Board of Supervisors Budget Work Session #5   3/29/2023

Thank you, Ms.

Jones.

And again, good afternoon and welcome, everyone.

I'm pleased to call to order this March 29, 2023, 3 o'clock PM meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors.

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

Also at the table with us this afternoon is our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson,

our Deputy County Executive, Mr. Doug Walker, Deputy County Executive, Mr. Trevor Henry, County Attorney, Mr. Steve Rosenberg, as well as from the Finance and Budget Departments,

from the Human Resources Department.

We also have supporting staff in the back which I will allow them to introduce themselves at the time they are called.

We also have our County Clerk Ms.

Claudette Borgerson present with us and I also want to thank and welcome Officer Dana Reeves and Andy Munsey

The Albemarle County Police Department for the service that you provide to all of us every day and keeping us safe and we thank you for your service.

We have added to the agenda item number four and that will be from the board matters not listed on the agenda authorization for the grant.

for the chair to sign a letter of support for a school construction assistance program grant application revenue commitment.

And we also do have an item on the consent agenda, which I am going to pull because I have a quick question.

And that is item 2.1, schedule a public hearing to consider the adoption of an ordinance to modify the real estate tax relief for the elderly

and disabled and Mr. Richardson I'm pulling that because I have one question I fully support the philosophy and the theory and everything behind this but I do have a question as to whether there will be any sort of a upper dollar limit on the expense or cost to the county of this as opposed to it being sort of if you will in the unlimited

I would like to ask that question.

I'm not sure who would be the proper person to answer it.

Thank you, Chair Price.

I'll ask our Chief Financial Officer, Ms.

Yeah, sure.

Chair Price, Nelsie Burch, Chief Financial Officer.

So what we try to do here, I will answer your question first by saying there is no cap at this time.

What we're trying to do with increasing it from $200,000 for net worth up to $250,000 in the public hearing

notification only so that we can actually docket this on the 19th when we were planning to have it come before you anyway.

So you have the ability to look at both income and net worth.

We wanted both of those options in front of you.

Right now we're estimating it based on what we've learned at about $125,000 of cost to the county if we expanded to the net worth, increasing the net worth from 200,000 to 250.

That's in addition to the already $125,000 cost to increase the income level.

But at this point in time, given the complexity of trying to put in a cap administratively plus working with, we need to continue to work with the county attorney's office to determine what we're able to do that's been allowed for us to do as a county in the state of Virginia, we still are working through that.

We will have that answer to when we have this public hearing.

We'll make sure we understand the legalities, what we can and can't do with caps.

Thank you, Ms.

Birch.

That answers my question.

Let me just check with the board to see if any supervisors may also have questions on this item.

Supervisor Galloway?

No, thank you.

McKeel, Supervisor McKeel, Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley, Supervisor Andrews, Supervisor Mallek.

Thank you very much, really appreciate it.

With that, I would ask if there's a motion by the board to move to schedule a public hearing to consider the adoption of an ordinance to modify the real estate tax relief for the elderly and disabled.

All right, I heard from Supervisor Andrews for the motion and I believe Supervisor Mallek for the second.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

Mr. Andrews?

No.

Yes.

Yes, I will.

Thank you for the introduction.

We can go to the next slide.

Just to orient us to where we are, last week we met on transit work session number four.

Today is work session number five where we will focus the first half on workforce stabilization.

We also have some planned discussion for some fuel investments and the other items the board may wish to bring up in the second half of the meeting.

After then we can see the work sessions ahead and plans in April and May.

On the next slide, just to rewind just where we've been, this is a slide the board has seen several times, we've been using it in town halls in the last week as well to really explain of the roughly $40 million in general fund revenue growth, where are those increased revenues going and why?

Starting in the upper left, we heard from the school board earlier in March and the board had time to engage with them about their funding request.

The middle line of schools capital and general government capital, that was at that same work session.

Moving up to the upper right-hand corner in workforce stabilization, there is a $12.5 million increase, most of which we discussed across two work sessions already, and that will continue at today's meeting.

Last week, we spoke about the largest portion of partner entities increasing, going in-depth with transit.

But again, today is really that workforce stabilization on the next slide.

And one final reference from the board for a slide they have seen before.

Sorry, next slide.

This was a slide we saw all the way back on work session one.

We talked about the $12.5 million increase.

These are all of the items that go into this.

It includes the market increase, the increase to the county's health insurance, increases for positions in police and social services and other areas.

But the one thing that we did not spend much time on yet is what I've bolded in the middle, the $1.4 million for implementation of classification and compensation study.

So that is one topic that we'll spend a lot of depth on today as well as walking through all four objectives of the strategic plan goal number six.

Good afternoon.

As Andy introduced me, I'm Kristi Shifflett, the director of performance and strategic planning.

I'm really excited to talk to you today about our workforce.

We're, as you see before you, the items that we're going to cover today are really related to Goal 6 under Workforce and Customer Service and so when we bucketed these items, we're going to talk through the compensation implementation plan, our staff development and wellness programming,

6.3 is about our modernized business systems and our projects and work in there and then lastly we'll talk about office space planning which you've seen before but we'll cover one more time as it's wrapped into goal six as it relates to our employees so we'll move forward so you've seen this visual this is in our strategic plan I want to spend a minute to focus on this image and call out a few things for you

You see at the end of the slide Workforce and Customer Service in the blue.

And what I want to call out is the blue line that wraps around each goal that you see before you.

And this is intentional.

This is to connect to the fact that our workforce is really wrapped around our ability to progress every single one of our other strategic plan goals.

And as this board is well aware, the stability of our workforce is going to be very important for our ability to progress the strategic plan.

So you can stay here for a minute.

Thank you.

So to solidify the importance of this work and our commitment to our employees, you'll recall the August 24 work session that you spent time with us.

And we talked a lot about our employees.

And you'll remember the presentation about our five generations at work from Dr. Antoinette Allen

And so today you'll hear some of these trends about how we are not only a changing workforce and landscape in our generations and our community, but also post-pandemic.

The world at work is quite different and we are constantly having to adjust and modify the way that we're used to working, but also be able to protect our employees and provide them a great place to work.

So this is a slide that I wanted to show you all.

This is an image that I pulled from an article from the International County Management Association.

And it calls out really all of the things that kind of go into the complexities of workplace culture.

And what I want to point out here is how it's rarely one thing.

So you'll hear this theme today.

We will hear about Compton Class, but it's also about performance management, opportunities for growth, leadership and management training.

We created the new HR department.

This board was very supportive and we thank you very much for our ability to have a local government focused HR.

One of the things that that has done has allowed us to be able to not only do a system, which you'll hear about, but it's also allowed us to focus on our employees and our workforce and the things that we need, the benefits that we need to be carrying, and really the data that we've been able to pull based on that work.

So I want to say thank you again.

Our HR department has worked very hard in the past year.

We have hired all new staff in that department.

They are just hitting their one year anniversary this month and you're going to hear a lot about the work that they've done and the intentionality that the whole organization has had in improving our HR work.

So you'll recognize this slide.

You saw this early in the work sessions.

And this just calls out that while this is a budget work session, today is not just about new funds and new opportunities, but it's also about what we intend to do with the current staff and the current work planning and the current funding strategies that we already have in place so that we can identify and share with you all of our intentionality about

how to put that staff and that funding into action for our workforce.

So this is really, we're going to move into the total compensation implementation plan and you are aware that we hired Gallagher Consulting Company to do an outside study.

We're going to go through the results and recommendations today but really this is focused on that 1.4 million in the budget request that focuses on our strategies to implement this and we're going to explain

It will include a new pay scale that's based on market data.

It will also talk about identified positions and I want to point out that we will discuss as you go through this information and you're able to ask your questions and get comfortable with the information that we have.

We also do want to talk about our ability to implement this in May of this year.

We have the funding available and Mr. Richardson will follow back up with you on that after we go through the information.

And lastly, this is really important and connected to performance management.

While we want to ensure that we are at market and we are taking care of our staff and we are being competitive, we also need to call out the importance of performance management processes and you'll hear a little bit about that as well.

So I'm going to hand this off to Ms.

Jessica Rice who is our Deputy Director of HR.

She has really spearheaded this study with me

and the other HR staff and she's done an amazing job and so she's the best one to walk you through this compensation information.

Good afternoon.

As Christy said, I'm Jessica Rice, Deputy Director of Human Resources.

I began work here with the county in March, so I just reached one year here and have been intimately involved in this project since day two, I think.

So I'm happy to present to you all of the information that we have for you in Gallagher's findings, their results, their recommendations.

and we're going to walk you through all of it right now.

When we first contracted with Gallagher, we came to them with some objectives on behalf of the county and on behalf of the staff and I have them listed up here.

Primarily, the objectives were to set a foundation for the county to be able to set a baseline of where the salary should be reflective of the market.

First of all, they were tasked with conducting a comprehensive total compensation analysis and review to look at how competitive we are.

with our market, with some of our competitors, some of them private sector, some of them public sector, some of them are universities.

Another thing that they were tasked with is looking at the way we classify our positions, the system as a whole, and how we are slotting them into different pay grades, assigning salaries for folks, and hierarchies and reporting structure.

They were asked to look at that, again, in comparison with how other local governments and other public sector organizations

As Christy mentioned we did ask them to look at our pay scales and our whole salary structure to see if it reflected the same things they were seeing in other localities and if it made sense for the work that we do.

And then finally, we also asked them for some tools and guidance on how do we sustain all of this work once it's completed because it's not just a snapshot in time, but how do we keep it up?

We need a lot of money for this project and for these recommendations.

We want the HR department to be able to carry it forward for years.

So a compensation and classification study in this particular project is a little bit different than what maybe had been done by the county before.

There's actually two components to this.

And the first piece of it is a compensation study where it's strictly looking at data and analyzing data from all kinds of sources.

And I'm going to talk about that in a few minutes.

And they're comparing our salaries and our structures and our philosophy to this data.

So it's a lot of statistical work.

The other thing was a classification assessment, which is the part that maybe hadn't been looked at as closely previously.

And that's the piece where we're actually looking at our positions.

Do we have too many job titles?

Are they classified correctly?

How is our reporting structure?

Do we have internal compression?

For the compensation study, this is actually speaking to the data analysis.

There were two ways that they collected data for us.

This first one is through what's called a custom survey and we have identified 23 organizations to be the county's competitive market.

What you will see on this slide is that there are cities and counties, the UVA is on there, and these are the localities that most closely represent

Our size, the work that we do, our recruiting pipelines, and our functions.

And then also, these are some of our neighbors.

So there's 23 of them on here.

We did get response from 20 of them.

There are three that did not respond.

They chose not to participate.

UVA was one of them.

Augusta County and Chesterfield County also declined to provide information.

This actually, I just wanted to say, this list has changed some from what was used in previous years where it was very, it was much smaller and more narrow focus.

And so we've actually identified that we have folks coming in from all over the Commonwealth and people are leaving to go to other places in the Commonwealth as well.

The other source of data came from what's called, these are just published data manifestos, so to speak.

So there are companies out there in the world that actually run statistics and collect data.

That's what they do.

from other types of organizations and agencies, private sector.

So we actually pulled down some information from private sector as well.

And Gallagher actually used data from several of these published companies to help us and match up our positions with stuff that we would be competing with even in private industry.

Throughout this process, Gallagher actually benchmarked 191 positions of the counties and it represented 94% of our workforce.

That is a very significant number because that covers the spectrum of all the departments, of all leadership levels.

That's very, very high when you're looking at

the holistic picture as far as being able to match and do assessments for an organization to be able to pull that much data down.

I did want to share that with you as well.

So here's the first look at some of the results.

So during the assessment, Gallagher took a look at our pay scale and our positions both and using a best practice that they have seen in their professional work and with other organizations they've worked with and also they use best practices from World at Work.

I don't know if you're familiar with that organization.

Yes, it's an international association that deals with total compensation which is paying benefits both.

So in their assessment of where the county stood compared to all the data they were looking at they utilized this philosophy over here where it talks about how you are compared to the market and if you're within 5% either over or under you're considered to be highly competitive because there's always going to be one-offs where people have negotiated specific

things for an individual because they needed the skill set.

And then you can see where the plus and minus 10% is considered competitive and then it goes down from there.

The plus and minus actually is indicative of being over the market salary and under

So what I wanted to show you on this slide, this can be a little bit confusing, but the part we're going to take a look at is the stuff that is circled in red there.

And in the blue section, this is our actual salaries.

This is our actual county position salaries that were compared to the market, and what they found

When they looked at the custom survey and the benchmark positions from the published data together, they found that we were actually highly competitive, we're 0.72% off from what the market was saying for positions overall.

We do have some over, we have some under, so this is more like an average.

In this part, you can't really see the cursor,

Over in the green, that data, it's the same concept, it's just about our pay scale itself.

So the midpoint of our pay grades on the scale are 6.17% off, which is still under 10, and so we're still considered competitive holistically.

I want to add two things.

The one is to remember we wanted to make sure that it's clear.

We already reviewed the public safety, reviewed the public safety pay scale.

And so this is only on our county government positions that are not on the pay scale for public safety.

And then the second thing I would say is that this is indicative to the increases that staff have received over the last year or two.

So think about our ability to be competitive, and if we had not implemented the salary increases over the last year, this would have been a lot worse, honestly.

But we were happy to see that we have some challenges.

You'll hear more about that.

But again, because this board's commitment to our staff has really allowed us to be able to stay a little bit more competitive.

This pay scale is the scale that Gallagher came back with as a recommendation for the county to move forward.

So there are some differences between this.

First of all, they have identified the importance of having a pay scale that is structured.

I guess I would say

structured equally and evenly between pay grades and also the spread from your minimums and your maximums, if that makes sense.

And so one of the things that they did was exactly that.

They set up a structure so that now you have the same distance between your pay grades and your minimum and your maximum have the same percentage apart.

That was not the way the scale was prior to them coming in.

And so what they've done is the first four pay grade, the first three pay grades are 40% spread apart.

And if you will, those first three pay grades are the folks entering in sort of an entry level position.

The very first grade, that minimum is equal to $15 an hour.

Take a look at it.

And that's where our scale starts.

Each midpoint in the pay grades is an 8% increase from the one prior and that way when you are put into a different position or you're promoted or your workload has expanded, you're able to see a real difference.

We did look at the concept of broadbanding for our department head group.

I think I understood the point about the 80% matched positions.

I'd be interested at some point whether we do it now or what some of the examples of unmatched positions are, but I mean I get the concept.

That's correct.

So I can speak to that right now.

So what he's referring to, the 80% match, what that means is taking a look at the job descriptions based on what the essential functions are that are listed in the job description.

Gallagher did not benchmark it against any other positions in the market, survey or published, unless at least 80% of those essential functions were the same because if you do, the job is too different and you're not able to compare them to each other.

So it's

Let me just talk through this out loud so I can help me understand it.

So we've got county employees minus public safety, minus 20%.

The remainder is on this slide.

There were 191 positions that they were able to match.

What is our head count right now?

So the unmatched positions, we're talking maybe 30, 40 positions?

So we got the organization minus public safety, so there's a number.

That does make sense.

If it's 94%, then that should be

Alright, and then go to the next slide.

The scale?

Yup.

So grade 25, that's basically our

31.5 is your $15 an hour and the 44 is probably what, $22, $23.

So that's your guess at some point maybe.

I don't want to get into, I don't want to, I guess I would caution against just because the numbers load the unmatched positions that we don't think about how we're paying for those positions because it gets lost in the

You know what I mean?

We still got to just be conscious of the fact that all right, we're taking what we learned from this and what we learned from the matched positions, but still apply it to all positions.

That's true.

I'll just add, because really this is grounding us in our compensation philosophy.

Yes, thank you.

This is really excellent.

I really appreciate this work.

You're simplifying it so that even I can understand it, but not appreciate that.

Because I'm not an HR person.

Just to piggyback while we're talking about not public safety, let's just run through the list for everybody that's listening.

Public safety is police, fire and rescue, ECC,

Emergency Communications, because not everybody thinks about that as being part of public safety, to be honest with you, as well as sheriffs.

And those are uniformed and sworn officers from the Sheriff's Office and Police Department, and then your uniformed firefighters.

and ECC is the 911 dispatchers.

So the folks that classify, what I think about is the classified folks are in this study.

They're the folks that aren't wearing a uniform or are in a sworn office.

Just so everybody is on the same page.

Okay.

All right.

And then I really appreciate and help me understand because

In my years on the school board, we dealt with World at Work all the time.

It was a great model.

It was sort of a standard.

And I'm trying to wrap my head around, I remember that we targeted for World at Work data, the central or southern, they were divided into regions.

And we often said that

Some of the changes that came, so the previous, the last time this work was done, the competitive market didn't even include the city of Charlottesville.

And so this group and with Gallagher really took a hard look at what is our real market.

to the other, to the other, to the other.

Well, historically, there were reasons why that market was developed 25 years ago.

But we don't need to go with all of that.

I'm sure there are.

And it's fascinating, but it is what it is.

So that's great.

I understand that a little bit better.

And I noticed, and I call it, I know you said UVA did not participate.

They did not.

Which is disappointing.

And did you say Chesterfield County?

I think those are the four questions I have for right now.

So $15 an hour is the first step.

to give the county executive the flexibility with certain positions, because that's critical.

OK, thank you very much.

I think that's it right now.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

This has been very, very informative.

I just wanted to go over the public safety.

That was police, sheriff, ECC, fire.

Is there another one?

Fire and rescue.

Fire and rescue.

Fire and rescue.

OK, got it.

All right, and I wanted to make sure, so of the positions that after public safety, we have about 640 positions that are represented here, right?

And we couldn't match 191 positions, is that correct?

So if you take a different position that has more responsibility, it's a promotion,

then you would move up in the pay scale because that's how we classify positions and realizing an 8% increase is much better than a 1.5% which might have been previously with our old scale.

Let me briefly, just to clarify, in looking at the market, I certainly can understand why.

Yeah, that's a great question.

Cost of living was one of them.

This is a county that actually has a college, a pipeline, a college within it and or at least close proximity to it and so we felt that we needed to look in other areas where they had a similar situation so we would go down and look at Roman Oak or something of that nature because they're also doing the same type of work.

They have a city and a county and there's a large university right there.

So that was another factor.

We did look at where some of our military bases and other things are situated.

The scope of service, right, and how many citizens are we serving in this organization.

That was also looked at.

It's a huge conversation.

Reading this, the jobs match 80% of the duties, and then my understanding is that if you were able to benchmark 191 positions, which is types of jobs essentially, and then that encompassed 94% of the workforce, if the workforce is about 640 people, then that's about 38 positions, and we're not

That was a silly question on slide 16.

The range spreads.

The fact that the first three are 40% doesn't surprise me.

Then it jumps to 60 and then suddenly at pay grade 30 it jumps back to 40.

That is a great question.

I need to look at that and determine whether that's a typo or what that is.

That's a great catch.

What Trevor just said is so funny.

I'll just say that I believe it is a mistake and it is 60.

We'll follow up with you on that because the 40% was only at the beginning of the scale.

Thank you for catching that.

One of the things that I'll add that Supervisor McKeel mentioned about being able to understand it is that one of the things we want to do with our employees is building trust in how they're being compensated and how those decisions are being made.

And so we appreciated this very specific and even spread because as

Jessica has mentioned before our current scale was not like that.

Thank you.

I think with the last go around, I have the 80-90-40-40 square foot.

So I'm not going to ask that question because I don't want to trip myself up.

Were there some departments where there were more unmatched positions than others?

And is that something you're continually slogging through?

There were some departments that were significantly off

The reason they started with 25 was just as we're going through and doing this work and communicating with staff, they can clearly see there is no relation from this scale to the old scale.

And while you're looking at confirming the 40% versus 60%, if you look at this, it appears that every starting pay grade position is worth more than the one before, except 28 is less than 27 and 31 is less than 30.

I'm going to hold off on the questions on the steps because I have a lot of thoughts but I don't know what you're going to present so we'll wait and see about that.

I'm presuming that part of what you'll talk about in the steps however would be recognizing that while every employee in every position is valuable there is a maximum value for

So I really look forward to that discussion.

On slide 15, if you look at the first red circle, the one in the middle, it looks like we're pretty good because we're a positive 0.72.

When you go to the last three columns, last three rows, we're negative on every one of those.

I look at that to see that that's not good.

because while the range plus or minus 5, plus or minus 10 keeps you within that category, every single one of those we are negative.

So I'm not satisfied with that being the outcome.

If we want to have a better workforce,

and half of all the students who graduate from Princeton University are in the bottom half of their class.

I don't want us to be in the bottom half of the compensation comparison in these 23, 20 that gave us data.

I'm not satisfied when I see us as a negative across the board.

That's just my initial impression.

And again, when we get to the steps, I'll also be wanting to see how we address the difference between across-the-board pay raises of the exact same amount versus targeting the value.

So for example, my background, 25 years in the Navy.

Basic pay scale, years of service on the columns and the rows are your pay grade.

There is a maximum amount per pay grade.

from E1 to O10 at a certain number of years you are maxed out because the military is an up or out organization which I recognize is different in many respects than the county but at the same token there is a maximum value per position and so what the military will usually do is everyone gets an across the board percentage increase

Every once in a while they'll do a little bit of targeting there, but then the military uses special pays and things like that to cover the difference.

You know, pilots, doctors, whatever it may be, they need more so they get some sort of special pay.

I don't believe we have that capacity, but I do believe that there has to be a recognition of the different value at certain levels that will continue beyond the value at a different level or position of employment.

Have I made that

So I'm going to be very interested to see how you do that as you also tie that into avoiding wage compression.

And so I really look forward to part two.

Any other questions or comments by supervisors at this point?

Real quick, since you're on this, I just want to make sure I understand the two circles.

So the blue is base.

When you talk about salary and range, are we talking about what people

The base is the actual salaries of our current staff.

They use the term base.

That makes it really confusing for everyone.

That's our actual salaries as they stand today.

and the salary range they're talking about is the pay grades of our old scale.

So Chair Price is, she's talking about the negative being a disappointing, it's reflecting our current scale, which says we were still competitive, but you're right, we were under.

With regard to the same chart in the blue, I'm not pleased with that third column, the actual base 75th percent, where we are way below.

Which tells me, if you look at the first, the actual base 25th, we bring in people at a more competitive wage.

but as they get more experienced we're losing our leadership because we are not paying at the upper scale what we need to to keep them and that is not good for an organization to be losing your leadership because you're not paying them a sufficient salary to stay.

That level of hierarchy turnover is as critical as the overall turnover within an organization, perhaps even more so because it's the leadership.

In touching on that, thank you for mentioning that, I want to bring up UVA because UVA is not included in this, correct?

They didn't want to participate.

Do we have any idea of

their schedules and their salaries whatsoever.

Because let's face it, once we do train everyone, the higher they go, the more experience they get.

The UVA grabs them.

So I mean, I think there needs to be some, I won't say covert, but there needs to be some way of perhaps finding out.

Because we're losing people that are experienced.

And so this will really, really

Well, and as Chair Price said, if we can address that issue, that would be good.

There is some information that we can access pretty readily.

They follow the state's HR, so DHRM.

And the pay scales and the positions, actually we are able to get those

Or nicely, as colleagues, or FOIA requests, if it comes down to it, is the actual individual salaries of their employees.

Okay.

Can we plug that into what you're doing?

Unfortunately, we couldn't because what they were comparing were actual salaries of individual employees.

Okay.

where we are right now.

That's right.

Not where we want to go.

That's right.

People have to remember we're not.

Yeah, that's right.

This is the befores line.

And I will say, there's a lot of flexibility in UVA.

They provide a lot of flexibility from their department heads in there.

I'm just saying.

What I would like to add, if I may, Chair Francis, that, I'm sorry, back on the last slide, is not only is that 75th

Callum calling out potential leadership.

The proposal from Gallagher there were there were two different things that needed to take place and

The second part to it was where do we place the positions on the scale.

And so once they put this together and recommended it for the county, they then came up with, there's a piece I'm going to share with you right now.

The midpoint on this scale, when you see midpoint annual, that number is actually reflective of market.

Okay, and so when you have your min and your max, those are outside of what the market reflects.

So in your mind as we talk through this, midpoint equals market value.

So in thinking about our positions,

We don't necessarily want them to be on the minimum even if for somebody walking in the door because now they're not placed in a situation where they're paid at market value.

and we struggle with recruiting as we have.

And so from a methodology, that was what was happening here in the county was in our scale and in the philosophy and the way we were hiring and positioning people, we were hiring to the bottom of the pay grade and then having them work their way up.

What's been presented is a shift

And so what Gallagher presented was your staff that have the experience and skills and education should be considered competitive with the market, which then if you go back to that chart is plus or minus 10% of that midpoint.

And so the recommendation was to come in at 90% of market and then do an adjustment for folks that have been in position for time and seat to alleviate some of the compression issues that we had.

That was their recommendation from a philosophical perspective.

From there, what would happen would be in future years, and this is where Christy is going to be really instrumental in all of this, we start looking at pay for performance going into 25 and stuff.

And so you work your way up the pay grade instead of up the steps.

Does that make sense?

So the recommendation again would be to place the positions at 90% of market

90% of midpoint in the pay grade that they're in or that they were that they were slotted into because of what that market data showed and then do a time and seed adjustment for folks of 2% every year that they've been in their position with a cap because you do have folks that have been here 30 and 40 years that would be making more

than the county executive if you left it open ended, right?

Before you go on, let's just

I think I'm okay today.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley?

Supervisor Andrews?

Just one example to make sure that it's the right place to put this example.

So if we had a long-time county clerk, for example, who was at the cap in a position for years and years and years, like ten,

then the bonus or whatever you would describe it as some different term was used to provide some extra take home for someone in that position.

Is that approached in a different way on what you're proposing?

Doug Walker, Deputy County Executive.

Yes, that does make sense.

One of the things about compensation, and this is also something different than what's been done in the past, but there's different types of compensation and you all have alluded to it at some point today.

There's a cost of living adjustment which is applied to everyone and it is strictly that.

It is not merit-based, it is not based on any type of

evaluation.

It's applied because the cost of gas has increased, rent has increased.

And when you have those increases, the scale moves also.

And so you won't have a cap out at that point because the scale is going to move also.

That's not what's been used before.

Then you have

your merit increases which are based on performance the scale does not move when we do those that's an opportunity for folks who are doing a great job to move up through the pay grades and realize right and be rewarded for their hard work.

What I would add is that if the position stays the same and they aren't focused one of the things to

I'm focusing on positions and what the job description is requesting.

And so that gives the opportunity for high performance to move across that pay scale.

So to move into the maximum without needing to move the job position up the scale.

And so in the past it has been somewhat challenging at times to move across the scale without moving up.

Does that make sense?

So there was constant need to re-evaluate the role

in order to reward that high performance.

Say I'm at 31 and I'm doing a great job in here a number of years, but I'm doing a great job.

I have the potential of moving from $46,254 to $74,000.

That's right.

That's correct.

If I were to move, as you say, up over to the next category, that's actually a different position.

Correct.

Got it.

That's right.

Thank you.

Let me just ask a quick question, because you just mentioned job descriptions.

So that opens up a whole other question for me because our job descriptions are going to be critical.

And are we going to be going back in and rewriting or looking at our job because that's... I can answer that for you.

Thank you.

Well, they were.

Yes.

So we had a lot of work to do over the summer.

The organization actually, before Gallagher began looking at our positions, all of our employees reviewed their job description.

their department leadership reviewed their job descriptions with them and validated that essential function work that we talked about earlier that Gallagher used to compare positions.

We made sure that that was refreshed and updated and accurate to what the employees were doing today.

We did find that some of them were very old people, more like this is not what I'm doing.

Thank you so much.

That work has been done.

And the HR team did a lot of the work.

Each department did their own effort.

Yeah, I don't think we have that anymore.

What I would also mention that she added on a previous slide, there were over 400 job descriptions.

That is not normal.

We were an outlier.

It speaks to how customized we were making each position, which also speaks to our difficulties of benchmarking.

And so it's, again, going back to the importance of the job description being about the position and the essential functions and the role that they're playing and not the individual's performance.

around 160 or something.

But what we have too is this matrix now that said you can have your individual title that says you have this departmental responsibility, but when you go out into the market you're going to be benchmarking against this title or this position.

We have that tool now.

I have the tool that Gallagher provided to be able to

to keep up and maintain and also a plan to where our hard-to-fill positions and at least half of the organization is going to go out and get reviewed annually and some of the others will be every other year, right?

Before I ask my questions, first off, Mr. Richardson, I just want to compliment Ms.

Coltrane, Ms.

Rice, and everybody in HR.

We have just gotten a really good glimpse of the breadth and depth of work.

Now referencing my question, we are all victims of our past and my past is familiarity with what was the GS scale of

in the federal government, at least up to the point shortly after I retired from the Navy.

GS-1 to GS-15, step 1 to step 10 within GS grade, and someone might be a GS-11 step 8 who gets promoted to a GS-12, but they're not going to start at step 1 because of course that would be below, so they would move them to a step

in the GS-12 that is slightly above the pay they were making as GS-11 at that step.

And so it sounds like maybe that's similar in terms of the promotion aspect.

All of the positions were tied with the position description to a specific GS level or range.

It might be a GS-789, something like that.

It sounds to me very similar to what you all are doing but again there is a maximum value per position which everyone should get an across the board cost of living increase because everyone is experiencing those increases but separate from that

is what you've been describing on the performance base increases.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thanks.

Any other questions at this point?

No?

So just to talk briefly about what the, I want to use the word impact here really quick, but

Using this methodology, what has happened is we have a proposed 199 employees who would receive a pay increase just using this methodology here internally.

And they will be brought up to market salary or the competitive range for their position.

137 of them are paid by the hour, they are non-exempt and of the 199 it spans all departments, 20 departments and the average increase for these folks is 9.8% for them to bring them

to have a competitive salary for the market.

So using this methodology, what we've done essentially is we've been able to focus on and target some of the folks that were brought in low, some of the folks that are maybe at the lower pay grades and make this a place where they want to stay and continue to grow.

Add.

It also is some of the places that we've been seeing retention challenges and vacancies and so which makes sense in our competitive market.

Can we contact them and see if they want to come back?

We'll advertise.

So that is all of the statistical analysis that I have for you today.

I do want to talk about

What this study has been able to accomplish for the county and how important that this work has been.

We have struggled in a lot of areas and recruiting and retention is at the forefront of that.

That's why we're talking about workforce stabilization today.

So being able to recruit better qualified candidates by paying a market salary,

For some people, and the way society is today, it is very much salary driven because folks will leave a job for a mere $1,000 or $2,000 a year.

And I see it over and over again.

So this is really important.

The other thing that this process has addressed and these philosophies have addressed are internal equity.

We have people here that have been here for a long time and they were brought in

and started working under an old pay philosophy.

And so right now we have the opportunity to adjust for some of those things where there are newer employees that have started in the same position and are now making more than someone that's been here for 10 years exactly.

We actually have an opportunity to lay out

After this work is done, there's a 2.0 that happens and that's the performance management

We haven't addressed those yet.

Those will probably be in grade steps that you can hit by getting different certifications and stuff, especially in our community development department and some other areas.

And so there's more work to do but there's opportunity for growth here.

We talked about performance management.

But the other piece, the final one for this, is looking at this holistically.

The total compensation is not just about pay.

This survey actually took a look at, and Kristi's going to go over this in a minute, but took a look at even the benefits in the fringe stuff that we're offering employees.

Holidays, vacation time, stipends.

All these other things that were looked at as well.

And so when an employee understands their total compensation package, they can really assess where the best place is for them to work.

Supervisor Galloway.

Thank you.

And it would be good before we get that final document that you all called about those couple of questions.

Because we don't want to have those same issues.

I just want to be clear.

So one of the things that we will be looking at going forward in the career ladders and the certifications and working all of that out.

Yeah this is truly a multi-year project and we're

Thank you, Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

I think the majority of this presentation will be provided to staff, just almost verbatim from what you heard.

And so they understand what the results were, what Gallagher came forward with for recommendations, and then what the plan for implementation is, and then how it affects them individually.

I think Christy's got a timeline, but they will start hearing some of that communication in the middle

of April directly from their department head whether they're one of the 199 receiving a pay increase or whatever that that looks like so very soon the next couple of weeks they'll they'll have the full how does this affect them so I'll add so we're we need to adopt a

We will adopt this pay scale, which will then allow us to be able to place people on the scale.

So what's happening next is a communication and change management effort with our staff.

And so that's with our leadership in the organization.

They know their employees best.

But every employee will have a change made for them.

while she reported not every employee is getting an increase through this process they are going to be have they will have that new job title potentially based on that job description or they will be placed on a different pay grade number and they all need to understand what the new scale is and so that's the work that we're going to do with our staff.

What we wanted to do today is with your approval

If we can move forward with the application of these increases for those 199, we will move forward with all of the communication.

At this point, we have not done that yet with staff because we wanted your approval.

Also, it does advance by asking for this in May.

What you've seen so far is the FY24 commitment of funding.

This is asking for your approval to go ahead

We have funding that I've worked closely with the budget team and we have funding that we can use to go ahead and begin these changes in May.

One of the reasons that I recommend that we do that is that we're separating

Thank you.

I think this is a great idea.

Of course, the more people really understand what you're going through, the more of something I think they'll be to appreciating what goes into it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, as someone who was raised in the self-employed

Generationally, my family, this is like the psychopathic HR, but just a whole different level of understanding and presentation and detail that I have ever heard before.

So thank you for making it something that I can really grab onto.

Thank you.

When you talk about a 9.8%

just so we can visually see what the impact of this is.

That would also help us to see categories that would be receiving more, categories that would be receiving less.

I fully support the work that you have done and what you are asking us to do with the one caveat or request that you clarify specifically what it is that you need us to approve today

We need a motion and so I don't know if you need to work with Ms.

Rosenberg or if you already have as to what we need to specifically approve.

It sounded like there were two things there.

I think what we need for the board to do today is to vote to accept the classification and pay study of Gallagher through the presentation today with an effective date of implementation of May 6th.

Is that the only thing you need today?

waiting for you to get through everybody, timing of approval here.

Because if that's the case, then everyone else may be comfortable with it.

But we got the before, we got the as now for the slide 15 with your percentages.

We got the what it will be for the pay grades.

But I didn't see the before for the pay grades, and I didn't see the after for the other slide.

Before I'm ready to

I want to make sure I'm in agreement with the before and the ends.

Okay, let me put this a different way.

We get a policy, we get a red line so we can see what the before was and what the new version is.

Well, we got the before on one and we got the after on one.

So I just assumed that the approval was coming at a different point.

So my question was going to be, when am I going to get to see the study?

Because I presume the study shows me all of that.

So then I can say yes or no, I agree.

where I'm going with this is it's not that I'm opposed to anything that you're showing but if we see the after slide on those percentages and we're not to Donna's point comfortable with what the new percentages are if we don't think that goes far enough then it becomes a budget question of going do we need to find more funds.

to just that.

I don't have the information to do that at this point.

And don't take this the wrong way, but I'm going blindly on your recommendation.

But I need a little bit more information to go, do I agree with that recommendation just yet?

I'm not opposed to the recommendation as a minimum.

What I guess I have in my brain is I'm wondering, is it enough?

Does that make sense what I'm saying?

I would like to have an opportunity to restate it back to you, Lord Member Galloway, because I'm not sure if I understand it.

In looking at the Gallagher recommendations, they were recommending with the new

Payskill.

It goes 25 to 41 and then the broadband that all employees, through the classification work that they did, be within 90% of the new midpoint of the new ranges.

They'd be within 90%.

And when you say, I want to see if we went far enough, that's why I'm pointing to

them saying if you're within 10% of the new midpoint, either way, you are considered competitive.

One of your questions, and it would be a very fair question, would be, why did we not go the remaining 10% to be right at midpoint?

Yes, sir.

And so once we got within the plus or minus 10%, like Ms.

Rice explained to the board, we said as a team, we believe that is from an affordability standpoint and an implementation, we believe that we're close enough

and what the cost is, especially when you consider everything else that is within the realm of the study and what Ms.

Shifflett is going to talk about next with the board.

Sure, understood.

So like 15, if you go back a slide.

So this is current.

Based on your recommendation, what does this look like proposed?

Because that's how I gauge did we go far enough.

Now, understood, based on affordability, my understanding was that what you recommended is currently budgeted with our proposed budget.

Well, as we all know, our proposed budget can be altered by the six of us.

and we have to then just make decisions on, well, if I wanted to do this, then I have to find how to do it.

So I can't, that's the exercise I guess I thought was, we still had room to at least ponder versus just going, I mean, I'm fine with going, look, as a minimum, let's do it.

But I still want to go through the exercise of going as the minimum, no.

So I mean, I'm not trying to delay or anything.

It's just, I didn't know I was coming in to make up.

Take a vote on this today.

If I may, so what we're asking for with the May implementation is that we are able to move forward with right sizing for those 199 and putting them in that and writing that change.

and then through the rest of your budget process is still your ability on the 4% which is that increase that's happening as of July 1.

Let's get them caught up and

We will be able to have all of our employees kind of right-sized on that pay scale.

But today's decision, there's a timing issue and being able to get with folks and

Well, yes because and I'll say because we have been working on this study for a while and so our employees have been waiting to hear what their results are and so that's one of the reasons why now that we know we're just asking for that extra and I also want to say

Chair Price, I would suggest that we have not finished the benefits yet.

And that's fine.

Thank you, Supervisor McKeel.

I agree.

And I want to be fair too.

What I'm going to talk about with benefits is not about any funding changes.

There's not any

Thank you.

And let me also thank Supervisor Galloway.

That was really important to you in terms of what we still needed to do.

This chart will be, in addition to the new structure, it will be impacted by the 4% in July.

I want to make sure that was right with all the other questions.

We will be moving all employees and we will be adjusting that scale.

So that's the other thing that Ms.

The only clarifier I wanted to make to this is to tie it back to why the decision on top of preparing the team, preparing the staff, that we need some direction is because we are committing fiscal 24 funds.

Thank you, Jessica.

Didn't I say she had done an amazing job?

HR department has worked really hard.

So now we're going to talk about the rest.

Remember that graph I showed you where it showed all of the different components of what it is like to be an employee.

So we're going to move into the other things that employees care about, right?

They care about pay, obviously.

But they also care a lot about their ability to have autonomy in their work.

their ability to have growth opportunities provided for them.

People want to see how can I grow, how will I be supported.

And so we're going to talk a little bit about that.

And then there's also the health and wellness component of working in our workforce.

So I'm going to give all the credit to this board.

And when we were talking about workforce stabilization in the fall, I believe Ms.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley said, well, why don't we ask employees what they want?

And so I took note.

And our organization surveyed all of our employees to ask them,

about their prioritization around HR benefits, but also around new programs.

Many of you have offered many alternatives and things that we could do for our staff.

We certainly have had many ideas about the things that we could do.

And so we wanted to take the opportunity to ask them.

What matters to them?

What will mean something to them?

Again, we have five generations at work.

And so what means to a 25-year-old is not the same quality or importance to somebody who's 55.

And so we wanted to do that.

So I'm going to go through how our 472 participants responded in prioritization of these things.

So we listed out all of the medical and dental and programming around benefits that we currently offer to staff.

One was to honestly list out all of the things that we do offer for them.

and it's a long list.

It's one of the things that sometimes you can take for granted.

And so we wanted them to rank for us their importance, the level of importance to them and nothing was surprising here.

Medical and dental leave programs, life insurance and retirement.

and so that but again it's always good to confirm what you believe to be true but what did come out of the survey were some comments about the lack of knowledge around the benefits and also the quality of service and so that was amazing input for us to look at the services we provide and the vendors that we have and what can we do more or different to support them

and I was a little surprised at the lack of knowledge around the benefits because we had just went through open enrollment and I know that our HR department has spent a lot of time communicating the benefits because as you know we had a new system and we did everyone had to enroll

And so even with that push to communicate your options, we still have work to do to ensure that our staff are clear about those options and what they mean to them.

So as we move forward,

These are the new programs that, and I'm not going to list everything that we asked them, I'm only listing today what hit the highest priorities so that we can focus in on making the biggest difference for the most staff.

and so it was that they really it was quality of life items kind of popped out for us.

Increased in the holiday schedule as well as more training and professional development opportunities.

So just like I said you know at the beginning when you large national surveys state that people want to see their opportunities and growth and development in their work.

It's not always about a promotion.

It may be about different experiences.

It may be about expanding their knowledge and skill set.

And so our staff matched that.

And they also want to see that.

And so they prioritized certification programs, increased tuition reimbursement.

And also we talked about the opportunity to do department or organization wide training.

Some organizations will close and you know our school division does this.

They do professional development days.

And so the reason for this is that our departments are having challenges bringing all staff together because they're always open.

And so that's one of the things that we have here.

and then we we also had a section on longer term priorities and these are things that we we wanted to be fair and set expectations properly and that we wouldn't be able to launch these things right away but we wanted to see their interest and so changes to leave programs was one of those things that we asked for a little patience on because of what you just went through we knew we were doing we had a new HR department we had the new system

We had this compensation and classification information that we wanted to get back and so we are committed to looking at those leave programs and what we're offering our staff but we were fair and upfront about these are longer term priorities that we'll be looking into and so they agreed and voted that that was a high priority and then also the work schedules and office hours

Modernized systems and processes, you guys have heard about that a lot from me and you'll hear a little bit more in a minute.

And then also more robust discount programs.

And so this is that access to things in our community or different services that we provide and how can we, you know, maybe provide more discount programming for them.

That's right.

Events or activities that our county staff could have.

So with that information, many of us have been hard at work.

And so what you see before you today is really work that's already started and intended to roll forward into FY24.

And so I'll start on the HR benefits section.

And just say that like I've already stated we're gonna reassess those leave programs Jessica Rice is going to lead her benefits team through really looking at the data from Gallagher and then also What do we have today?

again with a new HR they have the opportunity to look at things with through a new lens and

and probably suggest some opportunities for us to do some things differently for our staff.

Also, they are already working on a benefits fair for the fall and that is having all of the vendors come and really work with and talk to our staff about the benefits that we provide before the next open enrollment so we're able to clarify the offerings that we have and that they can make informed choices.

And then the last thing on there is related to that retirement the retirement point and so I want to this is our finance and budget team and the HR team in doing the 457 deferred compensation plan and so

Bolton, we did a study with Bolton and you might remember and so they recommended offering the 457 deferred compensation plan with low-cost options to employees.

The Board of Supervisors appointed deferred compensation committee and those recommendations came forward in April and so we are using a new vendor to offer this additional option for our staff.

So that is in place.

The next is the training component and the training area.

You'll see there that our staff talked about tuition reimbursement.

So you won't see an increase in our budget this year for tuition reimbursement and the reason why is because when we reviewed the data we aren't using it as well as we could and so there's already adequate funding based on prior usage and trending.

So the work we need to do now is to build awareness and communication and connection to our staff that it is available and that it is a resource that they can have.

And so we're going to track that this year and see if it can be used and be applicable for our staff.

And that's really related to community college and college courses.

The next thing that we've already done is our HR department has launched and leads a regular new hire orientation.

This allows us to focus in on policies and compliance and but it's also around their benefits enrollment and then really indoctrinating our staff into our culture and our mission, vision, and values.

The next item there is management and leadership training program.

So this is an area that the performance and strategic planning team has been leading and our focus here is building strong and competent and skilled, compassionate managers in our organization.

And so through that we have spent a lot of time Building that programming our department has actually helped coach and train on some of their expertise and skill sets And I think that that is amazing because our staff get to see some of our best and brightest deliver how the things that they've been through the things that have helped them and

and how they have learned to manage and lead.

But also we want to make sure that our supervisors and our managers are really coached but also supported.

because it's a very hard job.

They are often managing the external customers, but also then internal processes and all of the budget, staff development, work planning.

And so we need to make sure that that group of employees feel not only responsible for the work that they have, but also supported and guided by our organization.

And then the last thing there is partners for additional offerings and certifications.

So what I mean there is that we're also open to looking outside of this organization and looking at places potentially like PVCC or other consultants to offer additional certifications.

We've looked at building a certification plan where that would also then relate back to performance management.

and higher performance and that merit-based pay, which would be that if you get advanced certifications and different things that that would be able, not just for things that is built into your job description per se, but things that is really increasing your competencies in the organization.

So the last section I'm going to focus on is wellness.

We're looking at something that's pretty exciting.

We are doing an RFP and we'll be moving forward with employee focus groups around a potential employee health clinic.

and the goals of that would be to enhance overall health of employees and their families, remove barriers to dedicated quality health and wellness services.

Our community has seen some challenges with being able to get a doctor's appointment or being able to get your prescriptions at pharmacies and so this would be a benefit for our staff as well as managing the rising health care costs.

This is also the ability to look at our

financial responsibilities and our healthcare fund.

And so we feel that the employee health clinic could be a great solution to help us balance that.

And then the next one is our mental health and cardio metabolic health.

So this is where we are using our data about our employees health and wellness.

And so we're trying to understand

the challenges that our employees have and we see that there's really information from our EAP usage data as well as medical claims and pharmaceutical cost drivers and so this is where we have that data and we're able to see what our staff need and the most critical areas of concern are for employees with stress

anxiety, and then medical conditions such as diabetes and hypertension and cholesterol.

Again, this helps connect back to that employee health clinic that we mentioned.

The last bullet on here is that quality of life can also be directly connected to financial wellness and stress.

And so we are also looking at providing services for our staff that are helping coach them on

you know different financial challenges, debt management, you know retirement, also you know if you're looking to buy a home and that we are able to provide some resources for our staff that's a little more robust than we do today.

So more to come on the specifics of all of that but I wanted you to know that we are heavy and hard at work and trying to provide those things for our organization.

Are there any questions about that?

That's all that I have around the benefits and training and the whole part of an employee.

And then we'll move forward if there aren't any questions.

Any more comments and questions?

It always seems like open enrollment happens and then we all go, I don't have time, just sign me up for what I had last year.

And there's always a lot of questions and I'm not surprised just in my own day to day how often people don't know what they're signed up for or what's available.

So anything that could be done ahead of the open enrollment period.

And a lot of times I have folks that I'll meet with my whole group because it's

More efficient to meet with the whole team and say who has questions.

And then I forget that some people are afraid to ask questions for everybody else because then they're like, oh, I don't understand my own health care plan.

And then they come knocking on my door later and want to sit down and have a one-on-one.

So one-on-one time with your experts that would probably attend the benefits fair, while it's easy to get them all together, I would just maybe say that if there were a way to have more availability

Yeah, you know what I mean?

Right, yes.

Could help with that.

But the rest of this is great.

I'm recognizing limited time and that there's a lot more to come on this.

Thank you very much.

I look forward to more information.

Thank you.

I just had, I love what you're doing and I had one question regarding the times, you know, with flexible timing.

Would that mean that maybe some employees might start at

If that's the case, would that allow for increased hours for the community to be able to access, you know, if they don't get off work, if we close down at 5, they don't get off work until 5.30 or something.

I think what you're playing out in real time, Lord Member LaPisto-Kirtley, is exactly the conversations and the analysis that we'll look at as it relates to office hours.

I love how you're tying it to customer service and accessibility to the public because those are things that our department heads pay close attention to, foot traffic, high and low periods and such and so

It's a combination of hearing from staff and hearing about staff needs and

It's understanding the challenges that you face as employees who interface with the public and speak to the public in ways that are unique.

The private sector doesn't do it the same way, so.

Right.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

So many good ideas.

I'm sure you'll address a lot of things going forward.

So when you talk about vendors, you're talking about things like nationwide to provide some retirement or something, and you have a feedback loop to get in touch with those people.

Because I know NACo does have a whole nationwide group that I'm part of at the moment.

I'm trying to shift it to somebody else.

But if you need extra connection with somebody to shake a stick at, then I'm very, very glad about your

of certifications and things.

And the C3 program that the state funds through PVCC provides 60% of the funding.

And that really, really helps.

I think it's really only for 30% once certification is achieved, which is a really great scholarship effort.

And the health clinic sounds like it would be a great opportunity for the interns and residents at the medical school who are always looking for places to do their in-service.

And I know they use their

as a prime target.

But there may be some extra help that you might not consider coming from that avenue as well.

Thank you.

I'm going to follow up with the theme.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley started and Supervisor Andrews followed.

I really appreciate that we're asking the staff.

Keep in mind consideration of our community, our clients, our customers, because we are a government entity providing the service.

I like the idea of looking at how the schools do with their service days and everything.

Schools also publish an annual calendar.

So if we're going to schedule something comparable in the county, we need

We need to give our community plenty of advance notice on when a department is going to be closed because it impacts their ability to receive the services and so whatever we do cannot be to the detriment of services to our community.

One of the complaints that we heard during the pandemic and I will reemphasize during the pandemic so we all know that was a very unique time was the frustration with dealing only through email with certain staff members because they were working remotely and so it is important that we have face-to-face in-person opportunity for our community members to come to the county to work with the people who are

Dealing with their issue, not just phone or emails and things like that.

Great care, I know will be taken and needs to be taken with regard to rethinking work schedules and office hours.

Again, with that focus on we do provide a service.

I was always frustrated in the Navy when an office would say to serve you better, we're closing for four hours a day.

It's like that's not serving me better, that's limiting my ability to be served.

I just read a little bit about 457B deferred compensation plans.

Don't know a lot about that.

My comments may not be relevant.

I'm always concerned about the defined benefit versus defined contribution type plans because under the old defined benefit, a lot of people never qualified so they didn't really help a lot of people.

Under deferred contribution, which is a great alternative, provided people actually make contributions.

If they don't and you don't have a defined benefit, then you have no benefit.

and I'm also always concerned about legacy costs may be left with the organization by creating you know a great retirement system but it is these lifetime costs that come later so I'm more a fan of defined contribution which is what the 457B plan appears to be so that sounds good and a final comment and again military background confidentiality must be sacrosanct if there is an

I'm sure that state laws do

McKeel mentioned at the time one comment with Mr. Gallaway talking about educating people on their benefits and them understanding what they have

It's just much easier to understand, it's much easier to track, it feels more modern and more employee friendly in how it's designed and so I think that was a step in a needed and positive direction that sets us up for financial wellness, education,

I'm sorry, one last question regarding our health and I admit I do not know this one, regarding health benefits when you retire, do we have health benefits when you retire or is it just everyone goes on Medicare?

There is a health insurance credit that is available for folks that have worked for a certain period of time in the organization if they retire before their age 65 to get on to Medicare and then

I can speak from a position of knowledge.

The county offers what's called a VRIP program for employees who are eligible for full retirement who have at least 10 years of service with the county.

and that would provide for continued contributions by the employer to the retiree for up to five years or until they turn 65 and are eligible for Medicare or an equivalent cash contribution.

So one of the things we're looking at with the health clinic, it's actually not just employees.

It would be employees and retirees.

And so this is an option where you would have access to care at a cost differential that would be more beneficial to you than going to a private provider.

So we are pursuing that as part of this health care clinic.

Those will be policy considerations that we'll have to look through as we look into this.

That's why I mentioned about the length of time.

It doesn't matter.

I know you have another agenda item that you want to move to.

We believe that modern systems are important for our customer service, for our employee retention, but then our employees also validated that they care about that as well.

It's frustrating when you work day to day.

and you know that there's an easier way that it could be done.

So you've seen this slide before.

This is from an earlier presentation when I talked about the core systems modernization work.

But I'm going to go through, again, a little bit about the process and systems work that we have before us.

And I want to also talk about Supervisor Galloway asked about some return on investment information about our core systems.

And so I have that for you today as well.

So if we move forward, I have up here three different areas.

This is definitely not an exhaustive list of all of the process improvements that we've had throughout the county, but what I'm trying to call out here is that departments work on process improvement and systems all the time.

They may not be at the

These are three stories I wanted to take a few minutes to touch on and where our departments have spent time

trying to improve those processes and trying to improve customer service.

And the reason I'm telling you this is to kind of validate the intention of our staff choices and our intentionality around bringing these skills

and project management and also change management but then technical skills that we have invested in around the county.

So the first one is the mobile inspections app.

You, I believe, have heard about this before but I'm going to call it out again.

It's a great improvement that we had actually throughout the pandemic and that was where inspectors in the community development department were able to go to an app

I believe it's an iPad.

and they're able to review those inspections on site and implement in writing, put their notes and information in that information.

It uploads when they return to the office and also it was an improvement because they're able to get their assignments for the day through the same process.

And so they were coming to the office, picking up paper and moving forward.

So I just want to give kudos around that work.

the second one is a lot of effort went into last year working on what we call the Comino system and that is a community development application system and that's the intake that you've heard about that was allowing this very paper-based drop-off process in person

for applications around building permits and building applications.

They have been able to make that online and our development community has really appreciated the ability to do all of that from their office.

But a lot of care went into

Not just turning a system on, but improving our processes and removing multi-steps of things.

And a lot of work goes into process improvement.

When you're used to doing something that takes 20 steps and you have to figure out how to do it in five.

That takes a lot of work.

But again, to match those best practice systems, that's kind of the, I'm speaking really to staff time.

In order to build those, improve that work, and use those systems in the best way, staff has to spend time in making those improvements.

And then the third one I wanted to share is the housing electronic settlement project.

I told Ms.

Birch behind me that she couldn't talk about this project because she gets really excited and we don't have enough time.

But this is one she's very proud of, the Department of Finance and Budget as well as our social services department with the housing unit and our IT department has worked to automate the payments to vendors for our housing voucher programs.

We were having a lot of challenges because this was not only a manual process but it was going through the mail and it was really delaying our payment to the housing vendors and it was causing problems for our housing division and social services and so this is a great story about how bright and talented staff came together to solve this problem that we were finding was a very negative

thing for people that are at risk in our community and that we needed to solve this problem.

And so this isn't a project that was planned, but it was a project that they will be able to implement.

So I wanted to take a minute to share that with you.

So the last item here is really around the core systems modernization.

And so you remember that this is a five year program that we have in our capital budget and some operating costs.

But we implemented the human resources information system last year.

And these are the areas that we believe were real return on investment.

We were able to take and consolidate all of our data that was in four different systems and be able to consolidate that information for human resources and our employee data.

We were able to launch self-service of employee information and benefit plans.

And so before, staff were not able to make their own changes.

They had to contact someone in HR in order for those to be done.

and now they're able to do self-service requests and make changes due to qualifying life events, add and change their medical plans.

All of that has been an ease of use and a good service for our employees.

It's also, I know when I enrolled and I was able to see my payroll information with my benefit information, it was something that I was very excited about.

There is a return on investment because now employees have clarity on what systems to use and how to use that system in less steps to gather their individual and family information.

Before, we had four different systems that they had to use in order to get it.

Also, we've improved our data quality.

Previously, there was a tremendous manual effort in HR and Finance in order to report on the same data.

The old system was not intuitive and created levels of risk for the organization due to the dependence on long tenured staff who spent years building workarounds to enable to do the same thing.

And so it sometimes really worried us about what we might be able to do and

how we would be able to find our information if those employees were to leave and we have experienced that which is why this is important that we focus on this work.

An audit of every employee's salary, deductions, and benefits took place through the HRIS implementation.

We cross-checked with every vendor to make sure employees records and vendor records matched.

Moving from a paper-based manual system to an automated one showed us that there were errors.

We had 170 employees that needed corrections on our final validation report.

and so now that we have this data in one system with reporting capabilities unlike anything that we've had before we can perform quality control and auditing services and reviews in all areas and have built a level of confidence that our data is correct.

We're better positioned to find those errors that if they do exist before they're processed and before they impact employees.

The last thing I want to say about this is around the data compliance and just that it was identified that we were at high risk of falling out of the Affordable Care Act compliance without a new system.

Now that we have ADP, we can monitor compliance on a monthly basis.

and we have system controls in place to quickly identify and correct non-compliance issues and thus eliminating real financial and regulatory compliance risk.

We also surveyed the staff after enrollment and overall the experience and communications involved was a positive and supported process.

The cost of our HR system, we actually were able to save money on this system because we had already implemented the ADP payroll and we added the HR component to that.

We did save a lot of money.

I'll be honest, there were $66,000 that was out of a budget of $2 million.

However, before we get too excited, I wanted to let you know that because it's a five year program, we are rolling that cost savings forward into our future systems.

We've already seen, as you've heard, that costs are going up.

So I'm going to move to the last system here and this speaks to our community development.

You know, the best way to identify your return on investment is to be able to have data before you start the project and really identify the goals that you want to achieve.

And so what you see before you are the goals of this new system.

We're still in the procurement and contracting process for this, but we do hope to launch this project soon.

We really are looking to automate and integrate the processes between the divisions of community development.

We're integrating systems such as, this is where we have systems in real estate, we have our GIS, we have a document management system, we have the intake one that you just heard about.

And so this effort will be able to integrate all of those things.

So again, data can move across the organization,

and not have to be this download the report, print it out, upload something, do the QC.

We need to be able to move to a more modern technology where we'll increase those efficiencies.

We're going to have to re-engineer our processes and our workflows.

That's what I spoke about a little bit more.

We're going to be looking at the best practice ways.

And that's why we are looking for technology that understands the community development function.

It isn't something that's just off the street.

We have to be specialized as we provide this public service.

And we're also really looking to make sure it's user friendly.

and it has citizen self-service interfaces and the ability for our community to submit, attract, and monitor their applications.

So that is all that I had on the systems.

I will close on this slide and then if you have comments or questions about what you heard so far,

This is connected to the objective in our strategic plan which is 6.4 and this is the space planning.

You have already seen this slide.

Mr. Lance Stewart from our Department of Facilities and Environmental Services spoke about this at your last work session, but I wanted to call it out here just as a connection to the intentionality within Goal 6 and our workforce.

This is all that I have for you today You talked about like technology in the survey people saying they want the Up-to-date technology of it.

Did they speak to their spaces?

in the middle.

Whether it's the age of the space or... I'm curious about that.

Thank you for the... I don't think... I think we need to do a better job, all of us, of capturing when we find these returns.

Your point about the

savings from the HR to then go and cover the costs of the CBD.

We don't do enough of showing how we find those, capture those, and then repurpose those funds.

And frankly,

Oh, dear, the politician's going to complain.

But when people talk about, when I say things like effective use of resources, or being efficient, or finding efficiencies, these are the things that we do.

In 66,000, in the big scheme of this budget, doesn't sound like a lot.

But then I can take us back to page 16 to our pay grades and show you what $66,000 gets us.

So we have to do a better job year in, year out.

I'm not just saying here's our revenues, here's our expenditures, but here's our, I don't know what the word is, repurposing, readjusting.

We have to tell that part of the story.

Because one, I think our citizens just need to, deserve to know that.

But I think they would appreciate knowing the level of, or the quality level of staff we have

that those things are happening year in and year out.

And when you get questions about, well, you're going to not adjust our property taxes or we're spending more out of pocket for it, that goes to telling the story of the value of what they're getting, their own return on investment, I guess is what I'm getting at.

We don't do that.

I remember us making these comments in the school board 10 years ago, Diantha.

We'd say, oh yeah, we should do that.

We should do a better job of that.

We have to do that.

That's not a good idea or maybe a nice thing to do.

I think it's contingent on us to show people here's how we operate day in and day out to find

that we know that revenues are finite and they're just not, we shouldn't take them for granted and here's what we do in the face of that.

All right, I'll stop on that point.

When you take high human touch things and you add that to antiquated systems, I can't even imagine the amount of wages that we've spent on that lost time.

So your $66,000 I'm assuming is just your software change.

but to sit there and go okay well let's add up how much time we spent on the high human touch with the four or five people that had the experience and the knowledge to know the work around so they had we had to wait on those people and somebody else had to wait on those people to do a highly labor-intensive piece and how much time they were spending on that and watching for the little circle to spin on the screen you know

That's the money I'm after.

I want to know, yeah, what did that equate to?

Now, the auditors called it out this year in the audit committee, where some of this high human touch and antiquated systems was starting to, you know, it didn't become an issue.

What do they call it in the audit again?

Well, but it's called, you know, it's like you have a clean audit report and it doesn't rise to the level of whatever word they use.

It's just escaping me.

But the fact that we were already on that

and we were cleaning that up again based on our people, you know, that's going to say, you know, there's a phrase on one of the slides there that said more productive, wherever you had a bullet that said to make our employees more productive.

I'm a little uncomfortable with that because if I'm one of the employees, I'm like, well, I'm already being productive.

So whether it's more effective, I don't know if that's even better or if that's more efficient, I don't mean to undermine it.

We're not saying that we want to make them work harder.

But if we do our job to get them being more effective and efficient in what they're doing then the level of service climbs, level of service climbs you can do more with within the time frame that you're doing it becomes a lot easier to add extra holidays into the paid one or into the work life or into the schedule.

So all of those things like it's just incredible that when you start when my mind starts getting into the weeds of all that of how much money

goes to this type of stuff.

And if we could capture it more to tell that story down the road or outside of budget to really try to get our heads wrapped around how many dollars we're talking about, I think we'd all be pretty astounded at it and go, oh, we're doing a good job on that.

So I'll stop.

Thank you.

Yeah, I don't want to belabor it, but I agree with what Ned has said, and I really appreciate this.

I look forward to more.

and Lee Mean efficiency machine, frankly.

And there's the behemoth in the room, which is UVA.

And they do their thing, but they have so many employees.

It's such a large organization that they are large.

We can compete with them because we can be a Lee Mean efficiency machine, frankly, I think.

and you do that through technology and modernization.

And I think that's exactly what you're all proposing here, which I totally support.

And the only thing, I think I brought this up at the, we had a retreat, but our website, you're probably already thinking of this, maybe not, but our website on the cell phone,

on a cell phone.

So maybe that's something that you're already planning on doing is making that more user friendly on a cell phone or a website.

Thank you.

Supervisor Andrews?

This has been durable, but it was a very great presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

No real questions, but I so agree with and appreciate the work Doug

Thank you.

A couple of comments more than questions.

I appreciate all of the improvements that have been made.

The new system in community development, I understand the developers have been very pleased with it.

I would just ask that we also check to make sure the typical consumer user, individual property owner, finds it is easy to work through.

I don't need an answer for that today, but I do want to make sure that that's something we work on.

I'm amazed.

170 employees had these errors.

That's roughly 20%.

We no longer have that degree of error and inefficiency.

It's incredible.

And underlying everything that you all have done, both in human resources, community development, and everywhere else in the county demonstrates the necessity of enhanced IT security.

And so Mr. Richardson, I want to give thanks to the IT department for the things that they have done.

And I'm thankful every day that we are not one of those communities that has been held hostage by someone coming in.

And our community needs to know that we do get hundreds of attacks every day.

So the resource investment that has been made, both in terms of infrastructure, the hardware, the software, but also the people, shout out to them.

So thank you all for that.

Anything further, Supervisors?

Are you off the hook?

Yeah, I think we do need to do that.

So, what is the language that we need?

Drive.

So I said that but I forgot.

Are you all ready for the motion?

Is that what you were getting?

I'm just confused.

All right, motion from Supervisor Galloway, second from Supervisor Andrews.

Any discussion?

I heard the date May 6 or 4.

Which is it?

Third or sixth?

Six is when the adjustments will go into their pay.

It's the start of a pay period.

Ms.

You want to do that right now.

And the reason we're doing this, Supervisor McKeel may have to leave before the rest of us finish.

We've hit the dates with the work sessions of my grandchildren's birthday parties.

I'm sorry, but you know how family goes.

So I may have to leave a little bit early.

I just wanted to ask, and this is sort of under other matters, but if we could have

The information at the next work session around, this goes back to what Jim mentioned last year and we really didn't get to.

to our boards and commissions folks.

We have only a few, and I think I have a total of nine.

Travis actually went in and looked for me today.

And we have nine, and they're receiving stipends, and they have not had adjustments to those stipends for a decade or more.

And what I'm asking for is staff could look at the increase on those stipends for what?

which makes it simple and then later in the year whenever we have time we can come back and look at this holistically.

Jim brought this up last year and we never really got back to it.

And then we can decide what we want to do if that works.

That would be fine.

Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor McKeel.

I appreciate you bringing that up.

Thank you.

And so in the remaining time that we've got the seeding board for this work session, we really wanted to hear from the board on any items that

that the board has flagged, like what Ms.

McKeel just went over, things that she wanted for April the 19th.

And one of the things that I had mentioned at a prior board meeting is to revisit with the board where we are with Biscuit Run Park, what we have in the 24th budget, what we have in terms of field investment,

Thank you Chair Price, members of the board, again Doug Walker, deputy county executive.

My intention today recognizing there's been some interest already expressed by some board members around playing fields is as Jeff indicated it's kind of level set where we are currently and using that as a

And starting first with Biscuit Run Park, excluding the fields, acknowledging that in FY23 there has been $5.2 million appropriated to begin the work.

You're seeing that work out there happening currently.

The design and construction of what's been referred to as Phase 1A, including that Route 20 entrance, the paved access drive, trailhead parking, and restrooms is the primary

outcome of that Phase 1A.

What is included in FY24 budget as proposed is what would be called Phase 1B, that $2.9 million which would include some bridges, boardwalk, greenway connector, maintenance

and a maintenance facility for the Eastern District Maintenance Crew.

We had some conversations about that also, that's Phase 1B.

And then, as you know, the total investment at this point at $10.5 million reflected in the CIP that would include investments in the out years as well.

This is all excluding fields.

So with the next slide, there's only three slides so we can come back and answer any questions you have.

The next slide, this is also included in the FY24 budget in order to accomplish what is currently anticipated to be two fields, grass fields at Biscuit Run.

FY24 includes $97,000 for design.

If the board approves that as part of the FY24 budget,

then staff would recommend appropriating $254,000 additionally in FY23 funding in order to have funding available to proceed with design in FY24 that would then position the board for construction beginning in FY25 in any succeeding year.

So the total cost of two fields at Biscuit Run as proposed again in the CIP with some design funding in FY24, some using some FY23 appropriated money is roughly $3.8 million.

That is what's included in the budget for fields for FY24.

The last slide that I wanted to

and the ongoing responsibility we have for maintaining our current grass fields and the use of this.

And so this slide within the boxes here just gives you a snapshot of some work that has

Department, including developing an athletic field use and allocation policy, working collaboratively with our public schools and with community user groups who use our fields, also collaborating with the public schools, beginning discussions of current and future field needs and upgrades with projected timelines.

This is for future consideration.

They did reduce the number of playing hours from 34 hours per week to 28 hours per week

and reducing total play for practices and games by 312 hours at Darden Tow.

A significant piece of that was made necessary by taking a field at Darden Tow offline for the playing season in order to do an in-house rehabilitation of the field.

There was no additional maintenance money that was added in order to accomplish improved field maintenance work.

It was allocated in FY23.

The same is generally true for FY24.

Some increases associated with changes in best management practices, but not an overall increase in field maintenance.

I will say having been involved in some of the conversations with user groups in Parks and Recreation, a very concerted effort to work in conjunction with the users in order to better manage how the fields are used and how decisions are made with respect to inclement weather.

how decisions are made with who gets access to which field.

And I think that the Parks and Recreation, if you ask them, would say, and the users would say, is that the level of coordination and communication between Parks and Rec and these user groups has improved dramatically.

It does not increase the number of playing fields, obviously.

In fact, there is one less.

but I think that the staff has done a good job of mitigating the current field number in order to maximize playability and quality of play over the course of the year.

Thank you, Mr. Walker.

I'll just, without rehashing the debate from last year, which the board was obviously split on, I'm fundamentally opposed to approving money for new athletic fields somewhere else when we haven't made decisions on the Darden Towel fields.

So that's the basis of it, so if we need to take a separate vote, then I would request the board we do that so I can vote no on putting fields in at Biscuit Run Park.

Because that money should be invested in a Darden Towel,

and this board needs to have the discussion that it needs to figure out what those solutions are.

The basis of my argument is that we had a plan that did not reduce capacity of the whole system, that actually improved and increased capacity for the whole system.

So it was a better use of funds for that whole system that could increase play and durability of the fields.

So why I would spend $4 million or

almost $4 million on two new grass fields that does nothing to increase capacity or durability.

It's erroneous use of money in my opinion.

So whatever we have to do, I'm not saying that this vote would be different if it comes down to turf, but if there's alternatives or some other piece that want that money invested in the Darden-Tow Field,

and being directed to increase the overall capacity of our entire athletic field system.

Two fields for that kind of money out of Biscuit Run doesn't do that.

It replaces the one field that's out because I would guess next year under this maintenance plan they'll take another field offline for the season.

So we'd have to take four whole years to get the fields rehabilitated properly.

Maybe I'm reading too much into that.

Yeah, so we basically net gain one field for maybe four years, presuming we can keep up with the quality of maintenance in the current field of system.

Again, I don't mean, this always sounds like I'm criticizing staff, but we've not done a good job maintaining the quality of the current grass fields.

So until I see a way, when we're talking $2 million, $3 million, $6 million to invest money, I want a way that increases capacity, increases usage, and increases durability of our fields to meet the needs of our current users that live here.

I'm not looking to bringing in the sports tourism and all of that and folks that were in favor of doing it for those reasons.

I'm talking about our residents' use of it.

We should be able to find the way, because we had an option, that increased playability, increased longevity, increased capacity, and we did not take that option.

Thank you.

And I won't belabor repeating what Ned said, but I agree with Ned completely.

And I will add that we need to stress we need a system of parks.

And I think we need the parks and the fields at Biscuit Run and the fields at Darnton Tower to make up a system.

Staff had a great recommendation several years ago to start that process and we have not taken their advice.

Darden Town, for my constituents, many of them is much more accessible.

We can talk about biscuit run and buses all we want to, but Darden Town is in the urban ring and is accessible to many of my constituents that might not be playing through a formal soccer league, but need access to these fields for their teams.

And I can say anecdotally that I get reports from my family members about how they have had to have their soccer and their practices and their play canceled because of rain.

And we're not mentioning that.

But that one existing field has to be taken offline.

when it rains because obviously they can't go out there and play in the rain and trash the fields because it just turns into a mud field.

So in addition to what Doug was describing, we're also having the field taken down when it rains.

And I don't know if staff wants to speak to that, but that is also limiting the use.

I don't want to muddy the waters here, but there is a new product out that might be more palatable to the community.

The turf fuels are not single-use.

They last for 15 or 16 years.

They're not like a single-use water bottle, plastic water bottle.

But having said that, there is a not new product out that is more grass and less of the artificial plastic.

And it might very well be an option to look at if we want to step back and take our time on this.

Just a thought.

Darden Cowell is in the Pantops area, the rural area.

I do agree that we need more fields and we need to make sure that we encourage

is a combination of grass and artificial germ.

So you still have the environmental problems, have not been able to meet with them yet, but it is a new product.

So it is something, in my opinion, which would be worth looking at maybe for a future park, maybe for some future fields, but there's still the PFAS

There are some concerns here, environmental concerns because there is a base, a netting that is still not environmentally friendly and you also have, that I found out, you have artificial turf embedded inside also the natural grass.

So there are some concerns here, we don't know enough

and others each in order to make the grass, each playing field at Darden Tow bring it up to snuff.

The problem with the grass fields at Darden Tow is they really haven't been maintained that well.

The base needs to be redone and that hasn't been done in, I don't know how many years, but it hasn't been redone.

So it really needs an overhaul and with an overhaul of natural grass,

We have an expectancy of a very long time and a very low cost, frankly.

So now that we've actually taken one field offline, I'm not sure what the total price would be of that.

I don't think they went in depth as they should for a natural grass field, what they're doing now with taking one field offline every year.

But I would be in favor, definitely in favor, of coming back and looking at this and

asking Nelsie, Ms.

Birch, asking Mr. Richardson to find additional funds that we could fund for fields at Dorton Town, do them correctly.

And then, you know, Biscuit Run, that's important also.

And maybe that'll be a different type of field.

I don't know.

That's something for the board to decide.

But I definitely am in favor of going

Thank you.

And then if we look at the previous slide, I just want to make sure I understand the numbers that are on here.

I'm trying to understand, you know, when we talk about two million dollars per field, I see two million dollars for base work for two natural grass athletic fields, and then I see other things

Biscuit Run for having any fields of any type at all.

And I don't necessarily disagree with that recommendation.

I think that looks promising to me.

So I'm just going to look at these in that perspective before commenting.

Take the time to do that.

I think that would be very valuable.

While we're on this slide 30, so my understanding, but please correct me if I'm wrong, the base work includes a lot of heavy equipment because it's sort of sloping and stuff right now, and that's why it is higher

and where other communities are putting in fields in the 300,000.

I mean, Rockingham's was four fields, $300,000 a piece.

It was fairly flat already, so they didn't have to do all that bulldozing.

So that shouldn't be attributed to grass versus something else, natural grass.

To create a flat area for a field would be the way that I would characterize it.

I'm looking at the folks who know better than me.

Well, I was just going to also comment that you need to take into consideration Biscuit Run versus Unidoor and Dial.

At Biscuit Run, the infrastructure is not there.

Right.

Park that would be needed, a road extension, storm water, restrooms and such.

While this other work is going on, getting ready for Biscuit Run, what can be achieved with some moderate more investment at Darn Town?

Because are we just resting and not doing other things?

Are we disking it up?

Are we adding soil implementation?

Are we doing anything?

As others might have said, I'm not interested in going back to the discussion we had a couple of years ago.

I was very pleased to see at the budget hearing one of our leading advocates for youth soccer saying, please just build fields.

Appreciate that very much.

And so I think that that's a really strong way for us to come together to get these improvements.

But I would be very in favor of, if resources are available, enhancing what we're doing in Darden Town to recover.

And I think, and effectively, there are more like five fields, aren't there?

because they're so far spread apart that five different groups can effectively use them.

The one thing that I think is so important for all of our parks is that when a game isn't happening, there needs to be a surface which can be used by people who want to have a picnic or fly a kite or do something else that's not an organized team sport.

And those kinds of activities are not suitable on

It's just the heat and the prickliness and the germs and everything else just can't it doesn't work and I don't want to belabor this but I know all of you here every day on the news about regulation on PFAS which is coming and one of the latest discussions is about the sources when communities put in a known source of the PFAS contamination and it becomes a water problem then there's a whole liability issue that

makes risk managers go crazy.

I'm looking at Nelson here.

So that would not be an investment that I would be in favor of making to put our community and our finances in that kind of jeopardy in addition for all the people who use Rivanna water drinking water downstream.

This point is making those four fields whole.

In the last budget meeting, that was about $1.2 million.

If we did it with artificial turf, that would be $4 million, which would definitely cut into this.

And maybe the $1.2 million we can do at Darden Cow with grass, natural grass.

I guess one follow-up question, is the proposal to do that over several years, what you're talking about in our town?

No, I'm talking about getting it done.

I'm talking about getting it done and then biscuit running, you know, is going to take a few years, but I'm getting that done also.

I don't want to sacrifice anything.

I was briefly enamored with the concept of a sports-tourism in Albemarle County until learning more about the actual costs that are associated with that and it's not just having year-round fields because there are fees and hundreds and hundreds of volunteers that are needed and I appreciated a session I did at BACO a couple years ago which quickly displayed me being in support of funding that type of a program here

which ties in with what I think Supervisor Galloway was saying to the extent that I

Not to relive the saga of Turfields at Dardan Town starting with, for me, the December 2019 meeting where it was resurrected

I am much more flexible today.

I just want to get it done.

And I want to build fields.

And I want to build fields for our community.

So I support what is being proposed with working on the fields at Darden Cowell as grass fields.

building grass fields at Biscuit Run, starting with two, ending up with four.

I support looking for increased funding to our Parks and Recreation Department, which is, if I remember, about 3% of our total budget.

And so I just want to point the phrase, just build fields.

And I support this.

I support both.

What's being done at Darden Powell, as well as building fields at Biscuit Run.

I need the board, if you will.

I need the board for purposes of the 19th.

Are there four votes from the board to continue to move forward with our plan at Biscuit Run?

That's true.

May I have a point of clarification?

No, not four million.

What I'm saying is in the way the budget is currently budgeted,

and Chair Price, I'm not sure if Mr. Rosenberg can correct me.

I don't know that we need a formal motion and a work session on the budget specific to what you'll do a final decision on May 3rd.

This is in preparation of April the 19th and how we would come back and make adjustments for this board either finding money for additional money to go elsewhere such as fields or anything that you want us to do in terms of analysis so

I think it's fine but what I'm saying is if there that I as a supervisor that you know not wanting to you know deadlocked on a different topic but if this money is going to get programmed

I'm saying I want the opportunity to vote against that.

To vote on it now seems to me that it from what I've heard and what I've listened to as others are interested in figuring out the Darden-Tow issue and that cost for that isn't determined yet and this is a place where the money could be found.

So this is clear, clear in the sense of what it is in the budget.

Leaving that for a second, going back to Darden Town, and we have four fields and a smaller field, and we have maintenance, and we've got best practices going on with field resting and such.

Does the board want us to look for additional, do you want things in addition to what we have at Darden Town right now?

Yeah, how I would characterize that is a more thorough rehabilitation of the existing fields of Darden Cow beyond just what's been done currently is trying to improve overall maintenance.

Correct.

And that information, is that an effective way to characterize that?

Yes.

These are interesting.

So we've got clarity as to looking at increased levels between here and the 19th.

I'm just asking if you could just make sure that there's four members of the board that would like for us to do that work because we'll come back with funding levels

and we'll also come back with strategies for the board to consider.

Or this board can stay silent on Biscuit Run right now and just tell us, do you want more

Waller on Darden Towel.

Do you want more work done on Darden Towel?

As Mr. Walker has said, would you like for us to do that work?

Mr. Pisto-Kirtley, increased renovation, restoration, getting him in better shape and then us coming back with a funding strategy.

So what's integral to the Darden Towel, don't lose sight of what when I'm talking about a system of fields that the game plan, the way that I think about it, is the proper use of the money to invest doesn't just enhance or give us four fields, the plan has to be in place of how they're maintained and enhances the capacity in our entire county.

That's what those new investments was intended to do.

We got into an argument over material.

and the environmental issue of it, which elevated the conversation.

But at the end of the day, it was about what can we do to improve the quality of the fields at Darden Tow and at the same time improve the quality all around the county.

I'm not sure I appreciated that whole system-wide approach without having the artificial turf debate, but I do appreciate it now.

I don't want to invest money anywhere if the quality of the fields degrade to what they are now

and that the quality of other places with this investment should help improve the quality everywhere.

And I don't want to add fields into a system that is right now not able to support the current inventory of fields.

So this isn't just about putting fields in at Darden Town.

To me, that's not the way to think of the investment that's there.

So that's why I'm saying hold off on adding.

Let's not add to the house.

Let's look at the quality of the house that's already standing before we start adding additions.

That conversation, that's the game plan I'm looking for.

That's probably installation.

That's probably maintenance.

That's game plan of what the rotation is elsewhere.

Because I'm not interested in investing several million, two million, three million, four million.

I think we can do both and the reason why is I think Chair Price mentioned about perhaps increasing for the future maybe but increasing the budget percentage for the parks and that and it's obvious we all want more parks and so I think

Our budget will have to increase four parts.

That's what the citizens want.

That's what we want.

So that needs to be maybe part of it, maybe for the future.

I don't know if it can be done now, but maybe for the future to increase that budget.

But at least for now, have Darden Cow and a plan for Biscuit Run, frankly.

That's what I'd like to see.

I'd like both.

I'm sorry.

Mr. Branch Andrews, comments?

We saw those two million people who really wanted to just have passive recreation and spaces to play outdoors.

I think that I'm very much in favor of renovating Darden Tow and I will get back to Bob and Amy and ask them to resurrect their information they had already developed about fee schedules which we never followed through and adopted that were discussed in 2016 because I think that would provide some significant amount of money that could go toward maintenance.

for those things which hasn't been done before.

I really appreciate Supervisor Galloway's comments which really is focusing on the system rather than the field surface.

I'd like to see fields at Biscuit Run and I'd like to see an expansion or capacities within the entire park system.

Yeah, I just wanted to clarify what you will not see is any reference to artificial turf in that information that comes forward.

We're focused solely on grass material and then how that might be.

We have them up and invest in grass fields, both at Darden Towel and over time right in the system of our work.

Thank you.

I'll just, to clarify, for April 19th, there's three items on our list bringing back, one of which is fields.

The second is additional information on the tax relief for the elderly program.

That'll be an ordinance the board will consider that evening.

We'll have the additional analysis, which Christopher spoke to earlier.

and the third item is the boards of commission's compensation that was mentioned earlier.

I just wanted to check in one last time as we prepare for the 19th and the subsequent approval on May 3rd.

I appreciate the email with the FTEs to our three main policies.

There are two different pages on that, one seemed more specific to the policy and one seemed more specific to the day-to-day work with the federal programs and some of the grants.

So there's some additional questions that I have and my own understanding of that.

And then there are questions that I have for both Kaki and Stacy relative to the housing policy and housing Albemarle and how effectively we're moving that along relative to the FTEs that are programmed to it.

And the intent behind it is to then have a conversation if we need to find room to add to the manpower to get that policy chucking along at a quicker pace than it currently is.

I don't know how to be more clear about it, but that's my interest anyway.

And that is something that I was hoping at some point I could have that conversation with the whole board.

So whenever that's supposed to happen, that's why I was asking for that FTE analysis to begin with.

No, I was just to acknowledge knowing one, it's after six, if there's something immediately that could be resolved.

Sounds like there's some depth questions.

We do have the staff here this evening.

Who could speak to any immediate questions?

Yeah I mean your sheet shows, so let's take Stacy, she's the program director I think is the housing manager.

The intent was... The sheet makes it look like it is.

So I'm getting... My questions would be to get into the minutia of, well, wait a minute.

Is it 60% of that FTE?

Because now we've got a temporary FTE, which we brought on for Southwood.

We're adding one, but we're not really funding that until the second half of fiscal year 24.

So that's January of 25.

So we still just have Stacy at 60% working on housing Albemarle.

Meanwhile, I complain about incentive programs not being in place, we're not getting to the trust fund, and not to mention all the other policy initiatives are into that policy.

If we stay at 60% of 1 FTE, perhaps 60% of the new FTE that's coming on in the year, and we're still at 1.2 FTEs to put in that whole policy,

When you look at Project Enable, we've got four FTEs that are cranking along doing a pretty damn good job with the resources we're putting into that department.

I would think those who are interested in the climate policy could say a lot of the same things about that action plan relative to my points with Housing Albemarle.

But as an issue, I think the Housing Albemarle one in my mind is urgent.

and of high priority that we need to look at the staffing that's working on that policy that we voted on almost two years ago and say, I'm getting concerned as a supervisor that I'm not putting the manpower behind my vote and my policy initiative, frankly, that I have.

Thank you.

Matters that were not listed on the agenda, we added meeting authorization by the board from the chair to sign a letter of support for school construction assistance program grant application revenue commitment.

That letter draft has been forwarded to the board.

Second.

Thank you.

We have a motion from Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley, a second from Supervisor Malek.

Any discussion?

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Malek?

Yes.

Ms.

Yes.

Thank you, Board.

I will sign that today before I leave Ms.

Borgerson.

Any other matters from the board not on the agenda?

Supervisor Galloway?

Supervisor McKeel just left.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley?

We know nothing.

Thank you.

Supervisor Mallek?

Quick ones.

I'm on the Virginia Council on Women and as a result of that I was invited to a reception last night at the Governor's Mansion in honor of Women's History Month.

It really was a nice affair.

The Governor spoke, they recognized Lieutenant Governor, first woman of color to hold that office in the Commonwealth.

Actually the most impressive thing for me was the First Lady, Suzanne Youngkin,

who gave very detailed remarks completely away from the podium in any notes.

I mean, it was really impressive the way she was able to list fact after fact about women in Virginia, history, some artwork and everything.

I was very, very impressed with that.

Second thing, it's always sad when we lose someone locally, someone from the county who leaves to go to another office.

The town of Scottsville is my home.

Matt Lawless has been their town administrator for about five years now.

I first got to know him as a resident.

Obviously, the last three plus years as a supervisor.

And just last night, they announced that he has recently been hired.

as the town manager in Shelburne, Vermont.

Shelbury has a population of 7,717.

It's comparable in size to Lexington, Virginia, population 7,404.

He'll be leaving the small town of Scottsville of 615 people to six employees in a budget under a million dollars to take over a town with 21 departments, including a harper master.

65 employees, a $10.6 million budget.

And so it's quite a step up for Mr. Lawless, and I give him thanks for his service to our community, formerly here with the county, but also congratulations.

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