Board of Supervisors Budget Work Session   2/26/2018

All present to begin our Board of Supervisors work session on February 26, 2018.

And we will begin by making sure all of our telephones are turned off to prevent fuzz like we just heard.

That hurts the ears of our clerks for sure.

and we will, in a minute, go around and do our mic checks.

While people are getting ready, I'd like to introduce our officer for today, Lieutenant Terry Walls.

Thank you so much for being here.

Doug Walker, Deputy County Executive, Rick Randolph, Scottsville District, Diantha McKeel, Jack Jouett, Ann Mallek, White Hall, Norman Dill, Rivanna District, Liz Palmer, Samuel Miller, Ned Gallaway, Rio District,

Okay, so everyone please be sure to keep our listeners happy by holding the mic up close to your face when you speak.

Thank you very much.

We will begin with our work session and Jeff, shall I kick it to you or kick it straight to L'Oreal's house?

Alright, Madam Chair, members of the board, this is your second work session on the recommended fiscal year 19 budget.

As usual, we start with our schedule.

Today, we're going to continue the functional areas of the budget document.

On Thursday, the school division will be here to present their budget.

And we will also talk about the CIP chapter and the debt management chapter.

On March 5, we'll finish up any outstanding items that the board would like to talk about that day.

And usually, we work through what we call the list, which is kind of an add or subtract

Excelsheet that we actually have with us.

It's live and we can work through any changes you might want to make from the recommended budget as we move it into your proposed budget.

It'll also be the time that you will set the proposed tax rate for advertising and then on April 10th you'll have a public hearing and on the 17th you'll set your tax rate for approval and approve your budget.

We're going to start by moving to the health and welfare chapter in your budget document.

It's on page 149 if you'd like to turn to that page.

Thank you, Lori.

The health and welfare

functional area of the budget is one of the larger actually following schools and public safety.

It's the third largest and provides support services for quite a number of our citizens in different areas.

The largest of the category is of course social services which provides a broad array of services that we'll talk about in a minute.

Overall, the category represents $23.3 million of the General Fund proposed budget, which is about 8% of the total.

The category overall actually has increased very, very little this year, largely because of some positive activity we had in the CSA fund.

We've experienced through preventive services both a decrease in our costs there, but also put us in a position to utilize some excess fund balance that we've had as a result of some of those reduced costs.

So the overall budget only increases by $112,000.

which is less than one half of one percent of the total.

Again, we'll go through each of these areas, but to describe them all, you have the Social Services Department, you have the Transfer to the Bright Stars program, which we'll talk about, Transfer to CSA Fund, which I've just mentioned, is one of the areas we've seen a 38% reduction.

It supports our contributions to the Health Department.

As you know, the city is also involved in that.

Supports the Jaunt Program.

Region 10, Tax Relief for Elderly and Disabled, and other health and welfare agencies.

As you remember, Jeff talking about the broad number of agencies that we participate in and support that provide a variety of services for the community.

So we can, if we would, go to page 151, which begins the discussion of social services.

For this and a couple of the ongoing or additional areas that we'll talk about, I'm fortunate to have some subject matter experts with me here today.

Phyllis Savitas in particular, our social services director, is going to assist me with this.

I'll just point out generally that, as I mentioned, social services provides a broad, extensive array of services to the community, including casework delivery and eligibility determination.

Those are the two primary areas.

Four focus areas include protective and support services, education, prevention, and elderly intervention programs, employment and childcare services, and DSS benefit programs.

including more recently, as you know, we've combined housing programs, housing voucher programs are part of this operation as well.

Overall, the category is recommended at 14.2 million total expenditures which represents an increase of 802,000 over the course of the year from last year for a 6% increase.

At this point, perhaps I will ask Phyllis to come up and perhaps provide some overview of some of these changes.

Direct assistance expenditures are increasing by 356,000 or 9.8%.

And much of this relates to federal and state programs that are actually been increased in their allocation.

These are reimbursement programs for services that they provide.

So we've seen an increase there.

We are proposing the addition of two additional positions for social services, one child welfare supervisor and the other the eligibility supervisor position.

I just want to get clarified just to make sure I understand.

We had the two additional positions that were approved earlier, August 9, 2017, and then there's two additional positions that were going in.

So I just wanted to say that out loud and make sure that I had that straight.

Thank you for having me.

I'm Phyllis Savitas, Director for Social Services.

Yes, that is correct.

The two positions that we were able to secure last summer came from additional dollars that the General Assembly gave to the social service system to support child welfare.

Well, if I may, I want to follow up.

Phyllis, thank you for the information.

I know when you gave the report on the 7th, we were talking about the 11% under budget.

And I want to get information.

I think the board would share with the board that that total number we were presuming would be lapse factor.

But in fact, the most of that was increase in revenues from the state and federal level to the 11%.

The actual difference for the local cost would have been about one in a

Right, the local savings had to do largely with vacancies and hiring people in at the lower end of the pay scale.

The additional revenue really has to do with when you look at the statewide workload in Medicaid, as we have an increase in the Medicaid workload, that draws down additional federal revenue for the state.

and that affects our pass-through rate.

In other words, we get a higher percentage of federal dollars.

That was certainly a better

thought of that money that I was thinking the evening the report was there.

I would like, I have two questions and maybe for, I don't know who to direct this at, but the 221 in the given year, I have a, I made the comment then that if there is a way for a department like Social Services where you're going to be able to see, okay,

Because we've hired these three new positions at this lower rate, that's going to equate to X amount of dollars by the end of the year that won't be spent and it would convert to surplus or fund balance.

That there may be a mechanism in place that allows that money to still be utilized by the department in the current year versus just having to go to fund balance and being lost by the department.

That's something that

That's a policy question that I would throw out there to say is that something we're interested in looking at specifically for this department.

The second one question would be so in this year's projections that we've made for this department I want to be mindful of the fact that there was two hundred and some thousand dollars that the department was not able to use and are we capturing or making sure we're tight on that for this current year.

Does that second question make sense what I'm getting at?

I could generally discuss the process of how we budget personnel.

Typically, we'll work in January to take all of our existing positions where they are now.

We'll make certain assumptions on vacancies, just knowing that we won't have everyone filled.

For example, many positions we budget 10% above the minimum based on the experience.

Others may be closer to midpoint when they would come in.

And then we would take that information that we have based on our current personnel cost and then adjust that by the personnel rate changes we have.

So for example next year we would have the 2% salary increase on top of their current salaries.

But certainly where even between January and now people will come and go and that will continue through the year.

And I could add, we do have a process that as the year starts coming to a close or after the end of the year, these departments can ask for their savings for a specific item or need that they have and it can be carried over into the next year.

But it's based on a specific request, not just generally that a department keeps all the savings or extra revenues that came in.

have them go through a process collectively as a group.

Very good.

The other thing that's real interesting about the social services department is they have some offsetting revenues that come in from the federal and state

to actually help support some of their staffing.

And some of the ways that they utilize their money and some of the, Kevin is here, he does such a great job with monitoring that.

What they try to do is ensure that they can bring down as much federal and state as they can and sometimes they just have a better year where they bring in a little bit more and some of the local money we had planned and used was saved.

So they still get the work done and they do it really well but they actually can bring in some additional revenue.

Well I guess I just want to make sure that my bigger point is that we've had some fairly large fund balances in our history and I'd rather see that money being going to the budgeted purpose in the year versus falling to fund balance.

I would hope that there would always be a fund balance of some amount

that is indicative of proper projecting and proper budgeting, but when you have large surpluses, that can be, yes, we end up using that maybe as one-time funds, but at the expense of what?

And that's my overarching point.

I think for social services particularly where we have been for so long, so far below the number of staff that even our state levels approve, that then we're not able to deliver the services to the clients if we're not using those dollars.

So I'm intrigued by, even though it makes me nervous when I'm

Thank you.

I would like to speak to that too because I do think the one fund balance that is very important to make sure that is robust and kept at a

A decent level is our CSA fund balance because while we're doing really well at trying to keep costs down, that program is so volatile and I wouldn't want to jeopardize that balance in terms of not keeping it flush, if you will.

The other issue, and this is a little bit complicated, but as the budget indicates, we draw down funds for services as well as for staffing.

And if for whatever reason, for example, we budgeted a certain amount of dollars to fund foster children, well if we didn't have that many foster children,

Then we didn't, we won't spend that much and so it gets a little complicated because of the service aspect to it.

Is that right?

Yes.

This is my subject matter right over here.

Is there a percentage of balance that you try to aim for in your department?

Obviously we do it in the whole county.

Budget, but do you have something specific that you, some number percent wise that you target?

You mean like a surplus?

Yeah, that you target.

And while Kevin comes up, I mean the CSA isn't that a, that's a separate fund that we're budgeting for.

So we're not anticipating savings out of DSS to fund the CSA fund balance.

their target based on the report that was given to us is less than 1% or within 1% is expended.

And we were at 11% under budget.

Nine and a half percent of that was the state and federal piece, one and a half was local.

So if you just looked at your local target, you're within about 1%, that's pretty good, the size of that department.

It's just the sheer nature of, I mean Phyllis, I think you're doing an excellent job, but if you had an extra 250 grand to work with, you'd probably find a way to use it.

Yes, sir.

Well, it kind of matches the 280,000, which I think you initially said, that the three positions were requested for eligibility workers.

When I think of three people working full time for a year, that's an awful lot of people being served.

Do you want that on a parking lot list?

Well, I guess an exploration of this since funding the people is such a key part of this department that if we're talking about $250,000, $280,000 that could be three eligibility workers which they requested and

I think that's what you're saying.

So last summer when we presented these resource capacity requests, in addition to the supervisor positions, we identified eligibility staff primarily because we had secured additional money from the state to support some service staff.

What I'll share right now in terms of looking at priorities, I have a significant concern for our Child Protective Service capacity.

We certainly need the supervisory support to help those workers,

We don't have enough staff to go out on referrals and meet the timeliness response.

I think they were responding to your unfunded request in our book.

Right.

And so what I'm offering is just, you know, our world is a constant change.

It's a changing landscape.

Yes, last year we would have asked for both, but we had just received two new workers.

That's not to say that's not needed.

If I had to prioritize, it would be a child protective service worker and then an eligibility worker.

There you go.

In the eligibility, very specifically our fraud program.

To be clear, the 250 that I was speaking of was the fiscal year 17 money that already rolled to the fund balance.

That's not current year.

I don't know what the current year looks like.

The current year is tracking about 100,000.

I don't know if that's local.

So just a couple of comments.

One is, of course, as this money's fall to fund balance and fund balance becomes available, it doesn't necessarily mean that that is an ongoing source of revenue that can support new positions ongoing.

So that's just one thought.

The other thing I would just mention is,

You know, we've been looking pretty hard at the whole lapse and turnover program.

We work closely with HR to try to determine what is normal turnover in a county this size and what can we feel safely that we can begin to budget on a regular basis.

Okay, so we've been doing that and I think that's been a process that's changed in the last two or three years that really enables us to leverage those

those funds as best as we can where we think that that'll happen on an ongoing basis.

Now to the extent it happens beyond that and the funds are saved and fall to fund balance, we gotta be cautious about whether or not that represents an ongoing source of revenue.

Phyllis, I have a question, and I probably should remember this from last year, and I just didn't see it jump out at me in what the information in front of us.

I know we have the family support 19 positions, you know, the partnership with Albemarle County Schools and your department with social workers in all the schools.

But last year specifically we had the discussion around the urban ring schools and that collaborative and I thought that you all were a part of the team and I can never remember the name of the team.

The SEED, thank you.

I can't remember that but anyway.

The SEED program.

I didn't see anything about that.

Is that in the school division budget?

And I just missed it there.

It is.

It's in the school division budget.

We did have several conversations between myself and Dean and Dean Tisdat and Matt about ways in which a partnership could be created between the social services and the school division to have DSS positions and you know, drawing down the federal revenue.

They opted to hire their own people and so right now we're focusing on just having the DSS family support staff collaborate and work closely together with the SEED staff.

Right, and it's in the school division, so budget, that makes sense.

You know, I haven't heard very up-to-date feedback.

I know that in the beginning there was, you know, we needed to figure out who was who and who was going to do what.

But I haven't heard anything terribly negative about it.

Well, it's a question for the schools because they'll be coming.

So that's where I need to go with a couple of my questions about it.

So that's good.

And just kind of a comment or a thought in looking at your budget I think some of us are really concerned about the budget and some of the suggestions that are coming from Washington with the federal budget especially when it comes to support of our most fragile folks

I think the most notable possibility is that some of the benefit programs will have a work requirement that historically they have not.

including our housing choice voucher, which is, that's brand new.

There's always been talk about having a work requirement for the SNAP program, but there's discussion at the federal level about imposing that for housing for the food stamps, the IE SNAP.

and there's been some talk about imposing that for Medicaid.

If Virginia does not expand Medicaid, that potential new requirement would have very little impact on us because right now the folks who would have that work requirement right now are not eligible for Medicaid in Virginia.

If Virginia expands Medicaid and the work requirement becomes a reality, that would have an impact on workload.

If you're interested, right now the House budget here in Virginia has Medicaid expansion, the Senate does not.

So we'll see what happens.

That's what I'm hearing.

Thank you.

Phyllis, would you explain for people listening why if in fact Virginia expands Medicaid and a work requirement would kick in that would affect our own workloads of our DSS staff?

My understanding is that if Medicaid expands, that by definition means more people are eligible.

Those new groups of eligible populations would be the groups of folks who would have the work requirement.

What that means then is the DSS would be responsible for making sure they are complying with that requirement.

This may help.

Right now in our VUE program, which is the Virginia Employment Initiative for Employment, not Welfare, there is a work requirement for that program.

So there's precedent in terms of managing that.

So if we have to do that for these other programs, that's added work.

So I think that the suggestion is a good one for you to come back to us after the legislative session is over.

And if, in fact, that requirement is attached, have a discussion about what needs may be appropriate at that point.

We don't want to burn people out and DSS staff.

You're already operating with a smaller than appropriate staff.

So I think that's going to be really critical for this board to know about sooner rather than later.

I've been trying to stay up on top of it and also relying on the League, the Virginia League of Social Service Executives who were very in tune with what's happening.

That's great.

on your homework list.

If there are comments you have about the seed people and if they were funded in a different way that would bring down federal dollars for them as opposed to local dollars through the school department.

I would just like to know if there's any conclusion like that or if it's not apparent.

It would be helpful in the meantime if you could have somebody on staff give us a preliminary figure so that we just have a ballpark to operate by.

I'm not saying immediately that this week, next week, I'm just saying as we finalize the budget to have that, it's something we need to put in our parking lot and to be aware of that that's an expenditure we might need to make.

What you just talked about, if in fact Virginia Expands Medicaid, yeah sorry I'm jumping back but to jump back but to give us some idea roughly speaking of a ballpark figure this is going to be $200,000 is it going to be $300,000 so we just put that in a parking lot and we're aware of that from the outset.

Okay, I can already share with you the estimated number of individuals who would be eligible for Medicaid.

Then I would need help from my staff to translate that to dollars and then what that means in workload.

I'm also here to answer questions about Bright Stars if you have questions about that.

So just to confirm that Albemarle County is slated to get 17 additional VPI slots, which would be used to support the additional classroom in Woodbrook.

And that's in addition to the slots that United Way was using in their mixed delivery program.

And I can't claim to explain how we were entitled to those additional slots.

In the Bright Stars?

My understanding from staff is that last year we did not, we ended up with, if we had a waiting list, it was only one or two children.

Now keep in mind that the Bright Stars classrooms are not in all of the elementary schools, so it's unclear whether if

If, for example, Murray or Meriwether Lewis had a Bright Stars, would there be parents in those areas who might have children who would qualify?

The other issue that I'll say is that when you look at the current

Those numbers of children are receiving SNAP and Medicaid.

Those numbers have gone up, which would predict that there would be more children that we can serve.

So it's hard to know if we'd serve them all.

It's hard to estimate that.

Right.

And just so that I have it in my head correctly, we are currently shipping, and I say shipping because it's really frustrating, these little tiny children from Greer to Broadus Wood.

That's for Head Start.

That's Head Start.

Okay.

My understanding from school staff is that they would open up the Head Start classroom in the Woodbrook expansion.

I don't know whether that's Woodbrook itself, but it's in that mix.

So they'd be bringing that classroom back from Broadus Wood, and then if you all support the funding for the new classroom, there'd be a new Bright Stars classroom.

I just want the thought of those children having to do that.

What we're hoping is that if that

If there's no other questions, we can go to page 159, which is Children's Services Act Program.

So we're proud of the work that Phyllis has been able to do, certainly aimed at increasing foster care prevention efforts that really have, as we've seen, resulted in quite a bit of savings.

Of course, we had a good experience this year as well that caused us to have an increased fund balance.

It really is all about, for on the social services, court service unit side, and region 10, it's about keeping children in their home and keeping them out of foster care.

We're able to still serve them, but as you know, financially at the lower match rate, and so, whereas you see the overall cost of CSA go up, the local share has gone down because we are,

paying for services with the lower match rate.

On the school side, there's been a lot of attempt to keep the children in their public school so to avoid the private day placements which also impacts the CSA costs.

So the support for the family finding position was key.

Talk about hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And one of the things we've been seeing recently is we've had some children come into foster care who are undocumented and so aren't eligible for Medicaid, which translates to having to pay their medical costs with CSA.

And so that drives the cost.

But it's not nearly like paying for expensive residential placements.

Right, which really gets pricey.

So again, our focus is trying to preserve the families, the children in their homes, but support them, but also make sure they're still safe.

On page 160, we summarize all of the various agency partners that we support.

As Jeff had mentioned in his budget message, these are critically important to providing necessary services in our community.

There are quite a number of them listed here.

The total proposed recommended contributions are 5.9 million, which is an increase of 564,000, or 10.6%.

I would highlight just a few of these that had experienced either increases or decreases in funding.

One is the Boys and Girls Club, the other is Jaunt, MACA, United Way Child Care Scholarship Program, and the YMCA

Childcare at Jefferson School, which was a first-time request this year that was not funded.

I just wanted to highlight that.

I wanted to, thank you, I didn't have my microphone on so you beat me to that one, but anyway, I wanted to know a little bit more about the $10,000 increase for Boys and Girls Club youth development program to support the increase in Scottsville program due to the addition of the Yancey students.

Probably a good idea for the record, okay.

I'm Gretchen Ellis.

I'm a planner with the city of Charlottesville.

I manage the ABRT process for both the city and county.

The Boys and Girls Club has been funded by the county for two programs over the past several years.

One is their after school program and the second is their summer and expanded hours program.

This year they came in with a third application to cover the cost of absorbing the students who had been in the Club Yancey after school program at Yancey Elementary.

that they had to expand at both the Scottsville Club and their Southwood Club.

I guess I just want to make a comment.

I'm not suggesting we do anything about it, but I just want the board to know

Some of those kids actually ended up in doing their after school at Little Learners on Glendower.

And that was somewhat supported by the county when it was actually in the Yancey building.

But now that those children are being bused up to another place by a Scottsville school bus, we're asking the Little Learners to go through a

I guess an amendment to their SUP and charging them a little over a thousand dollars to go through that process in order to take those children.

And so it's just an interesting situation that occurred with one facility that did not

and K.R.B.T.

request and one that did.

Anyway, not expecting anybody to do about that, but I wanted everybody to understand that that occurred.

Again.

For the job of the Jefferson Area Board for Aging, I think the increase it looks like to me was centered towards a memory care contingency.

Correct.

And I think that's great.

I'm really glad that we did that.

So that's why the zero shows up on the

Maybe I'm misreading it.

And then we had in the second line just a contingency for the memory care.

I don't know if Doug, if you wanted to speak to that any further.

Which we're funding.

At $50,000.

The actual support using operating money for Java has not changed from the current year to next year in the recommended budget.

The support for the memory care unit, though, is that $50,000 that is one-time money in conjunction with their other donated funds in support of that unit.

That unit is currently open and operating.

Okay.

All right.

Well, it's certainly needed.

It's filling a void that we had in the community for those folks that are there.

So that's great.

I just wanted to be clear for everybody on what we're doing there.

And I have some concerns or just some questions about

Transit, we have established the new regional transit partnership.

with the city, which is, I think, going to be really allow for more transparency around transit for the community, what Albemarle is paying, what Charlottesville is paying.

I just think that's gonna be a really good partnership.

In thinking ahead about that, while I have some questions around the CAT budget as well as the jaunt,

It just seems like to me for jaunt to be listed here is not the right place going forward and I'm talking about next year.

CAT is mentioned under community development on page 83 and 185 and we have jaunt here.

I would suggest that

I don't know if the board would be interested or staff, but if we could next year have something that is a page around transit that gets to a little bit more information rather than we're giving John this amount and we're giving Kat this amount.

I've seen from John a great budget summary that they've prepared for the partnership.

It gets back to this partnership.

I'd love to have something like this next year from CAT.

It would be very enlightening for us.

So just your reaction to that, it looks like maybe you've all been thinking about that?

Yeah, I would say just generally how we report our agencies is really a partnership we have their finance to make sure that we're reporting things the way the state has.

Every couple of years we do revisit those and we've made adjustments over time and

Certainly giving the ongoing discussions of transit and it is a little confusing to have them in two different places.

But the same expectations for reporting.

Yes.

And that expectation I hope will take effect now, not next year because there's some big gaps in information about how the costs are being budgeted because you haven't got the information you need to have.

Yeah, and I guess what Ann and I have been talking about and getting at is, and maybe Andy you're the right person to help us with this,

Transit is based on hours of service.

I receive information.

I'm not sure exactly the board, what they receive, but it sounds like it's probably different.

you know CAT is a different governing structure than Jaunt where it's really a department of the city and so just kind of walk through the process CAT like any department will prepare a request kind of primarily first reviewed by the city office of management and budget and then once they've kind of done their initial kind of passage of that they'll share it to me and then give me the opportunity to ask questions and this would be similar to some other things for example we have a Darden Tow Park Fund where

Our office is a lead, we work with our Parks Department to prepare that budget and the city then gets a chance to ask questions about it.

So Cat and the information they provide me, they send me a copy of their budget, they give me a copy of their routes, because in the county we fund by route the number of hours we have.

They give me a breakdown of the amount of federal operating systems we get and their breakdown for revenue credits for a fare box.

So it's kind of a matrix I could put together.

Yeah.

And I get that.

Although I think we could compare apples to apples better for us.

And certainly, going forward with the partnership, I think we're going to be needing to do that, which is outside of this type of meeting.

I'm a little concerned that I understand that the city budget right now gives, affords a really strong pay increase for their cat drivers that they're not providing for for jaunt.

and we get into that competitive pay problem that we have a lot in this community around transit whether it's school bus drivers or transit drivers and I guess at some point we know that CATS budget has had surpluses

that I'm not sure that we've been aware of.

So I guess what I'm looking at going forward.

I think we can do that.

I'll send you a bunch for email and you can have them ready when we get to the community development section.

And I have one question I guess for Ann and Diantha.

We have a meeting this week and we sent some questions that we would like to have around budgets for both John and Kat.

But I'm bringing it up here because next year in the budget I'd really like for this to be laid out differently and I think Brad is here.

Did I see Brad?

Would you like to, is it alright if Brad comes up just to see if he has anything he'd like to add?

I don't see John.

Is John here?

If I could, just for the benefit of the board, just draw your attention to the Jaunt funding recommendation in the county executive's budget.

It actually comes in two parts.

One is support for the operating budget, which is significant increase.

Without a change in levels of service, to deal with consequences of funding that Brad can talk about very well, the other is establishment of a contingency for driver wages with an expectation that the Regional Transit Partnership really needs to talk about this at a regional level.

recognize that Jaunt, in this case, has its own significant issues with respect to driver pay, but that if we are not dealing with it from a regional basis, then we could end up kind of with this leap-fogging type of scenario that you mentioned.

For Andy to say it's complex, I guess is an understatement.

So I do appreciate all the hard work that Andy puts into trying to understand how I put my budget together, which I also appreciate y'all fully funding what we requested.

And the contingency idea was great.

Now have a brand new concern.

The city's budget was released today, and they're not funding any driver pay increase for jaunt at all, 0%.

So the discussions on Wednesday are going to be a little bit more difficult and complex without a doubt.

So that's the thing I would like to add today is that I noticed that I didn't have time to kind of give you all heads up, because I was trying to dissect exactly making sure that it was zero.

But without a doubt, it is.

I'm happy to share some more with y'all because I also noticed another discrepancy that relates to the county's funding request.

But other than that, yeah, trying to make sure that it's all laid out there to help better make some of these decisions is definitely something Jaunt supports.

Could I weigh in on this?

I really do, Diantha, agree with you.

We need to get John out of the health and welfare contribution portion.

And as a temporary harbor, I do think it's appropriate that it be matched under community development agency contributions because Kevin is our transportation specialist and works in community development.

But I would say that's a halfway house because, ultimately, what probably should happen is the transit should stand alone.

and the same thing I'm just thinking about here as we really do create a regional transportation partnership.

It's similar to the Albemarle broadband authority that needs to stand alone budget-wise.

We will need to start treating it as a singular entity, not subsumed under any other category because

legally it is.

The board has different responsibilities than other organizations and agencies so we need to start I think from a budget standpoint preparing ourselves that each one of these are going to be their own individuated mature entities.

and should be treated as such and I think when that happens it makes it much easier from a budget standpoint to really require ahead of time that numbers get crunched in a meaningful way.

We're getting them from jaunt.

I'm not sure we get the same level of robust detail and transparency from the standpoint of Charlottesville area transit which still is a misnomer.

Whatever, whatever.

But the county ought to be in there.

We're not just some amorphous area, undescribed and undefined.

Well, that's right.

As we've urbanized, we're certainly, depending on our transit more, we're seeing the need for transit more.

I will add, most of you all are aware of that state capital funding cliff that is still looming.

It was not addressed during this General Assembly.

I mention that because it may be also something you consider about identifying transit capital investments in your CIP, whether it's through proffers or whatever mechanism, at least start understanding that your CIP might also deserve some sort of separate identification, especially with that possibly coming up.

And Andy, thank you for your work you've done on John and Kat.

That'd be great.

And to get back to what Liz said, on Wednesday, the transit partnership will be discussing budgets.

Questions or comment I guess without going into a lot of detail I think we all know there's issues with legal problems in our low-income communities, Latino communities, and I think

I'd like to suggest that the Legal Aid Justice Center and Scene Barreras be funded at their requested amount.

I've worked with both of those groups and they work incredibly hard.

Everyone's working a lot of overtime.

They're really pressed right now with the push for

services for the immigrant community especially, and I'm not talking about illegal immigrants specifically, it's more, let's see, Burayosh in particular, there's just so much needed in terms of translation and services.

Sinbereres, who does a tremendous amount of work, is requesting $12,000.

It's a relatively low amount.

It's the lowest amount for an agency that's been described as solid.

And I think both those agencies serve people that are kind of under the radar, and we don't realize how important to them

12,000 dollars, 20,000 dollars I think it is, a requested increase for Legal Aid Justice Center.

No, it's only a little over 10.

So, I'd like to support those two and the last one that I think I also should consider is the Monticello Area Community Action, MACA.

You know, they request what?

just they requested again about $10,000 more and they serve a lot of low-income people, families, and I like the way they encourage them to be financially viable and learn how to discipline themselves to be able to go out and be successful.

So those are three that I'd like to add.

Hello?

No.

You just have to turn it on and then pause five seconds.

You should be okay now.

Yeah, that's good.

Okay.

Samba Rares was one of about 10 agencies that was recommended for funding by the ABRT should funding be available.

It was rated as a moderate priority compared to some others that were rated as higher priorities.

In terms of the Legal Aid Justice Center, they did not request funding for any programs related to immigrant or refugee populations.

The applications they submitted were for their civil law program, their health law program, and their just children program.

So the ABRT did not consider any programs or was not presented with the opportunity to consider any programs related to immigrants and refugees.

And on the MACA program, MACA applied for two programs.

One is their Head Start program for early childhood education.

That was recommended for funding.

It was rated as solid.

The second was Project Discovery, which is a program that promotes college attendance among low-income, first-generation students.

That program was rated as fair in Albemarle County last year.

It was rated as fair again this year.

And I will just add to what Gretchen just said.

Albemarle County Public Schools has a very robust AVID program that does exactly that.

Works with kids for first generation college and is very strong.

Matter of fact, the program at Jack Jouett is a

Global winner on their program.

They've won not only national awards, but awards across the world.

So, to me, that first generation college support is really handled beautifully by Albemarle County Public Schools.

Now, I can't speak to what Charlottesville does.

I have no idea.

While you're here, Gretchen, the scholarship programs through United Way has such a very significant increase.

Tell us a little more about that.

So the ABRT reviews the self-sufficiency program, but the scholarship program, because it really is just a pass-through program to provide scholarships need-based for low-income families.

And it's my understanding that they serve families up to 185% of the poverty level,

Gretchen, I just want to thank you all for the ABRT process.

It is absolutely wonderful.

You work with, I have folks that say to me, I went back to Gretchen three and four times.

Maybe more than that.

You work with the applicants and you all just do an outstanding job and it really saves us a huge amount of

Time, attention, struggle, I could never figure all of this out.

Thank you.

I actually feel like I am doing my job well because I don't vote on these applications.

Gretchen, I'd also like to observe that I think the role your group plays is absolutely critical because otherwise it would be viewed very easily by the public that this whole process is politicized, that there are most favored nonprofits that receive advocacy by members of the board and what you instead do as a group is give us a very neutral

I have one more quick question.

The tax relief for elderly and disabled, that's under agencies reviewed by the ABRT.

It's not reviewed by ABRT.

It's just the way it's listed in this list.

I didn't think so, but it was confusing.

Yeah, okay.

I guess for the long term I'd like to put on the list of consideration of trying on our side.

I don't agree with all the things we just said about ABRT of how valuable it is, but I think on our side to also try to look for what potential services can we provide to the community through nonprofits that are effective.

That is what we're doing, but my sense is, especially talking to the CNE leaders, that there's opportunities, Jeff and I met with them at one point, and I think there's real opportunities

Find groups that use volunteers and donations and whatever resources they have and that with just a little bit of help and almost psychological help of Being getting the credibility of being supported by the county could make a big impact towards our strategic goals with with limited

Resources.

So I'd like to have that be something that we continue to study and try to expand the ABRT program to more nonprofits.

I'm a little disappointed that just in a couple years now that I've been here that it's still a minuscule amount of our budget.

And I think we could use our nonprofits better.

Just to clarify though, on what Norman just said, the non-profits actually apply.

It's up to them to apply.

So that's how it happens.

I just have a formatting comment on when you list on 161 you do put the asterisk about which ones were reviewed.

I was having the same thought.

But if you could denote not just who was reviewed, but then maybe a second notation of which ones received the recommendation for funding, then you can look right across each line and go reviewed, recommended, and then see where we stood on the request versus the recommendation.

Okay, well if it's alright with you we can move on to parks and recreation.

So this section starts at page 167 in your budget book and just to mix it up a bit like I did last week I'm gonna work really off of the slides and just kind of talk through at a relatively high level some of the

the changes that I think are most meaningful this is not to minimize anything that's in your book and you see things that you want to talk about obviously we're all here Bob is here

Bob and his staff are here so we'll be glad to answer any questions that we can with regard to the department or any other agency that is included as part of the Parks and Recreation and Cultural category.

First though, with regard to the Department of Parks and Recreation, you see the total budget there of $8.6 million with a recommended increase of just under $450,000.

This category does represent approximately 3% of the total general fund budget just for your reference.

It includes, under resources, an increase of $26,000 for a total of $116,000 to support and a position that was going to be recommended as part of the completion of the needs assessment.

I think we all recognize from what we've already seen from the updates on the needs assessment there's likely going to be more needs identified than just that one position.

This one you'll recall was supported last year with an understanding that there was some additional work that was going to be required before recommendation is going to come forward.

I can tell you that that recommendation you're likely going to see at your meeting on August, excuse me, on April the 4th.

although that the needs assessment will not be done they believe they have enough information to be able to come forward with an initial resource to help them most based on the work that's been done to date and so we'll put the resource to use as quickly as we possibly can so this is intended to kind of just to be expedient in trying to get that addressed.

It's the position that was actually funded initially in FY18.

You'll see that it's referenced here as an increase of $26,000.

It is one, well at this point it is identified as one I believe.

To start July 1.

Okay, so page 89, the summary of general government position changes, that is not included and that needs to be added by members of the board is 116,000.

It does not appear on page 89, but once it is, we will certainly add it.

Okay.

The other comment I would make about Parks and Recreation is because we understand that there is so much that's going on in this category.

With the needs assessment that's going to be completed, you probably will receive the final report in June.

We're also aware of conversations that the oversight committee had last summer in the fall and the board has had about the potential for an upcoming bond referendum, including in addition to some education, also quality of life.

That also may be a conversation that would include some consideration of additional operating costs.

Biscuit Run is playing itself out although that you know a little bit of a horizon there's work that's going on now with that transfer of control over the property.

We are now a tenant that will have some implications and so that although this specific budget for FY19

doesn't necessarily reflect all of those changes that are really pending for this apartment.

The same for Hedra, yes sir, thank you very much.

Okay, thank you.

The facility maintenance supervisor, I'm sorry, Bob Krickenberger, Director of Parks and Recreation.

That position, Liz, that you just inquired about is a position that will assist our park superintendent

I'm going to show my ignorance here.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, and quite frankly, as we have grown, obviously,

No, we really aren't.

We're not receiving a lot of complaints however

Staff realizes there's much that can be done and from best practices we realize that there's a lot more that can be done.

You know, Doug and Bob, it would seem like to me that this would really be a good thing to talk about when we're talking about when we have the report back and when we're talking about hedgerow and biscuit run, we're going to need to have a conversation about... That would be a good opportunity.

Yeah, it really would, it would seem like to me.

I would think so also.

And I did note when the consultant was giving his intermediate findings, specifically with regard to the survey work that he had done.

I think he called it a statistical significance survey.

The correlation between the high value that the community, those who responded to the survey put on maintenance of our park facilities as being very high and the impression of the quality of the maintenance of the parks as being a good

But I think, as I recall, there was some opportunity there for some continued focus.

There were ample opportunities.

And also, I think what was mentioned at that time was their impression of local government.

You know, if the parks are running well and that's what they're seeing, then they're

As a teaser for that future discussion, could you just give one example of something that you wish you could do but you can't do at this point?

With the maintenance division or overall?

Just one example.

Well, as we all realize, when the funding is available to open up a lot of these facilities, obviously additional resources are going to be needed.

We have issues with our trail maintenance.

Our facilities are, I won't say overused, they're used.

and that ongoing effort is a real struggle for that not only trail maintenance but the overall maintenance division.

Just to keep up with the wear and tear.

Our facilities are aging.

And one other thing I'll throw in is in the context of the needs assessment and also I think a community discussion for us in the spring and summer will be the way other communities are actually having fees for organizations to use the fields, which we apparently do not, which I just learned actually we do not.

And so whether it's based upon numbers of children who are county residents versus numbers of children from other counties at different fees, this would help to provide some resources

to be considered, to provide resources toward the maintenance and improvement of our facilities.

We see articles in the newspaper about people demanding all this stuff, but let's have a wider view and bigger discussion about this as we go forward.

Not expecting an answer because I just dropped this bomb on you just now.

Well, just to comment on that, we will also be reviewing an overall revenue recovery program.

That could be a consideration.

So this is going to be a great discussion in the future.

Has lots of parts.

Thank you.

Okay.

No, the question is about Parks and Recreation.

Thank you, Bob.

Parks and Recreation, the JMRL, our regional library, of which we are a member, has its budget request recommended to reflect an increase of $191,000, almost $192,000.

That includes additional resources for an increase in our share of their cost to operate their system.

There's also an additional amount to support an increase in our share of the first year of a three year implementation of a compression remedy.

The board is familiar with this challenge that organizations have had really coming out of the great recession and trying to address the need to get starting salaries in particular away from minimum so you can hire staff

actually ended their starting salaries without compressing those who have been in the organization for a while.

Many of our associated agencies like the jail, as Diantha and I are aware, and now the library are trying to address similar problems.

And so this budget does reflect our support for them in doing that as a first year of a three year implementation strategy.

There's also an increase of two hours of operation per week at the Northside Library.

I think that the Board of Trustees recognizes the interest in expanded hours at all libraries.

This, as I understand, would enable them to have the same operating hours at their libraries.

Right now the Northside Library is operating two hours short.

than the other libraries.

In addition to being consistent with our interest in trying to address urban services, this also helps them be equitable across the board in how they provide services.

Then there is a request that's supported for a digital services librarian position.

This is contingent upon the regional partners providing their respective shares of the funding

The justification is how much of the library services has gone to a digital platform.

How many different library staff have to devote some portion of their time in order to try to deal with that change in the use of technology from a library services standpoint.

This is intended to centralize or concentrate that work into a librarian, like a branch is what they're trying to do, is create the digital services in a branch library.

This would be basically a branch directory.

And some good work that Andy did, as you would expect.

with the library to help underscore then how does that enable them to gain capacity back from their other staff who otherwise would be doing that work.

And so that our staff was convinced of the value of this position and the recommended for the county for our share of that funding.

I have a quick question you can probably answer very quickly.

Did we resolve the parking issues at the library?

There was such a struggle for people to be able to find parking.

We certainly affected a change.

We have leased spaces next door at the Daily Progress to kind of address some of the most immediate concerns.

I do think that the use of the building is still extensive, that there are times when it's still a struggle.

Did we address it?

Yes.

Is it fixed?

Yeah, I kind of knew that, but so we're...

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, I haven't either, so I just thought maybe the problem.

I also wanted to mention, I don't have any comments about Darden Town Memorial Park.

So I did want to mention that we do have in this budget included a $50,000 contingency for this arts and culture initiative that was discussed previously by the board.

Ms. Mallek, Ms. McKeel, and Ms. Catlin and I actually participated with city representatives and some others from the arts community and the CACDB.

At the time that this recommendation was made, we were not aware of what, if anything, the city was going to do to support this initiative.

As we now understand, they have done a similar thing and put aside a contingency of the full $250,000 that was recommended.

This is $50,000.

I think there's still a lot of work to be done to kind of flesh out how this is actually going to be developed and be implemented.

But it does certainly put a foot in the door.

I did speak directly with Ms. Neuer, who is involved in that, who was delighted at this point that at least it was there for discussion.

So I think that it's enabled us to go forward.

Whether the board ultimately supports that or not is a decision I think you will obviously make.

And there are other moving parts to this as well.

The city also had included in the city manager's recommended budget.

It's in a contingency.

So that in itself, in my view, really says we have to have a conversation about it.

I think that's an appropriate time.

There is a decrease in our support for CACVB because a decrease in our TOT that's reflected in the percentage that then goes to the CACVB.

It is slight, but we want to make sure that I pointed that out.

and then the only other thing that I would mention is the board previously funded the Piedmont Council of the Arts.

That organization no longer exists.

That $5,000 is recommended to be split between the African American Cultural Arts Festival, Chehamba, and the Rivanna Conservation Alliance's Flow Festival.

and that's, they will nibble away at that over several years as far as expenses are concerned for the art.

This was the, this upcoming one at the end of September will be the second year of the arts along the river.

And I don't want to mischaracterize them.

They recognize, I think, some of their own limitations.

And maybe those people are looking to kind of reform around them.

The interest is there.

The energy is there.

I will have a question to lead with you and I'm going to get in trouble I'm sure.

Looks like there's sort of historic funding for the Charlottesville Opera who apparently does children's programming for a couple of thousand children and Piedmont, I mean the Paramount who does 13,000 and I've been to

as a chaperone to multiples of their things.

I just wonder if the relative value of those and whether there are others who would rather increase what the Paramount is getting to support their outreach to every single school.

in our area to get students in to see things, once in a lifetime things at the Paramount.

Yeah, I'm just slightly confused at the question.

To come back to it, yes, that would be great.

For that one, I agree.

I guess I would want more information because I'm a little bit confused on what you asked.

Are you suggesting that we discontinue the Charlottesville opera money that is now, I believe, yes, it's at the Paramount?

I mean they do several educational programs for $4,000 and are we better off submitting that money to the Paramount to add to what it's providing 10,000 or more children.

Well I guess before that decision is made I'd like to talk about the Paramount as to how we're going to use it because we know

How the Charlottesville Opera is going to use it has been defined, but how the Paramount would use it has not been.

Is that correct?

No.

I would like to know about the Charlottesville Opera as to what the outreach is to Albemarle County and what the usage is, you know, how many children are being served.

And I'll share, the city actually still does review the ABRT cultural agencies through that process.

The county made a decision a couple years ago to break them out and review them separately.

So we will certainly provide information to those questions.

OK.

Sure.

Okay, any other questions about parks, recreation, and cultural?

I'm going to move to community development.

Remember, community development is a functional area as well as a department, so just to remind us.

This begins on page 177 in your budget book.

You'll see the total department

As recommended is $8.2 million.

That's a $295,000 or 3.7% increase over the current year.

And this functional area constitutes about 3% of your total general fund budget.

The issues that I would draw your attention to, first of all, is just reminding you that this Department of Community Development does not include inspections.

That was addressed in public safety.

When we talk about an increase in positions, you'll recall that you actually authorized a new inspector in the current year which is being funded.

But we're talking about other positions today.

The three positions that are included in the county executive recommended budget are a transportation management position to support the strategic plan implementation and expand the interest in the demands for services related to our transportation.

This would work directly with, we all know Kevin McDermott, would work directly with Kevin.

Interestingly it is very much in line with a plan that actually Mark Graham had put together now a couple of years ago.

As we become more urbanized and focus our attention more directly on those services that are more urban-like, there's some expectation that we would then be moving into creating a division of transportation, whether it's transit or dealing with the funding relationships we have with the state, which we see obviously becoming much more complicated.

The planning work, the customer service work, dealing with neighborhoods and individuals, it consumes an enormous amount of climate attention.

Just a thought while I have it in my head.

Yeah, because of an urbanizing county.

Mark Graham, Director of Community Development.

I guess it's working.

It sounds good.

Yes, absolutely.

Partnership.

Partnership.

Excuse me.

Yeah, that's okay.

The other aspect that I'm sure Mark would agree and Mr. Sheffield and Tim Miller has really helped us kind of work through a lot of these is that how much time it takes to do good customer service and dealing with citizens who are generally interested in what's happening in their neighborhood.

It's important that we do that and we do it well.

To do that and also do this other very complex, particularly funding work and planning work and transit work, it's just too much for one person to do and do it effectively.

It's interesting to me that the transportation planner position, we didn't have that for quite a while during the recession.

So we had no one.

and when this board first came on I know that supervisors were making a lot of those visits to Rhodes and this supervisor didn't know anything about Rhodes.

And transit has taken a much larger role, but also just the funding complexity and what it takes actually to put ourselves in the best possible position to qualify for getting other people's money, right?

Well, and with the Capitol cliff for transit funding possibly coming down the road, having someone with some expertise would really be helpful.

Okay, a second position is a senior planner position to support a number of initiatives.

The ones that have been identified here are Southwood and the Avon Corridor Study Project.

These are not necessarily intended to be exclusive, or whatever the word is, exclusive, but inclusive of the type of work that we struggle, frankly, to have capacity to perform.

and keep pace with the development level activity and all of the other interests that the board has also.

So this does not necessarily provide community development staff to do all the things that community wants to do right now, but it would put us in a position to try to advance some of these initiatives that the board would have in recent capacity.

It will take some time to get even experienced planners who come in here up to speed, but we think that it's time to get started.

If I could comment on that.

I would really like to vote to not have a new person come in on the Southwood Redevelopment Project if we can avoid it.

Megan has gotten well versed with that.

It's an adjustment, it's a unique project as we all sat in, some of us sat in prior to coming in here on that meeting.

And I also would like to point out that the Avon Quarter Study, that's primarily being done as we assume by a consultant, but even if it is in internal capacity,

It certainly is just a single shot.

We're not looking necessarily right now to expand to additional corridor studies.

We did have a discussion as a board about the value of using Avon Street as a default study that could be replicated elsewhere, but the board has not made a commitment

to that so I'm just a little bit concerned also because finally Southwood I don't see us given the fact that the project has a time horizon out to 2033, 2035 for completion.

I don't see the county long term making a long term staffing commitment to Southwood.

My feeling, which I've expressed to people on Habitat, is the need for Habitat to utilize our staff

to gain the knowledge on how to do this.

So we're doing capacity building, we're doing therefore educational work here for Habitat to be able to take that baton and carry it down the racetrack.

It's not the role of the county to become the good Uncle Theo here to be looking after this project in perpetuity.

I mean I do think there needs to be a crossroads that we reach somewhere out there where

The county pulls back and Habitat has more responsibilities so I do want to talk more about this about Southwood from a staffing standpoint and community development and the commitment on the part of the county to Southwood.

I think we have to be very clear about this otherwise we're setting ourselves up.

It is an important affordable housing project.

It's in my district.

I'm gonna jump in here for one second and ask Doug or Mark to clarify this, but I think these were examples of the kinds of things that need to be carried forward.

There's no way that we're booting Megan out of this job since she spent the last year working on it.

Mark Graham, Director of Community Development.

First off, yeah, with respect to Megan, the intent is not to move her out of that position, but to recognize that we have pulled her out of the development application and review process and we are really hurting there.

So effectively, we're trying to backfill that capacity so that we can maintain some level of normalcy with that review.

To Ms. Malek's point, she's absolutely right.

Those were examples of how we're moving forward

We see a pressing, ongoing need for additional work here beyond the Southwood and Avon Corridor study.

Places 29 is now overdue for a revisit of the master plan.

Ms. Malek would be glad to remind me that Crozet is actually long overdue for another review.

There's a number of ways that we could have kind of reflected to you how we're trying to put our community development department in a position where we can advance some of these initiatives and priorities.

As you've seen in the past, this community development is one of the areas that has

took the biggest hit for all the right reasons with the Great Recession and is getting its way back even in the midst of a pretty dynamic kind of building and development environment and so we think that this is actually effective.

the workload and recognizing that the development review stuff is going to take precedent and what's often going to get lost then is the valuable but not as immediately urgent planning work and so this is trying to set up balance.

The other thing I would say, and I do give credit to Mark for all kinds of things, not just one thing, but all kinds of things, is that I do think his department, going back to the shedding of positions during the Great Recession, but they are very much aware of the cyclical nature of development and how it is that they use attrition

to adjust their staffing up and down.

So even with the significant loss of resources, I don't know if anybody was actually, actually nobody was fired.

Nobody was fired.

No furloughs, just retirements and moving back.

So I say that we do have confidence that we can right size, if not immediately, then in short order, if in fact that there's a change in workload, a change in priority.

Well, the cross training was very successful a few years ago to shift people where they were needed and they did well.

Thank you.

I just wanted to say we have to be cognizant though when those situations arise

I was making a different point, as you know, but you're exactly right.

Yes, that's right.

The third position recommended is a neighborhood planner.

This would complement the neighborhood planner that was added last year, the David Fox position.

And between Emily and David Fox, they are supporting the seven CACs.

The intention would be that community development actually then provides the support to the CACs.

Your community engagement specialist would then provide support for engagement of all types for every department throughout the entire community and not have direct staffing responsibility to a planning function which is really what the CAC is intended to do.

It's not that she can't do it, she does it well as you know, but this is intended to try to then balance off and complement the other neighborhood planner in that regard.

The one thing I would add, and Ms. Malek will certainly remember it, but that was actually the original intent, was to have neighborhood planners for each of the master planning areas.

Rebecca Ragsdale was working with Crozet.

We want Rebecca back.

That was kind of our pilot area.

And then the recession hit and we got off track with this.

Those relationships are very important.

That's all that I have made notes to make comments about.

Glad to answer any questions that the board has.

Oh, that's not true.

That's not true.

I'm going to be ignoring that.

That's right.

Right, so in the economic development department, which is a function of community development, as it shows up in the budget, there is a conversion of a part-time to a full-time, and what's not directly reflected here is that position is currently temporary, it makes that position permanent.

And so that the economic development department, if supported in this budget, would have three full-time permanent positions.

An analyst, the business facilities, I can't remember exactly the name of the title,

facilitator and the director.

I'll just say, and you know I've been advocating for this for a couple of years, to have an analyst position in economic development is critical.

So that when we're making these decisions, we're looking at an analysis of return on investment in a much broader way than we've been able, in a more in-depth way than we've been able to before.

So I'm thrilled.

Yep, that's right.

It doesn't mean that there aren't questions that the board members may have about the community development agency contributions.

Well, I have a slide later, but the current number for CAT will decrease based on a change in city personnel costs that will impact some other agencies.

Later, OK.

Hold on to my questions until then.

So we're ready to move forward?

All right.

So I'm going to take you through a department, a category we call non-departmental.

So basically this is a category in your budget documents on page 187 is where it starts.

And this is a category of funding that's transfers,

It includes reserves, contingencies, set-asides.

So it's all areas that aren't really specific to one department at this point.

Sometimes we'll move the funding from one of these contingencies to a department for expenditure, but it's a very important category for you to consider today.

So it has $179.2 million in this category.

It's a 4.8% increase or an $8.2 million increase.

And it's really odd, the pie charts are dropping the titles of some of these chapters on your screen, but they're showing up in your document that we handed out and they were showing up at our screen in our offices.

So I don't really understand what's going on with this.

It's like a little bug.

Yes, there's a little gremlin in there.

Someone said you can't tell, but you can tell there's something very large that's being spent out of this category.

That's the school division transfer is the largest portion of this category.

This is where we also, I'll just move to the next slide that actually has a list of them.

We also do revenue sharing with the city, the capital and debt transfers, and the one-time transfer to capital.

are transferred to our water resources category, and then there's something we call other uses of funds, which when you go back to this pie chart that's not showing the titles, a very small sliver, about 3%, is something that we send to other funds, and we're gonna talk about those in great detail in the next few slides.

So I'll just move forward to revenue sharing.

That's actually on page 188 of your document.

and 189.

And this is just a sample snapshot of a chart that shows how revenue sharing payments with the cities adjust year to year based on a formula.

So you can see in fiscal year 19, it's a $15.7 million transfer.

It's down a little bit, about less than 1%.

and you can see historically up to fiscal year 11 when it was 18.5.

I think that's the highest it's ever been.

Lori, have you ever put this together, adjusted for inflation, to actually look at what the graph says over the time period from 82, 83?

You know that it is a formula that we use to calculate this.

The finance department does the formula.

And it does have a two-year lag to it.

So the price went up, actually, when we were in the Great Recession because it had a two-year lag back to the boom before the Great Recession.

And so it does have this lag factor in it.

So the other categories in this chapter are the transfers.

And you'll hear more about capital and debt service on Thursday, March 1st.

But this just gives you the number in a large way.

It's $26.8 million will be transferred from the general fund over to your capital fund and your debt service fund.

There's gonna be a transfer of dedicated funding to the Water Resources Fund.

Those of you that were on the board a couple years ago, there was an increase in the tax rate of a little less than a penny, 0.7 of a penny on the tax rate, which equals 1.289 million, you can see in that number.

That changes a little bit every year as the value of a penny adjusts each year, and that will be sent to a Water Resources Fund.

That fund supports both

or capital and debt and operations.

So it moves over to a water resources fund and then that fund then distributes it again just so that we can keep it very clear and categorized of what that amount of money that was raised and exactly we can track where that goes.

So that's why we do that.

There's also a new transfer for your consideration and it's a transfer to a housing fund.

This is one-time money.

It's $600,000.

We'll talk a little more about that when we get to the other funds category.

But this is something new, and it's something that we're recommending that you set up with some one-time money this year.

There's a transfer to the school fund.

It comes from this category.

As you can see, the transfer to the school fund is about $131 million.

It's an increase of $6.8 million, or 5.5%.

The school board representatives will be here on Thursday to talk with you about their budget.

Their school fund includes this transfer and then other funds, some other state and federal, and even some other local funding, so they'll share with you more information about their school fund.

We do want to point out this is a very small dollar amount compared to the 130.8, but we added an additional 213,194 for, in addition to this transfer, and you know these transfers are based on a formula guidelines when we decide on the transfers, but in addition to what the formula guideline is providing, this provides an additional amount of money for the operating expenses that were associated with the revenue, the GO bond referendum,

there was some additional operating expenses not for the teachers or anything but for just the utilities and the custodial for the additional the addition of Woodbrook Elementary School and it was part of the conversation and part of the materials with the bond referendum materials that there was an operational cost and so that was always also supposed to be part of the tax potential tax rate increase

along with that bond referendum, but we didn't do the tax rate increase at this time, but we still wanted to support that cost because that facility will be up and going in fiscal year 19.

I don't know that it'll pay the full cost, but it's the amount of money that we would like to move over for that.

I'm going to move on now to reserves and contingencies.

So you have in this chapter several reserves, contingencies, and set asides.

So you can see that they are listed on pages

It's on page 195 and it's other uses of funds.

So I just wanted to point out, I don't have any special things to say about any of it, but I just want to point out that there's a whole list of reserves, set-asides, and contingencies that are in this non-departmental category.

some of them just to point out the salary and benefit reserve a 1.15 million this is one that Mr. Walker had brought up a while back when we were talking about public safety it's a reserve so for some classification studies and public safety in other areas it's also there's also

A training pool with about a 10% increase is in this category.

For training, that would be divided out to departments where that training might need to occur.

So then that starts here in non-departmental, then it gets transferred to departments.

The reserve for contingencies, I do want to point out that that's $600,000.

It's a little different this year.

Usually it's about $300,000.

We have ongoing money.

So for example, if you decided last year to support a position mid-year and we said you do have a reserve for contingencies that you can use for that, that's usually about $300,000.

If there's an adjustment in a year that needs some one-time money or a one-time thing that you would like to put some funding towards mid-year, we would use the general fund fund balance for that.

But we've decided just to limit that and put an amount of money on that.

And in coordination with, if you recall, you set aside a 1%

Stabilization Reserve a few months ago.

So that 1% could be tapped if you go to a certain place.

But before that, there was about $300,000 in one-time money.

So where is this money coming from, the $600,000?

I'm sorry, $300,000 would be ongoing based on what we see as the revenues coming in.

And $300,000 of that would be from the general fund fund balance, which I'm going to go through in a minute, the calculation on that.

So it has two parts to it.

But this money is not coming from what we sometimes talk about.

It's coming off the top.

Oh, no.

No, ma'am.

Just trying to understand what might an example be for this.

So we put out, we hire for a position, we say the cap and salary is 80, but to get the person we want we have to pay 90, the 10 grand comes from this?

I think a better example would be if there was a position that had not been anticipated at the time of the budget and adding that full 80,000 in or whatever the partial year cost would be.

I guess another example would be initiatives the board thought were, you know, were they're pursuing.

I think in the current year we paid for, hopefully I'm remembering this correctly, the additional traffic enforcement signs that are used by the police department.

This was a funding source with some state funding.

We're very careful if it's something we consider one-time, we will use one-time money for it, but if it's something that's ongoing, like you're picking up a position, we will use an ongoing source of funding to start picking that up.

That's still to be developed some.

We don't have specific guidelines on it.

I think about 275 has a reserve for Southwood and then there's about 325 that's for initiatives, housing initiatives.

It would be based on the board's strategic plan or the board's housing priorities on how you would use that.

I don't know how you capture it but since it was brought up I mean the original idea at one point was you were going to put a million dollars in the housing fund that the board already approved $400,000 for Southwood.

So in this document it shows like we had set up $600,000 for the housing fund.

But the rationale behind spending the $400,000 was you're planning to put a million dollars aside in the housing fund to use for this type of thing.

Yeah, there's two places we describe this and one is in the other funds category.

I know where it's at, but what I'm saying is that the rationale for us to approve the initial $400,000 was because we were planning to put up a million dollar housing fund.

Well, now we've spent that four hours.

We've already voted on that action.

No, it was part of, so you're thinking about when we did the two-year plan, the two-year fiscal plan, which wasn't approved by the board, which gave some guidance of, here's some suggestions, and we did put a million in that.

And so what happened since then is that you did appropriate the 400 of it, the board approval of that.

And so the amount that would have remained from that was the 600 that we put here.

I'm not challenging that.

I want to make sure that the public understands that 400,000 has already been expended in our housing fund.

And that was the intent behind, or the rationale at least I was given at our board meeting.

I said well one of the reasons why you might do this, we're planning to set a million aside, 400 grand could come from that if we had already had it set up, I agree with all of that.

so whether it can be an asterisk and noted it's just a matter of we provided a rationale to make an expenditure of one-time monies based on setting up a fund that had yet to exist and now we've changed the amount of the fund for its initial existence

And for transparency it would just be not, I don't know if you can do it, but it should be in the end, it can't be lost in the conversation.

This is what happens when you're doing the one time and versus

and the things get out of order from the budget process, I understand.

I just want to add to that just a little bit because Ned has now picked out almost everything that I was spent

Way too much time trying to figure out and flip back and go through.

I found it very confusing also.

He did a better job of explaining it than I probably would have, but it was.

You had to kind of flip through and think back and go, okay, well, why is that not in there?

I have to go back and listen to that podcast because I said I'm spending $400,000 and some folks said, oh no you're not, you're not doing that.

Well yes, I knew I was.

but the point is is I wasn't spending it out of the fund maybe that was the point that evening in that in that meeting but I don't want to get in the habit of providing a rationale and say well you're going to set this up and this is an example of what you would spend money out of and then not continue that story to support the rationale after you put it into existence so I would rather see yeah the intent behind setting up a million dollar housing fund even though this look I get it things are out of order but

The intent was to set up a million dollar housing fund and we chose to spend $400,000 of funds that were destined for that fund to Southwood.

And I would just add to that that I think all of us do consider Southwood an affordable housing project.

I mean, the larger message for the community is that it is going to be affordable housing, somewhere around 700 houses of different types.

And it's going to take a long time for that to come online.

And that's a good point.

I have a constituent that I'm meeting with soon and she wants me to go through all the affordable housing and what are we doing and what are we planning for affordable housing.

I'd like to bring us back to the fact that when the board established the strategic priorities we did not have affordable housing listed as a strategic priority and I advocated for the board to consider Southwood as a beta test on affordable housing and

what we ended up doing is then asking staff to dedicate time and effort and prioritize Southwood and fast track it as much as possible and so we've made a real time and real resource commitment to Southwood here and it is confusing because it's over two budget cycles that we've expended this money.

I do think Ned's point and just increasing the clarity in the transfer of the housing fund

it would indicate that already the original fund had a million six hundred thousand was dedicated or four hundred thousand was dedicated already in 275 as proposed to be expended in fiscal year 2019 will help explain it but I just want to remind the board that we're inheriting the decision we made a year and a half two years ago as a way of prioritizing of

for affordable housing when we had a whole series of other priorities that were mainly centered at Route 29 and Rio Road.

And we are also making a huge commitment there.

And that commitment does not slacken on this front.

and the Southwood Affordable Housing will address affordable housing for families as well as seniors, the whole gamut of folks in our community.

So it's not just exclusively for one age group or one group.

Could you one more time explain the stabilization fund as it relates to the reserve for contingencies?

This stuff can get a little interesting when people are going, well, what is that?

Where is that?

And you said that we go there first.

Yeah, so basically, in your policies, which is in the front of your document, it was about three months ago, you approved taking 1%, and I'm actually going to get to a slide in a moment that'll show you the numbers, of 1% for a budget stabilization reserve.

You set that aside for potential revenue downturns.

It was about $2.7 million.

Or for unexpected expenditures for emergencies that occurred or for things that you have to do to maintain a current level of services.

So it was very explicit.

You were very careful as a board to make sure that it was very clear what that 1% could be used for.

And so that's been established.

We've never had that before.

And so what this 300 in one time money is set aside as an appropriated amount.

It's not from the 2.7, but it's in addition to the 2.7.

And this is for things that will occur through the year.

possibly that you might want to spend some one time money on before you hit that 1% reserve.

So it's kind of a, I always think of it as layers, it's kind of a layer on top that there's an emergency or a one time issue, like Andy had mentioned those signs for

Speed controlled or there's something that comes along.

I think there was a mowing thing.

There might be some small things that you see along the way that you want.

Hey, we really need to address this right now.

It would give you a place to go.

and let me, because I thought I understood and then I think I'll just second guess myself.

That's right.

It's more, I would say it's a little more flexible.

This could give you another option.

And again, you don't have to do this.

This would just give you another contingency that you could go to through your fiscal year.

Thank you.

And I think that was the one that we actually included the school somehow or another in the discussion around Laura.

Yeah, there you go, because one of the issues that I was concerned about was the situation like we had over at Greer where we had the earthquake.

that structurally we found out that structurally the whole front of the building had to come down and be rebuilt based on the earthquake and they had absolutely no money to redo that type of construction project because it was terribly expensive and the more they got into it the more they realized they had to do for stability structural yeah and the insurance I'm not sure earthquake insurance is very different so

and I'll walk through this.

I've got a couple slides come up to kind of walk through this.

You can make other decisions on it.

It's just a recommendation for your consideration that you would have two parts to that reserve for contingencies in the upcoming year, one that we consider for ongoing and one that could be used for one time.

And again, if it's not used, it would only be for what you approve.

There's a couple other reserves and contingencies here.

You see the

So money set aside for some strategic plan priority support, some transformational initiatives.

We talked about that a while back.

That's primarily technology initiatives.

We have a technology study going on right now.

There's other records management, those types of transformational initiatives.

I think you'll be getting a report on that very shortly.

on what's going on with some of the transformational items.

This is some set-aside money for that.

The Innovation Fund is doubled from what we usually do.

This is a fund where employees bring innovative ideas for efficiencies and effectiveness or changes, and you're all familiar with that program.

This provides additional funding for that.

to encourage more of that type of activity.

And there's this last one that's on here is a bond referendum contingency.

We'll be talking a little bit more about a potential bond referendum coming up on Thursday for you to consider for the CIP.

So we felt like if that does occur, we would start moving forward on the

all the work that goes into putting a bond referendum together and that last year we needed some funding, the last time we did it we needed some funding for that, so that's another contingency.

Just an idea, because people ask, is there information about the savings?

I know the Innovation Fund is only a year old or two years old, but there certainly were some wonderful projected savings and operations based upon some of our earlier projects, so that would be a great information blast that could, if it's available, be able to share with us.

Yeah, we can provide that.

And one good example would be reflecting the budget with the Turnout Gator project that was done with the volunteers and our career staff that received an award last year.

And it was mentioned in the executive's presentation, $20,000 savings.

And a couple of years prior, there was the fuel consolidation, which is another similar partnership.

And I think that savings was much more significant.

The ballpark around $100,000.

Those could be a couple of quick examples.

That would be a great slide, Ann, for the presentations for the town halls.

I think it would be valuable to have that.

You were asking for that last year and we had it.

We always like to take a look at things like, for example, your grants leveraging fund, we always had that at about 100,000 a year.

You can see that we reduced it to 60 based on usage.

So we watch things based on usage.

We would be mindful that if it's not being used, we would probably recommend you reduce it over some time.

You can make other choices with this.

It's just ways to put it.

And you can move things around.

Again, these are reserves, set asides, and contingencies that can be even moved to other items if the board would like to do that.

So I'm going to move forward just a little bit.

You're going to hear about some of these same things.

You might hear it again because it's kind of showing where the funding's coming from.

If you remember, this slide was one that Mr. Richardson presented to you when he presented the budget.

There's some undesignated funds and you're aware of this at the end of fiscal year 17 there's an audit and there's an undesignated funds and we talk about recommending some usages of those funds to you and we're recommending as part of this budget and again it kind of goes back to the other story about some things are done in 18 and some things are done in fiscal year 19 you know we have to be very mindful of a fiscal year but we're in the middle of fiscal year 18 and there's some things we could do right now the funding is available to you

you could put some of this money to work for you in the current fiscal year.

So we're recommending that of the undesignated funds, and I'll be showing you a slide in a minute to walk you through it, about 10.2 million of that you could actually appropriate in your current fiscal year.

We would bring back an appropriation request to you before the year is over.

to send about 7.7 million of that to capital, to send some funding over to economic development and broadband and I'll give you the details in a moment.

And then about 2.4 of that we would recommend that you appropriate as part of your 19 budget and you can see those same categories that we just talked about a little bit ago that these would be good for you to set up, we would recommend for 19.

So are you going to go over the proposed uses in more detail?

Is that what I'm hearing?

Okay, because I want to ask about one.

I'll walk you through it.

It'll be two slides.

Please feel free to ask me questions along the way, and if after the two slides we don't answer your questions, we'll go back through them again.

So we start with

and this is on page 198.

You can look at that or you could stay with me on the slides here.

I'm summarizing it a little bit on the slides.

When you have your audit, you have an audited fund balance and this is your general fund fund balance.

And as of June 30th, 2017, your audited fund balance and your general fund was $56.3 million.

And then you have policy uses of fund balance and this is included in your policies and these are approved board policies for the county.

and your policy is 10% of that fund balance, you set it aside and this is for a really, really severe emergency.

This is something that you really don't ever wanna go into but you wanna have it and it also helps us with cash flow.

So it's important, yes, for payroll.

So we keep 10% unassigned fund balance.

It's not appropriated, but it's kept on hand, and it changes, because it's 10% of your general fund and your school fund minus the general fund transfer to the school fund, so it's not double counted.

So we do that calculation every year, and as your budgets grow or change, this number changes.

So it's based on our current calculation, it's $33.1 million.

And then the school keeps their reserve fund as well based on the policy.

Their reserve, as of 2017, the audit was $2 million.

So the schools also have a reserve fund.

They might recommend using some of this for their fiscal year 19 budget, but that would be something they would share with you as part of their budget planning.

There's also something called committed prepaids and inventory.

This is a number that the finance department calculates.

It's $1.2 million and it's required to be set aside based on their information in the finance department.

And then now you can see the 1% stabilization, budget stabilization reserve we just talked about at 1% and that was $2.7 million and that was a recent policy change that the board made.

And then finally, the last number on there is funding in your current fiscal year that you've already appropriated.

Since you've appropriated it for potential use, we can't use it again in 19 until you get all 18 ends.

So there's 4.7 right now that's appropriated of this money in your current budget.

So that leaves you to a $12.6 million unappropriated, undesignated funds that you can put to work in the current fiscal year or 19.

It's your choice on how you'd like to do that.

Actually, some of it is accounts for bills that have already been paid such as registrations for conferences, prepaid type expenses.

The others would be encumbered purchase orders that we have at the end of the year.

Yeah, we made that change.

The remaining money in that reserve account at the end of the year

So my question is, let's say it was all not used, the 256 is there, does that go to help pay that 2.7

I hear what you're saying and what happens is we're kind of methodical about it so basically we'll hit the next time that our fiscal year ends and then that let's just say that fuel reserve if we haven't used it or if we haven't said like right now hey we should move that fuel reserve somewhere else right now because we know it's available which we could do

But let's just say we didn't.

Let's just say we were, for theory, for this conversation, let's just say we thought, well maybe something could happen as late as May or June so we're not going to move that contingency.

It would drop to the general fund as part of the audit and then it would be picked up for you all to use in a different way if you'd like to.

I'm just getting at we're paying for a stabilization fund at a certain amount.

Yes, and we really do want to take a look at fiscal year 18.

We want to look at it a little bit differently to see if there's some funding that we actually have in our current reserves and our current situation to just track it every quarter anyway to look at it to see if there's any more strategic opportunities, but thank you for pointing that out.

I was just going to say you don't want to cut margins so close that if something unexpected happens, you've got no means of covering that as a contingency.

Well thank you, so I'm gonna move, are you, Diantha did you have a question?

No that's okay, go ahead.

So we remember that number, it was, I'm gonna back up to grab it again, 12.6 million dollars.

So on this chart, this is a recommendation included in your recommended budget for your consideration, is that of that 12.2,

you take the, what did I say, I had it, 12.6, you take 10.2 in this current fiscal year and we would bring you an appropriation request for you to do this that you would actually move 7.7 over to your capital program.

And this was done purposefully because we really were looking at ways not to increase the tax rate in the current fiscal year for capital so we said is there some one time money we can put

put into the capital program to help the capital program in fiscal year 19.

You could send it over in fiscal year 19, but we have a couple projects.

There was a public safety robot.

There was a couple projects that the oversight committee thought when they did the work that they'd like to get some of these things done right now.

Why wait until fiscal year 19?

And you can purchase them in 18.

And that was where I had one of my questions because I remember long ago when I was on the capital improvement plan oversight.

The public safety tactical robot was on there, so it's been on there a long time.

If it's the same robot, I think it is.

My question at that time was, how many robots do we have?

My question at the time was, have we contacted the city to see if they would like to share in the cost of this because

I can't imagine that we would have an event between the city and the county where we would both need a tactical robot at the same time and it seems like between these two organizations that having won

that we could both access or share.

Now, maybe my thinking is incorrect on this, but I just remember that discussion at the time.

And they said they would check with the city, or talk to the city.

That's a perfect partnership, I would think, for the city.

Now, maybe not.

I'm thinking that on the first, when Trevor's here, he can certainly address that.

I appreciate that.

I would like our police department to own it.

And if they want to borrow it, that's one thing.

But our guys have been waiting a long time.

And we'll need this.

When they need it, they need it right then.

Well, and that shouldn't have to happen if the cooperation is working properly.

Thank you.

Yeah, I think that's great.

No, I'm just, I was surprised.

I just want to say that I wasn't surprised because I had seen the number before but I

I did want to know if there was any more information as to what that money was for.

It would add to that because it was a thought I had when I was looking at the earlier piece under economic development, which is only a couple hundred thousand dollars, which is mainly salaries.

So since that's going to come back, talking about how the fund and that office work together,

is that it seemed light on the other end, frankly, for economic development.

So it was in my thought that this fund is there to help that office do its job.

OK. That's great.

Could I also comment on the CIP?

Well I'm delighted with the idea of transferring 7.71 million, but since fiscal year 2009 we still remain down 2.34 cents in the CIP.

We've lost those pennies.

and this is just one time transferred funds that doesn't have the same cumulative effect of having dedicated pennies.

I just want to remind the board of that.

So the fiscal 19 uses, there were some that we just talked about on the prior slide.

So you can see those, the grants matching fund, the housing fund, that strategic priority reserve that we just touched on, the innovation fund.

The contingencies, these are contingencies that you've seen in other parts of your document.

So there's the art, includes the arts and culture on the memory care and this one time 300 that we just talked about.

there's a transformational initiatives reserve that we spoke about and then throughout the department for example if you hire a police officer and they need a vehicle we will place one-time money throughout your departments for capital outlay and the resource plans that you've heard us talk about along the way so when there's a one-time usage you can use this money for that so we have programmed that into the budget as well.

so you can see the two parts.

And then that would put all of that undesignated funds into a place for you to have it do its work or have it be set aside for things that you wanna do.

So that's the end of the story on that.

I'm gonna move to the other funds category.

I think we said we were going to talk about the transformational initiatives of what kind of things.

I guess I'd like to see what the, where it, when does it become a transformational initiative and when is it just your job to, you know, all of us should be looking for ways to save money all along the way whether it's a, you know, food that goes bad or, you know, the electricity bill for the whole building.

I believe that there's, Bill, I'm looking towards you.

I think that there's gonna be a report to the board shortly about the transformational programs that you guys are doing.

Yes, there is.

Presently, it's scheduled to come back in March, actually, the March meeting.

I've been hearing a bit of rumblings about whether they're gonna be ready or not, so I'm hesitant to commit, but I think at the moment, we're still scheduled.

But the teaser on page 195 talks to be about actual changes in process, investments in technology to allow us to do things better, the sort of access Albemarle type theme, as opposed to the innovation fund, which was the ideas of staff to do their job better, small projects.

It almost seemed as if the transformational was, were items that have a price tag to them, but bring us into a modern 21st century workplace environment.

The $300,000 is the one-time cost associated with resource plans.

That's basically our initiatives or perhaps new positions or new items.

I'm guessing that's not all.

I get the examples, but what I'm saying is 307 cover all the one time costs for all the resource plans presented in the budget.

I'd be curious to see what types of things beyond one off examples that would cover.

When we do the fund balance, looking at one-time costs, understood that the school division has their own reserve fund and potentially could do a similar type approach, but the general fund, end-of-year fund balance is a little different animal.

Yeah, they didn't have a part of this conversation, but I believe on Thursday you could check with them.

Well, I understand, but I'm saying the end of the year is monies, and especially when a revenue is off significantly.

We had a higher than anticipated revenue.

The prior year, if that revenue was in line or projected, you have a little different animal.

So, you know, providing that there's extra funds at the end that you can use for one-time purposes, and just looking to the school division to see if they have an opportunity to suggest any one-time costs that could be used out of that fund balance as well, and if that's part of the process or not.

Well, no, I know if it's part of the process or not.

I believe that the one area, just be mindful of the capital program is a school and local government program and they are very involved in the capital program.

I understand.

But that's one that, but other than that, I would say it's not part of the process right now.

Okay, so this last chapter, and we're about 10 till six, so we're just about finished, is called Other Funds.

And remember when we started this and we talked about the total budget, and then we said we're gonna spend a lot of time in the General Fund, this is the one chapter that's a little different and it includes other funds that are outside of the General Fund.

Many of them have transfers from the General Fund.

There's 19 funds included in this chapter.

And there's four funds that we put a notation on that we did include in other chapters of the book that you've seen before, like Bright Stars and some of the other ones.

But this just shows you where some of the other funds are.

I do want to mention one that

It might be of interest to you, we've been talking about the housing fund a lot, which is the last fund in this chapter, but there's also a housing assistance fund, and I know that could be confusing because you're saying, wait a minute, you have two funds here.

The housing assistance fund is the fund where we place the HUD funding for vouchers, and so there's about over $3 million in that fund, so if you see that housing assistance fund, it is different from the one we're talking about with the $600,000.

Other than that, I don't have any real comments about that.

Many of these do have transfers from the general fund.

And then that would conclude our day today unless you have any, oh I'm sorry, we have Andy's slide.

Okay, so back to the economic development you wanted to have, that makes sense to add that in.

Part of the whole, I'm not so worried about, all of that has to work together.

And it would be nice from a, as a supervisor to look and go, okay, in all of our tools that we have, total resources available for economic development.

All right, thank you.

So I'm gonna move on to this next slide that Andy, when we have changes, and before I get to it, when changes occur during the budget cycle, we bring that new information to you when we hear about information.

Sometimes we've had changes in state funding in the past, and we've had other things that have come along.

So we'd like to bring you information as soon as we know there's a change.

There are a lot of words on this slide, and I'm doing so because this is new information that isn't summarized in the budget document.

But just in short, after the finalized recommended budget was prepared, we got an update from the city of Charlottesville with what their health plan cost would be.

and it turns out their anticipated increase is less than they originally thought.

This translates to a $64,000 savings approximately across these four agencies, CAT, JMRL, Jefferson Madison Regional Library, which really make up probably 99% of this change.

The last two for the Juvenile Domestic Relations Court and the contribution to AVRT, which is the payment we have for aggression's work on our behalf, that makes up the remainder.

So the $64,000 savings, we simply are recommending that it either be added to the reserve for contingencies, which Laurie discussed a few slides ago, or it could be considered as part of any of the board changes to the 19 recommended budget.

For me, I would not be prepared today to make any decision about that.

Yeah, this would be our savings that are now available that were not thought to be previously as part of any other changes the board would want to make.

We actually put this on your list with your other items, so it'll be on that Excel sheet of some savings over in your budget.

How does that translate?

Okay, well I'll leave a question with you because apparently today the budget from the city reduced the money that the city is putting to CAT.

My understanding is the change that was made in the budget, it was a change to a city-only route, and it should not affect our share.

But that's based on my understanding of reading the budget document over lunch.

And I'll just pass along another tidbit for you to have in the back of your mind as you're going.

At an earlier, either MPA meeting or a transit meeting, the CAT director talked about how there were

numerous times he didn't specify how many when he didn't have drivers and therefore the buses did not go out on routes and so I would like to know if you've been notified or the county's been notified about which county routes how many times we didn't have buses running because this affects our value for what we're getting for the money we're paying for CAT and so our is our budget that we're getting enough detail in what we're getting from them to understand all these different levels of changes that are happening.

Yeah, and just to piggyback on what Ann just said, in the CAT Advisory Committee meeting in December, I believe I asked, or maybe it was January, I asked John about this and he said that he had some routes into the county that didn't run for about three months.

Well, it was, and it was only, I think it was like a six o'clock run or a seven o'clock run.

So people were thinking, unfortunately people I'm afraid were thinking that they, the bus, they missed the bus or for some reason, but it was because lack of drivers, he just wasn't making some runs.

and just one other thought to leave for next year and that in Community Development, Thomas Jefferson Soil and Water Conservation District, I know it's for some reason having a reduction this year but as we begin to do more with our stormwater fund and the other sort of criteria within that, hopefully we will put the Soil and Water Conservation District to work and get them and their resource people to be doing a lot of this assessment rather than hiring our own people.

I can address the first part of that question.

There's a position at the Soil and Water Conservation District that is paid 100% for by the county and that just reflects they had I guess a more senior staff person leave and someone was brought in at a lower salary.