Board of Supervisors Budget Worksession   3/2/2026

County Board of Supervisors to order.

We have several presentations to begin with this afternoon.

The first presentation is from the Louisa County Sheriff's Office.

Good afternoon.

We're currently expected to serve around 39,000 residents.

In the summertime, Lake Anna is the premier vacation area that attracts close to a million visitors each summer.

Our fundamental responsibility is a 24 hour day, 7 day a week law enforcement agency to provide services to the county.

Our patrol division is a 24 hour day service.

We cover about 500 square miles within the county.

The county is currently divided into four, or actually five sectors, as you see on the image here.

The way that we currently staff these sectors is two deputies, I'm sorry, one deputy per sector and a roaming unit as a sergeant.

The busiest sector right now is East 1.

That's the Bumpus Lake Anna area, followed by West 2, which is the Zions Crossroads area.

There's a breakdown for your calls of service.

Last year, the county received about 37,000 calls for law enforcement calls.

Out of the 37,000, the Sheriff's Office was the primary on 31,720.

We also assisted with some of the calls for the Town Police Department.

Their total calls for service were 5,274.

And there again, there's the calls per sector.

The busiest sector is, like I said, was the East One.

Lieutenant, before you go away from this slide, a couple things that I want to point out.

Well, some of those calls were handled by us and some by the town PD.

I don't have the exact number that we handled.

I'm not sure what you're saying as far as us being the primary for the town PD.

I'm not sure.

But those numbers, or a lot of those calls are handled by us.

I'm not sure of the exact number.

Sure.

I have a question.

Can you go back to that slide?

In the town you served, they had over 5,000 calls and you said you served or went on some of them.

That's what I just said.

Yeah.

I'm not sure that...

Your answer hadn't changed in the last 30 seconds.

No, it hasn't.

I'm sorry.

You are.

The town?

Okay.

Well, I'm sorry.

They have the chief and the sergeant, I believe, is still there.

Okay.

But he's retiring soon, is what I was told.

He is?

So yeah, they don't have a 24 hour a day service right now, so we pick up the times they don't.

You said you back them on calls.

What, outside of the town?

Yeah, they don't go outside of the town.

They will if we ask.

Alright, so we're currently slotted in the Sheriff's Office with 27 full-time patrol deputies.

Our minimum staffing is three on duty and that's a bare minimum.

That is the bare minimum.

We don't want to be in that position.

So during from 1400 to 2 PM to 2 AM, we have additional three deputy up to three deputies come on duty.

We designate those as the busiest times of the day, afternoon and tonight.

So the three deputies helped answer calls in those times.

With the existing staffing levels, we have one deputy assigned to each of the four sectors I showed you a minute ago and one supervisor to

supervise the shift that's on duty, which also helps with calls for service.

And ideally right now we have between 1400 or 2 p.m. and 2 a.m. we have around seven deputies on duty.

That's our ideal number.

All right, so as you all know, the county is growing according to the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, about 5.4% between 2020 and 2022.

I pulled the numbers last week.

They expect our population to reach 44,679 by 2030.

As the county grows, the sheriffs also need to grow with it to ensure the needs of our citizens are met.

So the sheriff's proposal is to grow from 27 to 40 patrol deputies full-time.

Like I said, we currently staff one deputy per sector and our goal is to have two deputies per sector for the four sectors in the county, two deputies per each one.

One reason we want to do that is some of our calls do require two deputies to respond.

As far as domestic disputes, disorderly subjects, they always require a 2W response.

So if you had a domestic dispute in the site Bumpus and you had a deputy that was at Gum Springs in East 2, so the deputy would have to leave that sector to go assist the sector in East 1, the adjoining sector.

And that's

often can be a pretty long response time.

And then while they're gone, it can take sometimes hours to complete a call.

You know, from from the time you make an arrest, take them to the jail occasionally, come back and be can be several hours that can leave a sector without a deputy for some time.

This may be your next slide, but I asked a question anyway.

I don't know.

So if we take someone into emergency custody for a mental health issue or a suicide or something of that nature, it can take up to eight hours at a time if the UVA cannot

take custody of the person.

UVA has come a long way as they will now sometimes take the person when you drop them off.

And you can turn around and leave, and they take it from there.

The PD will.

But sometimes they're at five east there.

Their mental health wing is full.

And that requires the deputy to go sit in the emergency room with the person that's having the mental health crisis.

And they have to sit there for, you know, it could be up to eight hours.

And that's the majority of their shift.

Not to include the commute time back and forth, so that's a major strain on resources if it comes to that.

So with the increase in patrol services, it will lead to a greater need for civil process.

The civil process division is our courts division.

They handle papers such as court orders, such as evictions, subpoenas, any other court order paperwork that has to be served throughout the county.

They also transport prisoners to jails and they provide security for the three courts in the county.

Sometimes all three courts can be running on the same day.

The Communications Center, that is going to also expand the amount of calls to come into the center, the amount of dispatch specials it takes to be effective there.

I want to talk about that.

On communication, because we just, this board just recently

approved a request to increase the pay for our dispatchers.

You know, and I've said this multiple times, because a lot of times when people think about emergency services, they think about the Sheriff's Department, they think about the Fire Department,

But they don't think about dispatch, which is really your first first responder.

If there's nobody there to answer the phone, you can't show up, fire department can't show up.

Correct.

So I want to point that out because it's a really stressful, high pressure job.

Yes, sir.

And nobody knows because most people don't have access to it.

They don't have the greatest view.

in the room that they're in.

There's no windows, right?

I mean, it is a very stressful job and we've seen the same thing happen with communications that we've seen with certified deputies, EMTs, firefighters, that they're in high demand and we're getting pressure from surrounding localities to try to hire them away.

for opening

The doors were opened, I think it was 1997, and I know that because I was one of the first dispatchers in there and they have not, our county has grown and dispatch hasn't.

That little room back there.

And full disclosure, I do have a family member in dispatch.

So, but yeah, they are, and they take many more calls than just 911 calls.

They get calls for parks and recreation, you name it, the calls come in.

I apologize.

The first number I gave you was the correct number.

It's 16.

And they want to make the increase in 18.

I'm going to go further into that.

But right now it's four openings.

And I know last week they said they had about 20 applications come in with the recent pay adjustments.

So more people are interested now.

All right, so the sheriff's plan that he wanted to put out there was a three-year plan from 27 to 29.

And this is the addition he wanted to do for next year, which would be five patrol deputy positions, one civil process deputy, one emergency communications officer, and also to add one full-time records clerk.

Right now, they only have one full-time person in records, and the other two are part-time employees.

And the need for that will be, as the county grows and patrol grows, we're going to have more papers for them to deal with, more reports.

So they're responsible for keeping up with all that.

In 2028, they would also ask for another five patrol positions, one civil process deputy and one emergency communications officer.

In 2029, an additional three patrol deputy positions.

That would be all that was asked for in that year.

With each deputy that you hire, it takes about a year, give or take, from the time they apply, the time they get hired, to be trained and released on their own.

The academy is 22 weeks long.

And then they go into field training with another officer, which can take about four months.

So I have a question on that.

It's been a mixture of both.

We've hired two certified recently, but we have two in the academy currently, but more are uncertified than are certified.

Mr. Chairman, how much from start to finish when you hire an uncertified deputy in that length of time does it cost?

Equipment, academy, equipment, car.

I'm not sure on the exact number that it would cost.

Okay.

I believe it's just the different departments coming in with the vehicle and equipment around $100,000.

I have a question, sir.

Given what Supervisor Jones just asked you, is there any contractual obligation for our newly accredited deputies or members of our sheriff's office to stay with us for a set amount of time in order to get any kind of incentive money or pay increase?

I'm not sure on the contracts.

We do have an incentive plan for those that come in certified that once they finish their field training we pay them a bonus and then they stay four more years and they get an additional bonus.

In closing, I just want to thank you all for taking your time to speak to me today, and I wanted to really thank you for the pay raises that you granted the Sheriff's Office a few years ago.

I mean, it was substantial in our recruiting and just our overall quality of life.

I just want you to consider a proposal.

We don't want to get in a situation where we just can't meet the needs of our citizens if we don't have the adequate staffing.

The Sheriff's Office, the Sheriff's vision for growth is phased, and we know it will come at a cost to taxpayers, but trying to do it over the course of years, several years to, you know, several years in the plan.

Does anybody have any questions for Lieutenant Officer?

I have one more in a minute, if nobody else does.

So, you don't have to go back, but over the next five years, I noticed that this plan proposed new patrol deputies and civil deputies as well.

In the first couple years, it also included additional communications officers, and then that leveled out and actually dropped off.

In the last year, it was just patrol deputies.

I'm assuming, but I don't want to assume, I want to know, that that growth in not only deputies but communications officer is driven by the county's population growth.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you very much.

Next is Byron A.M.S.

Mr. Chairman and members of the board, thank you so much for having us.

We appreciate your time.

All right.

We're going to give you a little high overview of the budget requests and a little bit of why that matters.

Why it matters.

24-7 is what Fire and EMS, Sheriff's Department do.

That's what first responders do.

We can't close, unfortunately, for weather or for any other events.

So with that, public safety is also an expectation of the citizens and of this government body.

The call volume continues to increase each year.

EMS still is a large percentage of the call types.

We have seen it go from anywhere from 90% of the call volumes over the last 10 years to now it's about 80 to 85% of those calls.

Fire calls are increasing within the department and therefore drives the reasoning why we must have safe numbers on fire apparatus so that we can have safe numbers at those fire scenes.

With both fire and EMS, we cannot stop training and we keep our certifications up to date and keeping up with the new trends.

We have to maintain service reliability and expectation, do it in a safe manner, all while maintaining compliance.

This slide, you may recognize a little bit of this slide, the heat map on the left side because I add that to the board packet each month.

I show you the monthly calls in a heat map and then I'll show you a rolling year's worth of calls.

This heat map is for January of 2025 through December of 2025.

That's like per station, right?

Yes, sir.

The population is not even in the district either, is that right?

Yeah, without having GIS in front of me, I would say yes.

Yeah, you would see a large population in that area, a large population in Zion's Crossroads and in the mineral area.

Do you have a total?

I do.

I have a slide that'll have a little bit of a total.

Okay, go ahead.

Yeah.

I was getting ready to write it down.

It is.

Not quite as high as the sheriff's department's numbers there, but it is a large amount.

All right, current 24-hour career staffing we have is 26 in the field per day.

Those are located at five of the 11 stations in the county.

Today, as of today, we have four full-time vacancies, and then we have nine additional openings that, if you'll recall, are funded

through the FEMA SAFER grant program.

We have been advertising and doing a process to fill those positions and our hope is that those will be filled by April.

We'll start an academy in April.

Those nine will be placed at Company 5 in Locust Creek.

Absolutely.

We're noticing, you know, as the staffing increases, as the population increases, as the growth increases, we were not noticing us going without units available, N.U.A., what we call no units available, for a while.

And it was really nice.

It's starting to come back.

Today was a prime example where we were without some units and hustling and trying to figure out unit placement.

You can jump on a vehicle and take that call.

Can I ask a question here?

You may.

I was going to ask it later, but you made the comment about, Mr. Goodwin, about the administration staff running calls.

And so just last week, a very good friend of mine, home, burnt in Blue Ridge Shores.

Yes, sir.

And probably totaled, it looks like.

Thank God his family got out.

But I did see Chief Lee in one of the pictures.

You're back, but I could see it.

So that would be a good example of the question that I have, because that was a major house fire.

There were several children in the house at the time.

Paid and volunteer, right?

Yes.

So one house fire, 30 people, and that was with, thank God, no injuries.

I happen to know those folks.

No injuries.

And three of those were administrative staff.

Obviously, we pick and choose the calls that we go on.

We're going to go on those higher acuity calls that may require assistance, may require a need to talk to homeowners, may require help with EMS or fire-related tasks.

Do you know, in that same vein, let's just pick

Generally, it can be as low a number as two providers.

One ambulance driver, one attendant in the back that is an ALS provider, a paramedic, intermediate, that will transport that patient.

If it is

If it is definitely that we see a need, they are having a STEMI, truly a heart attack, that we can see on our monitors.

We may grab somebody just in case everything goes south in that ride.

And then that ride is going to take about 50 minutes from Mineral to UVA.

Again, because you're talking about staffing.

About a week ago, there was a very bad car accident on 208 on a Saturday afternoon.

And I know that the road was closed down for an extended period of time.

Life flight came in.

Life flighted somebody out.

So you had, obviously, firing EMS.

You had sheriff's department.

And again, I haven't asked you any of this.

So I'm just looking for an approximation.

But on a serious accident like that,

How long does that tie up our staff and the number?

And I think Company 8, if I remember right, Company 8 was primary because it was right up the road.

It's going to tie up more than just Company 8.

It's going to also tie up an additional, probably an engine crew, the next additional engine crew.

It may even tie up a third additional.

Depending on how many patients, it will be either one or two ambulances.

Maybe even three, if there's a lot of patients, depending on how severe they are.

You're going to also get an EMS supervisor, and the battalion chief will head that way as well.

Time-wise, depends upon how banged up, how much force that vehicle took, if we can get to them, and how quickly or easily we can get them out of that car.

You said your house fire, or not your house fire, but the house fire in Blue Ridge Shores, roughly three hours?

Recently we had a fatality house fire in my district.

I know from start to finish you all were there much longer tied up.

Yes.

And when you have a fire, you also have an ambulance there at all times, right?

Yes.

When you're working the fire for any injuries, not just for patients from the fire, but fire.

But how long was that start to finish?

Because of fatality is involved it also requires a lot more investigation so we also will leave an engine along with an investigator and we call for the state police to come and investigate all fatality fires.

Depends on where they are.

This one took them a couple hours to get to us.

So they took a couple more hours.

It's it's that's a little bit more intense when we know there's a fatality.

We are trying to not only put the fire out, but put it out delicately so that we can also maintain it as a crime scene basically until proven otherwise and then also.

That ties up for the rest of the citizens too.

It did.

That one took a lot of resources.

Yes, ma'am.

Alright.

Why adequate staffing matters, everything we're kind of talking about, right?

Safety.

Safety is the number one, always will be.

Safety in numbers, safety of needs, and the safety on the scene to get the task that must be completed, done, and in a timely manner.

Responsibility, reliability.

We know how many personnel that we have coming to any given fire if we know how many are on the fire apparatus.

We can begin to comfortably assign tasks to personnel because we know what we have coming and who we have coming.

Response times.

are reduced.

There is a reasonable expectation that if you add staffing in the East End, such as these nine safer grant positions that will staff this engine, that will help to reduce response times in those areas by having a unit en route and on scene to begin care.

Overtime Reduction.

This is a large part of our budget, we know.

We allow two people off on vacation or training per day.

If one or two additional people call out sick on top of those that are already scheduled off, there is a minimum number of staffing that we have to have

We must meet to make safety, the response reliability, and to reduce those response times a priority.

Then we have to backfill to meet that staffing number.

Therefore, that overtime budget grows.

In FY23 and 24 we had a tremendous number of openings and over time seemed to go through the roof due to minimum staffing needs and having the mandatory providers.

As we fill the vacancies we continue to assess adequate staffing and plan for not only vacations and sick

Then it would be a reasonable expectation to see that over time trend downward.

Retention.

And this is where I give all of this body a tremendous amount of credit because we brought you a staffing matrix.

We brought you salary numbers of jurisdictions around us.

We brought you a career development need to help in retaining good quality members of our team.

And you all said yes.

You saw the need to pay well, provide adequate and good living conditions, and overall treated public safety services as a huge priority and our retention is better than it has been in years past.

So thank you all.

Burnout.

matters because if you recall back to those numbers in slide three of districts, it's easy to see which areas in the county run a tremendous amount of calls.

Medic units that can easily put almost 100,000 miles on them in a year due to the call volume and the distances to calls and then to hospitals and back, that burnout can occur.

Having not only adequate staffing, but the ability to switch out staffing if needed in the middle of a shift or a tour helps tremendously with burnout.

If you have never done this type of work, it takes a very unique person to be able to go from call to call of sick, really sick people and really bad traumatic injuries and just not take a moment just to reset.

You may recognize the capital improvements projects that we have submitted for this upcoming year.

We have apparatus replacement schedule that we have been working with the volunteer chiefs in the management oversight group to come up with that replacement schedule for both fire and ambulances.

Maintenance and renovations of buildings.

Many of the current volunteer buildings were never meant to house full-time staffing.

The buildings are older and need some renovations to make them more comfortable with adequate bunk room space, full bathrooms, and larger living areas for additional staffing.

As we look to the future, we are looking at the replacing or relocating of Zion's Crossroads Firehouse to a better location within that call volume for that area.

We will look at data

then to give us the best place for the next firehouse based on response times and call volumes.

Looking towards next year's request, again, we are in need of larger classroom and meeting spaces at the training center.

The burn building itself is fine.

We have repaired and inspected it to meet the current standards, and I believe that it will give us several more years.

However, the classroom is extremely small and we need to address this in the very near future because we are testing, we're now testing 40 to 50 people in any given process that we run because people want to come and work here.

We have had a very successful training academy with a 100% pass rate for all the classes.

We hold necessary FEMA-graded drills here in the county, and this alone requires several trainings yearly to make sure that staff, the sheriff's department, and county staff are prepared and therefore the adequate classroom is needed to hold people.

So the driving forces basically within the budget itself

Large amount includes salary, cost of living benefits, benefits themselves, and career development.

Overtime costs are property and liability and auto insurances.

Fleet maintenance and replacement, contractual services and their yearly increases, uniforms and turnout gear.

One complete set of turnout gear is about $5,000 from head to toe.

Medical supplies, fuel costs, population growth.

And with that population growth comes the need for services.

What we then maintain with those increases is current or lower response times.

We can maintain a safe minimum staffing number.

We can maintain advanced life support coverage.

Our apparatus maintains readiness and we are well trained and meet our compliance requirements.

This may be the slide that you are requesting that shows our response times and then also our call volume since FY24.

So 7,900 calls?

17, 117 different calls.

Remember, too, that this is average county response times.

If we lay it out a little bit different, not all the districts, it's all average, an average county.

So can you go back one slide?

Sorry.

So I had a note written down that I wanted to ask you about, and I guess that would be the time to do it.

So I think, since I've been on the board, I've been one of the liaisons to the MOG.

And I may not have these numbers exactly right, but I will give you my recollection of them, and then I want to ask you what they are today.

So I believe when I first became a liaison to the MOG,

that an ambulance was somewhere in the $225,000 to $250,000 range.

that a fire tanker was somewhere in the $450,000 to $500,000 range.

Where are we today?

Ambulances are upwards of $425,000.

That's a good ambulance, right?

That's a complete ambulance.

No, a complete ambulance.

Yes, sir.

Not the equipment pieces in it, but the ambulance and the box.

A tanker or an engine, two different pieces of apparatus, the engines have gone upwards of 1 million plus.

Tanker is about five hundred six, five to six hundred thousand.

And a ladder truck.

About two to two point four, depending on if you get it, what you're looking at, right?

Are you buying a name or are you buying the need and the necessities?

Crazy.

Well, back to the ambulance then, because again, the vast majority of your calls are EMS calls, right?

Depends on the location in the county.

If you look at company one, you're going to get a year, a year and a half before we're looking at replacing that or moving that to a less call volume area.

So this ambulance that costs the taxpayers, the county, $4.50, we use that number, right?

$4.50 if it's here in Louisa.

And then we have to start having a plan to replace it because then it takes a little bit of time to replace it.

And that's because I know this answer.

I just won't get this out in public.

But that's because every hospital transport that we have is outside of the county.

Yes, sir.

Right.

This slide here, I wanted to just talk about grants, and this is the one reason I wanted, chiefly, to come with me today, because we realize that we are one of the few departments that are able to take advantage of federal and state grants, and we feel that it is our responsibility to seek out and look into ways to offset some of these expenses.

It's not always about going after the biggest grant, but reading that fine print of do we qualify for this grant and how can we implement this grant and funding into our department to help offset some of these CIP and operation costs.

You as leaders have always been supportive of our efforts as we bring you these grants to apply.

And I don't want to take any credit for writing these, but we found that I have a great team that is really good at writing grants, and who knew?

But I wanted to get Chris here.

Don't tell everybody.

I know.

Nobody can have them.

Good afternoon.

So she just wanted me to give a quick overview of some of the grants that we've gotten.

Like she said, we fully appreciate how much impact on the budget providing Fire and EMS services have.

And so we did a five-year look back on our grants, and we have been awarded over about the last five years just shy of $6.3 million in grants, working with the chief and with the finance department to identify those grants, apply for those grants, and then work with you all to get those fundings.

The FEMA grants alone are just under $5.9 million.

We've made two big staffing improvements in the last five years just off of FEMA grants.

One of those allowed us to put safe staffing in our three fully staffed fire stations that we were staffing at the time.

And then the one that we're getting ready to realize that funding, I think, is available actually this month.

We're looking at an April 6 start date, like the Chief said earlier, for our upcoming

Recruit School where we will fill nine more positions and that will allow us to fully staff the Locust Creek Fire Station.

The same time we found out that we got that grant we also found out about almost a half million dollar grant that we got for equipment, fire hose, RIT packs, which are the air packs that we use to go in for firefighter rescue and survival if you have a downed firefighter.

It's basically just a heavy duty bag with a big air cylinder in it for the

Chris McCotter III, R.T.

in station.

They were sending it up to headquarters through logistics.

You'll recall that a few years back we also got a health and safety grant that we were able to bring a company in locally to do monthly training with all of our firefighters about the importance of exercise, of healthy eating, of healthy sleep, and then come back a year later we were also able to modify that grant towards the end for some savings where we were able to purchase workout equipment for all of the stations.

The Rescue Squad Assistance Fund grant is a grant through the Office of EMS.

All of those grants have a 50% cost share, but every one of these grants gave us 50% of the cost of these items that we were able to get.

One of the ambulances that we had to replace, we got 50% of that funding.

The cot, the power loading system, IV pumps, and video laryngoscopes so that we were able to increase our level of service that we're providing.

And then you all, I know, remember well all of the EMS pharmacy issues that we went through last year.

We were able to get a grant to get the storage locker, the access locker, many of the drug boxes, and the first years of drugs.

And then we just found out last month that we were able to get $130,000 from V-Dem for the emergency shelter upgrade that Captain Luck worked with V-Dem for.

So all of that, like I said, adds up to $6.3 million.

And just a note on that stuff, and everybody has kind of a different methodology when applying for grants.

None of these items that we got were

You know, sitting down with the grant package and figuring out what would be a cool thing to have.

These were all items that we were going to come to you anyway and have to ask for.

These were inevitabilities that we were going to have to buy, tools we were going to have to get, people that we were going to have to ask for.

And it's not a, I should add that it's not a given for every department.

What the chiefs and their team have done is just not something that every locality gets.

I'm not saying that

They're very competitive, and to your point a minute ago, one of the kind of bills that we rang over and over in our grant applications is that it's a really unique situation to have a call volume that's as high as Louise's, but also have to have 50-mile transports for every one of those calls.

There's very few organizations that run

7,000, 8,000, 9,000 calls a year, 4,000, 5,000 EMS transports and have to take every one of those transports for an hour away.

And is that why we're getting so many grants?

Is that because you said we're set apart different from other localities?

It can definitely play into the reasons what they are looking at on the future.

Definitely, especially with the ambulances, the R.C.F.

Okay, that's interesting.

Question on that, because the county is so large,

I'm assuming, I don't know.

But if you're on the eastern end of the county, Mr. Barlow's district, you're probably transporting to Richmond, correct?

Most of the time, most of the time.

If you're on the west end in Mrs. Jones's district, you're probably transporting to Charlottesville.

You can go to all three.

You could go to Spotsy Regional, but you could also head towards Richmond.

A few of you may recall that that was a hot topic several years ago, right?

They didn't take me where I wanted to go.

And working with the OMD and working with the needs of the call itself, does that call

require them to go where they had a procedure done, so it very well may mean that we take somebody from Ms. Jones' area and go all the way to Richmond.

That doesn't happen often, but it can happen.

I do want to say, and Mr. Goodwin is very good at keeping us updated on the grants that you all receive.

I hear it through the MOG, Mr. Williams hears it.

But if you'd asked me over the last five years what the total was, I wouldn't have said $6.3 million.

I didn't realize it was that much.

So thank you for being proactive and reaching out and trying.

Because that impact on the budget is huge.

I mean, that's not money that comes directly from our local taxpayers when you're getting those grants.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And we'll say the same thing to you that we said the Sheriff's Department.

Stay safe.

All right, well good afternoon.

Thank you all for having us here and excited to talk to you about the FY 27 budget and what that's looking like.

And I'll tell you, we call ourselves on a journey to greatness.

And we know we're not grading everything we do, but we know we need to be striving to be grading everything we do within our school division because it certainly drives what can continuously happen here in our community.

And as we do that, we say we have our vision.

And what is that vision?

Our vision is to be a world-class, forward-thinking school division.

It's gonna be the model of school divisions of the future.

And simply put, what does that mean?

It means we're gonna challenge every single student to reach their maximum potential so we can build a better Louisa every single day.

And with that being said, that looks different for every student.

We gotta always remember that.

And we also talk about the mission of how we're gonna do all that.

And we believe that it's through the five Cs that we have to equip our students

with the five C's to be able to go out into the world, to be able to communicate well, collaborate, build a critical thing, be creative and be good citizens, be good people.

And if they can do that, they're going to be able to accomplish the jobs and take on the jobs and compete for the jobs.

They're going to be out there for all of our students.

and for all other students that are out there.

They're going to be able to compete for that in a world that's changing and jobs are going to look much different as we move forward every single day.

We don't know what those jobs are going to look like, but if they are able to have these skills, we certainly can make sure they're competitive and they're going to be able to do any job that comes their way.

So what I'd like to do is take a step back and look at our previous budgets.

Since I've been superintendent, the budgets that you all have supported, and what does that look like, and what are the things that go along with that that really reach that mission we're talking about?

We're challenging every single student to reach their maximum potential.

We launched the LCPS Cybersecurity Program.

We were one of five school divisions across the nation, rural school divisions across the nation, that were chosen to launch this program through a grant process.

We also have added additional reading aids for our reading academies across the division to make sure we're helping our students at the youngest ages to make sure they're learning on grade level, reading on grade level, and doing math on grade level as well.

Also, we added talented and gifted teachers full-time.

We had part-time, we've added full-time to all of our schools, again, making sure we're challenging every student to reach their maximum potential.

And we had a one-to-one initiative for our pre-K through 12th grade students, meaning each student has their own device, kindergarten to first grade with iPads, second grade through 12th grade having Chromebooks, having their own devices so they can stay attached to the world.

Creation of STEAM labs, exposing our students at the youngest ages.

These STEAM labs are elementary schools, exposing them to science, technology, engineering, art, math at a young age through the resource rotation at each of our elementary schools.

Also adding the addition of our CTE directors and a focus on CTE, a focus on workforce development, making sure that we're providing the skills necessary for our students to go out into the world and be successful and drive a better workforce here in Louisa.

Added focus on our specialty SPED programs.

Taking our specialty SPED programs, we've combined some of those programs across schools to make them more focused and better so we can keep our students here in the county and not send them out to other schools or other

Other resources that are out and placements that are outside of the county and we've been able to really keep many of our students here within the school division.

In addition of our American Sign Language class, the middle school, high school, this is now considered a world language and many of our students is one of our most popular classes at the high school level classifying on the world languages as far as our American Sign Language and what a great skill for our students to have.

Also the creation of the state-of-the-art Creation Station at our middle school.

Many of you were there for the grand opening of that.

Again, pushing the five C's, pushing and challenging our students to really gain those skills so we can keep them moving out into the world.

Our Little Lions Learning Lab.

We set up the Little Lions Learning Lab.

That's a daycare preschool lab for our staff members, three and four-year-old students.

But also helping with child care for those staff members, which helps retain and keep and recruit quality teachers.

But even more so, we have our Teachers for Tomorrow program at the high school that works directly with this, setting up our own pipeline so we can hire our own teachers, build our own teachers, train our own teachers, and have them come back here and teach with us.

Continued implementation of the five C's.

Again, can't talk about that enough.

Continue to make sure we're prepping our students with those skills.

Addition of extracurricular programs such as esports, LCMS volleyball, girls wrestling, adding different opportunities for our students all along the way outside of the school day.

Began the LCHS media productions program.

Again, a program that's really giving our students the skills necessary to go out there and compete in many different areas.

In addition to our crisis in school counselors with increased priority on mental health, Louisa is not immune to the mental health issues that are facing us out here in our world, our country, our commonwealth, and certainly right here in our community, making sure we're prepping and have the resources available to our staff and our students.

Addition of our four resource officers to bring the total to seven across the division, one at every school.

We were the first school in the Commonwealth to have a resource officer at every single school.

That's something we're proud of because not necessarily standing there as an armed guard, but building relationships with our students every single day, whether it's out on the playground, whether it's inside the school building, whether it's walking down the hallway, building those relationships to build a better, safer Louisa community every single day.

Expanded a team of technology coaches, again, making sure our staff is up to date as they can be on all the technology so we can stay out in front of what we're doing.

The creation of our Steam on the Scene trailer, many of you have seen this out in our community, but not just having it on site in our schools, we'll be able to take it out to different events outside of our school buildings.

The addition of our weapons detectors at all six of our schools, again, being proactive, not reactive, trying to make sure that we're adding one more layer of safety for our students and our staff within our school division every single day.

Addition of our outdoor classrooms, providing spaces at all of our schools outside for outdoor classes to be held, something that you can see at any of our buildings if you go around to our schools.

Building classrooms of the future,

Making sure they're up to date on technology and what are those pieces that our students can equip themselves with and use to gain knowledge to get out there and make sure they have all the knowledge at their fingertips.

Creation of the State of the Art Impact Studio.

This is at our high school.

So you saw the creation station at our middle school.

You saw the STEAM labs at our elementary school.

This was recently put in at our high school.

Reutilizing, repurposing the space within our library.

Again, to help our students equip that.

You will not go by this space without seeing it jam packed with high school students.

Using their creativity, using their critical thinking skills to take another look at what they're doing.

Hiring additional staff to meet the enrollment needs.

I really appreciate it as our enrollment continues to grow within our school division.

This is something that has been very important to make sure we continue to hire the staff necessary so we can continue to meet the needs of all of our students.

And certainly we've been growing over the last few years, last several years.

Opening of brand new state-of-the-art LCMS and Alt Ed Wing.

This is something we're all certainly proud of and something that many of you all were there for the grand opening recently as we cut the ribbon and now we're utilizing that space at the middle school.

Again, growth has been, this addition is because of growth that has been occurring throughout the county as you're very well aware of which has increased our student enrollment and launched our highly anticipated Louisa County High School JROTC program.

of the Marine Corps program.

We were excited.

We've been trying to get this program for nine years.

You heard me talk about it for nine years.

We finally were able to get this program.

We have over 50 students already.

It starts official kickoff in January.

We have 50 students enrolled in this program.

It's something that I think is going to benefit not only

It's really going to benefit our community as a whole and beyond.

And then continue focused on compensation increases.

And I say, none of the programs we have can be successful unless we really put the people first.

Because it's the people behind the programs that make the difference.

It's not the program themselves.

It's the people running the programs that are going to determine whether it's a good program, it's a great program, or it's an outstanding program.

So we really appreciate that.

And if you take a look at this list,

Just wanted to put all that together.

We talk about our mission and vision of building a world-class, forward-thinking school division where we're going to challenge every single student to reach their maximum potential.

If you take a look at that list, that's what each of those things is doing, is making sure we have an avenue, a pathway, opportunities for every single student within our school division.

So I appreciate you allowing me to take a look back and talk with you.

So I want to go through these quickly, but I want to go through over the past year, what have been the things that as you have supported a budget and supported our budgets over the last year, what are the things that are coming out of that support?

And so I'm going to go through these accomplishments, but first,

All six of our schools are fully accredited by the Department of Education for nine years in a row, something we're proud of.

Also ranked second out of 133 school divisions in the state for the highest percentage of distinguished schools, which is something we're proud of.

We're right behind Falls Church.

Also, distributed a record amount of 37,000 of our 5C school board innovation grants from our Louise Education Foundation, something again pushing the 5Cs.

255 CTE completers in the class of 2025 with more than 70 students honored at CTE signing day.

That's 255 students who've earned a sequence, who've taken a sequence of courses that earned a credential and then graduated with those credentials and considered a completer.

Jewett Elementary School hosted Zootopia, which brought in 1,200 people from our community to go in and see our schools, be a part of our schools, and through a 5 Cs highlight.

Also making a difference through kindness days in the community.

This is something that's really important to me because we have to continue to help our students understand what it means to take care of your community, what it means to take care of each other, what it means to build each other up, and that's why these community

Kindness days are so important and something we host throughout the year with our students as they pick up trash, help at their local grocery store, resource council, animal shelter, and beyond.

Bobcats bringing home the hardware, our extracurricular activities, and over at the middle school football, girls and boys track, baseball, softball, boys and girls cross country, wrestling, girls basketball, all bringing home championships, something we should be proud of with our students outside of the classroom.

Also planned and hosted our first ever regional civics bee.

Really hosted and making sure civics is an important aspect of what we're teaching.

Through 8th grade we were the only the second school division in Virginia to host such an event which brought in people from all over the region and we'll be hosting that again coming up here in April for the second annual.

Record number of family events at Travailians Elementary School.

Again, bringing our community in our schools, such as the school cookout, breakfast with books, market night, a whole lot more.

I've seen many of you at these events as well.

And then 39 IAs are currently in our IA to teacher pipeline.

We talked about building our own pipeline.

We have an IA to teacher pipeline that we're working with Grand Canyon University.

We have over 39 instructional assistants now in that pipeline, working to become teachers, hopefully here within our community.

and also hosted the 2025 LCBS Job Fair, conducting 148 interviews in one day here on site.

Really trying to get the best of the best for all of our positions.

Any position within our community that Job Fair is a part of that.

We'll be hosting another one of those coming up here in April as well.

And then the Bobcat Band are in a superior rating at state assessments.

This is a big deal and something we're very proud of with our middle school band then going up and really driving and elevating our music program across the division.

LCPS Nutrition expanded their farm to schools to all four of our elementary schools.

Agriculture, farming, something that's very important here in our community, being able to make sure that our students understand that importance and actually farming and doing it at school and then their

producing salads and so forth within our schools that our students are eating after they produce the product.

and the Produce.

Thomas Jefferson Elementary School received the Distinguished School Rating from the Virginia Department of Education, something very proud of.

And then Successful Appreciation Nights in the Jungle.

Last year we looked and we honored Dickie Purcell for 100 combined years of service.

This year we we honored Dr. Al Southall for 40 plus years of service to to our community as a team doctor.

And then Military Night

As well, First Responder Night, things we do down in the jungle just to recognize people in our community doing great things.

And then our LCMS led the nation for the sixth straight year in positive messages on the UUplift platform.

That's a nationwide platform.

But again, helping our students understand the importance of building each other up, taking care of one another on a daily basis.

And then Bobcat Baristas expanded their services.

Students learning life skills.

Life skills are going to help them go out into the world, be able to be successful as they move forward outside of school.

Bobcat pride at LCMS of math scores were 8% higher, 6% higher in reading, 8% higher in science, 13% higher in history, all above the state average with those percentages.

And then looking at TJ earned the highest annual pass rate in the region in math with a 90% pass rate, something that's not, that we're very excited about.

And also the Foxes at Moss Knuckles increased their reading scores by 7%, math by 6%, science by 9%, and history by 8% as well over this past year.

And then looking at Trevians Elementary School, they had the highest annual pass rate in reading and science throughout the entire region with 87% in reading and 91% in science.

Then LCPS annual annual rate pass rate of 82%, which is 8% higher than the state average in English across the board within the school division.

Patriot Point at TJ.

Many of you have been there, seen this in action.

It's a nature playscape helping the students with all sorts of learning and nature outside, but also with their mental health aspects as well.

Getting them off of devices and getting them outside and hoping that takes effect when they go home from school as well, playing in nature.

And then hosted the second annual Ag Conservation Day for all of our fifth grade students.

This year we had our second annual over here at the Louisa Fairgrounds, a day in which our students really have enjoyed and I think our community members who have been a part of that have as well.

And then they earned the Region 5, Louisa County High School earned the Region 5 Creating Excellence Award from the Department of Education for its auto tech program over this past year.

And then they also earned the Workforce Readiness, number one in the state, for Workforce Readiness from our CTE program from the Virginia School Boards Association.

And then we've launched this AI Hub, which is integrating AI within our school division.

And I think I have some strong feelings on AI and the importance of helping our students understand and use it and navigate it in a very responsible way.

But I think we can't

say we're not going to use AI because that's the way of the future and we have to make sure our students are prepared with it.

So integrated in a safe platform again to enhance learning but not take over learning and right now we're using something called School AI to help with that in which we have when we say 474 School AI active users that's staff members and then they've created 2,400 spaces for our students to learn and do things within those spaces.

And then Moll Snuffles increased their past advanced scores by 40% over this past year, which is a pretty remarkable accomplishment.

Trailblazers leading the way with reading scores 8% higher than the state average, 17% higher in math than the state average, 10% in science and history 18% as well higher than the state average.

Great job by the Trailblazers.

And then the high school class of 2025 received more than a half a million dollars in scholarships from our local

And then 7% chronic absenteeism rate.

The average is 15% in the Commonwealth.

That's something we continue to try to drive down.

We're very proud that number has continuously come down and now 8% better than the state average.

Also, Lions leading the way.

So at our high school, our reading scores are 18% higher than the state average.

Our math scores are 23% higher than the state average.

Science, 17% higher than the state average.

Something, getting our Lions out there as they walk across the stage and go out into the world, making sure they're equipped and ready to roll.

Travailians also earned a Distinguished School Rating from the Department of Education, so we're proud of our Eagles.

And then, as you know, you were part of this.

We raised over $30,000 for Grayson County Public Schools in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene to help them with their recovery process.

Louisa County Public Schools annual pass rate in math is 84%, which is 12% higher than the state average.

And then we hosted one book, one Louisa.

We're getting ready to host our second one coming up here in April at the Goochland Drive-In where over 1,200 families came out and attended that event.

Really read the book and then they go watch the movie.

The high school earned the Distinguished High School Rating from the Department of Education.

Again, proud of our Lions out there leading the way.

And then the LCPS Communications worked with local media outlets to secure more than 94 news stories and positive activities happening.

Our staff, our students are doing great things, getting it out there and letting folks know the great things that they're doing, which is a big accomplishment.

And then the Proud Patriots.

Math scores were 18% higher at Thomas Jefferson Elementary than the state average.

Their reading scores were 8% higher.

The science scores were 3% higher and their history scores were 13% higher than the state average.

And then the nutrition program ended the year with more than a million dollars in their fund balance.

This is a really big deal because the food costs have driven up.

They've been able to go from what used to be in the red to now in the black and really helping pay for those increases as we've had to move forward with that.

That's a really big deal.

I'm really proud of Ms. Herman and her team.

Jewett Elementary School continues its Ag in the Classroom focus, something that, again, we're proud of with the chickens they have down there, and they have the younger students, who they call the chicken tenders, taking care of the chickens down at Jewett.

And then T.J. hosted Toy Story Night.

Again, 400, 800 families coming out, 800 people attending, getting our families involved in our schools, getting them into our schools and seeing what's happening.

Something we always want to do.

Twenty-six students this past year graduated from our alternative education program.

That's a really awesome stat, because those are students that didn't necessarily function as well in the high school setting, but functioned well in a different setting.

They graduated and now are going to go forth, some are going to college, some are going into the workforce, and some into the military out of those 26.

And then the LCPSCT was awarded the Virginia Governor's Innovation Competitive Equipment Grant.

We received a lot of welding equipment with that grant, which is something that we were excited to pick up as one of the very few schools that received that grant.

Provided swimming and water safety lessons for all second and fifth graders.

This is something that's near and dear to my heart as well as we make sure our students know how to swim.

There are a lot of bodies of water here in Louisa County to be able to help make sure our second graders have the water safety and our fifth graders are learning how to swim.

It's certainly something we want to make sure we can continue to provide for all of our second and fifth grade students as they come through.

Finished number one in the regional math hoops competition.

This is number one in the region is Maryland, D.C. and Virginia.

So this is a math competition, all talked about around basketball and our middle school won first place out of those three localities.

Trevians Elementary School leading the way out there with 13% higher in the state average in reading, 17 in math, 20 in science and 24 in history.

Higher than the state average, way to go Eagles.

And we were on the Today Show for the nutrition program for our breakfast participation.

And part of that really is a driver in the funding that I talked to you about earlier with Ms. Herman.

But we went from breakfast participation from 25% to 70%.

And the Today Show highlighted Ms. Herman and her program and what she's doing there for our students.

I will tell you a sneak peek.

The Today Show is coming back again in the next couple of weeks to do another highlight of our school division as well, which we're pretty excited about.

I spoke with them earlier today.

And then hosted the second annual Tournament of Champions and Little Feet Meet.

Tournament of Champions is for our special needs students, helping them get out there and see and be a part of, and our high school students, middle school students coming out and cheering them on in their competition, which is amazing.

And to finish it up, construction continues on our state-of-the-art CTE center, something we're very proud of and I can't thank you enough for the support of that CTE center that's on the way.

It's going to really change a lot of lives here within our community and opportunities that are really going to grow, not just for our

students in school, but also for in our adult community as well.

So really excited about that.

So those are 50 accomplishments.

I just wanted to hit the highlight of this to say, hey, you've supported that mission of being a world class forward thinking school division, you supported it by

I think that list there that we've given you of things that we've been able to add and programs we've been able to add to say hey we want to challenge every student to reach their max potential and then looking at some of those accomplishments.

So now let's take a look at the budget that I want to that we're putting out there for the upcoming school year.

and then really broke it down into four areas.

Where are we?

Operational increases, A, B and C. Compensation increases and then moving ahead.

What is that vision as we move outside of the school year and move ahead?

Well, first of all, so where are we?

Well, at the beginning of the school year, I came to you in the summer and I said, hey, we

For our schools.

R.T.

So then, what does that operations side look like?

So we look at operations, so the insurance pieces of that.

So there are three different phases we look at.

One is the workers' compensation insurance, that's at $51,000.

The health care insurance, we don't have those final numbers yet.

And then the earthquake insurance, we don't have those final numbers yet as well.

So those are numbers we're waiting on as we continue to move forward for this coming school year.

Also in the operations, segment B, are the personnel additions.

And each of the personnel additions you're going to see here are directly tied to the opening of the middle school addition for the students we'll be putting into that piece of the building.

And so first of all, IT technician.

A technician, this was across the division.

And again, the $87,000, that's the salary and the benefits from that side of things.

But the technology, excuse me, the technician needing additional people to help work on the devices and so forth.

This will also help us when we open up the CTE center as well.

Two part-time cafeteria workers, there's a cafeteria space within the new addition as well.

And then an agriculture teacher, there's a new ag space in the new addition.

So we'll have another ag classroom there, which we're excited about as the demand for that is high.

We wanted to continue to meet the demand at the middle school level because oftentimes if they can't get in they go they might go to some other things and never come back to the AG piece and if we really want if they have an interest in AG we want to make sure we're definitely providing that opportunity.

And then two custodians for that new wing as well at $96,000.

That's $314,000 for the additional personnel and as you can see it really tied around to the opening of the new addition.

And then segment 2C, the operations, supplies, and utilities.

Looking at that, we're adding an addition of $75,000.

Most of this is just for the new addition.

That's for the new addition there that we just opened as well.

So again, segment 2, the operations side, $440,000 plus the healthcare.

And then segment three, compensation.

And I would say our people are our most valuable resource.

We must continue to always remember that and keep that in the forefront as our people are our most valuable resource.

So what does that look like for us as we move forward?

So looking at a 3% plus a step increase for our certified staff at $2.541 million, that's 3% plus a step.

And then 4% increase for our classified staff

and then a degree supplement increase.

One of the things that we started last year, we were doing it over a three year phase.

And you'll approve this in the budget last year for again, third, third and a third for our staff getting master's degrees and doctoral degrees.

They get a supplement for that our supplements were getting a bit behind we

to bring it just above the average of our localities we compete with, and this would be the second third of increasing those.

And then the last is our administrative assistant or secretary scale adjustment.

We're looking at that.

That's a group of our staff that we have not increased and we did.

We went back and looked at this and how do we compare and 185,000 to bring that scale.

into where it needs to be.

So the compensation increases is right at $3.52 million.

So those are the three segments.

Again, where are we?

Our operational increases and our compensation increases.

And then we look at state funding.

I wanted to take a minute to talk a little bit about this.

So the state funding side, you notice there are two asterisks there.

So when we talk about the state funding over last year, so we go back and look at, you know, what

What are our additional funds?

And this is all off of the original governor's budget.

Okay, so that's something that's important to know here.

We're basing this off the original governor's budget.

There's since been a House and a Senate budget come out.

We don't have any specifics of how that affects us yet because they haven't put out that information.

So we're still operating off of the Governor's budget as a whole, but under that it was $963,000 more funding over last year's funding.

And why is that important?

Well, we know our LCI went up

And with our LCI going up, that means the locality would have to pay more as the LCI goes up.

So to be able to debt the LCI going up, the state funding out of the governor's budget,

closed the gap that would have been there and an additional $963,000, if that makes sense.

So that's the funding towards that from the state.

And then VRS savings, we're looking at about $490,000 in VRS savings that would be already in the budget there.

So we would look

to request right at $2.933 million plus the healthcare cost as we get those finalized or get those back as well.

So looking at that as a whole.

So what does this now mean as we move ahead?

And I just wanted to talk a little bit about down the road.

What does that look like?

So looking

I had to just put this one on there and then cross it off because I know it's been on there for nine years, our Marine Corps JROTC program.

I'm excited to be able to cross that one off continuing the vision beyond FY26.

But also continue to focus on the 5C's, something we know we need to continue to do to prepare our students for those jobs.

We don't know what they look like yet.

What they're going to look like as we prepare them.

Also, something we have to really keep in mind are the CTE program expansion as we open up the CTE building in the fall of 27.

There will be additional personnel that will be put into play there.

So we know that's going to be down the road as well.

Continued focus on our mental health resources.

That's something we got to keep in the forefront as we move forward.

And then the addition of our LCMS extracurricular opportunities with the addition of our turf fields there for the county that has been put near the middle school site there.

We're excited to also be able to maybe expand some programs there at our middle school as well with those new facilities we

It's going to be nice to be able to have those facilities there on site.

And finally, continue to focus on compensation as well.

As you can see, we've had a lot of things over these past nine years to really look at what we're doing.

And I can't say enough about how important it is to take care of the people.

And that's something you have always kept in the forefront of taking care of the people.

So, one final summary.

Here are the three segments.

We have our savings, state budget, and our savings from VRS.

And then to finalize it, what we are requesting is the 2.9 plus the health care cost.

I would like to just say one more time, the unknown impacts.

This is off the governor's budget.

We're waiting on all the pieces from the Senate and the House and then the new governor's budget once that comes out.

Mr. Williams, I wish I could say yes to that question, but you wanted me to be truthful, I'm assuming, so no sir.

But I do appreciate the opportunity to come, and really, I just want to dwell home one more time.

We want to be that forward-thinking school division that's going to be the model school divisions of the future.

My colleagues have heard me say more than one time that our school division is the reason people move to Louisa.

And I've said it publicly more than one time because you do a great job.

Just quickly, lightly,

You're going to be a magician when you take that $72,000 and pay them damn light bills around here.

For my $800 a month.

At the Y in Charlottesville.

So you take all of those kids to Charlottesville?

Yes.

Okay.

Ms. Straley, is it fair to say that because of the solar projects you put in, that you're producing and offsetting, that you're really not seeing a rate increase and that's helped level some of your electric utility bill?

It has.

Yes, sir.

I'd like to say I was really pleased to see, when you were talking about staff raises, the secretarial staff.

Because beyond our teachers that are so phenomenal, all the other staff, the secretary staff are the backbone of our schools.

And their pay has been, in my opinion, very low.

And so I'm so glad to see that you're specifically adding something for them.

Mr. Chairman, thank you.

Always a pleasure to hear what's going on over there at Team OCPS.

A couple questions.

I too want to know where the youngsters were going to get swimming lessons, because I know that there was some question about everybody in the community not learning to swim, so that was very encouraging, certainly outside the realm of normal education.

But my question is,

I don't think you should give away any trade secrets here, but what changes did you implement to raise so many test scores?

Well, it's hardworking folks that are getting in there and using the science of reading.

For example, we just talked about the reading scores.

I've really been focusing in on the science of reading and we've been focusing a lot as well on getting tutors in the building to help our teachers as well.

Also, not just the tutor piece, but also just in general being able to do expanded school day, do summer school, do some things outside of the realm as well.

But at the end of the day,

I said this earlier, it's all about your people and I think we have great people who are doing great things and I'm really proud of what they do.

They come in every day and they take it personal if a student is not learning and they want to make sure they find a way to make it happen and that's what we have to continue to do.

But I think there are a lot of pieces along the way that you all have supported with tutors and compensation increases that have been able to keep our people in place, to keep them here,

I know I shared this with you personally from time to time, but don't get to say it publicly often enough.

The thanks that needs to go to you and your staff for what you do for our young people in this county.

Mr. Barlow and myself are alums of the Louisa County School System, proudly so.

But the difference between where it is now from where it was back then is just amazing.

And thank you so much.

It gives our young people tremendous opportunities and puts them on a level playing field when they finish school to do things that kids from here didn't get to do before and to compete with any other school division in the state of Virginia, any students that graduated from those.

Well, I appreciate the kind words and I would say, first and foremost, I'm glad you said team because this is not a Doug Straley accomplishment.

This is a team accomplishment.

This whole team is this community as a whole who really supports public education and we're very blessed to live in a community that supports public education.

Anyone else?

And I actually wrote this down and Mr. McCotter just talked a little bit about it.

You still have and have expanded your instructional assistant.

Program in especially reading and math since COVID and even some of that when that COVID money has run out.

Have asked this board to continue to.

Fund those positions, not only to catch up for the COVID loss, but also, I mean, my granddaughter's taken advantage of that.

That's a very accurate statement.

So a lot of the tutoring and one-to-one help, small group help, is being provided by instructional assistants, and they're phenomenal.

And you hit on it as well.

you said out of COVID and one of the things that we realized out of COVID how important that small group setting was because we were seeing tremendous gains in those small groups which helped us understand the importance of having those positions within the within our school division and probably would have never been able to see those small groups in such a way

And I took this picture at the last Safe Schools Task Force meeting you talked about a little bit, and it goes back to something you brought up here, and that's mental health counselors.

And the school system has increased mental health counselors since COVID.

You've added more to the staff.

This board has funded them.

But I do want to share this, because I didn't bring it up the last meeting, but I usually do.

This is the number of suicide risk assessments in our schools.

Again, you just made the comment, Louise is not immune to it.

And I'm not going to give the numbers, but you have real suicide risk assessments in elementary school.

in the middle school and in the high school.

And it's interesting to me, and this has been consistent since we've been given this information from Safe Schools Task Force, that the highest number is in the middle school.

So that's what, kids that are, what, 12 to 15 maybe?

11 to 14, yes.

You know, the school system is the largest part of our budget.

But some of these things that we're funding, like those counselors, like those IAs, are directly driving, I think, some of this increase, as you've seen.

But I won't switch gears on you.

In new construction, roughly right now, with the middle school addition, the CTE center, rough numbers, $70 million.

You mentioned that a potential new elementary school at some point, who knows, $30 to $35 million maybe.

I would assume what we've heard from the Sheriff's Department and the Fire Department

Right over 100 students over the past year.

And so many of those folks are folks that are moving in.

I would say the vast majority.

I will say if you look at enrollment numbers uniquely to Louisa is the fact that birth rates in Louisa are also going up.

If you look at the Commonwealth, you look at the Commonwealth, the birth rates are going down.

Louisa is going up.

But also if you take it and look at the, I'm trying to think of the word they call it, but it's the death rates and the birth rates.

It actually goes down a little bit.

I think that's it, yes.

So if you look at that, however, birth rates are going up, which means you're going to have more kindergartners.

So for us, that means the enrollment is going up because the death rates don't really factor as much for us as it would a whole population, but the kindergarten numbers, the birth rates do.

So that number is going up, that attributes to some of it, but the vast majority are people moving in.

And we have a lot of folks that are moving in.

They move within the school year.

Last question I have, and it's kind of outside of what you talked about, but it's really a topic in the county.

Last board meeting, we had folks here from Dominion and ValleyLink about potential high voltage line coming across the county.

I know that at some point in the pretty near future, we're going to have to build a new elementary school.

Several years ago, the school system purchased, what, 90 acres, I think, besides your complex.

And I don't know if that's where it's going to go.

I know you have a study, and you're trying to figure all that out.

But at some point, that is an asset of the school system.

And at some point, you probably are going to do something with it, whether you put a new elementary school there or not.

One of these routes, the easternmost route, literally travels right down the property line of that 90 acres.

And I asked at the meeting how far it was from the existing complex and then how far it would be if you all ever build something there.

It's really close, 1,000 feet or something like that, 900, 700 feet if you build something.

If that is the route that is eventually chosen, does that give the school system concern?

Yeah, so we bought a piece of property 91 acres right there beside of the middle school.

You're aware of it.

We bought that piece of property knowing that something's going to be built there over the next several years, whether that's an elementary school, whether it was maybe the CTE center at some point before we decided to put it where we're putting it.

But certainly it's going to be a site of something down the road, whether it's under my term or someone else's.

And I would say that

It's not helpful to see those lines running so closely to that piece of property.

That is not something that

I would say it's kept me up a little bit at night knowing that that's going to happen there because I don't know or potentially happen there.

That's something that we need to keep a very close eye on and I think we need to to make it known that it's not beneficial to come across that piece of property especially or come near that piece of property knowing that we may build another school there at some point.

I think that's something that we want to certainly make our opinion known.

Yeah, thank you.

I believe this line, when looking at the maps, can be very close to Thomas Jefferson Elementary School and Moss Knuckles too, depending on the route they take.

Thank you, Ms. Straney.

Thank you.

You've done pretty good.

You opened the door.

I want to tell you we had a bus accident from another district.

We had a bus accident from another district and I was so impressed with our fire and EMS staff

We rushed out there as fast as we could.

Of course, we were behind them, but they were awesome.

Like they're excellent in their jobs.

Just wanted to throw that in.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

I do have a few things.

I'm still working on the operating budget, still tweaking things.

We won't have the final health insurance numbers for another week or two.

We do, based on what we're seeing, they're going to be higher than I've budgeted.

So I am tweaking those numbers to what we think they're going to be as we finalize those.

Good news is VRS for us came in and it came in less.

So we had a 1% savings with our VRS, which was awesome.

That was about $256,000.

But I also, as I was reading the General Assembly and some of the changes there, CSA, which is Children's Services, they're going to change the formula, which means the county will pick up more.

So I put that money from the VRS savings straight into CSA expenditures, because I see that as being a need next year.

Assessments are in so I've made adjustments for those and we'll have the public hearing for that at the March 16th meeting.

Allison and the Assessor's Office as well as Rich will come in and do a presentation for that meeting with me.

Then also I have one outside agency left for us to look at the old

Thomas Jefferson EMS Council is no longer, and they've moved us into the Northern Virginia Emergency Response System area.

So when we first started building our budget for them, we called and asked, hey, how should we start looking at this?

And they told us it would be based on population in a certain amount.

So we built the budget with $13,000 for that.

When they did their final submission recently, as they're starting to finalize things, they just pulled a number of what we gave Thomas Jefferson EMS Council last time.

And so they submitted for 20,000.

We're not sure of the benefit yet because we haven't used them yet.

So talking with staff and reading through everything and talking with different staff members, we're thinking if it's okay with the board, we start with that 13 that they originally quoted us and see what that benefit is and then move into 20.

If y'all want us to put 20 in the budget, we could also do that.

Well, it's still three groups, but they're all overseen by the Northern Virginia group now.

So we're so small in that group compared to now we're with all the Northern Virginia localities that we're like, well, let's see what we get.

No, granted, they're just starting too.

They kind of weren't given a choice.

They just got us.

So they don't know what that looks like either.

And so they're going to spend this year kind of looking at that.

But we were kind of thinking, hey, let's maybe stick with what they originally told us and see what we get.

I feel like we'll get something, but we just don't know what that is yet.

I think your advice is the best in my opinion, but we've got the other six of us.

We didn't get there.

We kept running out of time.

Okay, thank you.

I'll second it if you make it.

Okay, perfect.

OK. Any discussion?

All those in favor, signify by saying aye.

Any opposed?

OK.

Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Yes, sir.

The Henson Building, Girl Scout House slash library had a lot of different lives through the years.

I have gone back and revisited that.

The Finance Committee recommended moving that to the 28 budget from the 27 budget.

General Services had $225,000 in the 27 budget for it.

That $225,000 covers re-putting new siding on the building.

It has T-111 siding on it now that has been on there for years.

And it also would include putting new windows in.

The contractor suggested doing those at the same time, because some of those windows are an odd size window.

So they have to be custom made, which really runs the price up, is what I'm told.

So they suggested doing it at the same time in case the window sizes needed to be adjusted to put a more standard window in.

I've gone back and re-looked at all this, including the building.

Some of that siding is to the point

That's closer to the ground where water potentially splashes up and stuff on it, where not even the screws will hold on it anymore.

So they just pull through.

It's really in bad need of that.

New roof was put on it within the last few years, I think five or six years ago, something like that.

So the roof is in good shape.

The inside has had some work done on it.

It's getting finished up this year.

That's in good shape.

If we're going to continue to use that building, which it's used a lot by Parks and Recreation, mainly for classes of different types, yoga classes and things like that.

The Girl Scouts use it.

One of the Boy Scout troops, I think from what I understand, uses it.

It is still used quite a bit.

So I would like for us to keep that in the 27 budget.

And we go ahead and get this exterior done and the windows.

and just wrap that building up.

I mean, we're quite a few years away from building a new facility for Parks and Recreation that would be able to accommodate what's in that building now.

So that building is going to continue to be used for quite a few more years.

And I think it just makes sense for us to go ahead, instead of having a building that's crumbling on the exterior, to go ahead and get it fixed.

So do I need to make that an emotion, Mr.

In my last Park and Rec meeting, the members expressed the fact that they wanted to see that facility

I'm in support of Woody Williams.

Mr. Chairman, if I may, I heard earlier and I'm familiar with this building.

It used to be the old library and we used it at that time that dates us.

We take money from 28 and put it in 27.

We need to justify why we're doing it.

It sounds like it's being multi-purposed for many different programs.

Pretty much.

So if I remember correctly, when we talked about this in Finance Committee meeting, General Services said that it could be pushed off, that it wasn't impacting the use of the building.

It's the exterior, not the interior.

I don't think the siding's necessarily going to fall off.

I'll share this with you.

The windows on the west side of the building, which are small windows, the caulking and whatever else was in there because it was some way too large of pieces that caulking, it was too big for caulking just to fill.

So they had some other stuff in there too.

It had fallen out.

I mean, it was daylight through there.

It just is in bad shape.

Could it make it two years, two to three years?

Probably.

But it is in bad shape, Duane.

The siding isn't going to get any better.

It's just going to continue to get worse.

Apparently, it went through some years where

It went without stain or paint or whatever it is that's on there.

I think it's some type of stain probably.

It's all T-111.

And I think that really bothered it.

The sides that get weathered the most, you know, the sun hits the most, that type of thing, they're by far in the worst shape.

So, but in talking with Anderson, you know, it doesn't really just make sense to put siding on a couple of sides.

If you're going to do it, you may as well go ahead and do the whole building.

$225.

What are we short right now?

I've got we've got some changes that are in there with some of the stuff we talked about at the finance committee if we move some there's some capital projects that looks like might need to be done in 26 so if we I mean yes 26 so if we switch course on how we handle some of those there may be a little bit of money left in there for that what's the current budget deficit for next year right now I don't have a deficit what do you have

1.4 million.

No, an excess.

But we've got some other stuff we wanted to talk about, yes.

I mean, I've got it reconciled right now because we were going to put that amount aside for the middle school for next year so we'd have it.

So that's a choice y'all would want to make.

This is the final budget work session.

I don't know whether it wouldn't be a wise idea to perhaps schedule another one.

We can have one, if you all would like, before the next meeting.

Question of you and you you can you do whatever you want to do.

Could we refer this back to the finance committee to because we'll have another meeting we can have another work session an hour we won't have a two hour one provider judge all included in the 27 budget.

Well, I mean, that's your question.

Where are we going to find the money, right?

So is that fine with you?

That's fine with me.

OK.

So everybody, no objection to that?

OK. Well, I guess you want to do it to the next meeting?

Sure.

An hour, an hour before?

Obviously, if we could please do it at the next meeting, because the following meeting will be our budget public hearing.

So that would be the 16th?

Why don't we try to find the money first?

I'll do another finance committee meeting before then.

One more thing.

Congressionally directed funding, we have a due date of that for the sixth on some of the ones that we've been doing via email.

We've been kind of talking.

I've been working with the Housing Foundation and with LAC trying to get some submissions for them.

Do you have any other items that you would like to see submitted?

Yeah, we had just talked about, I mean,

Some things that we had talked about are potentially public safety apparatus.

Obviously, there's apparatus replacement in the budget every year.

Those are things that would absolutely qualify.

Wanda brought up that we might consider the animal shelter.

We're maybe talking to them a little bit about whether or not that would fit well.

And we're being asked not to have different legislators repeat

or not to repeat the same projects with different legislators and so maybe asking one legislator for one thing and then putting a small list of other things in front of another legislator.

I mean, do you all have any issue with us asking for public safety infrastructure, those apparatus replacements?

may be looking at the housing foundation, maybe also looking at things like the animal shelter.

I mean, anything that we can do to offset the cost, essentially, of the CIP.

Is that OK?

OK. And do you all have anything you would like to see that we may not have thought about?

We're good?

OK. That's all I have then.

It's $6 to $8.

$6 to $8.