Board of Supervisors Budget Meeting   6/25/2025

Okay, we call this continued meeting of the Nelson County Board of Supervisors for June 25, 2025.

First item of business is Resolution R 2025-47, our FY 25 budget amendment.

Do we have a motion?

Do we want some explanation?

Mr.

Chair, I move we approve the budget amendment as presented.

Second.

Okay, got a motion and a second.

Any discussion?

Dr. Lee?

Yes.

Mr. Parr?

Yes.

Mr. Rutherford?

Yes.

Yes.

Okay, next we have the fiscal year 26 budget, school budget, budget adoption, and budget appropriation.

First item on this is the school budget.

Good afternoon.

Sorry, Grace.

I wasn't sure where you all wanted to start if you wanted to go through the school requests as initially presented.

Well, we have the numbers.

We've had three meetings to cover it.

If there's no changes, what's the...

Nobody wants to start, I guess I will.

The school budget as approved to go to a public hearing, which we all agreed on, was done two months ago.

And since that time, there's been lots of questions and issues that have been brought up by numerous board members.

We've gotten responses from both the school board and the superintendent on those questions.

I think they've been answered as clearly as they could be.

In terms of the only other outstanding thing besides that, which we did bring up, was an additional school bus.

And I know that we aren't able to dictate how money is being spent.

We can have discussion about it, but we of course can't do any line items for them.

said earlier, we have a county reserve which is reserved for I would say emergency things that the board

has consensus that really should be in need to and has to be done.

And it's my opinion that the autonomy of the school board to determine how revenues are spent is a good idea and should be

And if we do want the schools to have another school bus, it certainly makes sense to me that we just go ahead and buy it for them.

A one-time non-recurring amount to cover a school bus which comes out of reserves would not affect the budget.

It would be a one-time thing.

It would get us ahead of the curve on the buses and it would put both the school board and the superintendent and the board of supervisors together on the same page that we were on when we had the public hearing on the budget.

So that is my suggestion that we adopt the school budget as presented and that we allocate sufficient revenue for an additional school bus from our county reserves.

That would keep both our revenue and expenses where they were when it was presented for public hearing.

There wouldn't be any changes to it.

Okay.

Okay.

Is there a second on that motion?

Second.

Okay.

All right.

We've interacted one-on-one a good bit, discussed in some of this.

Either one of you want to go first?

Where I think would be advantageous is if we allow them to administer the bus purchase throughout the year and just see if they have the potential to do that.

I don't have a problem with where it comes, you know, how, who writes the check.

So that's the motion.

Okay.

And you're accepting the second where they administer however they want to do that?

As amended.

Yes.

Okay.

Okay.

Now further discussion.

I'm just wondering the rationale for the 85.

Well, I mean, first of all, we don't dictate how the money is spent.

But that was a number that we were provided by staff when there were some questions about the school budget.

Yeah.

OK.

I'm just curious about being a subjective number.

My experience with the budget and the meetings that I sat in on is that it's a

It's a good budget, it's a tight budget, and I didn't see any areas that certainly would warrant, even in the totality, a reduction of that.

I am sympathetic to the fifth bus, and I understand that.

This number was done from calculations based on a blanket 3% raise instead of some staff members getting larger percentage raises.

Right.

You understand the rationale for the differences?

I do.

I understand it.

believe that retention of people is from a variety of factors, not just financial.

I think a blanket 3% raise is fair.

Mr. Chairman, before you vote, I just wanted to make a correction to the total budget amount.

I did say $744.

I just wanted to clarify that.

Thank you.

Want to say that number one more time?

Yeah.

$125,036,741.

So we've had a motion and a second.

We've had discussion.

Dr. Lady?

Yes.

Mr. Redford?

Yes.

Yeah, staff can amend the resolutions based on what you've adopted.

OK. Oh, the appropriation.

You have to adopt.

We did.

So now we're appropriating.

OK.

Has amended?

Yes, and based on what was just done, the school fund revenues and expenditures would be $33,794,259 and then that bottom line total of all funds would be $125,036,741.

OK.

OK. Any further discussion?

OK, roll call.

Mr. Parr.

Yes.

Mr. Alfred.

Yes.

Yes.

One thing I did want to mention is we had a Lovingston merchant meeting today, and I've brought this up multiple times about doing entryways for the Village of Lovingston to bring some character to the entrances, at least in two entrances, the northernmost and the middle, and I will be engaging

I'd like to engage with the building officials on VDOT just to kind of see what could work in those locations.

VDOT has some specific requirements if they want something to crash into it that would kill somebody, which is valid.

But I think this would be a good move forward in supporting the commerce in Lovingston.

Yep.