to do now is transition us to talk about the revised fiscal year 21 recommended budget and talk with you a little bit about some of the changes that have occurred since April 29.

So next slide, please.

So this is just to bring you back in time to the budget that was proposed to you as the revised recommended fiscal year 21 budget.

I just wanted to remind you that this is something we call the all funds budget or the total county budget.

So some of the next slides you're going to see includes information to all the different funds that the county is involved with which includes school funds, capital funds.

So when you approve your budget this evening it will be the all funds budget.

So this slide basically shares with you that it was a $397.3 million budget.

You can see the revenues on the left side and the expenditures on the right side.

And you can see the notation that it was $59.7 million less than the fiscal year 20 budget.

So next slide, please.

So I'm going to slow down on this one because these are numbers that I'd like to just talk with you about.

We submitted an executive summary to you two days ago that includes information on this.

So these are the changes, these are the updates to the revised recommended all funds budget that are included in the resolution we're going to ask you to approve this evening.

So I just wanted to start with the first one at the top.

So the revenue adjustments for the entire all funds budget is just a revenue adjustment associated with the schools and it's a decrease of $330,957.

And that's a combination of multiple items that are included in the executive summary.

So it includes state funds, federal funds, their other local funds.

So it's a combination of the various changes that are occurring from when they presented the information to us that we put into the revised recommended budget.

And the schools are adopting their budget this evening, so we just wanted to make sure we align up and stay where they are.

And then on the bottom part of this is the expenditure adjustments and you'll recognize some of them.

So if you look at the first line, well first of all if you go to the green boxes on the left you can see that most of these or all of these are in the general fund as far as specific items.

So the general fund is the fund we talked about the most.

There's an additional deputy sheriff based on the board's recommendation at our last work session as well as the adjustment to the funding that Mr. Bowman just talked with you about for Charlottesville area transit.

There's also additional funding put in place again discussed at the last work session to make sure we have match available for the planning and feasibility grant that TJPDC is going to apply for.

There's also a transit reserve, again that's connected to the transit conversation we just had, and then there's additional funding that was placed in our general reserve for contingencies.

You may recall that includes some one-time and ongoing, but it's your reserve for contingencies that we can rely on throughout the year.

So then if you go to the next line you see it says school fund and school special revenue funds.

The school has their general fund that they operate the schools with.

In addition they have what are called special revenue funds and they're the funds like the cafeteria fund,

different areas that they have to actually identify their funding separately per the accounting principles and so you can see there's a combination there and some adjustments with their school fund and adjustments with their school special revenue funds and then you can see how it balances you can see that the total there balances to the revenue adjustment so that's the adjustments that we have placed in the budget

since the County Executive presented this to you on April 29th.

Supervisor McKeel, any questions?

Sorry, I'm fine.

Thank you.

No questions now.

Supervisor Price?

No questions at this time.

Thank you, Ms.

Alshouse.

I have just one.

You did explain it.

I apologize, Laurie.

There's multiple ones.

The ones that I think that are easy to think about.

are the ones that are associated with child nutrition.

It also includes federal funds that are special, maybe for special education.

So there's a lot of special funds that the schools have to operate and segregate the money in different ways because of the funding.

We have them on our side as well.

So it's just different funds that we have to isolate and keep in a different area.

Okay, next slide please.

So this is just additional information that I thought the board would like to hear about this evening.

There has been some conversation about the voter registration and elections, which are on pages 53 and 54 in your revised fiscal year 21 recommended budget.

And the register's office is

has 971,510 in your current budget, 20.1% increase from fiscal year 20.

It includes an additional assistant elections manager position.

It includes support for the new state mandated early voting law.

It includes costs that were identified related to the November presidential election and support for the districting due to the census.

And we did also share that there are estimated costs that the registrar just provided to us if we would want to prepare and mail out absentee ballot application forms to all county voters.

And so you can see that number of 50,164 that was provided by the registrar.

And this includes costs for postage, for the mailing services,

for envelopes and for the application preparation.

And if this were to occur, if the register would be mailing these out, the timing would probably be the second week of September.

I guess I do have a couple of comments or questions.

First of all, I guess Lori or someone, they're

We're looking at that question, Diantha.

And I did speak to Anthony Bissette in our office who has been assigned to look at the CARES Act funding.

He thinks that there will be, that there, that we can apply the CARES funding for this purpose.

There are multiple levels of guidance that we're going through, but

Yeah, it would seem like to me we could because of the pandemic and people not wanting to be around each other and people not wanting to work the polls.

Having said all of that, I would, number one, I would be very interested in the answer to that question.

Other thing that I saw, we received an email, all of us today, back from Jake.

And Jake indicated that he's a little skeptical about the need to send out absentee ballot application forms to all voters.

On the other hand, I'm sure he says he's agreeable to do it.

He seems to think his major concern in this email to us is office space for staff.

And while I guess we can't get into a discussion about office space right now, I would like at some point for Lance or whomever would be working with this to get back to us on what he's finding or the availability of office space for the registrar because of what they're anticipating to be a lot of work.

But I guess another thought I have is, is there a way that we can wait on a decision?

I would be more comfortable waiting a little bit on a decision around this, assuming that we could come back to this at another time, especially if there's CARES funding.

any reaction or response there from staff or should I move to Mr. Henry?

Yes supervisor Galloway just just a note that um and we certainly can come back to the board at the appropriate time with more information but the land store director of facilities and environmental services has met um several times with

with Jake, as well as Clarice.

They've walked the space.

They're laying out really the details of what is needed, and I'm confident that we'll meet those needs.

So we still have time, and we're working through the planning, also working with social services to ensure that as we get into that early voting period, the staff that need to work from home in order

Yes, I'm sorry to have started a firestorm with this whole issue.

I received a contact from a citizen asking what we were doing about this and innocently just mentioned, asked Jake about the, you know, are you all considering this and that kind of thing.

And so it was not a demand for money.

It was not a demand for money.

I'm glad for the information and I'm sorry that everybody ran around and did a whole lot of extra work on this in the meantime.

a bigger, almost a bigger problem that we're having to deal with with the, well, two things that having going through my homework for the state, the VACO meeting tomorrow morning, there is a big section about the corresponding for elections from the state government level, which rather than sending it to the localities, they've decided to use it to replace the Verus, which I guess is their software that runs

all the election information.

So that's the update I have that's one day old on that topic.

But the second one is that we're still trying to get a correction on the State Board of Elections online absentee ballot request form where they, I think illegally, ask for your birth date, your full social security number, your driver's license number,

all to be shipped on there online in order to be able to request an absentee ballot online, which is wrong.

And several different contacts have been made with the state.

Jake was very helpful and six weeks ago wrote a letter to the person saying,

This has been brought to our attention and here are the corrections that are needed and would you please take care of this and she has not done anything.

So I hope that that will be taken care of pronto because that will make it much easier for people to actually request the ballots that they want and not feel like they're giving away their personal security to do it and go away in frustration instead.

I mean it's a very voter suppressive

process that they're trying to get people to do right now.

And that's something that the state can fix right away.

Thank you.

Supervisor LaPisto, Mr. Kamner, did you have?

No.

I saw your video jump to the front there, the forefront.

Yes, it seems like this is something we really do need to protect, especially come November to make sure that everyone does get a chance to vote.

I'm very concerned about the fact that if the virus continues or resurfaces this fall, we're going to have problems.

My question is though, I mean it sounds like the state may be taking care of this and we may not need to do anything.

But my question is do we need to move the 50,000 at this point or can we do it at a later point or if we do it now can we send it later since we're doing 366?

I would be glad to answer that question.

This is Lori.

You can go any direction you'd like as a board.

Basically, you can do this as an amendment to your budget if you'd like to do it later.

And I think Mr. Richardson would like to add some information.

I would basically

say to the board that based on the information that different board members are pulling into the conversation that it makes sense to me to go ahead and balance your budget tonight.

Ms.

Allshouse has worked with Mr. Washburn and they have flagged an approximate number of $50,000.

Board know that after you pass the budget tonight you can come back with an amendment later

In June, July, August once more information is known to include some of the questions that have come up this evening.

So there will be ample time for this board for the staff to work with Jake.

That number of $50,000 I'm not mistaken that number's changed three times in the last 24 hours.

based on the emails that I've read.

So there is a likelihood that this could change again and I heard one board member say maybe we don't need to fold this into the budget.

I heard Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley say if we did could we take it back later.

Okay, thank you.

I think it's something we all want to do, but it seems like this is a moving target.

The number is what's going to go out, what's the state's going to do, if the federal government does anything to help.

It's kind of a moving target.

So I'm glad that we can, I would recommend waiting as long as that's something we can address later.

Thank you Chair Galloway.

Also thank you Mr. Richardson, Ms.

Allshouse, Mr. Henry.

I have absolute confidence that Mr. Washburn and Ms.

Skimmerhorn overworking in elections are going to let us know what we need to do when we need to do it.

I think the important thing right now is we are all aware of the significance and importance of this.

We will continue to monitor it and I

I concur with county executive Mr. Richardson that we really don't need to do anything tonight.

We just need to keep our eyes on the on the ball here which I'm confident we will do.

I think Diantha asked all my questions except for one in this

In the outreach that folks have been doing to board members, one thing that's been suggested has been to consider paid postage for the return ballot, not for the ballot applications, but the actual ballot.

and so I just wanted to throw that into the equation when staff discusses things with Jake.

It was brought to our attention something I did not know is that in Virginia it's not the postmark that counts, it's the actual time that the letter gets there.

And so we want to make it as easy as possible for folks to get there.

actual ballot, absentee ballot in.

So just something to consider as you're considering all these other things.

Thank you.

Oh dear, done it again.

One more comment and that is in states where they have been doing this mail-in ballot for years or is that they have collection boxes all over the place.

that are secure like mailboxes so that people can, just like people use our collection boxes for paying their taxes without having to put it in the mail.

I think this is something we couldn't consider if we're going to be doing something more like this this year that would also provide much more security and certainty rather than sending something in the mail because all of us have had our mail go to Wisconsin and doesn't necessarily come back on time.

So that's just something to add to the list.

All right, very good.

I'll quickly go around the horn if there's any other items that need to be brought up.

Supervisor McKeel, any additional items or comments?

Nope, I'm fine, thank you.

Supervisor Price?

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

I concur with Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley right there exactly what I was going to say.

There have been so many changes and demands that have been brought up in a very short period of time and I just commend the entire staff for the work that you've done.

I have no questions.

Do we have a specific motion that we... Yes, I think there's a motion, it was a budget resolution that was attached to the executive summary that you all received from the clerk.

All right, Supervisor Price has made the motion.

All right, Supervisor Price made the motion.

Supervisor Malek was with the second.

Is there any further discussion?

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Malek?

Yes.

Ms.

All right, we have a budget set for

fiscal year 21.

So we are through that.

Just this one last slide.

The next step as you all know is June 3rd is the appropriation and I just want to thank the board very much for your guidance, leadership, and patience through this process.

I think I can say on behalf of the board that you know

Working through the budget under normal circumstances is quite the daunting task.

And I know that people put in a lot of intense hours and effort.

And then this year, in the midst of the crisis that we've been dealing with, to have to go back, rehash, and re-go, the board is very appreciative of all the extra hours and commitment to get this budget reset up, not just with the current fiscal year, but getting us prepared to do, to make the vote for next year.

Ned, if you want to bring this one up, this is fine.

Alright, we have a request from John specifically from of course Brad because he is applying for a grant that would support our on-demand pilot that he's talked to us about I think last fall and he's not asking for any funding we don't need any in-kind money

He just needs the board to ask Ned to write a letter of support on our behalf that he can submit with the grant application.

And I can give you more details.

I was just looking at what he has but it's the project centers on implementing the on-demand services that we've talked about in a complete trip mobility platform.

and it would use both of those technologies to shape public transportation services around specific needs that come out of forming partnerships to create a new way of moving our citizens and accessing transit.

So this is exactly what we've been talking about and Brad found a grant that he would very much like to apply for and just needs our support.

I support that.

Me too.

And once we get the letter done, of course, we'll share that with the board.

I think that we just have to get it turned around.

And economic, as the board probably read in an email earlier today, economic development also had already put a letter to be able to go with the grant project.

Thank you, Mr. Richardson, for updating us on that.

So this will just be an additional one from our body of support to go with the application.

Sure, let me just see that.

The motion would be that we ask Ned as our chair to write a letter of support for John's on-demand grant application.

Is that okay, Greg?

No.

So that's what I heard.

So I'm going to go with that.

Supervisor McKeel made the motion.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley made the second.

Is there any further discussion?

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Very good, thank you.

Just a couple of quick announcements and a question to leave for Mr. Richardson.

Today, May 14th, is the day when the Lewis and Clark expedition actually began way back then in 1803.

And it also is the day that our Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center opened here at Darden Town Park.

So that was just a cool bit of news that I received today from Alex Searles out there.

In my earlier afternoon Zoom thing with the

Smart Scale Projects.

It was great to see the Rio roundabout has come back after 10 years in Siberia.

The fact that it is now back on the table again after being fully developed back in 2010 was really exciting.

And I think that some sort of plan like that will make a huge improvement to that John Mulder Parkway, Del Mora, all those other complicated issues that are over there.

So it was the first time I'd actually seen the drawing and I'm really pleased to see it's making progress.

Some discussion in the news today about the veracity of the testing for COVID-19 patients in Virginia, both in national magazine like the Atlantic and also among citizens.

So I'm just wanted to say how grateful I am that Doug Walker and the IMT staff group at the county and our local VDH are keeping our own numbers

pure and trustworthy.

Because if we can't trust what the numbers are, then we will make a mistake as far as opening or not.

And so I'm very concerned about this and I hope that it will get itself sorted out very, very quickly.

And the last thing is yesterday I received, or two days ago received from the Bay Co-Executive Director the certification forms for the county to be able to apply for county share of this

Big tranche of money that's come to the state.

And so I assume that all of our people are working on that.

There's complicated looking certification forms and a signature from Jeff Require and others too.

So I just wanted to make sure that that was on people's radar and would soon get out the door.

Very good.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

I actually want to give a shout out to our residents in the county.

As I watch the news of events that are taking place around the country, I am just so proud of the people in Albemarle County who, despite a lot of the adversity that many people are facing, have come together to help people out, maintain civility,

and I'm just very appreciative to live here and thank our residents for being who they are.

I have nothing else.

I have one quick update and a question.

We had Supervisor Price and I just attended our first SWAC meeting virtually right before coming here and we did get some updates on how the COVID pandemic is affecting our recycling so I wanted to tell a couple of things about that.

It turns out that Gordao who takes our aluminum cans

has stopped taking them because the thought is when you drink, you get your mouth all over the top of a can.

And the way that they process those cans, the staff felt uncomfortable, the Grinnell staff felt uncomfortable continuing to take them.

We have found a place that will take them, but it of course is affecting prices.

and as you can imagine, when a lot of the recycling for boxes and all that kind of thing comes from stores, a huge percentage of it.

So that's dropped precipitously.

So there's just been a lot of changes and I just wanted to, I didn't want to go over them all but I thought it was important to let us know, let everybody know that it is significantly affecting the recycling markets

My only other question, I have my question, is I recognize that we are expanding testing here, but I'm wondering if staff can tell us, you know, my understanding, I know we're having a testing site at Yancey, for instance, tomorrow.

I believe it's tomorrow.

but still it is people with symptoms.

We haven't gotten to the point where we have enough tests to branch out a bit and I'm wondering if there's any information on when we might be able to expand that testing.

Ah, look at that.

Thank you.

I was hoping that was Dan that just came on.

Good evening.

Good evening.

So if I understand the question, are we going to expand testing beyond the scope that would include folks who are not symptomatic?

That is my question.

For instance, spouses,

of folks who are infected or are known to be infected and whatever, just how to expand that because I've been hearing from people who do have family members that are infected or have a positive test.

Sure.

Right now our capacity to test

folks outside of those who are symptomatic, we just don't have that capacity right now.

So we're just trying to expand the testing areas right now to those folks who are just exhibiting symptoms.

I would imagine when testing material in the capacity from the Department of Health, it spans will include folks who are asymptomatic.

All right.

Very good.

And I don't have any items.

The letter was the one that I had mentioned, so we've already taken care of that.

So the next item then number four from the county executive.

Yes sir we we have two things this evening.

I have uh Mr. Walker who is lined up and he's going to give the board a more in-depth uh review of where the organization is connecting to the governor's

I plan to move into phase one tomorrow.

Prior to turning it over to Mr. Walker, Mr. Cantner, correct me if I'm wrong, I may be confused, but I thought there was something tonight that we had to put before the board specific to certification form.

that is due May the 22nd.

It ties back to Ann's, Ms.

Mallek's comments earlier where we received the notification earlier in the week for local funding and step one is to get a certification form with myself, the chairman of the board, and the CFO's signature and I'm going to talk about that this evening.

No, that's correct.

I sent out an email with a proposed motion and with the information, which I think the board had already received on Tuesday.

This is under the CARES Act.

The state has been allocated

about $644 million and based on population approximately $9.5 million would be distributed to Albemarle County.

And what we've asked the board tonight is to consider a motion

by which the board would authorize the chair, the county executive, and the chief financial officer to request the direct payment from the state from this coronavirus revenue fund and also to authorize them to sign the certification form that was included in the materials.

And this will allow us to get our request in to the state.

And there was an email

mid to late afternoon that came in from Pete Lynch.

The state is prepared to deposit approximately half of that amount of money.

I think before June 1st came in during a, when I was on another call, so my fax may be a little bit off, but our deadline to file the, to get the certification is May 22nd.

We thought rather than waiting until the board's May 20th meeting to have the board

If anyone has that motion in front of them or I can read the motion and somebody can make them to move it.

So we would need a motion to authorize the chair, the county executive, and the chief financial officer to request direct payment on behalf of the county from the Commonwealth of Virginia of revenues from the coronavirus relief fund and to sign on behalf of the county the certification for receipt of coronavirus relief fund payments by the county of Albemarle, Virginia.

I heard Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley make the motion.

Supervisor Mallek, sorry.

I can't tell who gets the word in here.

So Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley made the motion, Supervisor Mallek

All right let me try this again.

A challenging thing we have all night.

I can restate my fourth problem.

Mallek and McKeel.

Is there any further discussion?

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

You had another item, Mr. Richardson?

Good afternoon sir, thank you.

We had sent an email out of the COVID updates I believe on Wednesday evening and it also discussed some framework to how the county was working to interpret the governor's move to move to phase one tomorrow

Mr. Walker and staff have been working diligently to ensure that there is adequate coordination between the state and Albemarle County but also working diligently with our regional partners as well as the state moves to phase one tomorrow.

And so with that I'd like to turn it over to Mr. Walker.

I think he's got a short presentation he'll just walk the board through and then certainly staff is available to answer questions.

Thank you, Mr. Richardson, Mr. Chair, members of the board, Doug Walker, Deputy County Executive.

Jeff had mentioned the email that went out to you as part of a more standard regular communication that identified a broader framework for our work to date as of a couple days ago on our phase one.

I wanted to make a couple of other introductory comments before heading into the presentation.

One is that after the conclusion of this meeting tonight, we will be forwarding to you in advance of forwarding to the entire organization a 25-page document that we are calling the Reconstitution guidance for employees, also known as our playbook.

Playbook is specific to phase one, but it's structured so that we can then modify it as we move forward into future phases.

And it is constructed as a resource document for employees, but we obviously think that you will find it very useful, too, to have a much, much fuller understanding

of the relationship that we are developing as employer with our employees and the management of relationship between employees and our public, customers, visitors, public contractors.

So I'm not gonna go through that extensive document today, but I wanna let you know that we just finished it up this afternoon.

It's hot off the press and we'll be sending it out to you.

It has a lot more information in it that we hope that you will find.

News, and if there's any questions you want us to know.

For the benefit of this presentation, just to find a little bit more depth of what you've already seen, just acknowledging that we in the last, we the IMT, Incident Management Team for the county, has been working over the last couple of weeks anticipating the governor's move into his three phase, currently three phase program called Forward Virginia.

I'm wanting very much to align our migration into recovery with the state and also with our partners here locally, regionally, the City of Charlottesville, the Health Department, UVA, to the extent that we possibly can.

Forward Virginia is much more about businesses and not about government, but we do obviously want to make sure that we are

Posturing and positioning ourselves in a way that fairly aligns.

Let me go to the next slide.

There we go.

So as you know, the governor, and we didn't really know until yesterday, but the governor did in fact say that we were ready to move into phase one.

He has intended his intentions to continue to move forward as a state with one exception, that's Northern Virginia.

They stay at phase zero for the next two weeks, but the rest of the state is moving forward starting tomorrow.

There are a number of factors that they are tracking and we are also tracking some of these as well in concert with the health department.

including the downward trend in new cases, the increase in testing, the availability of contact tracing capacity, PPE resource availability and access to those resources, those who need it, and then hospital resources in the local area.

Next slide.

The governor uses a number of data points and slides in his presentations.

If you've participated in any of his press conferences, you probably have seen these.

The one that he has reflected that we think is most meaningful is the correlation between total tests and total positive results.

It's that correlation that is really driving the state's confidence

that were making progress.

So as you can see here again, the number of testing going up, the number of positive results also going up with correlation between the two are showing a downward trajectory.

Next slide.

So Albemarle County's phase one.

is going to look like what's being characterized as phase zero.

We'll go on to the next slide, kind of uses the transition.

So there's not much from a program service delivery aspect that the customers of county services are going to see much different.

In fact, there's not much that our employees will see much different either.

We will continue to primarily work remotely using telework.

You recall that we made a very rapid transition into the use of telework at the onset of the coronavirus response.

And it has been successful.

We'll continue to do that as much as we possibly can through phase one.

We practice social distancing.

The face coverings for employees and customers is a little different.

We have frequently, routinely used face coverings.

We recommended the use of face coverings.

The administrative staff and those who work in this building regularly use face coverings.

But all employees are going to be required to wear face coverings and all customers or visitors to the buildings are going to be required to wear face coverings.

at all times in common areas.

The limited occupancy of physical spaces, the additional comment I would make there is that we have recalibrated the capacity of all of our conference rooms to accommodate social distancing.

They've been posted with the new capacity as an indication of how many people that we think are

We will continue to limit

We will continue our enhanced cleaning and disinfection, and we'll continue our employee screening protocols, which is a self-diagnosis screening protocol that you may have seen coming into the building that you see elsewhere, where we are asking employees to monitor themselves and of course stay home if they have any symptoms.

Next.

So it's important to emphasize that even as we move into recovery, we continue to be in full response mode.

You've seen our goals every night, right, when they go out, and we've used these goals on response to really guide our thinking, guide our policymaking, guide our actions with respect to our response to the pandemic.

and that has not changed.

This is still a very active issue and we don't want to, even as we move into recovery phases and talk about our reconstitution, which is how we're trying to characterize it, to forget the fact that we are fully involved in response.

That affects our focus and our attention and also affects our available resources.

So we are in a transition place and we want to be very mindful.

The response goals you've seen, the recovery goals you started to see within the last week, probably less than that, but they are protecting the health and safety of staff and residents, supporting all people and communities, facilitating a safe transition to, and we put this in parentheses because we're not sure what normal means,

County Operations and Community Economic Recovery.

And so just to emphasize for you and to the listening public that even as we transition into a posture of recovery, reconstitution is one.

And acknowledging that it won't look much different than phase zero or what we have been doing for the last month and a half or more, that we are still focused very keenly and directly on response.

In all that we do, we continue to be also grounded in the guidance that we receive from the CDC, from OSHA, workplace safety, and from the state, and principally the governor and the Department of Health at the state level and our local health district.

Next.

So this is indicating what you can expect with respect to county offices.

And again, not much has changed.

The community development continues to receive intake of applications and payments, continues to provide obviously inspections in the field.

They've limited their hours to days, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Social services and police continue to receive very limited customer interaction through a managed access at 5th Street and the office building.

voter registrar continuing to allow in-person voting for the upcoming Scottsville County Council election and for the June primaries.

Next.

The parks and recreation posture also remains very much the same.

Parks remain open.

Certain amenities continue to be restricted and closed.

So we invite our visitors, residents, yes, to enjoy our open spaces, our trails, our boat launches.

They all remain accessible.

We will continue to provide the park ambassadors out at the park to

to help ensure that people are using our park safely.

The playgrounds, tennis courts, basketball courts are closed as our gathering areas including the grills, picnic tables, pavilions, and shelters are closed.

We will continue to evaluate the safe use of these facilities as we move from phase one towards phase two.

As you're also aware that the park programming for the summer is suspended with regard to swim.

The summer camp classes and recreation programs are canceled for the summer.

And then field reservations, which have not been available for now for some time, are still remain unavailable.

Next.

Public meetings.

This will also be familiar to you.

The community use of county facilities is still unavailable.

that would be meeting rooms in the county office building, training rooms and birthday parties that previously frequently occurred at car stations and then use of our community centers.

And then public meetings will remain virtual.

As you recall, the board had a conversation about their experience with the virtual format at its regular meeting last week.

The confidence that you showed in the ability to use this format has really given us a stronger indication of our determination to move forward in all of our public venues with the use of virtual meetings.

And so we are looking at that format as a way to kind of move forward the business of the county in a virtual way to the extent that that is possible.

Again, as we look at Phase 2 and 3, we'll obviously be sharing information back with the board about when we see the possibility of getting back into Lane Auditorium.

I know that you're eager to see each other.

We're eager to see you too.

Your public is eager to kind of see you in person, but we obviously want to do that in a safe way.

Phase 1, we don't believe that we're there.

I believe that that is the end of this.

It is the end of the slides.

We're available for questions.

I think Dan is also available.

There are others that have been very active.

Trevor, Emily, Mr. Richardson, they're on the call.

They can try to address some questions.

Thank you, Doug.

I'll just go through our order.

I would imagine everybody might have a comment.

I do not have a question.

I just really appreciate staff's hard work on this, and I think we're taking the right approach.

Thank you.

On the Governor's call with the BACO board yesterday, he emphasized the fact that this is local choice.

Richmond is also preparing to stand down on the moving forward.

And so local localities need to decide for themselves whether they're ready to follow this guidance.

I know that the original plan last week was that everybody had to follow the same rules, but once Northern Virginia broke away,

then I think the necessity was that others had rights as well.

So I hope everyone will keep that in mind because when Dan just said, Chief Eggleston said that we do not have access to the testing facilities and capacity that we need to find out what the real numbers are for our area.

That is a concern for me.

Atlantic article this morning and the confusion that's created by the fact that the state is commingling the antibody test with the blood test in order to get that downward curve that then allowed them to open the state is really bringing about a lot of consternation in the public.

And I'm sorry, it's a self-inflicted wound that they didn't need to do, but it is out there.

And so we need to just make sure that our numbers

that Doug keeps reporting to us and Kathryn Goodman reports to us our clean numbers and using the proper descriptors that they have so we understand what's going on.

The other issue that I raised on the call yesterday with Angela Navarro is that some businesses are not having their employees wear masks.

So I went to a big building supply for about five seconds and none of the customers were wearing masks, but the employees were, but a great big grocery store where I was trying to get Kleenex, they weren't wearing any masks at all.

And when I called back later and talked to the manager,

I said, there are lots of citizens who have told me they refuse to go to your store because you're not getting your employees to wear masks.

And his excuse was that the governor had not required it.

Well, as of yesterday, and apparently Executive Order 61, I think Angela said, is requiring businesses to provide masks and get their employees to wear them.

And this is a common expectation that every citizen should see when they go out.

because I think everyone understands that the comfort of going out at all is what's going to help get us, you know, our economy working.

And if people are afraid to go shop because the business owners are being irresponsible, then it's not going to happen.

So it does still fall upon local government for enforcement.

So people need to call in if they just, as Chief Lance said a month or so ago, when citizens asked, what do I do?

He said, please have people called an emergency number and we will take care of it.

So this in order to not lose all the progress we've made so far and all the people who have died have that just even be worse.

I hope that we will all be very thoughtful and very careful and support each other and our local businesses who are doing a good job to do this right and to carefully and to know that we are responsible locally for what we do.

We don't have to do what the governor says if we don't think it's the right thing.

I agree with Supervisor Malek.

I'm worried that

The gains we've made we could very easily lose.

I know that restaurants are already opening tomorrow and they're having outside patio seating.

I just hope everyone wears the masks because the gains we've made we could quickly lose and then I don't want everything to have to shut down again.

So I hope people really are considerate and careful as we slowly go into this phase one.

Supervisor Price.

Chair Galloway and concurring with the other supervisors' comments in terms of things we still need to do to keep ourselves safe, ourselves and our friends and neighbors.

But I really want to thank Mr. Walker on behalf of everyone that's been working with you in the incident management team.

Thank you.

Well, thank you.

It is a talented team.

It's a deep team.

And, you know, I'm going to be very quick to point out that there's so many others in all their contributions.

But on behalf of the team, I thank you for your comments.

I'd like to know if we can get some more information on

the increased testing in the state.

Is there a graph?

Is there a spreadsheet?

Is there information that shows the incremental increase over the last month, six weeks, something like that?

And just a little bit more information about how we're going forward.

It was very clear at the criteria that we're supposed to be making these decisions on that

that we don't meet locally some of that criteria.

And so I'd really like to know where we're going on contact tracing and that sort of thing and the testing.

And I also, sorry for my dog, she's decided to bark in the background.

The other thing is, and I talked to Jeff about this already, but just to mention, there's a privacy issue here with respect to discussing who's infected and the deaths that we've had locally.

But when we do have a cluster, which we have had, I think it would be

Good to think about how we could communicate, and I'm sure you've already done this, but how we could communicate with residents locally that this is happening, maybe not with specifics, but so that they can understand.

So just something to think about as we go forward in communicating with folks.

And yes, I think everybody's done a wonderful job and thank you.

Oh, and this is an entirely different subject and I don't, I'm sorry to take us away from it, but I have had several inquiries from folks who are suddenly realizing that they haven't received their tax bills.

And of course, we delayed the tax payments

But I guess my question is, when are we expecting that those bills will go out?

Do we know right now?

I mean, I'm happy to get an answer later.

Because folks are saying that often by now they already have them.

I can't answer.

Yeah, it's OK.

If you could just let us know maybe later, that would be lovely.

This is Emily Kilroy, Director of Communications and Public Engagement.

Okay.

That way I can at least tell them, Emily.

All right Doug, thank you for the presentation.

I would imagine if other questions or anything come up that folks will be using you as the point person to direct those to.

Please do.

Yes, we will be immediately starting to plan for phase two even as we continue on our response protocols.

Very good, thank you.

And if that's Mr. County Executive, without all the items under your slate there tonight?

Board, we're going to do a really brief closed meeting for an appointment.

I move that the board go into a closed meeting pursuant to section 2.2-3711A of the Code of Virginia under subsection 1 to discuss and consider an appointment to the Planning Commission.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Ms.

McKeel.

Motion passes.

We're live.

Yes, I move that the Board of Supervisors certify by a recorded vote that, to the best of each supervisor's knowledge, only business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting.

All right, I heard Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley made the motion.

Supervisor Mallek with the second.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Board, it's with pleasure I'd like to move that we appoint Mr. Daniel Bailey to represent the Rio District on the Planning Commission.

Second.

All right I made the motion.

Supervisor Price seconded.

Ms.

Palmer.

Yes.

Mr. Price.

Aye.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley.

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek.

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel.

Thank you board for that appointment and congratulations to Mr. Bailey.

I had and I want to thank all the applicants.

I had three very stellar

And board that brings us to the conclusion this evening so if there's no objection we will adjourn to May 2020.

3 p.m.

That's an electronic meeting pursuant to ordinance number 20-A6.

And hope everybody has a good evening.