Board of Supervisors Budget Work Session #1   3/10/2021

Good afternoon everyone.

I call the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors to order for this March 10th 3 p.m session.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with ordinance number 20-A16, 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 of the Samuel Miller district,

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

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.

And also with us today, we have our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our County Attorney, Mr. Greg Campner, our Board Clerk, Ms.

Claudette Borgeson.

And with that, we're here today to begin our first work session on the 21-22 operating and capital budget.

And I believe I'm immediately turning things over to Mr. Bowman.

Is that correct, Mr. Richardson?

Yes, sir, it is.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon to the chair and members of the board.

My name is Andy Bowman.

I am the chief of budget of the budget division within the Department of Finance and Budget.

I'll ask Heather Taylor if you could go ahead and pull up the presentation.

I'll be walking through most of the presentation today, but I'll be introducing, or other staff will introduce themselves as we go along the way.

While Heather is pulling up the presentation, I did want to take a moment to publicly thank the staff of the budget division.

Today is notable as I think it was a year ago or a year ago from tomorrow we were completing a transit work session for the fiscal year 21 budget and in my mind that was sort of the last normal board meeting we had at that time.

After that it was in the auditorium spaced out where virtual had been for the most part and I really want to thank as a challenging year for all of us but so much of the strategic

Medical Care, and just be a thoughtfulness in our approach to manage our financial situation.

Much of that is due to Larvin Zant, Tia Mitchell, Heather Taylor, and Kim Gardner.

I just want to publicly thank them for helping us get to this point.

And we're still waiting for the presentation to pop up.

There we go.

So we can go into the second slide.

This is really to set the stage of all of the work that will happen in over the next couple of months.

I'm sorry weeks and months but today this will be the first work session on the 22 budget and we'll primarily focus on the high-level overview of general fund revenue and general fund expenditures.

On Monday, we will have the school board here to discuss the school board's request.

We'll also discuss the capital budget and debt service in more detail, and we will continue anything we don't finish up today on general government operations.

The intent for these two first work sessions is going to cover a lot of material relatively quickly, because on March 18th is going to be an important milestone for the board in our process, as the board will be asked to propose a tax rate and a budget for advertisement and public hearing.

Now those are my final decisions, but there's a milestone that will kind of continue our public process on the 22 budget.

We will also spend time on March 18th to talk about fire rescue in a little more detail.

And after we go through these kind of high level overviews in our first work sessions, we'll have much more time as we need to to get more in depth on topics in the March 22nd work session.

And if we need to, we can continue that on March 29th, April 1st.

If we need to find more time, we can do so as well.

We've identified a few items on March 22nd already to discuss the cigarette tax options, to have another transit work session, primarily with Jean on their budget request, and also for the electoral board who is, you know, requested to meet with the board about some of their budget work.

So more topics will be identified, of course, directed by the board of supervisors as we go through those work sessions.

That's really what the next week or so and beyond will look like.

We can now go to the next slide.

Our process for these work sessions is really grounded, what we've done in the past, and we've gotten feedback from the board that has worked well in the past.

This is going to be a very interactive approach.

Staff will present a little bit of information and allow then time for board questions and dialogue.

We want to allow as much of that as possible, so my comments on some of these chapters will probably be very brief.

Other times, it'll be a little more at length depending on the complexity of the topic and the changes that are in the budget.

All the budget staff are on the call and we're really listening for our follow-ups to support the board for two particular things.

The first is that we call the list kind of quote unquote for potential adjustments.

So if there's an item in the budget and the board seeks to add to or remove or modify in some way, I guess the magic words we're looking for is to have item X to be added to the list for discussion.

Staff will gather all of these items for the list and bring them back as a package at the March 18th work session.

And also of course if there are general questions whether how something works operationally, what our historical trend is in particular revenue and expense, or whatever that may be, we're taking thorough notes and we'll respond to those as we've already been doing today to respond to the board's questions.

And again we're working as I mentioned before to the March 18th work session where the board will propose a budget and tax rate for advertisement and further public input.

So to go to the next slide, this is today's agenda.

It is a lot of topics.

These are essentially the chapters we're going to go through.

As I said before, some of these will be very quick, but we'll also want to slow down on topics such as broadband or North Department volunteers' funding requests because those will be more substantial parts of the county executive's recommended budget.

I should note that on the agenda that was previously released, we had towards the end of the day what's now called intro to reserves and transfers, which is our non-departmental section of the chapter.

That will be a little bit different.

We'll probably just do an introduction to that today and save some of that for next time, given the pace of material that we have to go through.

And at the end of the day, we'll also pause and wrap up to make sure we have all our followups captured.

Supervisor Palmer, any questions on process?

Nope, thank you.

Supervisor McKeel?

I'm fine, thanks.

Supervisor Price?

No, thank you.

Supervisor O'Kurtley?

No questions.

Thank you.

So I will begin with a couple of high-level slides just to kind of frame the total county budget.

Heather, if you go to the next slide.

Now, I must admit, as we've prepared for this presentation, I noticed that slide counter in the bottom right of the corner says six of 53.

But don't worry about a quarter of these slides or transitions.

So if anyone can exhale after seeing the number of slides we'll go through today, hopefully I can take a little of that feeling out.

So this is a slide that was part of the county executive's budget presentation.

We've been talking for the last year about managing our budget in a 366 framework, referring to the last quarter of fiscal year 20, the first half of fiscal year 21, the last half of fiscal year 21.

We're now adding

There's really going to be a transitionary budget.

Our economy is stabilizing, but it has not stabilized.

Our community is adapting as our circumstances change and people are impacted by the pandemic in very different ways.

The organization itself is transforming in the future.

So even though this is a transitionary budget, we had to reflect and make recommendations.

What are those things we can do to build a bridge now to make sure that we're an even more resilient organization and community when we reach the other side of our future?

heading to the next slide this is a slide the board has seen before every year in the budget as we make recommendations it's guided by the board's strategic plan those are the nine boxes on the left of the slide with those objectives to make sure that we have things that are one going in the current year that will continue or upcoming in the upcoming fiscal year that we can tie to that certainly quality government operations underpins all of that in the thin bottom line

On the right another framework we use for our decision making is a graphic that we shared with the board about strategic use of one-time funding.

We have some one-time funding available based on our approach in the last quarter of fiscal year 20 where we really hit the brakes on spending at the start of the pandemic and that has really provided an opportunity to do some one-time support for projects as we look at in both the current year and the upcoming year.

We'll talk about that more in detail as we go through the work sessions.

So on the next slide, this will be my final overview, is just our total budget, which is $466 million.

And this includes the local government general fund budget.

It includes the school fund budget.

It includes capital budget and all other grants and pass-through monies.

Every dollar that the board has been appropriate is included in this total.

And I should note that the total budget year-to-year is an increase of 17%.

I'll also say that the total budget year-to-year can be a challenging point as a reference.

For example, the nature of our capital budget and debt service due to the timing of projects, the timing of borrowings, and when debt services paid off, there's a usual to be some fluctuation there.

So of the 17% increase in our total budget, about $46 million, or 64% of the total increase, is due to the year-to-year change we're seeing in our capital budget.

The board may recall at the start of the fiscal year 2020 budget, many capital projects were put on hold.

Some of those have been restarted, and that certainly plays into that as well.

So we're going to focus most today on the general fund, which is a much more meaningful point for year-to-year comparisons.

It is the fund where all tax revenue is received, and it's the primary ongoing funding source for the school fund and the capital and debt program.

It also doesn't include some of those pass-through grants that also may vary year-to-year.

So the general fund where we're going to spend our time today is increasing 4.8% over the 21 adopted budget.

and now we'll jump kind of another level down from the county executive's presentation and overview into what does our 22 revenue picture look like.

This begins on page 33 if the board would like to follow along with the document.

So this first chart shows what the county's total revenues are by funding source.

Just a few comments on

In total they make up 68% of general fund revenues.

Other comment I'll make on this slide is it surprises someone when I share this, but in the upper left quadrant, there's that yellow piece of the donut or wheel or bagel, however you'd like to think of it.

And the green piece of the donut, which is state and federal revenue.

Those only make up about 10% of our total county revenues that support local government.

The school division also receives state revenue, but that is received directly to the school fund.

It does not pass through the general fund.

So before we move to the next slide, there are two things I want to share as we're continuing to monitor our revenue picture, and they're both related to state and federal revenues.

I don't have an update on dollars today, and we'll continue to keep the board updated as we move forward.

But first, we now have a state budget that's been approved by the General Assembly that's going to the governor.

That was not the case when we finalized the recommended budget.

So we are currently going through a process to of the state budget to determine if there's any revenue updates we need to make from there as the state's revenue picture looks a little rosier than it did earlier in the process.

We know that for most of our state revenues which go to things such as supporting the Department of Social Services and some other kind of obligated aid, those don't appear to change but we're still doing our homework to make sure we have all that covered and we'll report back to the board at a future work session as we better understand those impacts.

The second item we're watching very closely is related to the federal government.

That has been going on.

I think this changes daily.

I said right before this meeting, I understand there's been an update from our CFO, Nelson Burch, of some legislation that has now passed the House.

That is the America Rescue Plan Act of 2021 that's been in development in recent weeks.

It seems every day we seem to learn a little bit more.

So this American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, in my mind I think of this as almost another round of the CARES or coronavirus relief funds that were received in the last calendar year.

So at this point I'll say in the last three hours or last 24 hours I've seen three different pieces of information suggesting different things.

So we are watching this very closely as staff to make sure we understand what the potential exact amount of funding we would receive.

What are the compliance standards and other requirements that would be out there?

And also, what are just the timing when that would be?

I understand in some of the preliminary information, the initial CARES deadline was a very short timeframe.

This may be more flexible.

But again, I hesitate to say anything so certain because Nelson may be watching and using the corner of eye and learned something even more recently after our last chat.

So I will certainly share with the board as we know more, but I do want to make very clear that the county executive's recommended budget does not include any revenue that would come from the federal government for this.

This would be an additive to our current fiscal plan.

So moving on to the next slide, we've talked about real estate as the majority of our tax revenue, so I'm going to spend a little time talking about that in more detail.

Our real estate property taxes are calculated at the current rate of 85.4 cents per assessed value.

That is the same rate as calendar year 20.

So the county executive's budget does not include a rate increase in the recommended budget.

Real estate revenues are expected to generate $173 million, or about 55% of our general fund revenues.

And from perspective, every penny on the real estate tax rate yields $2.1 million in estimated collective real estate tax revenues.

So what that means, if the board were to consider to either add or reduce the tax rate by a penny, every penny would add $2.1 million revenue, or if a reduction, take away $2.1 million from the budget.

This fourth bullet here is referring to the lowered or effective tax rate.

And to define what that means, the lower tax rate is the rate in which we would receive the same amount of tax revenue in calendar year 21 as we did in calendar year 20.

This calculation is based on the change in the reassessment value.

As the board heard from Pete Lynch, our county assessor in January, we had a total positive reassessment of 1.4 percent.

And so that is that 1.4 percent is the difference of 84.2 to 85.4.

This will also be part of the public advertisement when the board takes action on the proposed rate next Thursday.

That lower tax rate does not include changes in revenues due to new construction or new parcel creation.

or a change in property's land use is really just speaking to the real estate reassessment.

Final comment on this slide is that we continue to have a tax relief for the elderly and disabled program.

That is an expenditure that is included in the non-departmental section of our chapter.

It totals 1.3 million.

That is a 7% increase from the 21 adopted budget.

That really reflects the trend we've seen in recent years of about a 7% growth of a utilization of that program.

So heading on to the next slide.

Thank you.

I want to step back and I'm not going to go through a lot of numbers and charts and graphs through our revenues, but just kind of ground the board and what does our 21 revenue projection look like?

And we gave some information to the board on February 17th, our second quarter financial report.

and the main takeaway for me from that report that we want to share with the board is that in total the pandemic impacts on county revenues have not been as significant as we projected in April 2020.

At that time we were maybe a month or so into the pandemic that was the time frame we had to use to prepare the fiscal year 21 revised budget that the board adopted.

We did a lot of scenario modeling at that time in terms of high, medium, and low impacts both in fiscal year 20 and 21.

Now that we have all the data from about nine months later from that time, it's looking much more favorable than we anticipated.

Our 21 projection is about 2.5% above our 21 adopted budget.

And I want to be clear, this is in total.

There are certainly revenues that were impacted by the pandemic.

There were certainly ones that were impacted even worse than we thought they would be when you begin to look at a line item or category level.

But in total, as we learn more and more, the impacts have not been as significant.

So that 21 projection really becomes almost our new base for what happens in fiscal year 22.

Our fiscal year 22 recommended 1.1 revenues are 4.7% above the 21 adopted budget.

So to be clear, that does not mean that staff is projecting the economy will take off next year and be 5% growth.

That really reflects the 21 projection of 2.5%.

And then another modest growth of about 2.2% that would occur in 2022.

We've gone back and kind of done multi-year trend analysis through good times and bad times over the last 15 years or so to really get a sense of where we are, what revenues do we know are impacted by the pandemic or not.

But that's really kind of the very high level summary of where we are.

and we've talked before about this being a transitionary budget and to kind of help illustrate this, back on January 20th, we heard from Pete about our real estate projections.

We also heard from Steve Allshouse from the Community Development Department about our consumer driven revenues being relatively volatile.

There's still uncertainty out there, but I can share that they, although they have not stabilized, they are stabilizing, but they have not returned to pre-pandemic levels.

And I do have one chart that I'll slow down and explain on the next slide.

I don't have a lot of charts and graphs, but this is one that the board has seen a different version of before.

So this is a chart that I think will illustrate the previous point that I made where we're stabilizing, we have not stabilized to pre-pandemic levels.

This looks at our actual sales, actual meals, and actual transit occupancy taxes by month for the last three years from July to June.

July kind of starting the left of our fiscal year working through the right.

What we can see first is the green line, it's fiscal year 19.

And I'll say these are primarily what we refer to consumer-driven revenues.

These are the bulk of them, and they're the ones that are typically a little more volatile based on economy and consumer-driven habits.

So the green line is fiscal year 19, and kind of for purposes of this chart, that is baseline.

There was no pandemic in fiscal year 19.

The blue line is fiscal year 20.

So we can see, the board has kind of seen this information before.

As we go through fiscal year 20, we are pretty consistently and significantly outperforming fiscal year 19 through the first three quarters.

That changes very dramatically in the last quarter if you want to set up the pandemic.

Those revenues did vary significantly as we get to April, May, and June.

The third line on this chart is the orange line, which is fiscal year 21.

And you can see as the year has gone on, that orange line is getting closer and closer to the green line and has actually exceeded it just barely in two of the last three months.

We're still below the blue line.

We haven't gone back to the strong economy we had the last three, four years, but we're certainly in a much stronger place than we were nine months ago and six months ago.

So this is, I take this as encouraging, but as staff we're also being very cautious in our approach because we know we're not out of the woods yet.

We still are below where we were in 21.

We know from just talking to our folks in revenue administration and talking to people at the Court of Education and the Convention and Visitors Bureau, it's reasonable to expect that the March and April still may have impacts from the winter months when we've had a higher number of virus cases.

We've also had colder weather, which may impact businesses operations as well.

There are also some other revenues that we're going to get some key data points on around new business licenses and some other economic indicators that we typically find out in kind of the March, April, May timeline.

So this is a chart that's encouraging about our revenue stabilizing.

Again, there's more to come and we continue to watch this very closely.

So the final slide I'll have on revenues before I pause for questions is our use of fund balance, which we note on page 46.

fiscal year 20 audit, we have an unassigned fund balance above our policy levels of $7.5 million.

And that amount is recommended to be allocated in fiscal year 21 and fiscal year 22 based on the prioritization that's on the right of the slide and what I shared before.

Supporting our financial foundation, supporting our economic outlook, and supporting our community during this turbulent time, and also workforce stabilization, which we talked about on the board with the joint board meeting in January with the school board.

Page 46 has a list of those items.

I'm not going to go through them in detail now, because they're really expenditures that are being supported with one-time money.

So we'll spend time later today and on Monday talking about those reserves, such as the climate action funding, the support for the housing fund, the business process optimization and support for the community development work plan, as well as some other items.

So that concludes my comments, and I will pause now for any board questions on revenues.

I don't have any questions here.

No, I'm fine.

Supervisor Price?

No, thank you.

Thank you.

I would like to thank, if they're still on the call, Pete Lynch, our county assessor, and Jen Lynn, our chief of revenue administration.

Both they and their teams are very actively involved.

I'm kind of the one speaking today, but this is a very big team effort, both in the department of finance and budget and throughout our organization.

So moving on to general fund expenditure overview.

I'm just going to talk very high level at first.

before we go into the chapters and get into more specifics of departments and other changes.

This is on page 47, and this is the usual chart.

This is, I believe, actually in the county executive's presentation that looks at what are the major categories of our general fund expenditures.

As is the case in just about every year, the largest piece of our general fund is the local transfer to the school division.

That totals $141 million and is in the dark blue section, kind of the bottom left of the wheel.

The second largest category, which is true in most years as well, is public safety.

That is the orange piece of the wheel in the upper white quadrant.

The third largest is our transferred capital and debt.

That is kind of the dark brown section, totaling 30.5 million in the upper left part.

And then health and welfare is 22.5, that green section in the bottom right.

I'm going to go through the list in detail.

That just gives the sense of what are the largest parts of the general fund.

So going on to the next slide, just to hit on a few points that don't really impact one department, they impact all departments, and that is our workforce stabilization efforts.

The fiscal year 22 budget includes a $15 minimum wage and related compression at the bottom part of the pay scale.

The total impact of that in fiscal year 22 is projected to be $280,000.

We also include a 2% market adjustment.

This includes both for the public safety plan as well as classified employees.

The total impact of that of 2% for local government is $1.2 million.

That includes the impact of benefits as well.

The final category of workforce stabilization is our health insurance employer share.

This is actually an increase of about $75,000, but there's a couple of things that are happening there.

We are projecting rate increases in plan year 21, which I would say is calendar year 21 because our plan year ties with our calendar year, not our fiscal year.

And there's an additional rate increase that we're projecting in plan year 21 based on the work that we're doing with our senior healthcare analyst, Laura Andre, who the board met at the January joint board meeting.

We do have rate increases as part of the management of that fund.

We feel it's responsible to have a one-month holiday in fiscal year 22 as we manage the fund balance and the healthcare fund.

And so the net result of those two changes yield a $75,000 increase for health.

There also will be for employees no health insurance costs to increase in fiscal year 2022.

So the final slide I have on expenditures and kind of related to workforce is about our position changes and these are all summarized on page 54 of the document.

This is a chart that was in the county executive's presentation, and it's a chart that many look for every year.

I just want to highlight that while there's a net increase of 10 positions listed, and we'll talk about those as we go through this afternoon, this comes at the same time that we've continued to freeze 19 vacant positions in the organization.

Those positions were frozen as they've become vacant over the course of the last 12 months.

We feel that until the economy is stabilized more, it's prudent to keep those frozen in 22.

Those 19 positions are listed on page 54, but please keep in mind that this roster is just a snapshot of the recommended budget.

That list will continue to change in the weeks and months ahead, as we'll have new vacancies that will occur through attrition, and we may subsequently classify those as frozen.

There are some vacancies from that frozen list that would be re-prioritized, and we would fill those as our operational circumstances reveal the need for us to do so.

To give a couple examples of how this works, not too long ago, we had executive action that moved a climate action-related position that was frozen in the Department of Facilities and Environmental Services.

That position was approved to be filled.

The process is underway to recruit from that position actively right now.

In another example, we had several vacancies in our Bright Stars and Family Support Program, which is led by the Department of Social Services.

As those vacancies began to accumulate and were frozen, we determined we were really going to be compromising social services' ability to responsibly support that program if we did not fill some of those positions.

So accordingly, some of those vacancies were allowed to be filled to help stabilize that program.

But a portion of those do remain frozen to help manage the financial side of our pandemic.

It's this very delicate balance that we are trying to navigate right now.

I'll say in very general terms, vacant positions are being authorized to fill for those that are directly related to public safety.

So toward police officer positions or firefighters and paramedics, we don't believe we have a conversation about those.

Those are approved to be filled.

similar in the Department of Social Services for child and family welfare whether that be child protective services, adult protective services, and foster care positions those are also being filled.

We're also filling the building code and permitting positions and inspections and community development as part of the strategy to support our local economy and our business environment to keep things moving.

So periodic updates can continue to be provided to the board as this list of positions continues to be managed as part of our financial pandemic response.

But I did want to take a moment to talk about our frozen positions where we are.

And that concludes my high-level comments on general fund expenditures.

Thank you, Andy.

Yes, I have one, Andy.

The minimum wage increase and the 2% increase in salaries, how do they dovetail?

Are the minimum wage going up and then the 2% on top of that?

The way this would work, and I would ask our HR staff on the call to please chime in if I say this right, but the first thing that would be applied would be the $15 minimum wage.

Then after that, we would apply that 2%.

Okay, but we talked also about how raising the minimum wage would cause compression also.

So could you remind me how far up we're dealing with the compression?

Yeah, this would be looking to be one-third for positions of the pay scale, which is about, I believe, take rate 11 or 12.

Lorelei, correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm sorry, you cut out a little bit.

I don't think it's, I don't know if it's me or you.

Yeah, the compression will be an impact for about the bottom third of the pay scale.

It does not go all the way to the top.

I mean $15, I'm sorry, $15 with the 2% on top of that.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

I suspect with the frozen positions, we'll talk about that when we get to get to those departments.

And I know we're all thinking about the stimulus money too.

So it's almost hard to not talk about that.

Andy, just for clarification, now that we're talking about the campaign piece,

I guess I'm trying to figure out for all of our employees, is the compression worst at those levels that you mentioned, or will we still experience compression in the steps that are outside of where we're addressing it?

I'll give it a shot and please let me know if I didn't address your question.

I mean, certainly there would be some compression impacts, but the way it is is sort of feathered.

So if you're at the close to $15 an hour and people are getting bumped up behind you, you would receive a greater benefit of compression than if you were impacted but further from $15 an hour.

Yes, you answered my question because that's what I was kind of assuming, but I just needed confirmation.

Thank you, and that's all I have.

No questions, but we hope we've covered so far.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bowman.

Yes, they're anticipated to be, assuming the general assembly budget is adopted as expected, which I think is very likely because this was actually part of the governor's budget.

They would be 100% state funded and fiscally in 2022.

Okay, so after this year they're only going to be partially funded and the remainder of that would be funded by the county and then the year after that would it be a 0% from the state so they would be a

As I understand, it would continue to be that 15.5%.

All of our positions are reimbursed in social services at varying kind of complex rates and structure.

You have to go in the foreseeable future.

We would pay 15.5%.

Yes, so I said that backwards.

Okay, or I misunderstood.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Andy.

Could you go back to slide 17, please?

So essentially for one month, the employers and employees would not make a contribution to the health care fund.

Got it.

Thank you very much.

All right, thanks.

We'll move next to the administration functional area.

And I'll say that I'm going to start having a lot fewer slides than I've had to date until I turn to Trevor for broadband.

The only comment I will make on administration, I'm not going to go over everything in detail.

The book is there and we can certainly respond to board questions where their interests are.

But I do want to acknowledge that in the voter registration and elections budget, there will be discussion with the electoral board that we're targeting for March 22nd for a future work session.

But I do want to acknowledge that Jake Washburn, our registrar, has been in regular contact with budget division and other county staff regarding their space needs, their equipment and technology needs, and their operational budget needs given the experience what they've learned from the first round of early and expanded absentee voting.

We'll talk about that more in detail, but we're working to address their request in 2022.

We'll also likely be bringing an appropriation in fiscal year 2021 to support some of their technology needs.

And I'll just thank Jake, if he's listening, just for continuing to stay in close contact.

He gets a lot of information from the state that has changed several times over the last year and he's very quick to communicate that to us.

So I will pause here on administration and I'll say if there's any questions on broadband, we could hold those in just a moment for Trevor.

All right, so broadband is to come.

All right.

Supervisor Price.

Nothing right now, thank you.

Yes, I had a question regarding for the voter registration.

Will that vary depending upon the year?

For example, this last year we saw we needed all kinds of preparation and money to be able to deal with the huge influx of voters, which is great.

I don't see that for every year, maybe in a presidential year, but maybe in this coming year might be because we have all the House of Delegates, but will that vary?

You are exactly right.

There is a variance year-to-year based on the number of elections they will have, both, and also whether it's presidential, have very high turnouts.

Do not have quite that turnout.

That actually is playing out in the budget this year, talking with a registrar and their staff, projecting potentially an additional primary than usual.

which, you know, a presidential primary would be covered, you know, not by the county, but other primaries would be the cost of the county.

So one of our strategic uses of one-time funding would be to provide one-time funding in the event that a second primary is needed.

And that's a strategy we work with knowing that there typically may not be two primaries, but it's one, again, with Jake, we'll stay very close contact should that change.

All right, I think we're done with the administrative section.

So at this point, as we turn to broadband, we have Bucky Walsh with us.

Thank you, Supervisor Galloway.

Given that we have a FOIA quorum for the broadband authority and that we adjourned our last meeting on February 24 to this date and time, I'd like to convene the broadband authority to meet.

Very good, thank you.

And am I coming back to you, Andy?

Yes, sir.

Trevor Henry, Assistant County Executive.

Pleasure to be here today, Mr. Board Chair, members of the board.

Thank you, Bucky, for joining us to facilitate the FOIA component of having

you know, multiple board members discussing broadband today and also appreciate your willingness to be on this for questions that will likely come up throughout the presentation.

Also want to acknowledge Mike Culp, he's our Director of Information Technology and he also serves as our Chief Administration Officer.

He has forgotten more about broadband than I will likely ever learn and so he is a tremendous resource to have for our county

in the role that he has played over the past few years.

Also wanted to note Supervisor Price and Supervisor Palmer are the Board of Supervisor members that also double duty with our broadband authority.

So thanks again for the opportunity.

This will give Andy a chance to take a drink of water and catch his breath.

We have a handful of slides that I intend to go through.

I'm gonna work us through the slides and I'll work it through at a pace that I think I can get the information out and then also get it to the end so that we can answer all of the board's questions.

Mike and Bucky, along with Supervisor Price and Palmer, I'll recommend.

I will invite you to help support

with answers or anything that I maybe don't get 100% right as I move forward.

And so the first slide that Heather has already moved to is really just, it's starting us from where we last left the conversation around broadband.

On February 17th, we had a work session of which you all will recall to look at potential uses of some one-time strategic reserve funding

strategic priority reserve funding, along with pandemic reserve funding.

And broadband was one of the key items that we talked about on that day.

Some of what you'll see today you saw on the 17th, but I think it's important from providing kind of the framework for citizens that may be watching or just to provide kind of the framework for this overall recommendation and will help us move through the process.

The action that the board took after a really good discussion on the 17th was to approve a recommendation of $3 million from those one-time funding sources to be appropriated actually a week from now that will be coming back to the board.

The use of this will be primarily around supporting the infrastructure with a small caveat that we talk about today.

And so really just again, wanted to land us or start us from the landing point

from where we were a few weeks ago.

Next slide, please.

A little bit of a time delay between the ask and seeing it.

Again, this is a slide that was previously seen.

Supervisor Price and Palmer, I apologize.

This will be the third time that you've seen this information, but I think it will be helpful in our discussion.

And really, this was just to kind of highlight the history of broadband with Albemarle County, at least the recent history.

The authority was created in the fall of 2017.

There was some one-time funding that was provided.

It really has carried the work of broadband since 2018 to where we are today.

We all experienced, in my words, the tsunami of internet need that occurred over the past year.

And really, we have all been in that mode since a year ago.

What we've learned is even members of our community that live in areas that have what they thought was, I'm quoting, adequate broadband, they really learned

through what occurred in the pandemic that it was not adequate.

When they had multiple people at home and they worked from home, learning from home environment, that has really challenged the current infrastructure in the county, never mind the areas of the many miles, square miles of the county that still have no coverage.

And I know from seeing the emails, there's been a strong stream of

of work requests coming into the board and the county staff around broadband.

And in fact, I saw on the news last night around housing market and a realtor was talking that a component of housing now, as important as anything else, is broadband and access.

It's location, location, location, plus being able to connect because of how we as a

Nation, a region, a locality have learned to work.

Support of the broadband program really had exceeded our capacity to support this prior to the pandemic from a staffing perspective.

And so the work that has come since a year ago has only intensified the critical needs, and we have a lot of opportunities in front of us now to do some meaningful work.

the programs offered at the federal, at the state level, and at the local level.

And I think it's part of our responsibility and certainly a stated strategic priority of the board to prioritize this work as best we can.

And that's what's reflected on page 60 of your budget document and what we're talking about today.

There's a lot of work ahead of us.

There's a lot of opportunity ahead of us to make a significant difference.

Next slide, please.

This is the Doug Walker, you know, three legs of the stool slide, as he would say.

I'm going to talk about each of these, you know, pausing for a minute as we go on each of them over the next few slides.

But really the program that is being recommended is the, you know, the infrastructure component to continue to push into the areas that have no access.

A new program, which is around affordability support, which is both rural and urban.

and then finally creating an office to help professionally manage this work to connect with opportunities that we have not even been able to uncover but that are out there, you know, and really to try to advance this at a pace that we believe the board wants and our community wants.

Next slide please.

So I'm going to pause for a little bit on each of these components.

We spent a lot of time talking about this one at the last work session, so I probably won't go into as depth here.

This is continuing to partner with the federal funding opportunities, with our state funding opportunities, and our internet service providers to leverage our funding, state, federal, and those service providers to try to push the expansion into

into the rural areas primarily because those are the areas that do not currently have the ability to connect at this point, elements of it.

We estimate with our rural digital opportunity fund execution and we're waiting to hear on body the state funding initiative for 21, with those in the hopper, if you will, there's still an estimated 7,500 county locations that are needing fiber access.

We have some opportunities with the funding that the board approved a month ago to maybe even do some direct funding to try to accelerate this work.

And then finally, there may be some opportunities to continue to triage with some fixed wireless, really to get us to where we want to be, I think, as a community and as a county on infrastructure in the ground.

So next slide, please.

I'm going to slow it down a little bit.

And again, I know there'll be a lot of questions at the end.

We have Mike and Bucky and others that can help with this.

The second component of this program is what we're calling an affordability program.

The affordability program itself, this is a work in progress.

I tried to communicate that in February.

I probably didn't do as good of a job as I needed to, but this is an in-development program, but we think one that can be meaningful.

and there's multiple components to that.

There's the true ability to pay for wireless or excuse me, for broadband in those areas that currently could connect but don't have the ability to afford it.

And then there are other parts of the county where there's broadband in the pipeline running down the street, if you will, but then there's small,

clusters of homes and live at a certain distance from those streets that we're not able to connect because of the modeling of our ISPs.

And I think the third bullet really talks to that.

Community members on fixed income, multiple students at home, seniors with telehealth needs, or isolated from family and friends deserve the high quality and high speed broadband.

At times, the availability to obtain kind of this one time connection cost is really outside of the affordable range, and I think

Part of the program that we want to move forward with addresses that piece as much as the other.

We believe that the creation of dedicated ongoing resources will help allow the expansion of these opportunities that currently don't exist.

Next slide, please.

A little more depth on the affordability program.

You know, there's kind of two components to this.

There's what, you know, my words are near-term program,

which is really leveraging the existing work that has occurred in the fall and continues to occur with support of our pandemic response.

Just over the past three weeks, we've had meetings within Social Services, Office of Equity Inclusion.

We have had meetings with City's Pathway Program and United Way on how we could bring some one-time funding right now once it's approved hopefully in a week

to kind of add on to the existing model to allow help to those that are having issues making their payments for broadband.

This is for those that are out of work for multiple

Children or students at home, things like that.

And I think that that's getting to a pretty good place as far as those details.

We have I's to dot and some T's to cross with procurement and other elements.

But that is working towards, you know, I'll say sooner rather than later, again, assuming the funding and the other pieces.

And that also is helping us inform the second half of this, which is really what is the longer term

for this kind of funding and

connected in and is suggesting to tee up a cross-functional team that includes our public schools.

Great partnership between Mike and Christine Diggs.

And those programs have been well-connected in the past.

We'll continue to do that in the future.

Social Services, of course, Equity and Inclusion, our CAPE group, and as well as our partners to really take a look at the needs and how, you know, really post-pandemic, which is probably gonna be, you know,

Months from now, we hope that by the time we get into the fall, certainly at the end of the year, kind of tying to what Andy presented on the budget, we're hoping that that gets to a more steady state.

This program may look a little different at that point.

And what we would suggest is give this team an opportunity to work together.

We would like to bring back a program design and a recommendation to the board sometime

Lake Spring, early summer, but really looking at a post-pandemic lens on what this program would be.

I think use of our Equity Atlas would help inform the county structure and what that might look like.

There's existing programs with a voucher program from schools.

They've issued 1,200

Kajeets, that's a new word, that's a new thing I learned, but their Wi-Fi hotspots, you know, is there a way to kind of wrap around that program and help extend that program?

Nelson County has a fiber to the home loan program.

Would love to take a look at that and see if there's things that we can do to kind of mimic some of the best practices from our neighboring communities.

And then finally, the feds are rolling out a program called the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program that we believe we're going to have to help

help community members understand what that means and help them with the methodology of applying.

So a lot of good work there, a lot of good opportunities there, but also a lot of good work to sort out these details.

Next slide.

So obviously this work is complex.

It requires strong leadership.

It requires great technical acumen.

planning, executing, and a key is working across our departmental bounds, our jurisdictional bounds, to really effectively move our community, our county, to completing the digital access goals that we have.

The coordination between the departments is critical for future broadband success.

I'll talk a little bit more about that on the next slide, and I'm almost done, I promise.

Due to the size of the county and the changing demographics,

I think this recommendation of creating an office and providing professional management really will serve as a force multiplier on our effectiveness.

We have partnerships now with five internet service providers.

We work with VDOT, four electrical utilities, and we're spread across 720 square miles, you know, a combination of development and rural.

We have that represented by the board members here today.

and we live in the complexity of trying to govern and support in a community that has what is a true dichotomy and distinct needs and challenges between where people are, where they live.

And so the broadband faces that same challenge.

Having the right focus and dedicated resources I think will help us move the ball the way we need to move it in this area.

What is proposed in the budget is two FTEs, a director and an analyst, that they will be part of the county executive leadership team.

They will be their own office, really modeled a lot like the Office of Equity Inclusion, which is I think it's in its third year now and has done just tremendous work for our community and continues to do so.

There's also some money set aside in our

facilities environmental services department and the project management wing of that department, the FP&C, facilities planning and construction, to help provide construction management expertise and oversight for these varied projects that we are working with our internet service providers.

That will help us with communication, problem solving, anticipating problems, et cetera.

Almost done.

Next slide, please.

A little bit of an eye chart, but I really wanted to try to graphically or visually represent kind of a differentiation of some responsibilities.

In our meeting in February, Supervisor Palmer asked, you know, do we have job descriptions yet?

We have at a high level the work and how we want to divide it, but we don't want to get ahead of ourselves in any way doing that kind of work until the board has vetted this and it looks like this is something that we move forward.

But in generally what we're trying to show is there's a strong leadership and partnering need that will be

managed by the director, strong connection to the authority, broadband authority, leadership across our county.

All departments will be, I believe, involved in the success of this project, this program, excuse me, our school partners, ECC partners, et cetera.

So I really, I think the director will have a steady hand, hopefully, at the wheel to try to direct all of this work at that level.

The addition of an operations person, an administrator, will help us with setting up purchase orders, taking care of all the billing, taking citizen requests, responding, tracking that data, those kinds of metrics, making sure that the action items that we have in all the various meetings related to broadband get tracked and captured and we're working to execute them.

and also we'll be supporting the broadband authority in the administration of the meeting.

So it's really, this slide is to try to differentiate between the roles, but also show the comprehensiveness of it.

I really think that with this kind of focus, we will be able to tap into opportunities that we currently have not had the bandwidth to do.

Mike mentioned just this week that there's some potential grant possibilities with AARP that we've never

been able to connect with before.

And so I think that those kinds of opportunities will only continue.

Next slide, please.

Now I'm actually down to kind of the budget request.

So that's the backdrop of why what's in front of you today for questions and discussion is the FY22 budget is recommending a recurring funding line of $536,376

dollars, which covers kind of two components.

It's the broadband office.

It's the cost of the personnel and the office requirements.

And then a programmed number of the $250,000, which is for the access and affordability program, which again requires some development work.

It will require some work sessions with the board.

But at the end of the day, we will land a program that we can execute and it will have

with the strong approval of both the broadband authority and our board of supervisors.

There is a $350,000 one-time request which ties to part of the recommendation.

And the budget book is a little confusing about this because it references FY21 funding.

So backing up three weeks and where I started, the board approved $3 million to go to support broadband.

what we will be requesting that if the board over the period of the work sessions and kind of vetting this process is supportive of the creation of a broadband office and this program recurring funding for affordability, we're gonna ask to then take $350,000 of the 21 money that will be approved next week and use that to get started right away.

And then this 350,

which is reflected on this slide is to kind of shore that back up to a total of 3 million.

Go to the next slide please, Heather, because that might help explain it.

So pausing for dramatic effect.

There we go.

This slide really shows that as we work through this process and the county executive recommended budget, as it turns into the board of supervisors recommended budget heading into public hearing and adoption, if this program makes it through that vetting process and has the blessing of the board,

to move forward for 2022, then what we'd like to do is take $350,000 of the FY21 money, the one-time money, and use it to start up the office, hire the FTEs, start that program up, and then also use it right now to help augment the program that we have in the short term

Modeling to support the pandemic response and helping with the other community programs that are out there on rent and other utilities.

So, Ward, I know I've talked for, I haven't tracked my time.

Hopefully, I was able to walk us through, provide enough depth for understanding of the different programs.

I guess the key points are, you know, there's three components to it.

The affordability component is a

a work in progress, at least the long-term vision, and we will partner with, you know, within our community organizations, and then we will bring that back, you know, through broadband authority to the board for work sessions to land us where it's acceptable.

Supervisor Mallek, I think you had some questions on one of the goals that was in the budget book.

I would say that they are a work in progress, and we'd really like to also work with the board and the broadband authority

to help better define what are true SMART goals as it relates to broadband in our community so that we can be held accountable and we can be clear on what the organizational goals are.

And I'm gonna take a sip of water and I'm gonna pause for Supervisor Galloway to turn it over to questions.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Thank you, Trevor.

I don't have questions.

I just have a comment that I'm extremely supportive of this.

I'm very glad to hear that you have a plan to get this going in another week.

And I think we're really, really going to need it given, you know, the news of today that, you know, the federal government is giving considerable amount of money to to broadband infrastructure.

So

I think this is great and I want to thank you for all your work and it's a good presentation.

I don't have any comments I mean questions other than Trevor or whomever just to make sure when we're talking about affordability and access we're talking about both of those targeted areas or targeted for both rural and development area urban ring because

It may be hard to believe, but there are access problems right in the urban ring.

A hundred percent that really what we learned as the schools went to remote learning, they did some overlay of areas of the county where their students didn't have access.

and there was a surprising number of students that were in the development areas, but they couldn't afford it.

And so that Kajeet program was in part how they, or the voucher program was what was created to help solve that.

And so, yes, that was really the driver to create this part of the program was for both urban and there's also that scenario in the rural areas too, but certainly it is for both.

Like I said, we would bring that back to the board

Thank you.

That's great.

There are also access problems, though, in the development area just because of the topography.

So that, I guess, is what I'm saying, that there are access issues and affordability issues in both the rural and the development areas.

So thank you.

This was very helpful.

And I agree.

I am very supportive.

I especially

and really like the idea of taking this to the next level and modeling the broadband and having an office that has direct reporting and I just think this is really great.

It'll move us to the next step.

Thank you.

I'm testing my microphone.

Can anybody hear me better now than before?

Yes.

Okay, the reason is because before, two minutes ago, I was doing wireless on my laptop and Mike just brought me a cable.

So now that has solved this problem and that's instructive to me about how

Fiber is so important because we have to keep plugging away as much as we can to get the really good quality service to people.

So I've gotten a bunch of questions written down and they're not necessarily in good order.

But I first want to start by saying I'm very supportive of this extra effort that the county is proposing.

to be able to do more for our citizens than our absolutely overworked individuals who have been trying to carry this ball all along for the last two years or three years or five years have been able to do just because there are only 24 hours in a day.

And Mike and his folks have been tremendously helpful trying to run

Mediation services between individual residents and our ISP providers who treat them so badly.

So I'm really looking forward to seeing more level of the county stepping up as other counties have to do this.

So one first question is, in any of the money categories which you have listed so far, is there an ability to use some of it for opportunities with Dominion and Firefly that could become available

to expand further on the fiber work that SEVAC is doing.

Hello, it's Mike Culp, the IT Director.

Thanks for including me in this budget work session.

And I'm sure Bucky will verify what I'm about to say.

Yes, we're meeting with Firefly frequently to work through a potential partnership similar to the one that's been announced with Louisa.

And the meeting that's Friday hosted by the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission will further detail what that partnership or the availability of the partnership will

Kurtail or include.

So I think there's a very high likelihood that some of the new funding that will be available March 17th may be leveraged to help with that sort of partnership.

So thanks for the question, Supervisor Mallek.

I'll turn it back over.

Thank you.

Don't go away.

You might be needed for another one.

So in trying to distinguish among the three funding categories,

It sounded like the number two affordability program would be where there's an existing hookup, but somebody can't afford to hook up and they need help to do, financial help to do that, which is a money category.

And then the third one may or may not be helping with the physical hookup when people are further from the main roads, or they are the 15 or 20 houses left out.

between existing ISP projects which we have been paying for through our providers.

Yes, that's a great analysis of how we're going to help through either a loan or a direct fund process to build areas that

the ISPs either have an expressed interest in or cannot turn the ROI together.

So we will help make that possible.

That's especially true with the longer driveways for homes in less populous areas, so regions where there's not so many people, but the homes have been there for a while.

So we need to be able to build to those homes to make them

Equitable.

So it's a real equity question that's going on here that hopefully this new affordability program will help address.

I agree completely.

This is an equity question because you'll have older residents just beyond the stop point where fiber was paid for tens of thousands of dollars paid for by neighbors in some fancy subdivision and the old timers next door are saying, well, what about me?

And they feel tremendously deprived because they see their neighbors with gigabits of something or other and they can't even get dial-up.

So I'm really grateful that we're starting to do something in the right direction and also that it gives county dollars more reliability than just giving it to people and then having to take the crumbs that they give us.

So I'm grateful for that and I'm also very grateful that there is an oversight role that FES is planning in so that you will not be turning over money to people and having no control over what they do.

That we have learned the hard way over many years of

Streetscape 1 in Crozet where the contractor left for nine months and didn't come back, to how important it is to have tight leashes on our contracts to make sure that people fulfill what they're supposed to be doing.

The only question which should not be spent any time on today, but just to think about, as I was reading the packet for today and looking at the goals that are to be considered in the future

The point about these cell phone drop zones, there are tens of thousands of them.

So I would just ask us not to put our sights on curing that problem in five years.

And we shouldn't really, that's not my first priority.

My first priority is doing all the other things we've already talked about because when you get to the top of the next hill, it'll pop right back on again and you just need to go along.

Supervisor Price.

Thank you and thank you very much for your presentation.

Mr. Henry, Mr. Culp, the work that you all do, Mr. Walsh and the others who work with the broadband authority, the timing of the broadband office could not be better.

I think that we can anticipate increased funding coming from a variety of sources, particularly from the federal government.

So to be able to split the work that Mr. Culp, you've been doing both as our IT director, as well as the administrator, officer for the broadband authority,

will really be to the benefit both of you personally in terms of not having both those responsibilities but also for the county to have this office as we work to improve the connectivity of our decaying urban and development area expanding the rural coverage and closing that last mile in those gapped areas that we've got in the county.

Unmute, yes, thank you very much Mr. Culp and also to Trevor and I just really, this is something I'm extremely supportive of and I agree with Supervisor Price if we can find some additional monies that would be great.

This is something that's a health and safety issue.

This is something that needs to go to every single resident.

I know, Mike, I don't know if you want to discuss about the Middle Mile program, if that would be a benefit to everybody.

Thank you.

Thank you Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

The middle mile program that's being referenced is the discussion topic for the TJPDC meeting with

Dominion, SEVIC, Rappahannock Electric, just to talk about how the progression of building out to the substations for each electrical utility, fiber connectivity to those substations to help generate

apparent data and make the electrical grid more modern, that same mileage, that same mileage of fiber can be used by service providers, internet service providers, to help them get to the internet itself.

So that's the partnership.

We have Firefly, Firefly Fiber Broadband, working together in a partnership to make sure that that middle mileage utilized for more than just

taking care of electrical substations that goes all the way to the meter so that that fiber connectivity is provided to the home with an ISP, in this case Firefly, providing the service.

So it's very exciting.

The legislation that's on the books to be signed into law allows Dominion to do that.

Before it was a little bit murky, but now it's more of a

designated, you can go forward and do this through that pilot program.

They're extending the pilot program and making it permanent.

So this is a great success to get this far.

I think it's going to yield a lot of benefit going forward.

So thanks for that question.

Yes, and I just wanted to say the legislation that's due to be signed, that would also address any residents out in especially the rural areas that have, let's say something like Starlink, they would then still be eligible for fiber.

Because prior to this,

Just for the board's information that if you had something like a disk, you know, a satellite, you would be considered served and then the fiber ISP servers would not be able to come in because you'd already be quote served.

So this legislation cleans that up.

So that's very good.

So look forward to that passing.

Let me know when it does.

Okay, thank you.

Trevor, just give me a little more detail on the math here.

Of the 536, 250 is the affordability support.

I mean, you got a rough estimate of what the two employees are and then the operating costs.

And it just needs to be approximate.

Andy, I'll ask you on that question if you could.

I believe it's like two,

Yes, so if fiscal year 22, I believe the total broadband office is around $536,000, 250 of which is the affordability support.

So that's what I'm trying to do is get an idea of that operating cost versus the people and the, you know, we throw out employees, but what we're saying is that, you know, this can translate easily to somebody that, oh, it costs us almost 300 grand for two employees.

So what are the operating costs associated with bringing those two staff on?

It would be the basic costs we would have for any employees, such as telecommunications, basic materials and supplies, startup costs to get them computers or whatever other devices they may need, travel, training, education, just as part of professional development for those employees.

Let's get my question very well.

Thank you.

And just so I track this right, because I think I did, but I'll say it to make sure I didn't hear it.

So the 350 is going to get it to a total of 3 million.

Then that 350 is being used to, I see where the 350 is being used.

Did I hear that another 350 was going in to shore it back up to 300?

You did track that right.

Heather, can you go back one slide?

So that's the breakdown of the funding request.

So yeah, there's the 286, the 250.

And then there's 350,000.

And 22 comes from a one-time source that would help shore up to get back to 3 million.

Yes, sir.

You have it exactly.

All right, thank you.

I'll just make a comment on the goal with the dead spots for the wireless.

Sometimes I feel like

The broadband, it's not that it's broadband or wireless.

I think they're two different components.

Broadband certainly downloads speed, data capacity, things like that.

But when we're talking about

mobility around the county and trying to not have somebody stranded out there with no access to communicate.

That's where that wireless capacity comes in.

So, you know, I get it.

I understand when folks say, well, we don't want wireless to be the solution or an alternative to broadband in the home for data support.

especially if you're working from home or have high needs from that standpoint, but that goal of that two-year goal does seem to be an appropriate one to try to clear out because there are a lot of dead spots and they're not even necessarily in the areas you would think would be a dead spot.

So I'm just saying that I agree with that goal shouldn't be there.

All right, very good.

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

Really appreciate the questions and feedback and support.

Before you do, I can answer Chair Galloway's question.

The total operating cost for this was about $26,000, rounding it up to $27,000.

The one cost I did not mention is there would be some contractual support as part of this office if they needed to leverage expertise, whether that be through some of their programming.

Thank you, Andy.

Chairman Gallaway, thank you very much.

Given that the broadband authorities business is completed, I'll adjourn our meeting.

Thank you, sir.

All right, that should take us then, Andy, to... Am I coming back to Andy?

Thank you to the chair for the judicial functional area that is made up of the, sorry Heather if you go to the next slide.

Thank you.

We have the three elected constitutional officers, the sheriff, the commonwealth attorney, and the circuit court make up this area as well as the other operational support that goes to the court system.

I actually do not have any detailed comments on this functional area.

There are no major changes like we've discussed with broadband and we'll discuss in a moment with public safety for fire rescue and police.

You're writing notes.

Thank you.

In the packet it says that the Clerk of the Circuit Court's budget is being cut by $524,000 due to the change in recordation taxes.

I can explain that.

I'm going to find the page just to make sure I don't say the wrong thing.

To clarify, the circuit court's funding request is funded as recommended for their total expenditures, which are $930,000.

I see what you're referring to in the document.

That's referring to the revenues that are related to that operation.

This actually is a significant change that I will highlight.

After the county adopted the fiscal year 21 budget in May, the state budget followed and when it was adopted later in the fiscal year.

There was a very significant change where the state, I guess prior to this year, the county received an allocation from the state of record state share recordation tax revenue that totaled about $580,000.

State action, which we did not know because it didn't happen until after they adopted, was to take that funding from Albemarle and other localities and redirect that into transportation needs in the Hampton Roads area.

So this was a net impact to the county of a loss of revenue of $518,000.

It's reported here under the Florida Circuit Court because the Florida Circuit Court is really the area where recordation taxes come in.

So that is more of a revenue impact rather than a expenditure impact to the Florida Circuit Court.

Now, I will offer too, as the board may have a question about the local government kind of legislative efforts across the state have been working to reinstate this as part of the state budget.

General fund from here.

Okay.

And we're going to plan to do the same thing next year?

Yeah, the state- Whatever we're going to make up for the state.

Okay, because that was- Yes.

41% of something or other.

All right.

Well, I'm still confused, but that's OK.

I'll stop now.

OK, well, that's a really big hit.

Wow.

All right.

Supervisor Price?

No questions, thank you.

Thank you to the constitutional officers who have joined us for this portion of the call.

All right, moving on to public safety.

And I'll spend more time going in one moment to go into a little more depth around North Garden's volunteer supplemental staffing request.

Before I do that, I want to note that public safety is made up of these pieces of the donut shown on the screen, our police department, our fire rescue services system, then our other public safety agencies, which include the regional agencies such as the regional jail, emergency communication center, and the Blue Ridge Juvenile Detention Center, which is part of that other public safety agencies in green there.

I'll note in the police department, there is a discussion in the county executive's presentation, there is a shift in how the school division is providing security in the coming year.

So right now there are five employees who are, I shouldn't say right now, in the past there have been five employees.

who would be working in the schools as resource officers and how they spend their time.

When they're not in the schools, they would be then supporting the department through other programs.

Because of the school's change in how that would be provided, there are 2.5 FTEs, which is about 5,000 hours of staff time.

They're then being reprogrammed to support the patrol division, where they'll then provide their experience as part of the department's geo-policing work.

I do not have any comments more on police or the other agencies.

I'll talk about fire rescue in one moment.

I have none.

I know there's some discussion about creating

There's nothing in the budget, Andy, right now around that initiative.

That is correct.

I would ask if there's an operational update in terms of something going on.

Yeah, I think that's still a work in progress, and I just wanted to make sure, because it really is an important initiative, but I think right now this budget rollout is probably premature with where they are in that planning.

Okay, thank you.

Other than that, I'm fine.

All right, Supervisor Mallek.

Supervisor Price?

No, thank you.

Thank you.

So moving to the next slide, we will talk about the North Garden Volunteer Fire Company supplemental staffing request.

Recommended budget 422 includes $435,000 for this request.

and it helped to get everyone oriented to the county and the map on the right in the slide.

The section kind of the southwestern portion of the county is highlighted in light blue.

It is North Garden's first new response area.

and currently there are no county staff down there.

They're entirely volunteer.

We received a letter from them in the fall requesting supplemental staffing during the weekday daytime, which is Monday through Friday, 6 a.m.

to 6 p.m.

Then the other times on nights and weekends, the volunteer station would staff that.

Their request for supplemental staffing is a total of five FTEs who would be firefighters slash paramedics.

and they would be down there to staff a fire engine and an ambulance.

Just so we've discussed this in the past with the board, but it's been a while that five FTEs to run an engine that represents three FTEs based on our standards to actually staff the engine when it's in service, but we need a total of five because we have to allow for the leave of those personnel working 12 hour shifts or 12 hour plus shifts and then for the other training and other requirements they have just throughout the year to make sure we have five FTEs to get three people in an engine 6 a.m to 6 p.m Monday to Friday.

So in addition to North Garden's request for the supplemental staffing, they're also requesting an ambulance to be added to their station.

There's currently not an ambulance in service there, but their request is consistent with a model that was put in place about a year ago.

I should say it's put in place and we're striving to get that as the current staff who have been added in the fiscal year 2021 budget are now working their way through a recruit school and a paramedic school.

where we would have the kind of primarily volunteer, primarily rural stations, East Urbana, Stony Point, and Earliesville would be staffed with an engine, what we call a cross staffed with an engine and ambulance.

And depending on the call type, those personnel would take that apparatus out there into the field as appropriate.

You know, currently when there is an EMS call from the North Garden area, that response is either coming from western our rescue squad to kind of in the western part of the county.

We can see that blue dot.

There's a response coming from the development area likely from either the Ivy Fire Rescue Station or the Monticello Fire Rescue Station respectively when the

where it may be the case that the ambulance down near Scottsville provides some temporal coverage may be responding to that area.

So this also continues the philosophy and kind of the model last year of providing that support in the rural areas and it also has the benefit of keeping those apparatus in the development areas where the call volume is much higher.

Also included an ambulance down there will help because as you can imagine, just looking at the map, those response times tend to be longer, but also the transport time to get to the hospital is longer just because they have more distance to cover than some of the other stations.

So that is just kind of some of the logic and rationale coming from North Garden about why they had that model for the engine, staffing for the engine and an ambulance they can support there.

the ambulance and the related equipment that is included in the capital budget and that's approximately $400,000.

The general fund for $435,000 that covers the personnel and all the related operating costs for that.

So the timeline of how this would work is these personnel would be hired in September of 2021 and that September date is September instead of July 1 based on the techniques of the recruit schools and in just the subsequent training schedule that we have in place right now.

Those staff would then go through a training academy, the full recruit school that we do now, and then they would be subsequently a paramedic school to make sure that we have the personnel and field to be able to run the ambulance throughout the entire system.

and then once they go through those programs, they would go through their normal routine process and be released into the fields.

The actual staffing is still about 18 months away in the fall of 2022 when the service is in place.

That is similar to where we were a year ago as we talked about the supplemental staffing going in place.

Unfortunately, we've been able to do some of that quicker this year with short recruit school.

Those positions approved in 21 are still in the works to staff at Crozet Fire,

Pentops Public Safety Station for the engine and also for the supplemental staffing that would be in place at the IV 24-7 IV ambulance and the Pentops 24-7 ambulance.

So that's the timeline.

So there is one additional component to this request for North Garden.

That is not North Garden's request to be clear.

That is the position in the fire rescue department's training division.

Though I should clarify though, it's in the training division of the fire rescue department.

It serves both the personnel in the department as well as the volunteers throughout the system.

That support includes both the initial onboarding of those personnel, whether they be staff or volunteers.

and all of the ongoing continuing education requirements and their certification.

Now, the need for this training division is not specific to North Garden's request itself.

This is really about getting to a tipping point for the service changes that have taken place system-wide over the last three to four years.

And so, for some perspective, the last time that there was an employee added in the training division, the EFS instructor primarily focused on volunteer support as part of the fiscal year 19 budget.

and now we've seen in the last four budgets in response to either request or kind of communication with volunteers, we've actually added a total of 32 FTEs in the field.

That's five for the Southern Albemarle EMS coverage to be 24-7.

There were 22 FTEs added between a combination of local EMS cost recovery and federal FEMA grant funding to support rosary fire and supplemental staffing, to support the change in cars in the development area,

also to support the Pantops engine weekday, Monday through Friday daytime.

And now we have additional 550s at the request of North Garden, which is how we get to 32 over the course of four years.

So in addition to the staffing, there's been an effort, it's been publicized for the Fire Rescue Department's Diversity Initiative,

We're now, instead of recruiting people who have certain certifications at the front door, we have a program where people can be fully trained up.

If you don't have any prior experience as a firefighter, they will take you all the way.

from kind of scratch and go up to the certifications as part of the department's diversity and efforts.

So that the impact there is that creates a longer training school at the same time we have more people in the system who are in support of training.

So this is not particular to North Garden's request but it's really we look at our ratio and the requirements and the entire system and the support we need for our training division really felt as part of this staffing now is the time to make an integral success as part of these system transitions to add staff into the training division as well.

So I will say we may have questions about other things that are going on in the fire rescue system in the March 18th work session to dive into that in more detail.

But I'm happy to address questions we can right now and we can also flag things that we'll talk about more on the 18th.

That concludes my comments right now about North Garden and I'll turn it over to the board for questions and answers.

There is a question in terms of how we're working through the recruit schools.

Okay.

At this point, unless we were to reassign

Yes, I would say unless we reassign personnel from an existing station, the earliest we could staff North Garden during the daytime would be the fall of 2022.

response times down in that area right now?

I mean, I know that's a weird question.

I will say that we looked at the response time data for North Garden and it does exceed our standards of cover standards that we adopted several years ago.

Okay, I'll have to get that later from you, I guess.

And the other thing that is not necessarily for discussion now, but it shouldn't be for discussion now, I know, but I just want to bring it up, that while we're looking at staffing that facility with

County employees, that building is in very good shape.

The volunteer department has kept it up very well.

However, it is not handicap accessible.

And I'd love it if at some point, we could talk about that as you're looking at staffing and gearing up for that particular site.

Thank you.

Supervisor McKeel?

I'm sorry, I just went through my notes here and I will say that the 90 percentile response time in the North Garden area is 22 minutes, so that is above our standards of cover as I mentioned before.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Andy.

This was an excellent report and I really appreciate it.

It is, I knew that we've been hiring a lot of fire and rescue folks.

32 over the last four years, I think is what you've said?

Yes.

Wow, that really, that's a lot.

And I'm not saying they're not needed.

I'm certainly in favor of it, but I remember us talking back

what, six, seven years ago, seeing this coming on the horizon.

And it's been very gradual, those 32 over four years, but wow.

I don't think I have any specific questions.

I really would like to compliment, though, all the fire departments and the chiefs and the volunteers and everybody, and Dan and your staff, everybody working together to try and get all this coverage and all these problems solved.

Because they are challenging, and I understand how challenging it is for folks, you know, the volunteers.

We're in a different world with volunteers these days.

People can't leave their jobs as easily, and it certainly is a different landscape.

But thank you very much.

Excuse me, thank you.

Some of this, I guess most of my questions really will be perhaps better addressed on the 18th.

I'm very glad we're coming back to this topic on the 18th.

But I would like to know, because I've been looking very carefully, where in the budget is there any mention about funding to bring back the staff at the Roseville Fire Station?

It was over two years ago that we were told in a meeting with Tom LaBelle and Chief Puckett and Chief Eggleston

that this was temporary to move these day staff away the day staff have been there for more than 25 years and running hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of calls a year and now since January 6th there has been no one no one at the station except for February 25th and the neighbors are calling on a regular basis and reporting when there are no cars there and people are getting very concerned so

As I said, I've looked very carefully trying to find mention for this, and so this is important to the whole region.

In the presentation, it was mentioned about, number one, pulling fire and rescue station staff away from the urban ring into the more rural area.

Station 12 was built all those years ago to serve Route 29 North and Rivanna Station.

And they can't be running out to Boonesville three times a day without really disabling the service in the core.

And someone also mentioned transportation time to the hospital.

It is already an hour from Boonesville and you can't add an extra 20 or 30 minutes to get somebody from cars or from some burkmar if we don't have somebody halfway there already.

with the ambulance that's already on site and has been for several years at Station 4.

So I really, really look forward to having more information about that next time we get together.

Thanks.

All right, Supervisor Price.

Thank you.

I have no questions right now.

Look forward to the 18th.

I just want to understand the detail, Andy, between the narrative and the chart that's on 50, or I'm sorry, 86 and 87.

Yeah, so earlier in the current fiscal year, I believe it was in October, those stations came and approached the county to kind of say they felt they would be more better and efficient and better use of our medical supplies, just because we were stocking those if they could just be consolidated and managed by the fire rescue department.

Let's see.

Yeah, so Seminole Trail, well two things have happened to Seminole Trail in the current year.

They were adopted by the end of 293.

We then reallocated those E&S supplies but there was also some one-time funding that was approved as a supplemental appropriation to complete some work for a water line replacement that was a continuation of the project from several years ago.

So if you look at the 21 projected budget for Seminole Trail they're actually above the adopted based on the news approved appropriations the board has already approved.

And then when we look to fiscal year 22 for Seminole Trail, they are funded at $287,000.

That is a decrease of $6,200.

And that would reflect, sorry, I'm gonna lose my spot here.

Yeah, that would reflect the reallocation of those EMS supplies to the fire rescue department.

It would also impact if that station had any one-time request for equipment.

That would vary, but we will plan to provide by station a very detailed breakdown in terms of what was provided one time last year versus one time this year.

And for Earliesville, the same thing is true.

You can see they're 21 projected of 182.

182,000 is less than 187,000.

That reflects the allocation that's taken place in the current year.

and they also have the impact of that reallocation in 22 and they also, if I remember correctly, have some one-time costs that were requested that were funded and some that were not.

Thank you.

May I ask one other thing?

On page 87,

the 6th bullet down, the change of volunteer funding

being cut because there's been some inexplicable reduction in operations for the paid staff.

This is a new procedure, a proposed new process.

And so I would really like to understand more about that on the 18th, because I read it four times and I can't understand what it says.

And when other people ask me, I don't know what to say either.

Sure.

I can speak to that a little bit right now, and then we can follow up in more detail on the 18th.

you know back as we were starting the pandemic in the fall we really tried to emphasize in just such an uncertain time what are those things we can do to have a simplified process that was true in a lot of our departments where we sort of kind of held the line on expenditures that was our capital budget process based on the board's direction in October we did not do a

Full-blown five-year CIP, we really looked at just kind of the coming year ahead and those projects that we paused.

And this really extended to the volunteer process as well.

I met with the fire and EMS board in October to kind of walk through where our financial picture was and kind of the why for a lot of that.

We agreed on a simplified process with our day-to-day operations, and this includes what we fund for building utilities, building maintenance, communications, their supplies,

the meals, the administrative expenses, their training uniforms, all of those things that we provided them.

We said that for a simplified process and also to give them some relief as they're living in a pandemic as well.

We would provide a recommendation for their baseline operations that would be comparable to what we do in fire rescue.

And that would include what happens in the department based on the decisions that were made a year ago.

There are some things in the fire rescue budget based on the impacts of the tent positions and the ambulances, those kind of 22 positions we talked about.

But to kind of put that aside, baseline operations, that's what we're focused on.

And so when we went through the budget for Fire Rescue, they actually have a decrease in their operating capital expenses, about $40,000.

So we did not feel it was appropriate because we want to be supportive of all of our community partners, including Fire Rescue, to reduce their operations.

So we recommended level funding for their operations for 2022.

and certainly when we go to fiscal year 23, we plan to do a more comprehensive process.

So that is one component of kind of where we start for level operating costs.

The second reason for kind of how we get to a decrease is Chair Galloway's question.

We reallocated about $17,000 from Seminole Trail in Earliesville, but the MS cost applies which are now being funded through the fire rescue department rather than just two volunteer stations.

Now the remainder of the decrease is due to one-time costs that, per the volunteer funding policy approved by the board, are considered on a case-by-case basis.

And so because those are one-time costs, just as was the case in the county department, it's natural for that to vary year to year.

And I'll give an example.

I'll use Western Albemarle Rescue Squad because I was, I believe, in fiscal year 21.

The county identified they had a request for a large number of defibrillators that needed to be replaced.

I believe it was in the ballpark of $100,000.

I'm probably wrong with the exact amount that was drowned there.

So the county recommended and the board approved funding that.

In the upcoming fiscal year, they don't have to replace as many defibrillators, but they do have some other equipment needed to be recommended for funding.

So the total amount of those one-time equipment is less than it was in the prior year.

Some stations did not have a one-time request at all.

People at Eastern Rivanna believe they did not have any.

Their request is down to $15,000.

That reflects no one-time equipment but level funding operations based on the methodology we described.

We'll walk through the follow-up to the board by station.

Here's where they stand in terms of the ongoing operations, what was funded last year for one time, what was funded this year.

Well, I guess the two questions remaining are, you know, there's no information provided really about the decrease in the, that means, but there's still no explanation of the earliest bill, the 16,000, just from year to year.

Thank you.

I know we do in the budget document try and balance right now the summary and level of detail, but we can certainly give more detail for every station and explain exactly what is happening by station.

I think one other thing just to carry forward would be especially helpful for the chiefs.

to actually get feedback from someone in this staff about which parts of their budget requests were not funded.

And some rationale about that because all they're told is here's your amount.

And so when people like me ask them questions, then they don't have any information.

I'll say before we move on, we spent most of our time talking about, you know, just kind of North Garden's request, but I did not hear any other questions about the fire rescue system other than we'll dive into that more detail next week.

So the next item on our agenda is actually break.

That is correct.

Thank you.

I got some feedback from staff in the building that every now and then my voice gets garbled for some reason.

I'm not sure why if I ever need to go back and you know go over something again if something cuts out please let me know.

I am in the county office building not presenting for my car today as I did six months ago.

All right, so diving back into the material, we will go next to the public works chapter that starts on page 91.

The public works function of the area is made up of the Department of Facilities and Environmental Services and the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority.

And I do not have any detailed comments.

I will pause here for board questions in this functional area.

I have one question and a comment.

First of all, if people from public works are on, I just want to thank them for adding in their goals.

The county's role in provision of solid waste management services and also pointing out very specifically their goal of protecting local waterways and other natural resources.

That was a change in the goals from last year in the printing in the on the

front page.

But I do have a question.

Last year, we were told that a number of projects were paused from the FY 2020 budget and going forward and that was some drainage infrastructure.

and maintenance and repair program of drainage structures in the urban area and also the mandated TMDL program.

I would say that on Monday we'll talk about the capital budget.

Going by memory, I can't remember where that ended up on the CIP list, whether it was on policy 21 or 22 or at all.

But we will certainly address that Monday, or we can send an email in advance unless one of our analysts is thinking the chime immediately.

I don't see either camera once.

They may be looking at this up right at the spot to clarify.

OK.

Supervisor Price?

I'm fine, thank you.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley?

No questions.

Sure.

As part of the January appropriation to add back projects mid-year, fiscal year 21, there was $330,000 added back for the drainage infrastructure and $810,000 added back for the water quality mandated TMDL program.

So that funding is available now and ready to be used.

Thank you.

All right, Diantha.

So next to move on to the health and welfare functional area.

This starts on page 99 and we'll go ahead to the donut chart next.

The largest area of the health and welfare section is the Department of Social Services, which is making the majority of it in kind of that light bluish gray color.

Or maybe it's green on the screen, but it also includes the transfer to the Bright Stars program transferred to the CSA Fund, which stands for the Children's Services Act.

also includes our funding for the Health Department, Region 10 and some of those other kind of state human services agencies, as well as what we call the agency budget review team process, which I'll speak to in more detail in one moment.

We already discussed earlier with Supervisor Price's question around the two family preservation workers.

Those are included in the Department of Social Services.

In fiscal year 22, the local cost would be $0.

In fiscal year 23, it would be approximately $28,000 local cost.

Then when we get to fiscal year 24, it would be $28,000 plus whatever increases we have in personnel at that time.

It would be probably more incremental.

I should say all of that is subject to future decisions by the state, but as best of now, that's what we know.

I will also note just a high level of the health department's request is fully funded.

In addition to continuing supporting their existing services, we do have additional funding to support the part-time community health worker position that was added in fiscal year 21 at the Yancey Community Center Clinic that serves Southern Albemarle.

Fiscal year 21, it was about a half-time position.

This is another $16,000 or so that increases in hours to get it closer to full-time, but it will still be a part-time position.

So the only other comments I have in health and welfare are going to be about the agency budget review team process.

We can go ahead to the next slide.

This is a slide, it is led by John Freeman for the second intro.

The board may be familiar with John, also he is a retired assistant director of services.

He's been involved in this, what we call the ABRT processing years prior.

There's also significant staff support by Siri Russell, our director of equity and inclusion.

Dr. Stacey Petia, our housing planner in community development and Phyllis Cevittis, our director of social services.

They, along with community volunteers, hold a process where they review 32 agency applications.

I'll say the review is much bigger than the agencies because some agencies have multiple programs that are reviewed.

They go through a process and criteria that the community can adapt to the agencies in the fall to kind of, you know, kind of educate what we're looking for and how does their performance there, how does it tie to the county's human services goals,

and throughout the fall and the early winter, they prepare evaluations of those programs.

They then take those evaluations and provide them to the budget division with scores and turn them into funding recommendations.

So to summarize how those recommendations play out in fiscal year 22, if you are an agency in fiscal year 21 who's funded and you're ready to either exemplary or solid, you're recommended to be level funded in fiscal year 22.

If you are an agency who is funded at This Leader 21 and you rate it fair or lower,

We have recommended that you be funded at 50% of your 21 amount and that remaining 50% is held in contingency.

That contingency funding can be released mid-year reporting performance requirements.

So for these two agencies who are listed on the screen, you can provide half of their amount throughout the year.

Then if things are looking better and their performance improves through the year and we're comfortable, staff would recommend releasing those contingencies which are earmarked for those two agencies.

In addition to those agencies, there are three new agencies who are recommended to be funded.

They scored exemplary and they strongly tie in with some of our pandemic response funding, whether it be access to food or access to child care.

So they're recommended one-time funding of $10,000 each for the local food hub, Meals on Wheels, and the Piedmont Family YMCA.

The total funding for all of these ABRT is 1.7 million recommended funding for this group of agencies.

I just really appreciate this process.

Third year, okay.

And I think every year we've managed to become a little smoother and more agile and really doing a great job.

And I just appreciate the whole hard work because these are a lot of agency applications and it's just great that our team is willing to do this for us because I can only imagine what our budget

what our budget work would be if the Board of Supervisors were having to do this work.

So I'm saying it over and over again.

I just appreciate it.

I think the job is great.

This is a little different this year than from last year, but I really think we're making a lot of progress with a good review of all of these agencies, and I appreciate that.

I'm a little confused.

There seem to be some arts things that are still in the ABRT instead of shifting over that I'm not quite sure.

We don't need to talk about it today because I sent in a whole bunch of questions on these things.

But I guess my major one that needs to be addressed now is could someone please explain why there's such a lower funding for OAR?

So for OAR there was a change in the processes here and this was partnership with staff who worked on that.

It's not a change in funding for those programs but it's a change in where it's reported.

So I apologize that was not clear in the document.

This will be clear next year because the changes happen and this actually applies to two agencies.

The Thomas Jefferson area coalition for housing is the other.

Where the ABRT

Bender Aid and Restoration, and really felt when you look at kind of this more administrative position, it just wasn't a good fit for the criteria in our ABRT process.

So that $21,414 is recommended for funding, but it is reported in other health and welfare agencies rather than part of the ABRT category.

So if you were to look on page 107 in the third line down for OER Criminal Justice Planner Program, there's an increase of 21,000.

But anyway, since I can't put my fingers on it right now, I'll send it to you again.

I know there's a question we received about live arts specifically in the arts and cultural agencies that we'll talk about just in a moment but I'll generally speak that part of the evaluation process is whether it's all arts and cultures or the ABRT.

Right well they're

You know, certainly that is not the intent of this process as well.

There are specific agencies where you have further questions.

We can discuss that.

We can talk about the other question on Live Arts that came in by email.

We'll talk about that in just one moment.

Supervisor Price.

Thank you.

Again, Mr. Newman, I'm just so impressed with your instant recall of data here.

And I'm just going to piggyback on what Supervisor McKeel said there.

And while this comment may apply in general to all of the volunteers who help us around the county,

specifically with regard to the ABRT process.

It's great.

I love it.

I think it helps to depoliticize a lot of the considerations that go into this, provides a much more objective and an unbiased approach.

And I'm just extremely appreciative of the work that everyone has done.

Now, in the interest of time, I just want to say thank you to the volunteers and I like all these programs that are continuing to be funded.

Good programs.

All right, Andy.

And I would add just to thank John Freeman because he's on the call today.

But if there's anything that I didn't say around the population that you feel I would add as part of the process, just to make sure we're doing that justice.

I just wanted to thank the board for its support for this process, for the many hours that the volunteers spend.

I think they do an admirable job of reading, giving thorough consideration to these applications, so thank you for that feedback.

and appreciate that the county continues to support our nonprofits who serve the human service community this way.

Thank you.

I found on page 39 of the ABRT book, it says under OAR $283,000 decrease.

And that's what I was asking about, not the $6,000 that was mentioned.

And so with no other comments or questions on health and welfare, we'll go ahead and move to Parks, Recreation and Culture.

Parks, Recreation and Culture is made up of the Jefferson Madison Regional Library, Parks and Recreation Department, the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau, and some other small arts and cultural agencies we'll talk about in just one moment.

I will note in the Parks and Recreation Department, the board may recall last summer with the pandemic there essentially was essentially no summer swim or other special activities that occurred during that summer.

We're still in the process of staff evaluating what this summer would look like, but to provide some flexibility, we've funded a one-time reserve of about $158,000 that can provide some flexibility for whatever level of programming that looks like based as we learn more about the impacts of the pandemic and what our staffing opportunities may be during the summer.

So this does provide some flexibility with one-time money, but to know exactly what that looks like will still be a question for the future.

And we'll go ahead next to a slide on arts and cultural agencies.

This is a process that is separate from the ABRT process, and it was actually based on the board's feedback several years ago, where it's really saying that the criteria that are used to evaluate human service agencies really needs to be different for these arts and cultural festivals.

Those applications are reviewed by a different group of county staff.

It is led by our Director of Equity Inclusion, Siri Russell.

I also want to thank the staff in Communications, Public Engagement, Parks and Recreation, and Economic Development to participate in that review looking at a different set of criteria.

The total funding for these agencies is $53,000 in fiscal year 22.

The team recommended continuing funding for those agencies that received funding in 2021, and again we're requesting funding in 2022 with just a couple exceptions.

There is a decrease for the second year row for Chihamba, the African American Cultural Arts Festival, and then we are providing new support at $2,500 each on the Charlottesville Symphony Society, the Front Porch, Live Arts, and San Berets.

And I'll apologize, my pronunciation and notation in Spanish is not excellent.

So if I apologize if I pronounced that agency wrong.

I will say that the question on Live Arts, which Supervisor Mallek spoke to a moment ago, they do an evaluation where they track who participates in their programs, who buys tickets, who participates in those as well.

And I believe the number that, you know, Siri, Sydney just recently was at 63% of their participants are reasonably allocated to the county.

In fact, myself really quick to make sure I had the number right.

Yeah, 63%.

And so that's sort of the explanation of why we have an agency located in the city that also serves county residents.

I'll give another example of the Paramount Theater.

There's a $2,500 fee support for them.

They do provide services to county school age kids, including those who be in the Bright Stars and Family Support Program.

That's some of the rationale of why there's a connection for the county funding for a facility located in the city.

I guess what I'd like to know, I guess we'll get to more detailed discussion of parks

at a later time, or is this, are we just doing the cultural agencies right now?

Okay.

Well, I am concerned about the frozen positions as we go forward and what I know that some of the, as I remember,

Yeah I'll say that in fiscal year 22 there will not be an operating impact to Biscuit Run but certainly I believe in fiscal year 23 would be the earliest that would happen.

What are the employee needs for the parks right now if they were going to open up Biscuit Run?

For 2023?

Yeah, I'll ask, Tia's probably furiously looking at that right now for the operating impacts of the request.

So if she can't pull that immediately, we'll get back to you on Monday as part of the capital budget to outline what those are.

Let's see, Bob is also taking his microphone off.

Thank you, Andy.

Supervisor Palmer, it is included, which I think we're going to be discussing on Monday,

with the Phase 1A that we're currently underway with.

The majority of it, in terms of staffing, is more part-time than they are FTEs.

As we move forward with that development, then we move and request some, excuse me, did I say FTE?

I meant part-time.

As we move forward, there'll be some requests for some FTEs.

But right now, we're looking at, especially with Phase 1A, which includes

Superintendent of Parks is a staff position that manages and oversees the entire maintenance division.

Back in April when Matt Smith, who had over 40 years of service to the county, retired.

Yes, he is.

Yes, he is.

Okay.

All right, I'll save the rest of it till Monday.

Okay.

I don't have anything, any question about the arts and cultural activities.

I think, Andy, this is great.

I do have a question about the Parks and Rec, if I could ask that.

I'd just like to know where the Ambassador Program, the funding for the Ambassador Program falls.

Maybe I just didn't see it or I haven't, you know, maybe I overlooked it.

Yeah, so in fiscal year 21, when that program started, for the ambassador program, I'll say this to be Drew, but it was the parks, so the ambassador program that's operated out of facilities and environmental services was originally funded with CARES funding.

Now, as CARES funding has expired, the board created a reserve in December, called our, potentially our pandemic reserve, to continue to support those operations that will extend, obviously, beyond the CARES time.

So as part of the planning for that reserve, it's looking at our ongoing operations right now that would extend as the pandemic draws out.

The 22 recommended budget does not include funding really through the Parks Department to continue that program.

However, that would be provided as we monitor the use of our pandemic reserve and how we take that out over time.

Great, thank you.

That has been a very successful and a very popular program, so I thank you for that information.

Supervisor Price.

Thank you and you know I really appreciate the contingency funds of the $157,000 for the parks this summer.

I think it's important for our residents to understand however that just because funding may be there is different from having the people available to actually hire and the parks department I would expect is fast approaching the time where they have to make decisions about hiring people

and we may not reach that herd immunity that is bantered about until midsummer at which point we may have the money but not be able to find the people.

So I just want to acknowledge the complexities of what the park department is having to deal with in terms of preparing to be able to hire people but then we don't know whether those individuals will be available.

I really support.

No questions.

We'll go ahead and move to the community development functional area.

Dodge Clarify as we go to the donut chart.

Community development is the only functional area where we have a department that shares that name.

So this is not just the community development department.

It also includes our economic development services, agencies that are transit related, and then other community development agencies.

I say I do not have any questions at this time or I'm sorry I do not have any comments at this time but I will note a couple things.

On March 22nd we do plan to get more in depth in transit.

I'll note that will include Kat and John and her regional transit partnership.

I'll say two board members, Supervisors McKeel and Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

In the last Regional Transit Partnership meeting, you saw a very lengthy and detailed presentation about some of the data that CAT has now.

It's informing their decisions and how they move forward.

We'll probably have a little bit of that as part of that presentation as we look to fiscal year 22 as a transition here.

One thing I do want to comment on that was mentioned in one of the previous sessions is that in fiscal year 21 there are two studies that are taking place through the regional transit partnership.

One of those is a longer term regional transit vision plan.

The other one is funded in 21 looking at some Albemarle specific transit services and we'll be looking to what comes from that report as we head to fiscal year 23 and beyond to see what recommendations may influence future transit decisions.

I do not have any other comments about community development at this time, so I'll just pause for any board questions and comments.

I think I'm fine for right now.

I will have some, maybe some questions and some comments when we talk about transit.

And, Andy, thank you for clarifying the transit and the two studies.

I appreciate it.

It's all good.

Yes.

As I remember, when we were talking about the water protection ordinance and the possible changes that could be done to provide better improvements in our water quality and less erosion, I think one of the elements was dependent upon having extra staff for investigation and etc.

And I couldn't find that on the frozen position list.

So is there any information mentioned

that I just haven't been able to find yet about expansion of the staff for WPO.

And maybe it's already been done and I'm thrilled, but I just couldn't find it.

Yeah, I will.

It's kind of an operational question.

I see that Amelia McCulley, our deputy director of community development, she's unmuted herself.

Okay, thank you.

Sorry about that.

The staff resource devoted to the phase of the water protection ordinance work that decreased the threshold that is the trigger and Supervisor Malek's nodding her head, she knows what I'm talking about.

That is the phase

of work that we have not yet resourced.

That isn't related to frozen positions, it's related to new positions.

Okay, so there's more study work.

I thought, okay, it's not just the funding of the position.

There seemed to be more study work that had to be done.

I thought we'd already done it.

But anyway, I'll deal with that later.

I'm sorry if I was confusing about that.

We don't need to study further.

Thank you very much.

I can't wait.

Supervisor Price.

Thank you.

I don't specifically have questions have a comment though as we come out of the pandemic to whatever our new normal is going to be.

I understand that the Economic Development Office has been relatively new in Albemarle County and I just

I want to be anticipating that they may have some additional needs depending on what this new normal in the economic area is.

I guess my question, and I know this was related in the, I think it was in the finance section, about the leases because this is the same with economic development.

The capital outlay, the change there is due to the space not needed to be leased.

That is correct.

Is this a year by year consideration?

I mean, as we think of, I mean, understood why we don't need it.

We have space now and we can work from home and things like that, we're able to accommodate.

But moving forward, knowing that we still have, we had these space concerns in the past, we probably don't operate under exactly what we had in the past moving forward, but we probably don't continue to operate exactly like we've been operating the past year.

Yeah I would say that there is a still prior to the pandemic there was kind of a longer term assessment of county space needs that obviously has evolved as the pandemic has gone on.

Staff feels it is time to go ahead and end the leases.

We have the two spaces for finance and budget and economic development.

And then it would be better to proceed in the future as we kind of look at those space needs and learn more about what does this teleworking environment look like in the longer term.

I would think we'll be keeping careful eye on the election setup out at

Cobb 5th as well.

Yes, now I would add that Lance Stewart, Director of Facilities and Environmental Services, he's been in regular contact with the Registrar's Office to make sure we're meeting their spacements for upcoming elections.

So with no other comments, we'll go ahead to non-departmental, which begins on page 131, page 142.

This is a slight change in the agenda as we plan to talk all about Mountain Department and other funds, but really just due to the volume of information we've covered today and some of the meaningful uses of one-time money that's in this chapter, we thought we would split this into two to talk about some today and then some on Monday.

And we're about 535 right now, and so I think we'll be able to go through what we have planned and finish closely on time.

So to begin about Albemarle, the first thing I want to talk about is the revenue sharing payments in the city of Charlottesville that's discussed on page 122 and 123.

This is a chart that shows what the revenue sharing payment has been to the city for the last five years, this last four years, and this year or this coming year.

The orange line on the chart is the average as it's been over the last five years as the board can see.

It's usual recently to have some fluctuation in this year to year.

We've had years of both notable decreases and increases.

Fiscal year 22 will be one of the notable increases.

We will have an increase of about $823,000.

The primary reason for that change in the formula is really about one component, which is the sales ratio.

The sales ratio is how actual sales compare to the assessments of properties.

What we've seen in the city sales ratio, which is the number we get from the state, two years ago there was a pretty dramatic increase where they jumped in their sales ratio based on the historical trend.

So essentially by those, the way it works through the formula is that city sales ratio increased and that resulted in a

change for an increased transfer from the county to the city of that funding.

And unfortunately with the timing of that, it's always a number we learn in mid-January from the state based on how their calculations and reporting work.

But that is the primary reason, certainly the tax rates, total assessed values, all that goes into the formula.

And we do have the full calculation and history in the budget document if anyone's interested, but that is the primary reason for the change from fiscal year 21 to fiscal year 22.

So the final slide that I have in terms of content today is it's really going to be a good bridge from today's work session on the general fund to Monday's discussion on the capital program in the schools.

This is a slide that was in the county executive's budget but I want to spend some time talking this through and allowing for discussion because I expect there may be some from the board in terms of questions.

This slide is titled uneven revenue index but it's really about what is the local transfer to the school division

Where does it transfer to capital and debt service for local government and school division?

And then what is that amount that remains to support local government operations?

And much like the broader community that we've discussed with Steve Alsace's presentation that I referenced in January and the boards observed on their own that the impacts of the pandemic have been very different whether you're an individual or a family or a business from very high to relatively low.

And this applies to our revenues as well.

And as I spoke probably just about a little over two hours ago, when we set back and we look at our revenues in total and how they're performing at the pandemic, they have not been as significant in total as I shared earlier.

But when we begin to look at those specifics about certain line items in terms of what would be a shared revenue versus non-shared revenue, there does appear to be a little bit of a different story that plays out.

So I'm gonna start kind of by talking about one component of our shared revenues at a time.

So the school division in the upper left, they have an increase of 6.2% over the 21 adopted budget.

That is due primarily to $11.9 million in new revenues above fiscal year 21.

And that is made up of $6.9 million in revenues from the local transfer.

So for all of our local tax revenue that goes into that formula, that's up $6.9 million.

And then they have positive news from the state.

of about an additional $5 million.

That's $5 million as of the county executive's recommended budget.

The school division, just like the county, is monitoring budget updates, and we'll hear about that on Monday.

So that is just a timestamp from the recommended budget.

That number may change based on the number we hear from the schools with the state share.

But it's positive news.

Our local tax revenues have not been impacted in total by the pandemic as much.

So by formula, there's a $6.9 from local

and then the additional state funding that the schools receive from the state.

So moving next to the upper right of this slide, we kind of look at local government operations.

And our general fund is going up 4.7% over the 21 adopted budget for only one revenues.

But there's a little bit different story that is happening here.

is that we look at our non-shared revenues, and these would be the revenues that would be coming from things directly related to services, whether that be charges for services and parks and recreation or other departments, looking at community development revenues, looking at interest earnings, look at other revenues from the state.

It's really just a combination of a lot of variety of services.

When we look at our projections for fiscal year 22 for that, it is actually less than the fiscal year 18 actual that we received in those revenues.

As we've seen, a lot of the pandemic impacts are relatively small in the part of the budget, but they're in the total scope of the general fund.

They're more pronounced in those items that are affecting general government.

A good example of that is Supervisor Malek's question earlier today about the change in state renovation tax.

That is not a shared revenue.

The county is losing $580,000 in 21 and 22 to support our local government operations.

That is a good chunk of, but not the only thing that is impacting our revenue picture.

So when we set back, because I don't want to say it's all bad news, because we do have still relatively strong tax revenues, that is mitigated by what we're seeing in our non-shared revenues.

When we look at obligations such as revenue sharing, prior obligations for decisions made in the past, we look at other things like our employer health care needs, we are left with only about 2 million in revenues before any other adjustments for fiscal year 22.

So that is certainly better than we thought we would be probably at the start of the pandemic budget I think last April, but that does not provide as much flexibility as we would

as we would have those prior three to four years we've had a strong local economy.

So moving next to the capital program.

The capital program which we'll discuss more on Monday, it fully funds the CIP's advisory committee's recommendation for projects both for those projects that are moving forward in 21 and those that are recommended to move in 22.

And we prepared that advisory committee back in that scenario back in October, November, and then December working with that committee.

We made an assumption of no revenue growth based on what we knew at the time.

We did not know a real estate assessment.

We did not know the impact over December collections.

We did not have the data that we saw in the most recent quarter in terms of how some of our revenues are performing with sales and meals and the transit occupancy taxes.

So

And I'll say, in addition to our capital improvement program recommendation, we still have those active ongoing projects that are ongoing, some of which are very substantial investments.

We have the courts renovation expansion that's underway, and there's additional funding that will be taking place and added in 2022.

There is the ongoing work for Red Hill and Scottsville for the school division, as well as many other projects.

So our capital budget with all of that work is a total of about $181 million program between our active projects and next year.

It is balanced with no revenue growth.

We can meet our debt service requirements.

And it also does not include the one cent tax rate increase that was contemplated for fiscal year 22 prior to the pandemic.

That's going back now about 18 months ago, what some of our modeling was.

So in the capital budget, it's balanced with no revenue growth projected from the general fund.

But by formula, the capital fund this year would receive $1.6 million.

The recommended budget deviates from that formula as a proposal for the board's consideration.

The recommended budget includes a transfer of $400,000 to the capital budget.

And that $400,000 is related to the ambulance and equipment for the North Garden request we discussed earlier this afternoon.

This approach from that $1.6 million is recommended for two reasons.

One is that we are supporting the CIP's advisory committee's recommendations.

They are supported.

And two, because we know that capital projects rely on the substantial staff support throughout our entire organization, outside of just the project management function that's supported by the CIP in our facilities and environmental services department.

This is really kind of the division that's led by Blake Albemarle, who the board is very familiar with.

It relies on procurement, legal, and other services and expertise throughout our entire organization.

And staff feels that our organizational capacity to take on additional projects beyond that $181 million, both active and proposed projects, is limited.

So what we are proposing of that $1.6 million that would go to the capital budget by formula is that instead of the $1.6 million, we would send $400,000 as an increase and allocate that to support North Garden request for the ambulance and related equipment.

There would be $1.2 million that would be retained for local government, which would keep the school division whole.

There is no back to the school division transferred by this change.

They would receive $6.9 million from local funding, whether we did this or whether we did not.

It keeps the capital fund whole, as it funds the Capital CIP Advisory Committee's recommendation.

But the key support it provides is it bridges the general fund as we continue to monitor our economic performance.

As we've talked about before, this is a transitionary year.

This allows us to transition, but it also allows us to meet these compelling community needs, such as broadband and North Garden support requests.

And so, again, without that 1.2 million going to support efforts such as that, there would be some significant items that we would have to remove from the recommended budget that are supporting local government that would not be possible without that reallocation.

So staff looking back at the relative need of this kind of balance, really a delicate balance, between the capital improvements program of capital and debt service and looking where we are with the general fund, we put out for the board's consideration this change where we would allocate that $1.6 million differently than it would have been done in a normal year.

So we'll talk in more detail about the capital improvements program on Monday and also as well as the school division in terms of what their picture looks like.

That really allocates, kind of explains some of the rationale of why some of these things will be able to move forward in what is maybe a more constrained environment where we've been and for local government for the last three or four years in a strong local economy.

And so I will pause here because I expect there may be board questions.

But I really just wanted to kind of end the day with this key point in the budget because it allocates our, we allocate our funding among capital program versus operations.

And we can talk about this more if there's time as we're talking about other details.

If I understand you right, Andy, you're saying that we can't, there's no reason to put more money in the CIP because we don't have the staff to facilitate those projects.

Is that correct?

Yeah, I would clarify that a little bit, just to say that to invest in equity and capital is always a good practice.

I wouldn't want to discourage that.

But when we look at, so with that said, you are correct.

So when we do talk about the CIP, we're going to know more about what this money is that's coming from the state and what we can use it for.

And some of that is going to be infrastructure.

So I guess what I would say is I'm looking forward to that discussion and to hear what staff has to say about the use of that money.

if there is significant staff issues with doing infrastructure projects.

So I'll just leave it at that and we'll talk more, I guess, about it when we talk about the CIP.

Thank you.

Thank you, Andy.

I appreciate that.

And I also appreciate taking it slow and carefully.

I like this approach.

And as Liz pointed out, and I would confirm, we're going to be coming back to this later, but we really need to get a better picture of the landscape and where we are, both with the federal funds, the state.

I just think this is a really good approach, and I really appreciate it.

So I'm very happy with this.

I likewise am happy that we're being very cautious and careful, but the remaining $1.2 million will go into a capital reserve or something like that.

It's not going to be gobbled up in operations.

So it's gone.

Wow.

Okay.

Well, back in 2010, we took money out of the CIP and it took us 10 years to recover it.

So I'm really nervous about doing this.

But that's certainly the primary discussion coming forward in a month or so or whenever we decide how to handle

whatever we might have coming our way.

There certainly is an unlimited supply of CIP projects that we can do things with.

So thank you very much.

Supervisor Price.

Thank you, and I guess sort of following up on that, the other alternative would be that we'd have to look at either reduce, as you mentioned Mr. Bowman, reducing

funding to other things or a tax increase.

So under this current situation, this appears to be the way to keep everything balanced without having to look at either cutting funding elsewhere or raising revenues from a different source.

That would be.

I see the kind of executive took himself off mute for a second.

No, sir, you go ahead, Andy.

So I'll say that I saw Nelsie turn the camera on.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Mallek and Supervisor Price for both of those comments.

And hopefully I can help provide a little bit of clarity.

Supervisor Mallek, it is not the intention that this would go away forever.

And the reason I can say that is because our economy will rebound.

And as Andy was describing on this slide, we were in a pickle this year because when you look at our revenue growth, it wasn't growing like we needed it to to support our operations.

And so this is part of the reason for this transitionary budget and why we keep talking about that.

is because we needed to do things a little bit differently to get us over this hurdle, to protect the things that we need to do.

Like North Garden was not something that was anticipated.

The need for broadband wasn't necessarily anticipated at this level.

And so that is the reason why.

And so there's several things that we're going to be doing once this budget is adopted, particularly in light of the new revenue that's coming from the federal government.

um related to our our bond structure some refinancings that might yield some savings

that can go directly into the capital program, looking at how we're structuring some of our capital projects in general that we can do to help provide the support to building more and supporting the capital program.

So I would not look at this as a permanent thing, and I hope that's helpful.

But our Vice Chair is absolutely correct.

If the board at this moment decides to make a change to that $1.2 million, it will have to come from somewhere.

So it's either taking something away from the general fund or adding some sort of revenue to the general fund.

Thank you, Ms.

Burch.

I really appreciate that additional explanation.

I have other questions.

Ned, I appreciate the additional minute or two just to elaborate further on Nelsie's comments.

Ann, I appreciate you talking about back in 2010 about how the capital budget was really stalled out and it was slammed.

And we were reminded last year, while we needed to be cautious, let's move forward.

and let's try to strategically move forward because our economy is different than it was in 2010 during the national recession.

With that being said,

And I'm sort of reiterating what Nelsie said, but I hope I'm emphasizing this, that we can't have a $181 million capital budget, which is a big capital budget for us, and not pay attention to the operational side of the house.

We've got to take a look and look at our capacity, our workload,

the stress that our departments are under and I'll also remind the board that I have 19 positions frozen right now so I have to look at both sides of the house both the capital side and the operating side and we're trying we're trying really judiciously to move forward and to move projects forward and that make the biggest impact in our community we're not slamming down on the capital budget like you folks did in 09 and I understand why you did this is very different

but I have to pay attention to that bottom bar under the strategic initiatives.

We have nine strategic initiatives and we're trying to judiciously move as many forward as we can but that bottom bar is quality government operations and that's where we have to continue to invest in our people and in our day-to-day operations so that we can continue to absorb this workload.

So that's all I wanted to say.

I'm very satisfied.

Thank you very much, Ms.

Birch and Mr. Richardson for your explanations.

I like the direction you're taking us in.

I like the fact that you're looking at

All different angles to be able to give us a balanced budget, but also focus on the community and making sure that our operations are safe and sound.

I think what I'm seeing is a very measured, deliberate, considered budget.

And with what's upcoming, I just continue to see the effect that you have regarding the budget and how we're using our monies in a very good way for our community.

Yeah, I mean I agree with the comments that have been said.

Well, we are right on time to wrap up.

Just go to the next slide.

I'll just summarize the follow-ups that I've heard and if any other final questions or thoughts out there, please chime in.

The follow-ups I heard that we'll respond to is we heard requests for the response times for North Garden for both fire and EMS.

We'll provide that.

Some additional information around the Earliestville daytime staffing.

We'll provide information of that to both kind of in advance on the 18th or whatever makes the most sense.

We'll provide full details station by station on the volunteers in terms of what was funded and how those amounts were arrived to.

We'll confirm the Biscuit Run operating impacts.

We will clarify the OAR funding in the APRT book.

And we will, Supervisor Palmer's last comment, talk about kind of our capital funding infrastructure and how that weaves into the capital discussion as we learn more from the federal government about what our funding will be.

In terms of the list for items that may be added or removed or modified in the budget, I did not clearly hear anything.

I know a couple board members said at one point that considering additional funding for broadband shouldn't become available.

If I missed anything in those comments, please chime in now or other follow-ups.

Anything missed or additions?

Nope.

Good synopsis.

No new ones, and half of the ones I sent in by email have been answered, so Andy, you can strike those off.

Supervisor Price?

No, just very impressed.

Thank you very much, Mr. Bowman and everyone else who helped to put all of this together.

Continued to be impressed and proud of our county administrators.

Good, I don't have anything to add.

Should additional questions come up, please don't hesitate to reach out to us.

We're here to support the board, especially these coming weeks as the board weighs some pretty large decisions.

The final slide is just to recap where we started.

We'll be back on Monday to discuss the school board's request, the capital budget, and then we'll finish up anything non-departmental that we did not cover, and then we'll go from there.

Thank you for the board for all your attention and time.

It's been

They've been a very long history hours.

And you just covered a ton of material in a very expeditious way.

All right board, we do have a couple of things here, but one specific we move into from the board matters not listed on the agenda.

We did have a request, I was supervised upon her, correct?

The letter of support from the Commonwealth Attorney's Office seeking a Bama grant for restorative justice diversion project.

Yes, I'll speak to it briefly.

I was contacted by Shannon Neal from the office, Commonwealth Attorney's Office.

She had tremendous apologies for the last minute request, but she would like it if we could send in a letter of support for the pilot program, the two-year pilot program for restorative justice.

and I sent along a brief description of that.

It's a small grant for $9,000 to Bama Works.

and I don't know if I need to say a lot more about it other than they would like the letter of support.

Supervisor Price sent a letter, sent an email suggesting that we spell out BAMA.

I don't even know if that's possible.

I always thought it was just a BAMA grant, but if there are words that go along with the BAMA, I'm fine with that.

Is there any objection to the letter?

The letter has already been penned or written.

I just need to sign it.

Okay, great.

Okay, thank you.

I thought you were ready to act.

Okay, I move that we approve a letter of support for the Commonwealth Attorney's Office for a BAMA grant for a two-year pilot program for restorative justice and for our chair to sign that letter.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

Go again, there's Bea, you were muted there.

Thank you.

All right, and now other business, like I said, that is ready.

So I'll sign it now and that can go out right away.

So from other members, just any other items not on the agenda?

Yeah, I have nothing else.

Because this is the meeting we're having this week, I just want to point out that on Monday, March the 15th at 6.30, I'm having a town hall and it's in combination with my Citizens Advisory Committee, but we're opening up for a town hall and the times are, it starts at 6.30.

And I think all of our town halls are listed on the website, so if people want more information, Emily's done a great job of getting all that up on the website.

I do have one thing I want to ask about, though, and I don't expect really a discussion or an answer about it.

I noticed that the Associated Press was reporting that 144 cities could lose status as metro areas.

and we're listed as one of those metro areas which could affect funding.

I just would be interested at some point in hearing a little bit more about that or maybe you all are right on it and

I see Doug jumped in.

Mr. Chair, members of the board, Doug Walker, deputy county executive, just acknowledging that we are also just recently aware of that information and the economic development director and I had a brief exchange earlier today with an indication of our need to kind of catch up quickly so that we could understand what the implications are

so we can advise the board.

Okay, thank you very much.

So we'll hear more if there are problems.

Hopefully there won't be any big ramifications for us.

And the only other thing I noticed, I had all these unusual things that came across I saw this week.

We discovered in 2000, and Liz may be able, or Ann may be able to help me with this.

I didn't realize that we had a new tip

You guys knew and I didn't know that.

I'm sitting here I could get the information and send it out maybe Ann has it on the top of her head I can't remember the name of it but I've gotten all the information from the health department from the

Yes, exactly.

Over here, yes.

The movement of animals and climate change.

Yes.