Board of Supervisors Budget Work Session #3   3/18/2021

of the Rivanna District, Supervisor Liz Palmer of the Samuel Miller District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, our Chair, Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rio District, and myself, Supervisor Donna Price of the Scottsville 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.

Participation will include the opportunity to comment on those matters for which comments from the public may be received.

I would also like to mention that our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson,

our county attorney Mr. Greg Campner, our senior deputy clerk Mr. Travis Morris, and our clerk Ms.

Claudette Borgerson are also present.

Other staff will participate and be identified at the time of their participation.

I would note for the record and for the public's information that Chair Ned Galloway will be attending and participating in the meeting however due to some anticipated interruptions at his work site

At this time, I will turn it over to our county executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, to then turn it over to whoever will begin the presentation from county staff.

Madam Chair, members of the board, thank you very much for an opportunity to be with you this afternoon.

We have a number of staff who are with us today and those staff members will certainly introduce themselves if they are an active part of this afternoon's presentation or if in addition to that at any point in time this afternoon, if there are questions from the board, the various staff members who are with us this afternoon, they will step up and introduce themselves, the department,

that they represent.

Mr. Andy Bowman is with us this afternoon and he is chief of the budget function and a part of our financing budget team and if there are no initial questions from the board I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Bowman and I believe he's going to walk us through the framework of how we're going to spend our time this afternoon.

Thank you, Mr. Richardson.

Thank you.

Good afternoon to the vice chair and the board, and I'll just wait one moment while TNR office pulls up the presentation.

I'll say this is number work session number three on the fiscal year 22 budget.

When you guys send out the slides for us later on, could you put it in a form where we can easily see your notes?

I kind of like the notes myself.

Yeah, I sent about half an hour before the board, two per page, just to make it a little more digestible.

Well, Andy, why don't you let me talk her through getting it right.

Tia, if you would bring it up again, I can talk you through getting that setting

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

Thank you all for being here today.

So if you put it into slideshow mode, Tia, and then select display settings on the upper left, it's the second, and then just swap.

Thank you.

All right, let's go to the next slide then.

I'm sure if it was a detailed question in the capital budget, Tia would have had it right off the top of her head.

It's all right.

So here's where we are today.

This is work session number three, and number four will follow in Monday.

Monday we'll talk about an update to the cigarette tax, transit, and voter registration budget.

We do have an update on March 29th that was previously an if needed session.

That is now planned to be an update and discussion on the Federal and American Rescue Plan Act of 2020 funding.

We do have a if needed number six work session on April 1st if needed that just remains.

We will then have a public hearing on the County Year 2020 tax rate and the Board's proposed budget April 28th and adoption on May 5th.

But going to the next slide, looking at today's agenda more specifically, we will do an overview of fire rescue.

We'll then have a short break scheduled if the board desires.

The board will then take two actions.

The first is to finalize an advertised tax rate for public hearing and advertisement, and then also to approve a proposed budget for public hearing and advertisement.

Those items may be considered in either order.

Staff has suggested for the board's consideration putting the tax rate first.

and then we can discuss that later in the meeting.

Any members of the board I would just ask if you have any questions raise your hand.

Thank you.

I will begin just by framing it at a high level.

On the next slide, the total fire rescue system budget, which is discussed on page 85 of the FY22 recommended budget document.

The total budget for the system operations is $19.5 million, and it's made up of these components on the slide.

To talk through these at kind of a high level, the largest portion of the fire rescue system is the fire rescue department.

It's kind of shown in the light grayish blue-green color that makes up the majority of this donut chart.

And I should note that the fire rescue department includes a substantial portion of volunteer support.

For example, volunteer stations who have requested supplemental staffing, those personnel are included in the fire rescue department budget.

the training division which is a division of the fire rescue department that supports both department personnel and volunteers in the system.

All the training division expenses are included in the fire rescue department.

There are material and supplies costs that are really system costs that are included in the fire rescue department.

There are other costs out there such as insurance for, insurance for volunteer stations or the line of duty act which is a state program kind of insurance related.

All of the costs are included in the fire rescue department.

They manage those costs individually on behalf of the entire system.

So looking at the next piece of the pie, kind of in the dark blue and turquoise, that's called volunteer fire rescue.

And this really refers to the contribution to the nine stations in the community.

And this would cover, kind of pursuant to the board's volunteer funding policy, items such as utility costs, building maintenance, fire and emergency medical services supplies, meals for crews, uniforms, training, administrative costs, and so on.

and that total is $1.8 million.

The next category, system-wide fleet management, that total is $1.7 million.

The apparatus are co-titled and this would include such things as the fuel, their repair and maintenance, the insurance on those vehicles that go into maintaining our entire system-wide fleet.

So that is one category that totals $1.7 million.

The final piece of the donut up around 12 o'clock in yellow is other fire rescue.

It's about $300,000 and the majority of that is a contract with the City of Charlottesville who provides a fire service in the development area ring around the city.

It's in some areas where it makes sense where the city is closer to respond.

That's an amount that's sent by a contract.

The funding is revised every year based on the number of net calls that go from the city into the county.

So it's just a very high level of components for our system.

But I'm going to next turn it over to Chief Dan Eggleston, who's going to talk us through the majority of the content for fire rescue before he turns it back over to me to return to the fiscal year 22 budget.

Thank you, Andy.

If we could go to the next slide for a moment.

Well, good afternoon, Vice Chair and members of the board.

My name is Dan Eggleston, Chief of Fire Rescue.

I'm joined today with

by Deputy Chief Childress and Deputy Chief Puckett who's going to be participating in the run-through of our fire rescue system at certain times.

But I'm going to start us off by just giving you a quick overview of the fire rescue system, touching on significant milestones and investments we've made in the last 20 years.

The first major investment was back in 98 when we first started putting career staff in volunteer stations upon their request.

Seminole Trail was our first department followed soon by

Earlesville and Stony Point Volunteer Fire Departments.

In 2002, we built and staffed the Monticello Station.

This is one of five stations that we built over a 16-year period.

And this really was something that was identified years ago in our comp plan to mainly support our land use plan by providing urban level services in the development area.

So this was a process that we started in 2002 and ended with the Pan Top Station in 2018.

Also during this period, in the next part, we started adding additional career staff to volunteer stations that are listed here below.

And we also fortified some of the staffing in our urban stations to address service gaps that we've been seeing over a number of years.

In 2005, we made a significant investment.

This is probably one of the more bigger

processes we've had where we, the board adopted a volunteer operational and capital program, whereas before what we were doing is we were funding each volunteer department the same equal amount.

So we changed this to make it based on their actual needs.

At the same time, what we did is we established a fleet plan for the entire system, and then established a replacement criteria and moved all that apparatus into the capital budget.

So this was an initiative to free up the funding that the volunteers

who are doing to put towards their buildings and other methods to close those gaps.

So that was a significant move in 2005.

We began the EMS cost recovery program.

This is a long process, but began this in 2010, which today allows us to recover about $2.7 million of EMS insurance only billing.

So this is related to the transport of patients to the hospital.

This has been a very successful program.

And with the board support, we're only charging insurance only so that the citizen does not bear any cost to this program.

In 2011, we established through ordinance a coordinated fire and rescue system, which clearly defined roles and responsibilities and expectations of our chief, our volunteer stations, volunteer members, and it really set forth an initiative for us to develop a more unified and coordinated system across the board.

In 2013 was a significant milestone as well.

That's where we renegotiated the city contract, which at the time was approaching $1 million.

We negotiated that back down to something much lower, about 150 at the time.

I think currently it's around $200,000.

But what we were able to do is take that savings and then reinvest it back into the fire rescue system.

In part, the IV station was helped funded by the savings of this renegotiated contract.

and then finally in 2021, last year, we made a significant investment of 22 additional personnel to further staff up two ALS ambulances in Pantops and Avi to provide a daytime engine at Pantops and to provide staffing for Crozet Volunteer Fire Department during the daytime.

That was a significant investment in our system and as we get to later on with Chief Puckett,

right in the middle of implementation of that program.

So if we could go to the next slide, I'll just give you a sort of a quick snapshot of, this is a snapshot of where we, our station makeup basically.

As you see in the top, we have four stations that are all volunteer.

There's an Astrid North Garden because in this budget, FY22 budget, we do have an initiative to provide daytime staffing to North Garden.

In the middle there are our stations in which we provide supplemental daytime staffing.

We call them combination apartments because we help staff during the day and then the volunteers pick it up and staff nights and weekends.

And then the bottom part, the six stations there are mostly career staff.

These are county-owned stations and staff.

We're mostly in the development area, but we provide 24-7 fire and rescue service out of most stations.

We still have an all-rescue station there at Burkemar.

and then one at Scottsville.

So, you know, naturally with the recent request from North Garden, you probably wanna know more about what we're doing in terms of volunteer recruitment and retention.

So at this point, I'm gonna turn it over to Deputy Chief Childress to cover these topics.

Good afternoon.

My name is Heather Childress and I'm the Deputy Chief of Member Services here.

As you all know, the last several years have seen significant change across the fire rescue system.

Given this amount of change, we felt it was important to provide board members with information about system-wide recruitment and retention efforts.

Unfortunately, volunteer fire and EMS numbers across the nation are declining.

That is the fact that every volunteer fire department and volunteer rescue squad are dealing with in the country.

I have included a link at the bottom of the slide to a study published by the National Fire Protection Association that provides a quantitative analysis of fire department profiles nationwide.

That report talks about declining numbers of both volunteer firefighters and volunteer fire departments across the nation.

There are a number of reasons that volunteer numbers are declining and we wanted to take just a quick minute to share a bit of that information with you.

An important factor to consider is that baby boomers are retiring en masse and there are not enough millennials and Gen Zers to take their place.

The fire service has traditionally relied on multi-generational families passing down their tradition of joining the local fire department or rescue squad, but that is sadly becoming a thing of the past.

The millennial and Gen Z generations also are just not trending towards emergency service as much as previous generations have done.

Many people need two jobs to make ends meet or have other obligations that prevent volunteering as a firefighter or EMT.

In the Commonwealth, the time and effort required to obtain and maintain basic fire and EMS certifications has increased significantly over the years.

These changes were made to increase member safety and provide the highest quality patient care, but

without an argument have quite a negative impact on volunteers.

An unintended consequence of the additional certification requirements for volunteers is the hardship that it creates for them to obtain that certification.

That directly impacts any volunteer department's ability to draw in new members.

Locally, our fire rescue system is not immune to this problem.

We are experiencing some of the same issues seen across the county here in Albemarle, across the nation here in Albemarle County.

Last year, Crozet Fire Department requested career staff, and you will see a similar request from North Garden in this year's proposed budget.

While not immune to it, we are somewhat insulated to this problem with the supply of students from the University of Virginia who join Albemarle County departments and provide service during their time here.

Residents in the area also have hundreds of other opportunities to volunteer in the community.

The vast majority of those opportunities do not require the significant and ongoing time commitment associated with membership in a fire or rescue department.

All this being said, there are indicators of successful recruitment efforts across our fire rescue system.

The first indicator is the number of volunteers that are recruited, onboarded, and trained every year in our system.

A significant number of volunteers join here each year.

The second indicator is that the certification courses taught by our ACFR training division are consistently full with rosters made up of new members from our fire rescue departments.

In calendar years 2019 and 2020, approximately 180 new volunteers were onboarded across our fire rescue system.

95 new members were added in 2019 and 84 new members, as you can see, were added in 2020 despite the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic forced departments to halt onboarding for several months while we got our arms around what conducting business in the pandemic atmosphere was like.

Data on these new members are collected from the number of new member physicals that we schedule and pay for, and then the number of new users to our records management system.

An important data point that we don't have a firm grasp on is the number of volunteers who left our system during that same time period.

So the net gain or loss of members is not clear.

The ACFR training division is responsible for providing basic certification courses year-round for our volunteer members.

The training division provides all the courses required for any member to be released as a firefighter or EMS provider in our system.

These classes are offered multiple times throughout the year and are held on nights and weekends to accommodate volunteer and student schedules.

The training division also provides advanced classes to train beyond that basic certification level.

Additionally, we try to accommodate any requests submitted to us by our volunteer departments if there's something specific that they'd like to have.

This slide provides data on the basic certification courses conducted in 2020.

Please keep in mind that the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to make multiple course adjustments, postponements, and ultimately resulted in a few class cancellations throughout the year.

The courses in this table represent the core set of certifications necessary for our members to provide service.

It shows how often the courses are offered in a year, how many hours the classes are required, the minimum number of hours required per class, and then the total number of students who were members of our volunteer fire rescue departments who participated during the year.

So based on the data from these rosters and the required hours per course, 156 volunteer members received 13,324 hours of instruction in 2020.

The asterisk just notes that several of the students took more than one class.

So it's not 156 discrete, but 156 students total.

This is a similar slide that documents our advanced training that was offered in 2020.

So these go beyond the essentials.

So they vary widely in subject matter and include some instructor, officer training, driver pump operator, some technical rescue and specialty classes that aren't required to participate in our system, but many people enjoy taking.

Several of the courses were canceled in 2020.

One of those toughest cancellations was our regional fire school.

That event is always well attended and provides another eight to ten classes for members to participate in.

To provide reference, in 2019, 38 volunteer fire rescue members received over a thousand hours of instruction in the 2019 regional school.

The training in this table represents an additional 1800 hours of instruction for 57 more students that happened in 2020.

Again, some of those students may have participated in more than one class.

So thank you for your attention.

Thank you, Chief Childress.

I wanted to take a moment and talk about our volunteer retention efforts, if I can.

What you will not see in this budget recommendation is a funding request for the length of service award.

You know, this was an issue that's been identified some years ago as a high priority item when we did a survey back in 2019.

But the more we dug into it, the committee, the volunteer recruitment committee and staff working with the FIMS board, the more we, less we felt, excuse me,

about the program's ability to retain volunteers, especially in comparison to the cost of the program, which was roughly $500,000 annually with about 50% of the people participating.

We also reached out to other departments that have used the length of service award and really got some lukewarm reception from them as well.

So we talked about that during the 2020 FEMS board meeting back in January.

and the FEMSA Board decided to pivot at that point and establish the Volunteer Incentive Program Committee which was focused on other ways and perhaps we can incentivize volunteers.

I think what we have seen in the past is that we've exhausted a lot of other options perhaps to the point where we're really considering direct compensation to volunteers.

Now this has a lot of implications in terms of tax and employee-employer relationship that we've got to navigate through

But we will certainly look at all of that.

We had to pause some of that due to COVID, but we're reengaging and reestablishing that committee again this month.

At the same time, right here in our own backyard, we have the Center for Nonprofit Excellence, which is a great organization that helps nonprofits focus on leadership and governance support.

So what we did is we're currently working, staff is working with that group and with our procurement and legal to perhaps even get a contract that where other volunteer organizations can engage with the CNE to provide that support.

I understand right now that a couple of volunteer stations already having conversations about updating bylaws and looking at some other governance structure kind of things.

So I think that could perhaps help us quite a bit in terms of providing support at that level.

Good afternoon, this is David Puckett, Deputy Chief of Operations with Taiwan County Fire Rescue.

Before reviewing Fire Rescue's fiscal year 22 budget information, I'd like to take a few minutes to review and update the board on our fiscal year 21 initiatives, along with a few of the concepts we introduced last year.

As the chief mentioned, fiscal year 21 included 22 FTEs to address several urgent service needs, including a daytime engine at Crozet and Pantops and an expanded ALS ambulance coverage at Ivy and Pantops.

We also introduced the board to two staffing concepts, cross staffing and dynamic staffing.

Cross staffing is a practice used in lower call volume areas where a three-person crew staffs a fire engine and an ambulance and responds in the unit that's most appropriate for that emergency.

Earlesville has been utilizing cross staffing for years and we propose expanding the practice to Stony Point and East Rivanna as part of the fiscal year 21 service changes.

Dynamic staffing is the practice of reducing in-service units based on the number of available people and I'll describe this concept in more detail in just a minute.

This slide is the proposed timeline from the fiscal year 21 budget process.

As you recall this was an aggressive plan requiring a total of three recruit schools

and a paramedic school in less than 18 months.

I'm happy to report that we're on schedule.

An ambulance was moved to Stony Point and cross staffing was implemented in July.

Career staff was assigned to the Crozet Volunteer Fire Department last September, a full year ahead of the originally proposed schedule.

And the paramedic school and final recruit school was in progress.

I'm happy to report that earlier this week we learned that the recruit school had 100% success rate on their first attempt at the National Registry EMT certification exam.

While this is all good news, I also feel obligated to point out that this is our most challenging period.

As expected, staffing froze early in running a recruit school and paramedic school concurrently has resulted in a strain on our staffing model and an increased use of dynamic staffing.

As I mentioned, dynamic staffing was a concept introduced to the board last year, but all stations, career or volunteer, have used dynamic staffing informally for years.

While the same concept of staffing units based on available personnel could be used to staff extra units, the scenario that is more concerning for fire rescue, the board, and our residents is when we have to reduce the number of units staffed, as this may lead to increased response times as units respond from further away.

Currently, there's no systematic method to coordinate and document when dynamic staffing occurs across our system, but I want to take a minute to describe how and why this occurs with ACFR career staff units.

Prior to dynamic staffing, ACFR used forced overtime, or holdovers, to ensure minimum staffing for all career units were met.

A holdover is a term we use when we require a firefighter to work an additional 12 hours after finishing their regular 24-hour shift.

The firefighter cannot decline this assignment, even when they have personal needs such as childcare to attend to.

And after that 36-hour shift, they are typically scheduled to report back to work 12 hours later for another 24-hour shift.

As you can imagine, this can have a dramatic impact on our employees' personal life and their overall health and wellness.

Leading up to 2018, we were experiencing an unsustainable number of mandatory holdovers.

In some cases, firefighters were being held over twice in the same week, and we began to see a dramatic decrease in morale along with an increase in employee turnover.

So we decided we had no other choice but to implement dynamic staffing to address the growing problem.

I want to stress this was not an easy decision.

I never imagined when I became a firefighter that I'd have to make a decision to reduce service to the community I served.

And in fact, this was one of the most difficult decisions I've been a part of as a chief officer, to choose between the service our community deserves and the health and wellness of our firefighters.

So I want to spend a few minutes describing how dynamic staffing works today and our plan to minimize its use in the future.

While we never want to take a unit out of service, when we do, we have to carefully consider the impact of the county's overall fire and EMS coverage,

the number of residents impacted, and the individual person that is actually receiving 911 services during that period.

Trust me, there are no easy answers, but our decisions are guided by the board adopted standards to cover, historical call volume, and the potential impact on the delay in response.

This slide represents our desired career staffing at rural stations.

Earliesville and Stony Point are both staff of the three-person crew,

and cross staff of fire engine and ambulance, taking the most appropriate unit based on the call.

East Rivanna is also staffed with a three person crew, but are not scheduled to be cross staffed with an ambulance until later this fall.

We always attempt to fill open positions with voluntary overtime before implementing dynamic staffing, but if we can't fill all positions, we transfer one person from Earliesville, reducing them to a two person ambulance.

If necessary, we then transfer one person from Stony Point, reducing them to a two person ambulance.

And finally, if the staffing shortage is severe enough, we transfer all personnel assigned to Earliesville and cover that from adjacent stations.

Beginning this fall, I'm sorry, let me back up.

Once Stony Point is reduced to two-person staffing, finally, that triggers East Rivanna Engine to move to Pan Tops, where they're better positioned to provide coverage to Stony Point.

And finally, if the staffing shortage is severe enough, we transfer all personnel from Earliesville.

Beginning this fall, all three rural stations will have a three-person crew and crawl staff and engine and ambulance.

Our dynamic staffing strategy will then shift to utilize all three stations to compensate for our staffing shortages.

One firefighter will be transferred from each station as necessary, but will maintain a minimum of a two-person ambulance at all of them.

By now, you may be asking yourself why we have staffing shortages in the first place.

The board has funded a number of FTEs for fire rescue in the last couple of years.

but all those have been dedicated to expansion of service, not to address existing staffing shortages.

As you recall, we use a standard method to determine how many FTEs are required.

As an example, the fiscal year 22 request for North Garden requires a total of five FTEs to ensure we have three firefighters on duty for five 12-hour shifts.

This chart retrospectively applies that same methodology for all of our operational units put in service since 1998.

As you can see along the bottom, it indicates we need 120 FTEs to ensure consistent coverage.

But we currently only have 113 in the field.

So functionally, we're operating on a shortage of FTEs.

Historically, we've been successful at using voluntary overtime to address that shortage.

But over the last several years, we've seen that trend change.

Our employees tend to place more emphasis on a healthy work-life balance, meaning they don't take as many overtime shifts.

In effect,

their time off is more valuable than additional compensation.

As our department has grown, and to be frank, aged, we've also seen an increase in our unscheduled leave, including sick leave, family medical leave, injury and military leave.

To provide perspective, we currently have seven people on long term leave due to injury or illness, in addition to two break vacancies.

All this places further strain on already lean staffing model.

In addition to overtime, we've attempted a number of other strategies to address our staffing shortages.

Hiring and training a firefighter is a long process, and a vacancy can have a dramatic impact on our staffing model.

The use of overhires minimizes the amount of time it takes to get someone back on the street following a vacancy.

By using historical trends, we try to anticipate the number of vacancies we'll experience throughout a year and hire replacements for them, in some cases before they actually leave.

In fiscal year 18, we requested and received

three FTEs specifically to address our staffing shortage.

While those positions had some impact, it ultimately wasn't enough to meet the demands.

And finally, as we discussed earlier, we implemented dynamic staffing to address a significant increase in forced overtime or holdovers.

Andy Bowman will share additional opportunities to reduce our use of dynamic staffing as part of the fiscal year 22 budget information, but we felt it was important for the board to have this background prior.

Thank you, David.

So to summarize, you know, we touched on the evolution of fire rescue system, identified some major milestones in the development of the system.

Chief Childers gave you a good overview of onboarding and our training successes.

And then Chief Puckett touched on our staffing challenges and what we do to compensate in terms of dynamic staffing in the process we go through.

So I appreciate the Chiefs going through that.

I just want to wrap things up on my part by talking about a long-term fire rescue staffing plan.

We've made tremendous investments in the fire rescue system over a number of years, especially the last two years here.

And really even with that, there are probably still significant needs out there in terms of demands for service and gaps in our current system.

And likely we will see additional staffing requests come forward.

So my intention here is to work with our finance and budget office and the county executive office to put together a long-term fire rescue staffing plan that gives us an idea of what investments may be needed in the future.

I think it's a better way of planning our financial demand in the future and certainly I look forward to bringing this forward once vetted through the county executive's office to the board for further discussion.

I've had some conversations already with our finance team and even sat down with one of the volunteer chiefs the other day to explain the concept and I think we've got general support to move forward.

We just want to do it in a smart and meaningful way so they can provide us with some predictability as we move forward.

Okay, Andy, Mr. Bowman, before you go, if you don't have anything more specifically on fire rescue, I think this might be a good time to let the supervisors ask any questions they may have.

I do.

All right, let's do that and then we'll go to the questions.

I think this may be a good transition because Chief

My staff have been discussing the past and the present in the fire rescue system.

In my comments, I'm going to turn our attention back to the 2022 budget and just potential options in the future.

So going to the next slide.

This is a slide that I reviewed with the board last week with the North Garden supplemental staffing request.

I'm not going to repeat myself beyond just noting that the recommended budget includes $435,000 in operating funding for the services that are described on the screen.

What I'd like to speak to instead today is an opportunity or an option for the board to consider in the near future.

It does not impact the 22 budget today, but it potentially creates some flexibility to address the issues that Chief Eggleston and his staff have been reviewing this afternoon.

So we can go to the next slide.

And that option that could be available is another FEMA SAFER grant.

FEMA SAFER is a long acronym that stands for the Federal Emergency Management Agencies Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response Grant.

The board may recall that the county is currently in the first year of a grant, a FEMA SAFER grant, that will fund the salaries and benefits for ten positions for three years for fire engines at the Crozet and Pantop stations.

This proposal would be a second FEMA SAFER grant.

The county has put in an application for a second grant, and I should be very clear that this application does not bind the county for anything should the board desire not to pursue this.

Only an application, not an accepted award.

If awarded, notifications would be expected sometime between June and September.

For perspective, we applied last year in May and received an award.

and September or so, the application for this grant was due earlier this month.

So the application itself includes 10 positions that are shown on the screen.

This would provide five positions for supplemental staffing for North Garden as requested by the station, as well as five additional minimum staffing positions that would work in the field and the intent of those positions is to reduce the need for dynamic staffing once all of those approved positions would be trained and released to operate.

A combination of these two issues into one application is done to make the most competitive application possible.

It would provide several benefits if it was awarded and accepted by the board.

The first benefit is really for those five positions at North Garden.

It would provide the ability to staff that a little sooner than the current plan in the 2022 budget.

And I'll show the schedule in the next slide, but essentially instead of having staff in the fall of 2022, there would be staff in the summer of 2022.

The second benefit is that once everyone is trained and released to be in the field, it would reduce the use of dynamic staffing as it enables there to be more minimum staffing positions in the field than there are currently available.

The third benefit, and this is more longer-range in the future, it's more of a what-if for hypothetical, is that it just provides more depth into our organization to more quickly address system-wide future needs as they arise.

Within the future, a volunteer station requested supplemental staffing.

This could create a situation where that need could be addressed sooner than the current timeline that exists for stations, between the timeline for the budget process, the timeline to hire and train and release people to be in the field.

So that would shorten that timeline.

That timeline wouldn't be needed to use at the same time as dynamic staffing.

and then the kind of the future long-term staffing would be considered as part of the future budget process.

That is a lot of variables and hypotheticals but the main takeaway from this point here is that in the future we put the county in a better position to adapt than we can currently do right now where we have a situation where North Garden in the fall of 2020 has

The current status in the 2022 recommended budget would be getting those positions fully in service almost two years later.

So beyond the benefits of the grant, I just want to spend some time talking about the budget impact if the grant was awarded and the board wanted to perform with this.

This grant, like the first one that is currently underway, it provides salaries and benefits for these positions for three years.

The value of the federal funding across those three years would be approximately $1.8 million.

Now, the county would be responsible for related operating costs to those positions and anything above base compensation such as overtime.

If awarded and the board accepts the current budget that we have in place, that $435,000, that could provide the local management fiscal year 22 that would be needed for these 10 positions.

Now that would just take care of 22 and then we would certainly look at our long range financial planning process this fall.

The county would need to incorporate our increased local funding with the grant expires into our long range financial plans.

If awarded and accepted, we would have two FEMA grants running concurrently.

that would be picked up in fiscal year 24, 25, and 26 as those grants expire.

That would just need to be part of our long-range financial planning process that we would be be involved with.

So moving to my last slide on content is really just what the schedule of this looks like.

Deputy Chief Bucket shared a schedule that we've kind of shared with the board in the past but now with these 10 positions this would look a little different where if we were awarded in the summer

We would hire 10 employees in September and they would go through a recruit school and essentially be able to wrap up in the spring and then be kind of on the top bar, be able to be released at North Garden Volunteer Fire Company.

That's what NGFVC stands for in the summer.

So this is a little earlier than the proposal in the fall.

What would happen to the other five FTEs is there would be a paramedics school that happens in the system in the first half of calendar year 22.

And then as they go through that paramedics school and they're released into the field by January 2023, we would have more minimum staffing positions in the field that would put us in a position to reduce the current use of dynamic staffing.

So at this point, I believe it pauses our presentation and I think this will be a good time to turn it over to the Vice Chair and the Board for any comments and discussion.

Thank you, Mr. Bowman.

Yes, Andy or I mean Mr. Bowman or Chief Eggleston.

I understand about the the SAFER grant and getting 10 positions and I fully support that.

You have five positions for paramedic school, but that's coming out of the 10.

Is that correct?

Okay, so the parents, you have five FTEs, that's coming out of the 10 FTEs, okay, now I get it.

Going back, when you talked about, Chief Eggleston, about hiring seven additional firefighters, would the 10 safer

if it's accepted, would those 10 offset the seven you're talking about, or are you talking about getting the 10 and then also getting an additional seven?

Yes, the 10 would help to address two issues.

First of all, it would help to supplant the funding that we have proposed in the FY22 budget for North Garden, but the other five would help to reduce that seven that was identified in Chief Puckett's chart

that puts strain on the system and causes us to dynamically staff Charlottesville, Stony Point, and Bea's, Rivanna.

No, I think right now we have approved overhires that we could make up those other two.

that will continue to utilize over hire and overtime where necessary.

I think the five will provide the much needed relief.

We just want to be very conservative on our number.

All right.

Thank you, sir.

No more questions.

And good presentation, by the way.

Excellent.

And I hope we can get the PowerPoint sent to us.

So I don't have too many questions here.

Just to be really clear, you said that 20 positions would come due in the budget for 24, 25, 26.

That is correct.

The exact timing would phase out or we can provide a follow-up with that schedule look like, but essentially the first grant will end in kind of mid-year 24.

So half the impact of 20 half the impact of 10 occurs in one year, 25.

So is it hard to find, you know, clearly we have a lot of turnover over the next several years.

We'll have that normal turnover.

Well, I don't think it's going to be difficult to fill these positions at all.

We have this past year, a couple of different recruitment and programs for career staff and have filled our

our needs to provide a greatly enhanced recruit school.

Okay.

All right.

That's all my questions.

Thank you.

Thank you for the, excuse me, I have a frog in my throat.

Thank you for the presentation.

As somebody who has been in two professions, nursing and teaching, and had to have additional hours of training and so many requirements, I am very impressed with the numbers I'm seeing here.

That is extraordinary requirements for folks who obviously have families and

and other things going on in their life.

It's pretty impressive.

I like the idea of a long-term staffing plan a lot.

The only real question I have is obviously whenever we have these grant opportunities, and I think that they're often the right thing to do, but at the end of the day we have to absorb them because we're not going to end up firing those folks and letting them go when the grants run out because we need the positions.

So what are we talking about at the end of that three-year grant?

What monies are we actually talking about?

I think from that envelope, back to the envelope numbers, and I can pull that, but knowing the federal... Yeah, I kind of got lost in the numbers, Andy.

Yeah, and it's okay.

I'm just talking back.

Yeah, so I think the federal funding is about $1.8 million over three years, so it would be $600,000 or so as those get picked up.

Okay.

It would be staggered a little bit over the years because for partial use, it would depend on the personnel cost of those positions in the future.

Yeah, that's great.

Thank you.

I appreciate the presentation.

Thank you, Supervisor McKeel.

Yes, here I am.

Finally back away again.

Thank you very much.

So I have a few little questions along the way that may or may not have

reasonable answers and I guess if it's not appropriate right now then people could send answers to everybody later.

Starting way at the beginning where you were talking about the training and the numbers of students in Firefighter 1 and Firefighter 2.

Is Firefighter 2 required for a candidate to be released?

I thought it was and it sounded like many of the students were not going that far.

So that'll get them in the burning building.

In other words, they're not stuck outside.

Okay, very good.

I still hope that sometime after budget we can come back to the retention programs and really dig in a lot more on that with this new information because it's been sort of a revolving door for 15 years and we really need to nail down what's going on and learn from what other places are doing.

So how many staff are involved in training

I seem to understand people saying the reason that we were only could field 113 in the field now is because some of our staff are having to stop and train other people and do things.

We do.

We have a training division.

Chief Jones may need to help me about how many are assigned for ongoing and training for both the volunteer and the career.

Recruit Academies, but it's an entire division that provides volunteer academies, both fire and EMS, as well as our career recruit academies.

They're also responsible for providing continuing education for our career staff, which is pretty intense, as well as you may understand the board.

We support Earliesville and East Rivanna in terms of EMS.

They're under our EMS license for that same group.

It helps to coordinate and provide continuing education for those two departments as well.

So it's a pretty big endeavor.

So I understood there were four training officers now and somewhere in the recent materials that talked about we were hiring

Four more firefighters, and we had to have one more training person.

But I assume it's not a four to one ratio.

It's a far greater ratio of one training officer for numbers of candidates.

Yeah, it is.

We made a significant investment last year, 22 people, and they were added to the system.

Okay, that's I understand that.

Yeah, I'm getting yelled at to adjust my camera.

Okay.

Thank you, Gary.

All right, going down the list here.

So later on another page, it talked about, I guess we're moving into the dynamic staffing category of my notes now.

It talked about how there were no systematic records on how dynamic staffing is happening.

And I just

Can't understand that, first of all.

I mean, a couple of weeks ago, we all received charts from Doug Walker that had come from your department that told exactly about how many days various stations have been staffed and open.

I think what Chief Puckett was referring to is we have really good records, very good records on when the career staff are supposed to be assigned, when we actually use dynamic staffing or reduce staffing in those stations.

But what we have looking at it system-wide is oftentimes a lot of the volunteer companies are faced the same challenge and they may, they may downstaff their station or not staff their station at all.

That's where we have holes in our data.

We don't know exactly when that happens or have good records of that.

We just know that some,

They're having staffing shortages as well and some of them actually will not staff their station when they're having difficulties.

We do.

We have one station that does a very good job of marking their units out of service and then we have some that

in the dynamic staffing.

Because what I learned from that graph that came out a couple weeks ago was that early still, the neighbors were not wrong.

They had been calling me and saying there's nobody at the station, there's nobody at the station.

And it turned out from the chart that from January 6th until today, there has been staff there one day.

So what is the cap that is put on for this station?

Well, you know, as Chief Puckett explained, this particular time we're in right now is a very difficult time because we're trying to run a recruit school and a paramedic school at the same time.

And we explained this last year during the budget work session, because while we're doing that, we also staffed Crozet early.

So we're in a very difficult time and often have to dynamic staff or reduce staffing there at Earliesville.

But come the fall when we graduate these students and begin to staff up units, I think what Chief Puckett's referring to is that we'll never go below two at those stations.

They'll start with Earliesville, then go to Stoning Point, and then to East Rivanna.

So, and then we'll probably at that point just hire back folks if we have to.

Okay, as I panicked a little bit later on in the presentation when you were talking about all this doing things in 2022 and I just can't, we can't live another 18 months.

You also talked about relying on the standards of cover and the call volumes to make decisions.

I just would ask you to be aware of the fact that if you've closed the station for nine weeks of course it doesn't have call volume and that's really unfair to use that as a punishment when it's since 1998 there's been a county obligation to staff that station during the day.

So I'm just putting that out there I just we have to be careful about how things are evaluated and be fair.

Going back to the whole dynamic staffing operation, when the board discussed this plan, I guess it was last fall and last summer, it was talked about as a shared obligation, a shared deficit to be done.

And there was never a discussion about having all of the burden fall on one station.

and this is where our part of the county is getting underserved and very upset.

about the fact that our station is closed for weeks at a time.

And it puts everybody at risk and there has to be a way to figure out how not to do this and burden one station and leave all the others completely staffed or three instead of two.

There are three paramedics about to graduate and be released.

at the early volunteers.

If there were one person from another station who could come and work with one volunteer that would get that ambulance going during the day.

I really hope I'm asking you that people need to work harder about finding some bodies to go out there to keep that station going.

One day a week is one thing.

And that's the way it was described when this was dropped on the station two years ago.

not nine weeks of nothing.

So this is a real concern.

I would also very much hope that there would be staff who are working at the 5th Street Office Building who could take their duty out at the station and be in teleworking from there.

I think that's a reasonable thing for people who have had long careers in the field.

I did ask Dan in the future, when we're looking at page 86, the FEMA salary doesn't even show up.

on the salary and then the numbers for our, so it's already a $592,000 more in salary that we're not paying for all of it, but I think it will be helpful for all of us to understand going forward where we are if we include those FEMA numbers on the same budget page rather than hidden away in other funds, I think is where it finally showed up because I had never found that before and I was grateful that I found it this time.

We talked about that, talked about that, talked about that.

Okay, so I guess I have asked all my questions, but for the citizens whom Ned and I share, who depend upon the station that's been there for 55 years, I really ask you to dig deep and figure out a way to get us some staff in that building before September of 2021.

Thank you.

Cara Galloway?

You're muted, Ned.

Can't hear you, Ned.

Can you hear me, Donald?

Yes, now we can.

So the questions that I had, I shared with some of the questions Supervisor Malek has asked.

And I'm satisfied there.

No need to rehash.

Thank you.

I don't have much in the way of questions.

I do have a few comments as we go through this.

And first off, Mr. Bowman, Chief Eggleston, Deputy Chief Childress, and Deputy Chuckett, thank you very much for your presentations.

They were very informative.

As we go through this, I'm reminded of the indebtedness, the reliance, the dependence that we in the county have on our volunteers.

What they do for us is really immeasurable.

So it is the first comment that I have.

Looking at what you have described, the forced over holdovers, what in the Navy we would have called cross-decking someone, as you've recognized and commented upon, is simply unsustainable.

The demands that that places on an individual to have done a 24-hour shift, hold over 12 hours, 12 hours later, back for a 24-hour shift,

It really is unsustainable and I appreciate your recognizing that and taking all the action that you are in order to diminish and reduce that from happening.

I think really the only sort of a comment that I really have is that the $1.8 million from the SAFER grants, about 600,000 years it was later described once those funds start to go away in 24, 25, and 26.

There was also reference though that in addition to the $1.8 million from the SAFER grants that there are additional funds that the county has to pay.

So as those cuts go away it will be a little more than $600,000 in today's figures which means it will be even more than that a few years from now.

And I really appreciate you already working up what that's going to end up costing the county.

The population growth continues as the demands continue, hopefully perhaps a little bit reduced from the pandemic state.

But with the training that is required with the staffing, we just as a county need to be prepared that these additional expenses will have to be part of our budget as we go forward in future years.

But I really appreciate what you've provided to us today, the explanation of how you've handled what you've had to face, and the actions that are being taken to reduce those personnel burdens on the individuals and provide better staffing for the county.

Thank you.

May I ask a question before we have a break?

Sure, Supervisor Malle.

Thank you.

I just wanted to clarify, there was something in the email today from someone, and there have been so many, I'm sorry I don't have it straight.

Oh no, it was the chart about the different

budget payments and reductions to the volunteer companies.

I did forward that on to the three chiefs and heard back very quickly from Costas Alberda's chief at WARS because they were not told

what the reductions were for and he wanted to clarify that there were errors in that, the reasoning that was given and they never had the opportunity to know and therefore had no corrections for it.

So I'll just report this quickly and people can take it just for guidance sake that I think we need better communication with our agencies when it comes to budgets

that there should be reasons provided.

There should be contact back in the same way that staff does with our ABRT agencies.

We don't just slam the door on them.

We say here's some shortcomings or here are the questions we haven't had answered and give people a chance.

So there was a deduction for a gas pump that was needed saying it didn't meet the qualifications of the process because they were buying supposedly an unapproved ambulance.

This ambulance was purchased through the CIP and is part of the fleet plan.

and they have had, so it is approved, and they've had gas vehicles for years there and they've had to go to Crozet Fire to fill up.

So Crozet Fire has been very helpful, but that was the reasoning that this pump was included that was disallowed by whoever's evaluating these things.

The cardiac monitors were not

I just think it's appropriate that as a way of showing some bonafide respect for our agencies that we communicate

with them in the budget situation.

I have very high expectations that they will hand in their audits and do their forms but we also need to do on our side to be able to make sure that we're making decisions based on the full information.

So I wanted to put that clarification out there so that people could figure out a way to

Do it differently next time.

Thank you, Supervisor Mallek.

Sure, I say we can always look to how we do things differently to better serve our community.

So certainly I can follow up with the chief and staff at WARS.

When the budget's released, the day of the county executive sends that out, we do communicate to all agencies, whether it be volunteers, ABRT or other community partners, so they're aware of the funding recommendation.

We provide them the light item detail of their request.

I'll say before we get to that request, there's a dialogue that goes through the budget between the Fire Rescue Department and our staff.

I have not heard any questions yet from Boris, but I'll be happy to follow up with him to make sure we understand.

just what that is, just so there's not a disconnect in there.

I have not received any questions personally, but if there are concerns, we certainly would follow up those and understand.

There's a missing link somewhere because I contacted them earlier when the book came out and I saw there was a big 20% or $20,000 cut to two of the stations.

And I said, what's this for?

And they had no idea.

So somewhere along the line a little better clarity needs to be provided so that we can, you know, they felt bad because they didn't have my answers and I was even more confused later than I was when I started.

I would encourage if there are questions in the future that the board may receive, they could direct them to me.

Thank you, Mr. Bowman, and I think recognition that an improvement in the process is really the major answer to it.

Thank you.

Yes, I definitely agree with Supervisor Malek regarding communication and clarification, and the process needs to be improved.

One thing I wanted to ask Chief Eggleston, it piqued my interest when you said that Burleysville

that they would notify you.

Am I getting that correct?

That they would notify you when they weren't able to respond?

But I did notice that you didn't mention the other volunteer stations.

That is correct.

When they notify, the way in which they notify us is that we have a computer-aided dispatch system.

So if they're unable to staff, they'll go in that system and mark that unit out of service.

And for us, that's very beneficial because then we can modify the response and don't delay to send the next closest unit.

Is there any way to, I mean it seems to me that that's something that would be easily addressed and that each volunteer station should be doing that because that provides more safety to our residents.

So I mean is there any way that... We've encouraged all the stations to utilize our system that we've invested in

to do just that so that we can know at a moment's notice.

I mean, that's what the system does.

It receives a call, it evaluates who's available, and it dispatches the closest unit.

And the only way for that to be most effective, it has to be accurate to reflect the amount of resources we have out there.

Otherwise, we're sort of flying blindly.

So we have encouraged all departments to participate in that.

And really, at this point, that's all I can do is just continue to encourage them to participate.

But this is not across the board.

I mean, we have some stations that are very robust and do a wonderful job, and some are struggling.

If they're struggling, can we find out why they're struggling and provide some kind of assistance?

We have on staff an IT person too that runs around and makes sure that the systems at the station are up and running, that the computers and the apparatus are working so that the infrastructure is there.

And would you be able to give us a report periodically, maybe, I don't know, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, but would you be able to give us a report on how that's working?

I mean, this concerns me, I have to tell you.

And the ones who are doing it correctly, kudos to them.

No other questions.

I think I would follow up on that.

Well, we utilize the CAD system again to say, okay, I've got these units in service.

Keep in mind that some of our more rural stations have home response, so they may mark the units in service, although that no one is at that station, so they respond from home.

But even in that case, sometimes people are just unavailable, so it would be extremely helpful.

if we knew, if there are not enough people around to staff a unit that that unit's taken out of service.

And that sounds like we need to work on that system to actually know who is available rather than it being self-reported in all instances.

This is just a wild idea and that I don't know if it's possible to just tone the station and they push the button if they're there and respond back that way or and if they're not if they're out on a call they would have gone through they would have done their dispatch response from ECC so you'd know they were out with the engine.

And let me just restate that that's why we've invested in the computer-aided dispatch system.

It does all of that.

All we have to do is make sure that our unit statuses are updated.

And it's just, again, a matter of a couple of keystrokes.

Thank you, Chief Eggleston.

Also, I appreciate your comment about home response.

Yes, what is the longest home response you've had?

Okay, I would think that this is something along with the audit, getting information about the audits from each volunteer station that we should make sure that this response system is utilized.

All right, why don't we go ahead and take a 10-minute break.

We do have one on the schedule and I've got about 10 after so we'll

and continue with our next session.

All right, thank you everybody.

There are two actions that need to be taken today to meet the public hearing legal advertisement requirements.

The first of which is to finalize a tax rate for advertisement.

We can go ahead to the next slide.

This is a slide that our people have shared on March 10th where we discussed general fund revenues.

Just a reminder that the recommended budget, the revenues are calculated at a current real property tax rate of 85.4 per hundred dollars assessed value.

That generates the majority of general fund revenues.

Each penny on the real estate tax rate equates to about 2.1 million dollars in collectible tax revenues.

The lowered or the effective tax

What that refers to is the rate at which we received the same amount of tax revenue in calendar year 21 as we did in 20.

This is based on the reassessment change of 1.4% only.

It does not factor in changes to new construction, new parcel creation, changes in land use, etc.

Also the county continues to have a tax relief for the elderly and disabled program that is recommended to be 1.3 million in fiscal year 22.

I will just finally note that the tax rate that the board chooses to advertise is a cap on what can be adopted.

So for example if the board were to advertise a rate of 85.4 they could do that amount or lower when adopted but they could not raise it higher at that point.

So at this point, if the board is going to the next slide, if the board desires to advertise the current rates, the motion is shown on the screen.

Thank you, Mr. Bowman.

We'll go around each of the supervisors.

Thank you very much, Mr. Bowman.

All right, thank you.

I don't have any questions either.

Thank you.

Andy, I just have one quick question.

The relief for the elderly and disabled, I noticed that obviously people were able to take advantage of it, which is a good thing.

We take a look every year.

Does the state ever raise the cap on that?

It looked like Greg, were you about to weigh in on that?

I think the best thing would... Yeah.

Yeah.

Let me get back to you.

Well, it's okay.

I just assume that we, as the state changes theirs, I'm sure we match whatever the state does, right?

Yeah, I don't want to just derail our discussion today.

That wasn't my intention.

Certainly from the Jagatua District, I'm not going to do that.

But I'm just going to, you know, but I'm just curious and I should have asked it at some point.

All right, thank you.

Supervisor Reddy?

Who's next?

I didn't know who you were calling on.

I missed that part.

So I didn't want to jump in if it was somebody else.

That's fine.

I don't have questions about this.

We're going to come back to the clerk's office and things afterwards when we talk about the budget itself.

Right, I understand.

Very good.

Stepping away, can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Yes I'll make a motion to advertise the 2021 tax rates for the public hearing.

Mr. Campner, do we need to read the specific language?

Okay, I move that the board advertise the following rates for public hearing for the 2021 tax year.

0.854 per assessed $100 of assessed home value for real estate, public service property, and manufactured homes.

$4.28 per $100 of assessed value for tangible personal property.

$4.28 per $100 of assessed value for miscellaneous and incidental tangible personal property employed in a trade or business that is not otherwise classified as machinery and tools, merchant's capital or short-term rental property.

and that has an original cost of less than $500 a can.

$4.28 for $100 of assessed value- Quiet!

Alright, you call the roll.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

I can quickly answer Ms.

McKeel's question.

Sorry, I was muted.

Now you're not seeing me.

That was very helpful.

Thank you, Greg.

I appreciate that.

And I'm sorry I didn't mean to derail the discussion.

It just jumped out at me and I meant to ask.

Thanks very much.

I knew that something had, I knew that there was a cap or that the cap had been lifted.

That's why I was pausing, but I had to go back and dig out when and

Yeah, I'd be worthy of a little bit of a discussion or at least some information on that at a later date, not now.

Well, I guess I would just like a little bit of clarification because I didn't realize that we can have a discussion later.

But when you say the cap was raised, can you explain what the cap was that was actually changed?

Well, no, the cap was removed in 2011.

The locality sets, but the cap may be.

Yes.

Thank you.

Well, just clarifying my understanding was that what the locality decided about was the net worth value.

I mean, we have a much higher figure net worth than the city does, for example, for their program that allows more people in between to qualify.

But I think that's a great thing to look at, you know, during the summer or something like that.

I am grateful always that whatever the need is for this category,

The local government finds the way to pay it.

We don't have people turned away because we budgeted wrong.

I remember previous county executives always explaining that, that if we had a lot of people apply, we just found the money somewhere to make sure that we had that amount to cover.

I'm very grateful that it's gone up almost double in the 13 years I've been here because I think it means people are participating in something they should participate in.

Folks who have worked their lives and it's our turn to help them.

Just to, if someone could send us a link or the information on what that is right now.

I'm a little bit confused.

We don't need to talk about it now.

But anyway, so thanks.

No, that link is found, I believe, on our county website.

I actually looked at it myself not long ago.

And it is very reasonable

All right.

Mr. Campner?

I just forwarded by email my explanation and summary of where Albemarle County stood among Virginia's counties that I sent for the budget Q&A last year.

And I just re-sent it to you all.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

The second action item is for a proposed budget for public hearing.

I have just some summary comments before I turn it over to the board.

Next slide.

We just have the total budget of approximately 466 million dollars.

This is the total budget that includes all funds.

Revenues are on the left, expenditures are on the right.

It includes the general fund, the school fund, capital and debt funds, and any other funds.

The next slide is just a snapshot of the general fund, which we reviewed on the first board session on March 10th.

These are the snapshot of revenues, the majority of which come from general property taxes.

On the next slide, just a snapshot of the major functional areas we've reviewed, the transfer to the schools and the transfer to capital debt.

This was also reviewed on Wednesday, March 10th.

Going to the next slide, on Monday, we heard from the school board about their funding request

Just a snapshot of what the capital budget for 2022 looks like.

It's shown on this slide.

Again, I'm not going to talk about it in detail because we spent time on that on Monday.

We'll slow down for a moment now just to talk about a potential adjustment to the recommended budget.

And the first item on the next slide is that on Monday, deputy county executive Doug Walker introduced and the board discussed amending the recommended budget, the executive's recommendation, to add in a transportation plan or funded from the capital budget, which the board discussed.

So on the very next slide, this just shows what the revised recommended total budget looks like, which is still about $466 million.

This is just a change that you can't see in the chart, just change the total at the top of the page.

So at that time, that has been the only change the board's discussed.

I would pause at this time for any other recommended changes that the board would like to discuss, any other general questions.

I would remind the board that there are no final decisions today.

There will be opportunities to continue to revise the budget before May 5th.

If the board would like to go ahead and approve the proposed budget with the county executives, I recommend an amendment for the transmission planner.

That motion is on the following slide.

All right.

Thank you, Mr. Bowman.

We'll go through.

No questions or additions at this time.

Sure so we have the recommended budget as was introduced by the county executive on February 24th and we have a recommended adjustment that to include a transportation planner funded from the capital budget

And really at this point, I'm just pausing for any discussion or further changes or questions the board would desire.

These are not final decisions.

The board can still amend the budget through the public process before it's adopted on May 5th.

And at this point, it's really the time for the board to ask any final questions or I say final for the proposed budget or any questions.

It would include, T, if you could go to the next slide.

Thank you.

Just include the recommended budget, any staff adjustments, and if there's any further clarification.

I'm sorry, Supervisor Colle, just to clarify, this is simply to approve advertising the budget

to the public.

That is correct.

Certainly board members are holding their town halls and the other public engagement that can happen over the course of the process.

And so there would still be opportunity for supervisors to submit proposed amendments or modifications to this proposed budget if it's approved today, correct?

Correct.

So we just approved the tax rate.

We have that in place.

We have more discussion on the 29th about the federal money.

We're going to have more discussions occurring going forward.

I'm not totally sure why we're approving the budget right now.

My understanding, Mr. Bowman, if I could answer first, then I'll turn it back over to you.

We're not necessarily approving the budget.

The budget itself would be approved at a later date.

Okay, I'm sorry.

I just got a little distracted there.

All right, that's fine with me.

I don't have any questions.

All right, thank you.

I am fine.

All right.

My question is regarding the clerk's office.

When we were doing the original run through of those, I asked the question of where the extra $500,000 was coming from for their budget because they had lost the recordation taxes that the state took away.

There was no answer that came forward that I saw.

And now apparently their request

for supplements for their staff who was in the office the whole time during the pandemic has been denied.

So I just would like to know what other options there are for this or if other board members have anything, any opinion about this or whether this is something we should take up at an upcoming work session.

On the 22nd, I guess is when we could do it then.

Yes, there were a few questions there and I'll take them one at a time and if I apologize if I missed something.

I did not respond to a follow-up on the question about the state recordation tax because I thought it would have been addressed before so I apologize that it was not.

Essentially the clerk of the circuit court is funded in the general fund and so all of the local tax revenue, state revenue, and any other designated revenues kind of go into this one central pot and then it funds all of our services.

The impact of the state's elimination of the state recordation tax does not impact the court operations.

It's just less revenue that comes from the general fund.

And the recommended budget essentially says we don't have that state revenue now, so we just need to rely on other general fund revenue to continue to fund the Clerk of the Circuit Court's operation.

I believe the fiscal year 22 request for the Clerk of the Circuit Court

is recommended to be funded and I'm going to flip through and fact check myself just to make sure I did not misspeak.

That is correct.

They have requested a total budget of $930,453 and that is the recommended amount on page 73 of the document.

So while there is revenue lost to their operation it does not impact the expenditures that are being provided to them.

Now, this is very clear.

It was not the answer that we got before.

So I'm very glad to know that they are made whole by it's the county government that got cut by the state, not really their operations.

And so what the concern is now is refusal to or the disallowance of any

bonuses or something as we did for our fire and rescue and other people who were working hard on the pandemic, his employees are not included in that, even though they're part of the county pay plan.

And can we add, did the sheriff's office get the 2%?

The clerk of this court is included for a 2% salary increase in the fiscal year 22 budget.

Okay.

I believe that is the issue, Mr. Bohm.

I am finished and we, if the board is interested, we can certainly discuss it on Monday.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I would add my voice to the question about the one-time payment to the employees of the clerk's office for consideration.

That is something that we all just learned about right before this meeting.

But subject to that, understanding that further

Changes can be made to the budget.

I'd be glad to read that.

I move that the board authorize staff to advertise for public hearing the fiscal year 22 proposed budget

Second.

Aye.

The motion has been made and seconded.

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes, Ms.

All right.

Mr. Bowman, is there anything more from you?

Yes, that is the only thing.

We'll be back Monday for a discussion on the items we mentioned, the cigarette tax update, transit, and discussion with the voter registration and elections.

March 29th we'll discuss the Federal American Rescue Plan funding.

April 1st is just if needed for this time.

Then April 28th would be a public hearing on the tax rate in the board's proposed budget and then the adoption of the budget on May 5th.

And that concludes my comments unless there's any final questions and we'll still continue to provide the Q&A as the board has been sending those.

Thank you, Mr. Bowman.

I think very clearly there are enough supervisors who would like the issue of one-time payment to the employees of the clerk's office to be addressed.

Yes, thank you.

If I could, Madam Chair, members of the board, just to clarify that that issue would be relevant to all three of the constitutional officers.

They're similarly situated with respect to this issue.

So I just want to clarify for the interest of the board.

And if I could add also, supervisors, this is coming before the board at your first meeting in April, I believe that's April 7.

That's actually when you're going to be appropriating the funds from Fund Balance to support this one-time payment that we've been discussing for a few months.

And it's an FY21 payment.

It's not affecting your FY22 budget.

I did want to clarify that there would be an opportunity at your April

Thank you, Ms.

Birch.

I appreciate, I think we rely upon county staff to let us know the timing on these and we're letting you know that's a matter of our interest, so thank you.

No ma'am, I'm not aware of anything else at this time.

I'll pause for a second and see if any of our other staff members may be aware of anything else that we were supposed to take care of this afternoon.

No, only that on Prophet Road and Polo Grounds Road this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, we're doing a big cleanup.

Thank you.

I have nothing other than our CAC Town Hall tonight with Supervisor Price and tomorrow with the Yancey Advisory Committee at 6.

Thank you.

I have nothing.

Just the Rio District and Whitehall District combined Town Hall on Tuesday, March 23rd at 7 p.m.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Ditto, Supervisor Mallek's comments.

If there's nothing further, then the meeting will adjourn to March 22nd, 2021 at 3 o'clock p.m.

The meeting will be an electronic meeting held pursuant to ordinance number 20-A16, an ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

Information on how to participate in the meeting will be posted on the Albemarle County website, Board of Supervisors homepage.

Mr. Richardson and all other members of the county staff, thank you very much for your informative presentations today, and we look forward to meeting with you again next week.

Thank you.