Planning District Commission Finance Exec Committee   3/6/2025

We just started the recording.

I'm at that.

If you want to follow along, and then as soon as the other two get here, we'll give them the materials they need as well.

We always seem to have issues with Zoom.

No worries.

So we do use cost of labor, labor differentials.

And so all of the data is adjusted to Charlottesville, Virginia, so that we're comparing apples to apples with your salaries.

And that can be for many different reasons, such as performance or turnover, longevity, anything that would impact base pay salaries.

Hey, Sherry, while you have a pause right there, can we have Mr. O'Brien go ahead and officially call us to order?

I call the special executive meeting of the TJPDC to order on March 6, 2025, 5.35 PM or something like that.

So that's what you're seeing on the screen now with the new ranges or some revised ranges around those jobs to give you an opportunity for hopefully better recruitment and retention of your current employees.

So you'll see both of those in here.

You read my notes because I was going to ask that question.

So we wanted those roles individualized also so that we could do that.

I don't think we've ever not.

We haven't always had the chief operating officer.

That's true.

And the deputy director with legislative director, you know, there's a couple that are split.

I just think the likelihood of that ever going away is minimal.

If we did not include the additional experience with the previous relevant experience outside of Thomas Jefferson, that cost, the time and seat cost, does go down quite a bit to $36,842, with the overall cost going down to about $272,000.

Do you guys want to stop and ask questions as we go or just have her go through all six options?

Okay.

We'll wait until the end for questions, Sherry.

That is the end in sort of a high level overview of some of the benefits questions that we did ask in the custom survey.

I think now we'd like to open up our discussion, questions, guidance from you guys on a direction moving forward.

Any insight into that at all, or any feedback that you could offer there?

Terry might be able to speak to that more than I know.

I mean, take out the $42 million and take out the $40 million, you're a much smaller organization overall

If I removed Richmond and the city of Charlottesville, we could see if that number looks any different.

Also, I didn't catch this the last time, but if you look at the actual number of employees and your annual payroll number, technically, and this is surprising to me because it would appear that TJPDC's payroll weighs more heavily than other organizations yet we're beneath the median, right?

And I don't know.

Do you know that by any chance, Sherry?

I believe they did just base compensation without fringe.

And so what would be our base compensation without the first one?

It's what we're comparing when she shows us.

16, yeah, so current total payroll cost right now is about just under 1.2 million.

So, okay, so then that makes sense.

I think that's where it's at, is it's not comparing you to your face.

Even if you did two employees medium, yeah.

You know I know we pay our people too little so that it's not surprising that we're way below.

to see what a two, three year implementation option would look like.

That makes sense then.

if the percentages, so if somebody's now 60-40 and in the future they needed to be 40-60, we had the baseline data to be able to do those proportions.

Just the questions I have, I'm not so sure is for you more than for the consultant.

So going back and looking at, say for example, the program director for VATI here, we're saying that we're 47% above the market there.

We wanted to bring somebody in who we knew could handle that without a ton of support.

I got you.

Even though these are also annualized salaries and that position is not full-time, it's part-time.

Is there anything that you think really stands out?

While it's not listed as a blended role, she also is like a program assistant and part of her job description, so I think there may also be that that's not blended here.

So of the six options, what do you guys like the best?

But with the numbers, that's really gonna be you guys giving us direction.

That's option five, I think.

What is our option?

I'm looking for the weighted, action five would be one of them.

Because what I want to make sure

So, but,

Well over 10 or 11.

So we have additional cash flow, but that additional cash flow is how much per month on average?

remember December are usually low because of holidays but it's been it's been steady and solid so now we're in a very different environment now than the PDC has been right so we've got much bigger programs we've got much you know we've been dropping that indirect cost rate right and then in terms of i mean one other thing that we

That's the reason I'm asking about that month lead in.

What's your magic wand or magic crystal ball telling you about the next 12 to 24 months?

But I need to know which one to start to clean.

Two years.

We're growing $344,000 in salary.

So are we spreading that over two years?

You've got two different options.

There are a few of you who have very heavily weighted experience.

whether it was directly relevant experience or if it was transferable experience and then we gave like a factor you know transferable experience you might get a 0.25 year credit when you get a 0.5 credit so we did some calculation experience matters and for us to do this without experience in it I would not support

And if I'm taking the number that is, you know, if we were looking at

some of that Tony is frankly because you weren't paying people.

No, no, no, no, no, I know, I know, I know, but I'm just, I understand that and I'm not saying that we shouldn't account for it at some level per se, but I'm just saying without looking at the hard numbers themselves.

From my perspective, after number five, the additional experience included 1.5 million bucks, stretched out over two years.

So we gave them a factor for that.

So, yeah, so if it's spread over two years to your point, maybe that's we want to be fully staffed.

So my decision's made, so.

I think the conversation is helpful for us.

I think so, but.

This is only taking me 13 years to get people paid more.

And oh, but it's not blended, right?

I bring that up in every book.

And so what does the executive directors mean in terms of the various different options?

And then I think if we're leading the market, I think if we are at 50th, we're gonna be behind again very soon because of how quickly wages are moving in the market right now.

Good product.

I think the question that I have is, you know, what do we I think it would be unfair to the rest of the commission to just present one option.

If we can't figure that out, then we might as well pack up and go home.

Right.

So I know you want to pay your people more.

At the end of the day I have to balance the budget though.

So I know what I want, you need not to figure out how to make a balance.

Is that basically what everybody kind of feels from that perspective?

Blended roles and experience.

It's unfortunate that summary doesn't actually say whether it's blended or not blended.

On the cover sheet, sorry, I don't have it.

Oh, multi-role positions, it does, okay.

That's what that means, yes.

Start at 50th and then move to 62.

That's what I'm trying to figure out is how you want to map out the 24 months from a cash flow and budget.

Or the number's 253... 253, 344, 455.

So yeah, about 90,000, 345.

So if we drag it out for two years, what's the cost of doing that?

The question is if we wanted to pay any one of these options over two years.

So what's the cost of that?

You're probably looking at, and this is, please know this is napkin math in my head, probably an additional 50 to 75,000, depending on the additional, including additional years of experience or exclusion.

Yeah.

But if in $50,000 to $75,000,

I'd rather overestimate than underestimate for you.

But that is also a pass-through to the programs.

But that's a travel through on any option, right?

But I mean that's a base salaries plus, so you're saying it's not including that.

So it does not include the taxes.

23, 27.

It varies, but it's like 20, 21.

But I'm saying that in terms of like, you know, what you're really saying is what's not included here is the extra BRS cost and the Social Security cost.

or return life insurance or those kinds of things that are also based on.

So yeah, so that's important because now you're looking at least 15% on top of that.

But I will be surprised if that 75th plus increase in benefits.

Makes the middle look a little more attractive, exactly.

Because I can tell you in a month, I probably cannot create three budgets.

That's the practical reality of the budget.

This is a unique business to run because you can't really tweak your expenses at all.

Well, no, our expenses are...

In your revenue side, you can't figure out how.

It's not like we can raise taxes.

He can raise taxes.

I can assure you.

So I would say for April meeting, coming back, what are your thoughts on meeting an hour before the commission meeting so you guys get first eyes on this and answer and ask any questions that you have?

Well, I've gone the month of June, so.

before bringing to them a budget.

Why are you twitching?

I don't even know if I'll have revenue projections for two years out.

But you can go over.

I'll walk that back.

50, 75 sounds about right.

So that really translates to, if you were to weight that accordingly, 16 at $1.4 versus 18 at $1.4 is a little different as well too, right?

That's helpful, thank you.

And hopefully, it'll be received well from the staff, and you won't be having to hire more people.

I mean, I think we've all known anecdotally, this is the data that I needed.

options are?

I can certainly, we'll look at it.

You're bringing somebody else in, less time and seat, they're a little bit cheaper.

I can't remember.

So I wouldn't recommend anything more than three.

You may have to look at three to make your budget work.

On the other hand, there are a lot more people that might be applying for jobs than there were beforehand.

Or they said he hasn't been on a project in 18 months or two years.

But how does that apply to the pool of people that...

I may be wrong, but I just don't think you're going to see.

So you've got Northern Virginia, Richmond,

So two years it is, but I think you're going to need three years to make the budget work.

Do you want to save that one, or would you prefer to pitch that one here first, related to the benefits?

Do we still need Jerry or not?

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

So would you rather us cover the compensatory one or the employee handbook one if the employee handbook one is also going to the commission?

Do you want to do the other one?

So we wanna make sure before incurring that type of liability that that is the intent of the commission.

Right now it's just in my agreement.

For right now, we just want to know what is it in my contract that she should be doing on the back end when I comp my time?

We do actually track it because we are billable hours organization.

So I wanted to have the flexibility to do that ahead.

You're unique in the structure, right?

Well, perhaps.

I think there are others.

She's the only one who has this comp time in her employment agreement of any sort.

Not so sure that's right for you.

If you can renegotiate a contract anytime she wants to start a process.

Maybe that's what the consultant can help us with on that, but I just... Say more about what you mean for that, Keith.

We don't allow that as a liability.

So it's something that has to be compensated at some point.

What are we recording it for?

So if she works it on the 1st of the 15th.

If you end up working five hours short one month and you got five hours in the bank, you get the criminal.

What is your average work week?

That's the real question.

Does this get recorded, by the way?

So that's the reason I'm a little uncomfortable with this conversation.

I know you do.

I definitely know you do work more.

There's several.

So does that offset the extra time or not?

agency, agency policy throughout.

If you're working 80 hour weeks and you're only getting paid.

So a practical thing that will happen when she works more than 40 hours in a pay period is

She would have to use her annual or sick leave to do so.

Then there should be a simple fix.

That's Taki's point where you come back and say, you know, I either need to hire somebody, I need to hire a mini me because I can't do this and I don't want to do this any longer.

She needs to make sure in the general ledger, she is recording it the way you all intended.

So it's sort of an accounting question, but the accounting is happening to really an exempt employee from that to begin with.

Because those hours will be passed through to programs or admin or those types of cost centers.

That's really what it is.

and you know for your time I mean that's the goal right is that you're building the full 40 hours I guess what you're saying is one week I'm at 45 hours I can't build 45 hours you can't build five hours you can't build the additional five hours you know but you're gonna come in and well it's one side of transaction because you are billing the five hours just in the next whatever right no ma'am you're building the five hours to the program it's gonna be built in the month in which it's worked that I'm looking at a total program

You're only getting, in theory, compensated for 40.

Well, next week, maybe I take a half day off.

I think we should allow the executive director the latitude to move their hours around, right?

Yeah.

Like, who's going to say?

We just wanted a mechanism to understand first understand the intent.

I think none of us remember what that was.

It's a one for one basis just so that as we are recording it and she's putting it into the general ledger, we're all on the same page about that.

Well we haven't, she's been losing, you have not been able to appoint time anywhere, you're losing vacation time is what I'm hearing.

Until October or November where we started tracking it differently just to see what was going on, I was losing leave.

You were using vacation time?

I was using vacation time.

That's wrong, that should not happen.

O'Brien,

If you're working 80 hours, there's a problem.

We stuck in negotiations a little sooner than we should, than we have been in the past.

Well, the first closed session should be in April.

The question is, what do you do between now and then, right?

I don't work any extra hours.

It's like, look guys,

Because again, that's management of your time.

So if you're asking me these questions, this is the way I'm going down it, right?

You know what I'm saying?

I don't know if I can say.

That's going to be reflected in the performance, I guess, is really what we're talking about.

If you are leaving so much time on the table, I think a better option might be is figure out a short-term fix, give you more leave time.

Our flex is within the pay period with exception to the next, whereas mine doesn't have that same

So is that a shorter answer to a longer rambling?

I appreciate that discussion.