Board of Supervisors Budget Work Session #3   3/17/2022

and you're live.

All right, thank you Mr. Morris.

Good morning everyone and welcome.

I call to order this March 17, 2022 board meeting from the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with ordinance number 20-16, an ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

The supervisors who are electronically present at this meeting are Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rio District, Supervisor Jim Andrews of the Samuel Miller District, Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, and myself, Supervisor 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.

I would also like to mention that present with us this morning are Mr. Jeff Richardson, our County Executive, Mr. Greg Campner, our County Attorney,

Mr. Travis Morris, our Senior Deputy Clerk, and Ms.

Claudette Borgerson, our Clerk.

At this time, I'd like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Richardson.

Thank you, Mr. Richardson.

Good morning to the chair and the board.

My name is Andy Bowman in the Department of Finance and Budget.

I'm the chief of budget.

I'll start today while our staff has split up the presentation that this is the third work session.

The primary today is proposed to tax rate and a proposed budget for public hearing.

I will share that this will be the third meeting in just eight days.

The board is on the budget work session, plus what I know is a long day for the board yesterday.

So I'll start the day on perhaps a hopeful note that I do not have or anticipate three hours of content today but we'll go ahead and look at where we are on the schedule today and then we do have work sessions scheduled on March 23rd and the 30th and if needed on April 30th.

So going to the next slide today's specific agenda

Before we get to the board's requested action to finalize real estate tax rate for advertisements and a proposed budget for advertisement, there are some updates recommended by county executives and staff.

I want to walk through with the boards for the board's awareness some available reserves should they desire to make changes to the budget either today or you know all the way up into May 4th when the budget is scheduled for adoption.

We also have some time to just hear and allow the board to ask additional questions

of our Community Development Department and Department of Social Services based on feedback at the first work session, and then we'll have the actions coming later.

And after each of these items, I'll plan to pause to give the board a chance for any comments or questions.

So we'll begin first with some county executive updates.

And the way I would characterize these changes is that if these were all things that we knew prior to February 23rd, they would have already been factored into the recommended budget.

This is mostly a timing of when we have learned things, but I want to walk through these one by one just to explain which each of those are.

So first, I have at the top of this slide a state group life insurance rate adjustment.

The county is a benefit provided by the state for a rate set by the state.

It is a approved life insurance program.

In December, we received communication from the state.

There will be a very slight drop in that rate from about 0.15 percentage points.

We then received an update more recently after the recommended budget had been finalized that that rate actually would not be decreasing.

I think this is probably the first time in at least my time in the officers management budget where we received a difference in those two times and we received an explanation from the state

based upon those changes that took place in this general assembly and statewide pool while they're not expecting that rate to drop.

So in short, the budget impact of that is what we thought would be that $83,000 savings that we factored into the budget is now going to be an $83,000 increase that we do need to build back in.

This is a mandated rate by the state and this is one we really do need to reflect in the current budget.

The second item, and I'm actually going to talk about the next three together, was the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority, the Emergency Communications Center, and the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail.

We line up our budget process with our regional partners, both the agencies and other governments, to try and line things up as best we can with the county executive's release of the recommended budget.

But based on the timeline of the different agencies, the information they receive from the state and working with other partners, there are typically some adjustments as we work through the process that tend to be relatively, in the scope of the overall budget, relatively small compared to other changes.

So for these three agencies, this does not reflect any change in the level of service or anything else.

This really just reflects these agencies continuing to work through and amend their budgets.

So we have a decrease for Rivanna Solid Waste Authority and the Albemarle Regional Jail from what we previously thought, which is offset partially by an increase to the Emergency Communications Center.

Again, this is not a real change in services.

It's just better information as those regional agencies that work through their process.

The final item I want to mention on here is this affinity and aid restoration program for a therapeutic docket program.

This is one of several programs that are reviewed by the ABRT process.

This is one that staff went through and looked at the scores based on how agencies are

scored from exemplary to the highest score to solid, which is the second highest score and below.

This particular program was classified as solid and had a recommendation to level funding based upon that.

With an additional review of this, we realized there was a arithmetic error in terms of how the agency's evaluation was calculated and they should have been noted as exemplary instead of solid.

Meaning had that been corrected, they would have been recommended at the time of the recommended budget to receive an additional $2,200.

So I would like to credit the staff who caught that.

But before we could really even look further, they took it upon themselves to really wonder, was this an isolated calculation?

It went back through all of the calculations for the 43 agencies to make sure there were no other places.

We've also considered in the future how we can make sure that we have a tightened up review process and that this doesn't occur in the future.

So this is not a change in interpretation of their scoring.

It simply was just a math issue.

So we would recommend $2,200 to be added to the current recommendation for OAR.

And I do apologize to the board and to OAR that we did not catch this prior to February 23rd.

So with all of these changes, a total increase of $55,000, approximately.

Staff would recommend taking a portion of what we call the reserve of contingencies, which is a contingency that exists whether the board desires to make amendments to the proposed budget, either now or during out the year.

And that would be the funding source for this and still be in a balance of $382,000 in that reserve contingency.

So these are not, we'll ask the board as part of the proposed budget to officially approve these, at least approve them as part of the proposed budget, which again could still change later.

Thank you, Mr. Bowman.

In the interests of expediency, I will look for any hands raised by supervisors at this point.

Seeing none, thank you, Mr. Bowman.

So I'm going to take a moment and talk about available reserves.

The fiscal year 23 recommended budget is balanced, meaning that all available revenues have been programmed.

So if the board desires to add something into the recommended budget, one of three things would need to happen between now and May 4th.

One, additional revenues would need to be identified.

Two, there would need to be a corresponding reduction in an expenditure currently included in the budget.

Or the third option is that something held in reserve could be allocated.

And so this is the one that I want to spend a little more time on, just to educate the board about what flexibility and options they may have.

So first, as I mentioned on the previous slide, we have that reserve contingencies.

The ongoing portion of that is $382,000, which would be available for adjustment.

We also have a one-time amount, and that reserve contingency is totaling $300,000.

We still maintain and actually appropriated in the fiscal year 22 budget is $1.8 million in what we call the Capital Advancing Strategic Priorities Reserve that would be available for just awaiting more direction.

We also have a couple other reserves.

We shared in the first word session a little over a week ago that we do have a $5 million transfer to the Economic Development Fund.

that is really intended to support economic development initiatives in the future, in support of the board's priorities.

That is an area if the board desires something different, could be an area of flexibility.

This is really, $5 million comes from year-end funding that is available from fiscal year 21 that would be programmed in fiscal year 22.

The other items of flexibility out there are going to be discussed more on March 30th at work session number five.

In the American Rescue Plan Act reserve, we did not allocate the full funding.

There is 1.7 that provides some flexibility for the board, as well as we do have a housing fund reserve also planned for discussion that day, and that is going to continue with the Department of Social Services on April 20th in that board meeting where they can talk about some proposals for the housing fund.

Thank you, Mr. Berman.

So these next two items are not anything that I have slides on.

It's really just to give the chance of the board to have further discussion and questions around the community development department and the social services department.

I'll ask our team if you can go ahead and pull down the slides.

There is no content right now, at least from a presentation.

Yesterday afternoon, the board heard from Jody Filardo, our director of community development, and Charles Rapp, our deputy director, about the community development work plan.

I wanted to provide a moment in this work session in case there were any follow-up questions or anything they would like to discuss with Ms.

Delardo.

She's available here.

Thank you, Mr. Bowman.

Again, not seeing any hands raised.

All right.

So for this next item, for the Department of Social Services, I do want to introduce Kathy Dinnick, our Director of Social Services.

The board expressed at the first work session

Ms.

Denick, but just due to the time, we didn't really get into that at the time.

I will ask her to just present a little bit about how she's been here a little over six months or so, maybe closer to seven or eight at this point, but just to share about the need she has seen, her time in social services, and then the board can have any opportunity for questions of Ms.

Denick.

So go ahead, Gaggy.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Terrific news.

Thanks very much for this opportunity to talk a little bit about the background and what influenced the Department of Social Services budget request this year.

I was in the position of helping to craft our budget request after only being here about three months.

Those were rich three months, learning a lot about the county context and learning a lot about BSS.

Now we're not hearing you, Ms.

Demick.

Yes, I did notice some other reactions.

No, you're muted.

Okay, great.

The third phone option worked this time.

Thank you very much for your patience.

I'm sorry about that.

And so what I heard was a very strong interest in providing best practice high quality services.

And I also saw that we were unable to do that, and often we were unable to even meet our state standards because we were facing such dramatic increases in our caseloads, particularly in the eligibility realm, and then increased cases

and dramatically increase the community of need in our child welfare cases.

And so what we surprise you to learn that the staff feel beleaguered and stressed and having a difficult time meeting their day-to-day expectations for their work.

So the budget request that we submitted I think reflects three different kinds of investments.

And the first investment is in the investment of meeting our immediate needs, increasing our capacity to provide the baseline expectations to meet state standards.

That is reflected in the request for the three CPS positions that the board very graciously provided during the mid-year adjustments in December.

and the six eligibility worker positions and the one financial analyst position for the office of housing.

The second category of request reflects an interest in meeting high quality best practice standards and the third category of requests reflects an interest in expansion and capacity building to meet future need.

When faced with a budget request that the department gets to make, we get to make that based on our robust understanding of our needs.

And we make that request largely in a vacuum.

We don't have either the responsibility or the obligation to consider the county's overall needs.

And so we get this opportunity to make a request that says, this is all the stuff we need.

and we don't necessarily have to compare or weigh that against other competing needs and so we trust the county executives team and the finance and budget team to make that determination internally to make the budget request.

When faced with a limited budget, as we all are, I would defer to supporting our immediate needs requests.

and not our high quality performance needs requests or our expansion or capacity building for future needs.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

Seeing no hands raised by supervisors.

And you gotta get that hand up quick with Chair Price.

Thank you.

So I'm going to restate something and then once that's confirmed and I'll go based on that.

So the recommended budget

Yes, we'll go a long way to do that.

I think I can't say for certain that we're able to do that, particularly in the area of eligibility because the expectations and policy context has been shifting so dramatically.

We've been a little bit behind the eight ball for the last two years during the pandemic changes.

and we're anticipating pretty significant unwinding expectations in terms of people coming off caseloads, resuming reviews.

We just don't know what that context is going to look like and it's sort of happening to us right now and so we're always a little bit behind.

It will certainly go a long way to getting us there.

Indeed, I think that the three eligible positions in the financial analyst position that are contained in the budget will certainly go a long way to helping us do that.

So, and this is theoretical at this point, but if we were to give you a chip and say, all right, you get another FTE or another two FTEs, do you continue to just build to strengthen that, what's in the recommended budget to get to the state standard?

Thank you.

I have been scrounging around trying to find the pieces of paper where the details are and I can't find them so I will ask.

So your list that I wrote down just now was the three positions already on in mid-year and six eligibility plus one analysts that are on the bubble, shall we say.

And then later it was mentioned three eligibility people.

Yes ma'am, we requested six eligibility positions in our internal request for our budget request and the county executive's budget includes three eligibility workers and the financial analyst position.

That's the distinction between those numbers, sorry.

There are already three which are on staff already.

If I could make sure it's clear that the three positions recommended in the County Executive's budget, one is to start on July 1 and two are to start on January 1.

We staggered these positions like we did other positions in the budget.

So just want to make sure that that's clear that the part of what Ms.

Demick is

is offering as a part of her priorities is a preference for having those two start on July 1st rather than January 1st.

Thank you.

I'll let Mr. Walker is correct, and also the housing financial analyst is also scheduled to be a mid-year start of January.

So that is another position if the more desired could be accelerated.

Thank you.

Yes, so just so I'm clear, so again, the question or the answers that Andy sent out yesterday under social services, so the three eligibility workers, I'm just clarifying, six were requested, you got three, and then there were the other three that were unfunded, and that's what you said, that if I had the CHIP, I'd get another eligibility worker.

Yes, sir.

Got it, confirming that.

So now based on just what was clarified, the July 1 start and the January 1 start.

And it sounded like two positions were being held until then.

Doesn't really matter what the positions are.

Given the situation with retention and recruitment.

and be fully understanding why we do these staggered start dates.

It helps with budgeting and making sure the resources are used and it's a creative way to spread the resources.

But given the situation with recruitment, I presume that if we're in September and we've got who we want or need or the need rises and we need to make the hire,

As a budget management strategy, I think with the Office of Management and Budget and the County Executive's Office, if the Department of Social Services were to work in the recruitment of the initial July positions and felt like they had candidates

I mean I'm guessing this is part of the wiggle room where these funds come from if it gets accelerated is like lapse factor.

areas like that, I would only get into those weeds.

But I mean, this is based on the presentation, the annual report in my concerns here is that this is a, I mean, we have a lot of departments that don't want to make it sound like other places aren't under stress.

But we want to make sure the resources are here, given the increase in acuity that I saw in the report, not just the increase in cases.

So it's a double hit.

Even if the cases stay the same and the acuity rises, then that

creates the resources that are needed on our end.

Multiply that by the stress on the staff, et cetera.

This is a high area of concern to be able to go, all right, let's make sure we're getting there with the resources.

If we're not ready to hire, put positions in play July 1, I understand scheduling them for January 1, but I just wanna make sure that we've got the wiggle room to make this happen as CACI needs it.

to make sure this department, I think Albemarle has always looked at the state standard, but Albemarle County standards have always been designed to be beyond the state standard.

So when I hear that we're trying to meet the state standard, that's concerning.

So let's get it.

Let's get to that mile marker first.

Thank you.

I will just add on to that from the client person's perspective.

As the federal programs begin to wind down and everybody's being weaned off the support elements which they have had for two years, I expect there will be an even greater uptick on the need for people in your office.

So are there also operational advantages regarding recruitment and training if you have a slightly larger number of new people coming basically all at once so they all get jump started about the same time?

Thank you.

Yes, there certainly are some benefits for us for starting staff all at one time for the training capacity issue that they have to have several months worth of training if they come to us with no experience.

Thankfully, in the eligibility world, we have been actually able to recruit fairly quickly and super qualified staff from other jurisdictions, frankly.

And so we are our concerns around recruitment really are in our child welfare realm.

Thank you.

I just didn't want to miss an opportunity to first acknowledge that the budget strategy this year of spacing the filling of or the adding of positions over the course of the year is both from a funding standpoint and also the practical aspect of dealing with a very uncertain employment market and

that we still have vacancies that we're trying to fill.

You've heard some of that already in some of the previous conversations, including yesterday in community development.

but the market is not affecting all positions the same.

So I wanted to at least acknowledge that so that Kaki can speak to the market for eligibility workers which is perhaps different from the market for child protective services workers and how then that might inform a consideration of an earlier hire for those eligibility workers which are now slated for January 1st.

Again, this is very intentional to, for example, to recommend the police officer positions in conjunction with the schools that are open and available to them, as well as the fire rescue positions.

And you heard yesterday in community development about the challenges they're having filling some positions.

Thank you, Ms.

Walker.

Yes, thank you Ms.

Dimick for your presentation and from what I understand what Supervisor Galloway would say is that if we do find qualified people, let's say we find three qualified, super qualified, to put it into your words Ms.

Dimick, in July, maybe those are the people we hire because then it will save training in the long run

because maybe in January the two of those would not be eligible or available.

So I think we were looking at, I think Supervisor Galloway was getting at the point of being flexible that if you find the right people and you need them

than to be able to go ahead and hire them prior to January.

If you don't, then that's fine.

If you don't need them at that time, that's fine.

But if you do, I'm looking for flexibility and I think Supervisor Galloway was also regarding recruitment.

Thank you.

I'm sorry, I couldn't find my unmute or my hand.

I think Kaki Lang did a minute ago to say something or to respond and I'm just wanting to make sure she had a chance, if she wanted to, to respond.

I was hoping she could address the question about the market for eligibility.

There you go.

I will just reiterate that we have been fortunate to find eligibility staff who are qualified and trained largely from other jurisdictions who are seeking a change in their employment status and frankly want to come work for Albemarle DSS, which is really fortunate for our eligibility staff.

At least our recent history suggests that we would be able to hire fairly rapidly, certainly more rapidly in this unusual market than we would for child welfare positions.

Thank you.

This morning's not going to be the time to get the answer to this question, but it's one that maybe can come back and it may be outside of budget season.

You know, there's two and then I would guess multiple departments that for various reasons that stress on the job is a big deal.

One way to deal with stress if it's workload or capacity is to get more people in to be able to handle the workload so the workload is spread more evenly so that one person has a smaller caseload, if you will.

But even with a normal caseload, there are obviously positions that are high-stress jobs.

and then given other circumstances of what we've been coming out of for the two years being it's been a high stress environment for everybody I think I'd like to hear what does a county do as an organization and if it's resource related then maybe it needs to be part of the budget conversation but what do we do

plans.

But all right, we attack it one way in helping get additional people into the department so that the workloads is spread more evenly.

But given the current environment and the current situation in an area like DSS, I'd imagine this is the place for our first responders, public health, and even community development from a workload standpoint.

Long-winded way of saying what do we do as an organization to help folks cope with stress that is the nature of either workload or acuity of what they are dealing with on a day in, day in basis, day in, day out basis.

Supervisor Galloway, thank you for the question.

I think it's very timely.

We also have on the call today

Mia Coltrane, and I'm going to look for Mia.

Hopefully I see her on mute.

Yep, she's close behind.

She's got her green jacket on today, so that's a nice job on your part, Mia.

Happy St.

Patrick's Day.

So I'm going to talk first, really just as an introduction to your question, and then I want Ms.

Coltrane as our new human resources director for local government, I want her to step forward and talk a little bit more in depth as a subject matter expert.

For the work that we're doing, several questions I heard Supervisor Galloway say.

The first one is that we do have across our organization with over 900 folks with departments coming and going and going in a lot of different directions.

We've got certain job classes that just inherently based on the type of work that these people do, it's a significant amount of stress.

And so we're coming out of a two year pandemic and we are

looking at what is new normal, not just for local government but as a working world.

What is new normal and what does work-life balance look like in today's world?

So the first thing I think about is our key relationship with our employee assistance program, which is a human resources benefit

It's a normal benefit that employers have.

And so Mia, can you talk a minute about how that works, how EAP works for all of our employees and all of our employees and families in the organization?

I sure can.

Thank you.

Good morning, all, and thank you for the opportunity.

Our EAP is available to all of our employees and their family members, and they have so many visits they can receive.

But the beautiful thing about the EAP is they also provide training to staff.

We're working with getting some of that training incorporated into our day-to-day functions.

So it would help kind of, we can't take away any outliers, but we can sure help make the working environment a little bit more inviting because you have to understand most of our staff are at work more than they're at home.

So we want to make sure when they come into the working environment, it is pleasant, but they do have the opportunity to call to get services for whether it be Family Matter, teenagers, and if anybody's had a teenager, they understand that nuance.

And then

Just the day-to-day stress.

But then we also have the vicarious trauma aspect, just the things you hear in your job.

They have the resources for that as well.

But there's another beautiful benefit that a supervisor, if they see an employee in distress, they can call and contact the EAP for that.

That employee says, hey, I need to refer a person.

This is the background.

And then they can talk to that employee to have them go seek the EAP assistance.

So those resources are there.

And then another beautiful thing is some of the elements and just some mechanisms will be incorporated in all of our upcoming training.

So, Supervisor Galloway, that would be one key piece and that's a formal piece of our benefits program that is managed and facilitated through human resources.

It's really important that we keep those services front and center in front of our employees.

And this board will remember that back in 2021, there was a point in time where Doug and Trevor and the team, the COVID-19 team, put some data in front of this board that showed that, first of all, in a normal year, EAP usage would be about 10% of the organization.

So it's fair to say, how many people use EAP?

In normal times, about 10% of your organization will access EAP services.

During COVID, at one point in time, we had data to suggest that that number had doubled.

And so we saw usage go from 10% to 20% in the organization.

That's a good thing.

It's a good thing on a lot of levels.

But first of all, it means that our employees understand it.

Our employees and families see it as a benefit.

And they were connecting it to the stress, Supervisor Galloway, that you were speaking of.

Now let's talk for a minute about telework, Mia.

The human resources in our organization has worked hard

to identify a post-pandemic formal telework policy for our organization.

And it's not a one-size-fits-all approach because our departments, while they have commonality, they have as much or more differences than they are common with how they provide their services, where people reside, how people work.

But Mia and her team have worked with our managers and our organization to put together a telework policy.

Yes, sir.

The telework policy we have right now, it was already in place.

And so what we are looking at, a couple of things, is making sure each department is identifying positions that are telework eligible.

So as we maintain that the hybrid type work style, not all jobs are telework eligible.

That's just the nature of what we do because we are a boots on the ground organization.

But for those positions that can be, they do have that opportunity to telework so many days a week.

And we have a policy in place to mandate or not mandate

But oversee how that happens, how performance is done, how meetings are done.

All of those things are in place for us already.

So we do have that functionality, and we will continue that.

And especially with going through all of our positions upcoming, we'll make sure that all of those positions are identified.

Chair Price, those are just two pieces of the program of what I would refer to as workforce stabilization.

One would be related to the AP.

The other would be the whole world of what are your hours?

How do you work your hours?

Can you work from home?

Do you work strictly from work?

The final thing I would say, and it's all really I've got to offer, and then I've asked Mia if she's got anything else to add, would be that

The study that we will provide through the consultant back to the board next year will look at our pay and compensation strategy, it will look at how we pay jobs, and we will be looking for not a one size fits all approach, but we will be looking for the company to come in and give us strategies to consider as a local government

that frankly when we were dumped into one big pot with schools we were we and you know they're 75% of the pile we're 25%

You know, no fault to anyone, but there wasn't a dedicated effort to look at local government and say, what does local government need to remain competitive, to hire and retain the best people, and also to make sure that people have a decent work-life balance.

And so we expect that company will help us with that.

But there's also other things with Mia bringing her HR department online and having subject matter experts in a wide variety of areas.

Mia will be able to offer our organization things that maybe we've not ever thought of before as it relates to helping our people stay balanced.

No, you've covered everything, but I just want to reiterate with having people that are really focused in this area, we're really not going to, the comm study is going to help us get there, but I have people in place now that can start doing some preliminary work and take what we have today.

and incorporate training, incorporate the way staff address certain situations and flexible work schedules and giving guidance in that area, specifically with our policy updates.

Thank you both.

This is more of a comment than a question really, but I know this board for a long time has been very concerned about social services.

I would just put as a tickler to suggest that we are all looking for flexibility when it comes to social services and their ability to do their work for retention and recruitment.

All of us want that, I know that.

It would be good if we could have a tickler in the early fall, perhaps, Jeff, to come back to us with an update from social services from Kaki and Mia.

I'd really like to have that in our minds so that we can see how this is playing out in the early fall.

I mean, reasonable amount of time, but I'd just like to have this discussion again so that we're kind of following it and we know what's happening.

Is it important to codify in a way, I mean to, as part of the budget, put that hiring flexibility in there that Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley was describing?

If the three perfect people show up in July, extra, you know, should we grab them now?

Rather than have to wait to come back for board approval, if we can somehow put that

Mr. Richardson?

I'm sorry, we click and sometimes it reverses back, I apologize.

So I guess Ms.

Mallek's question, or kind of asking for clarification, I guess it might be a good time for us to summarize what we think we're hearing from the board this morning.

on social services related to the budget.

I've heard several board members say flexibility.

I've heard several board members, it appeared to support moving the positions that were slated for mid-year to July and for the budget office to work with DSS and the county executive's office to make sure that we build that flexibility in to where if we need to move her to July with her positions that we do that.

Andy, am I being consistent with what you've heard that we can do that in our budget process?

We can move her positions to July?

If the board wanted to go ahead and take action to accelerate those positions to July 1,

The impact for the eligibility workers, those two positions in January to accelerate the net cost.

I say net because there's expense, but there's also some state revenue.

There will be about $44,000 that we take to accelerate those eligibility worker positions on July 1st.

The housing financial analysts that were to be accelerated to July 1st would be approximately $28,000 of net impact.

So if the board desired those total impacts of about $72,000, I'm using approximate quick math in the board meeting.

That could be one option and that could be funded by the reserve contingencies.

The alternative if the board just wanted to kind of watch and wait how this played out, this could also be addressed as a mid-year adjustment.

Supervisor Galloway?

Yeah, and I think we can make the budget move if we decide to do that.

And then I think that that should be put into a list as we continue to work through the budget to decide because obviously, if we do that, then where does that you said from reserve contingencies in this case, but there might be other places or other departments where we want to want to do that sort of thing.

So I think it should definitely stay on for an additional conversation, but after we've had a chance to see if there are other FTEs that supervisors are interested in adding.

But I also have confidence that, or at least I'm hoping Khaki has confidence, to hear that, look, if these positions come to the point where we need to hire them, even if they're slated for January 1,

Whether it comes from reserve for contingencies now in the budget book, or it comes from reserve for contingencies in September, it's there to give us the ability to do what we need to do when we need to do it.

And I'm hoping that if we solidify that by putting it into this budget that way, great.

If supervisors all decide to do that, but otherwise, even if we don't, we know that we can pull that off if needed.

and nobody should hesitate just because of it being slated for budgeting purposes for January 1 in regards to these positions.

Thank you, Mr. Vice Calaway.

Mr. Richardson, I believe from the reaction of the board that we have great confidence that you and your staff can help us to know when we need to make any budget adjustments and are demonstrating our great support

For all of the departments right now, we are talking about social services.

I think it does.

Andy, I'm looking at you because if you're clear on it, then that means we're going to meet the board's expectations or not misstep.

And I look at Ms.

Demick, is she okay at this point with the conversation?

Heck, are you okay with it?

And we're clear.

Chair Price, I know we've got other items and I promise I don't want to be long-winded here but also Supervisor Galloway's question is much appreciated because we've spent lots of time working diligently on workforce stabilization.

That doesn't mean that we're

that we're leading the pack with employers on how we're doing things.

We've got challenges like other employers.

But one final thing I wanted to say, Ned, to the board about this that I think is very relevant is the work that we're doing with core systems modernization.

When you talk about work-life balance and you talk about creating really

a work life and being an employer of choice where people come to work and they say, I like my job and I like working there.

Core systems modernization work is a key part of that, especially when you look at millennials and Gen Xers.

And what I mean when I say that is that those folks come to come to the workplace with strong technology skills.

because they've grown up in technology world.

And so when they see systems that are broken or systems that are heavy manual or systems that are prone to errors, sometimes employees get frustrated with that because they don't think the employer is keeping pace with the world of technology and using it to work smarter and more efficiently.

And it's a funny joke, but it's true that in the world of recruitment,

Gen Xers and Millennials will take a look at what your technology is and oftentimes ask the question if they've got better technology in their home they'll say can I just bring my computer to work because I don't want to work on your slow systems because it's very frustrating and so our core systems modernization work to be to be fast nimble

across departmental sharing information, being able to move fast on things that you can really automate and move fast on.

This is efficiencies, it's saving time, it's saving money in the future, but it's also a workforce retention tool of using modern technology to be able to work quickly where it's appropriately

set up for advancing customer service, being fast on our feet.

So the core systems modernization work that really should have been put out there in the broad sense of us trying to do better and that includes making it easier for our workforce.

Thank you and I'll ask our team to pull up the presentation again.

We'll next move to setting the tax rate for advertisement.

I have just a few slides to walk through where we've been with the board and also for the public and had they not tuned in before.

The board will be asked to set the real estate property tax rate for advertisement.

The recommended rate in the current budget is 85.4 cents per $100 of assessed value, but it's the same as calendar year 21.

Each penny on the real estate tax rate generates approximately $2.38 million in collateral revenue.

The lowered or effective rate will be 78.8 cents per $100 of success value.

And what that really refers to is what would the real estate rate be if the impact of that 8.4% total reassessment change was flat.

I'll also note that we have included in the recommended budget the tax relief for elderly and disabled programs.

which has been updated.

The form of approval that has not come forward but the budget reflects the anticipation of that approval based on the board's February 16th direction.

On the next slide are the personal property rates.

These rates apply to individual vehicles.

So I will now turn it back to the board for any questions and discussion.

This would be the motion.

It's written based on the county executive's recommended budget, but if the board were to desire an alternative motion, it can just be, you know, modifying those dollars shown on the slide.

All right, thank you, Mr. Bowman.

And for this board, we will go through our order.

I don't have any additional questions or comments at this point.

Thank you, Mr. Bowman.

Thank you.

Mr. Galloway's comment reminded me that I did not mention, I believe the board has heard this, but when they advertise the tax rate, this does set the maximum.

And if the board were to revisit that decision, they would not be able to go higher, though they could adopt the rate advertised or go lower.

So I apologize for excluding that from my initial comments.

Thank you, Mr. Bell.

Supervisor Andrews?

Yes, I appreciate that clarification and don't have any further questions on this at this time.

Thank you.

Supervisor McKeel?

Yes, thank you.

I don't have any further questions.

I am supportive of what we're offering and recognize that if this is what passes, then we find in our budget what we need to do.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

No questions.

Just the presentation throughout this budget process has been very clear and I appreciate it.

Two worries.

Well, one question and one worry.

The question, effective tax rate, I just want to make sure

That is going to be different for each individual place.

It's not necessarily that everybody would have the same impact because of that range of assessments.

And if that's just opening a can of worms, don't go there.

The effective tax rate looks at the total county general fund revenues.

and the 8.4% reassessment in total, certainly individual residential or residential versus commercial or different parts or just at an individual basis throughout the county and very wildly so.

Everyone's experience in terms of the impact can be different, just as it will for personal property.

Thank you that gets that clear and the other worry is that the state of course is not doing their budget yet and maybe they will make some move before May 4th but otherwise we're going to have to deal with that uncertainty probably in the summer and as I've said before one of my most painful experiences in 2008 was having the state decide in August that they weren't going to send seven million dollars to the schools that they had promised in April and so everybody had to try to scramble around and figure that out and

So I really appreciate all the effort we've done to get to here and hopefully the rest will be as predicted and smoother sailing.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

And I have no questions.

My only comment would be a great expression of appreciation for the work Mr. Richardson, that you, Mr. Bowman, and everyone has put

also supported.

I can leave it here.

Bea, you want to go ahead?

Sure.

I move that the board advertise the following rates for public hearing for the 2020 tax year, 0.854 per $100 of assessed value for real estate, public service, property, and manufactured homes.

$3.42 per $100 of assessed value for tangible personal property, $3.42 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 merchants

All right, thank you.

Do we have a second?

When we have a second, any further discussion?

Seeing none, if the clerk will call the roll.

Ms.

Rapisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

All right, thank you.

We will move next to approve the fiscal year 23 proposed budget for advertisement.

As we've discussed, this can continue to change until the board is requested to adopt on May 4th.

You know, not counting all of the work that the board did in the fall leading to this, there's been at this point, I believe, approaching about nine plus hours with the board in public meetings since February 23rd.

I've gone through these recommendations from proposals.

Plus, we will have just the time the board has spent individually working through the budget, which is clear from their questions and what we've been posting on the website as we've been working with the board.

So just to recap very quickly with what we've done to date,

We started looking at the total all funds budget totaling approximately $565 million, which is the county's general funds, our school fund, capital and debt funds, and any other grant revenues.

At the first work session on the next slide, we discussed general fund revenues, including general property taxes, which I just hit the highlights of on a couple slides.

We also spent time talking about state revenue and what we know to date and where our vulnerability may be as we continue to watch this in the future.

After that, we moved on the next slide to general fund expenditures.

Really, over the rest of the first board session and the second board session, the board of supervisors heard from staff and worked our way around this donut chart to go through each chapter of the budget to provide information and some clarifications and anything else the board was interested in.

On Monday, we heard from the school division.

We also talked about the joint capital program.

And some of the example projects that are listed on this slide begin spanning everything from projects currently underway to those that will be requested for appropriation to 23 from those that are planned to extend into fiscal year 27.

So with that, we just have a budget amendment on the next slide.

At this time, we heard a board comfort with approval of the county executive recommendations from earlier today.

And I have on the slide board record adjustments, if any, at this time.

We do not have any at this time.

However, we do have on our list to bring back and continue to monitor the Department of Social Services question or any other adjustments that the board may desire to make between now and May 4th.

So while that's not factored in today, that option inflexibility doesn't meet for the board.

So with that, we go to the next slide to go to the motion to approve the fiscal year 23 budget.

And I'll turn it over to the board.

And I just did notice Mr. Camptier has taken himself off mute, so I didn't know if he had anything to add.

All right, thank you.

It's the board.

We again will go around through our order.

I don't have questions here, but I do have some questions that I'm throwing out to Andy at some point for additional answers.

So that'll come later, I guess.

I'm asking for the opportunity to do that after we get past the motions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

No additional questions at this time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Supervisor McKeel?

I'm fine.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Supervisor Mallek?

None from me right now, thank you.

All right, thank you.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley?

No questions here, I support the motion.

All right, and again I have no questions, but again I'd like to express appreciation to everyone from the board, county staff, for the work that's gone into preparing this very complex budget.

I move that the Board authorize staff to advertise for public hearing the FY23 proposed budget, which is the same as the County Executive's recommended budget, including any staff recommended changes and any additional amendments made by the Board of Supervisors.

We have a motion and a second.

Any further discussion?

Seeing none, if the Clerk will call the roll.

Bea LaPisto-Kirtley, Ms.

Mallek, Ms.

McKeel, Ms.

Price, Mr. Andrews, Mr. Galloway.

Thank you, Board.

Yep, thank you Andy.

The questions for the, they came out yesterday for the police department.

Let me just restate so I understand.

135 is where we're at.

This is the staffing ratio.

County standard is, our county standard has been one five, so thank you for reminding me that.

And the state average is around

172.

This isn't for now but I can't if somebody could remind me what drove or what what was the rationale for the one five is our standard and then um what's the math that if we added if we added one FTE or one police officer what does that move the 135 I'm trying to equate

To move that number, how many positions does it take to move the number?

That's one area.

The second area, since it's a formula piece for the DSS, I don't know if it's calculated the same way we were talking about state standard to meet the current recommended budget is designed to get us to the state standard.

I don't, my gut's telling me it's not the same type of formula

to figure that out, but maybe it is.

Meaning, well, is one and a half per how many you have in population work in the DSS world?

But if it does, I'd like to know where we're at and where we're designed to be based on this recommended budget.

So similar question to the police, if it's a comparable apples to apples type of comparison, or if it's some other formula, then let us know that.

But when I hear we're attempting to get to standard,

and we're talking about staffing that makes it sound like it's similar to what's going on in that police ratio.

So I'd be curious about that.

And then this is a follow-up from the school's conversation the other day.

I've been thinking about the response to my question about the $3 million for workforce stabilization in the school division.

I need more information on that.

I need more color commentary.

I need some examples.

They talked about how well it would be used now, but then stuff gets rolled into future years.

So I just need more information to understand that answer.

And then in similar fashion,

response to what's the backup plan if the state doesn't come through with the CIP dollars for the schools.

The response is, well, we'll have to get back together and discuss that.

So I need more color commentary on that as well.

I just need more information.

Thank you.

Do any other supervisors have any comments at this point?

Seeing no hands.

I just have a final slide.

We'll be back on March 23, Wednesday, to discuss athletic fields.

And then the following week on the 30th for ARPA housing initiatives and the Boys and Girls Club.

We do have time, if needed, on April 6 before the board's regular meeting that remains available should the board desire that to be identified in the future.

That concludes my comments.

I think, again, the board

Thank you, Mr. Bea.

Board, do we have any final comments or matters from the board?

No additional matters.

I just really appreciate Andy getting these questions, the answers to our many questions back to us in such a timely manner.

Totally agree with the previous comments and no further questions.

Supervisor McKeel?

No questions, just a super job.

Thanks to all the staff and Andy for the work so far on our budget.

It's just been outstanding.

Thank you.

I have no other questions.

So many were offered by people in the meeting and from the public and just the group effort results in so much better information that I can do by myself looking at the book and I appreciate the process.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

I too appreciate the process and I thank you very much for making it clear, concise, and understandable.

A lot of work went into the budget process that you did for us and that's really appreciated.

Thank you.

And I can only echo that and I think one of the most significant things is how

We have not been inundated with questions from the public.

I think the process has been transparent.

I think the information that Mr. Richardson, you and your staff have presented to the board and what we've been able to ask questions has been able to answer the questions that our public may have.

Yes, and following up on that, having the availability of the meetings online has allowed so many more people to be in the process, but not in the room all the way through.

And I think that provides a lot of calm and confidence when they hear the discussions for themselves.

And then one last thing, Mr. Richardson, anything further from you not on the agenda?

Alright.

The board, we will adjourn to March 23, 2022 at 3 o'clock p.m.

This will be an electronic meeting 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.

Thank you, everyone, and we'll go on to the rest of our day.