Board of Supervisors Budget Work Session   3/5/2018

Good afternoon, everyone.

Travis, is this working at all?

Okay.

Welcome to our Board of Supervisors work session, March 5th, 2018.

Everyone would please deal with your microphones and turn off your telephones.

Did we work?

All right.

So keep that handheld distance similar.

I got scolded because sometimes I was holding it right and sometimes I wasn't, so people didn't hear very well.

Thank you.

So today we are back at it with our capital improvement discussion and our list and other tasks.

So, Lori, are you taking it away for us today?

I am, thank you very much.

Madam Chair, members of the board.

I beg your pardon?

Madam Chair, members of the board, my name is Lori Allshouse, I'm the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and today I'll be taking you through your fourth work session on the Fiscal Year 19 recommended budget.

Before I get started, I'd like to share with you three pieces of information that's in front of you today.

You have a copy on your white copy of the slides from today.

We also shared with you two more documents and these were sent to you over the weekend but I know that there was a lot of power outages and internet down and those types of things so we printed you out an extra copy of the follow-up information that was sent to you this weekend is on the gray colored paper and the yellow colored paper was an attachment to that and this is the unfunded fiscal year 19 position as the request

Just the number of those that were placed on the list for discussion.

So it's not all unfunded, it's just the ones that were placed on the list by Board of Supervisor members.

If you wanted to see what has been included in the recommended budget, page 89 in your document will have that.

So those will be some pieces of information that you'll need as we go through these slides.

Okay, is that better?

Okay, thank you.

So I'd like to start with today's desired outcomes for our meeting today.

The first thing that we'd like to do is review the schedule and some potential adjustments to your work session scheduled forward.

We also want to complete the review of the fiscal year 19 capital budget and debt management chapter.

These are two pieces of information that we did not have time to get through at our last work session.

We'd also like to begin the board discussion of the items that you have placed on the list from previous work sessions for discussion.

And then we'd like you to consider approving a proposed tax rate for advertisement today.

That proposed tax rate for advertisement is a cap.

You cannot go above it, but you can go under it.

And we'll talk more about that as we go through today.

So here's a look at it in our schedule format.

You can see here we are today on March 5th.

What the schedule adjustment that the staff is recommending for you today, if you might recall from previous work sessions, we had scheduled two if needed work sessions on your schedule.

This was way back in the fall when we put the budget schedule together.

We said, if you need a couple extra work sessions, hold these days.

And we're gonna recommend that you consider using these work sessions, at least one of them, and I'm gonna share with you why.

So here we are in March 5th.

If you approve this calendar year 2018 tax rate for advertisement today, that's pretty much a requirement.

You have to do that 30 days before your public hearing on April 10th.

So that's a legal requirement.

You could move your public hearing, but we don't recommend doing that.

So to stay with your schedule, we think that it would be important for you to do that today.

The one thing you don't have to do today, but we had it on your schedule, was to actually approve your proposed budget.

So this is the time in the process where you take the county executive's recommended budget and move it to the Board of Supervisors proposed budget.

And this is an area where you make some adjustments possibly to the recommended budget as you move forward.

You don't have to do that legally.

30 days before the public hearing.

But you do have to do it within a certain time period during the rest of this process.

So we're suggesting that on March 27th, which is one of the work sessions we're recommending that you add to your process this year, that that would be the date you actually do your proposed budget.

and I'll share with you on the next slide some reasons we think that that might be something you should consider today.

If you choose to, you could actually do your proposed budget today.

I'm not saying you can't, but we suggest that with some new information we received from the state and the school's information and all those things, the new information the school received from the state about the composite index and how the budget is changing at the state level and some of the other reasons we think that might be a good idea to give us all some more time.

The other thing with the arrow on there is a consideration of even adding another work session on March 29th, and that's if you want to further discuss the CIP potential bond referendum.

We haven't had a chance to talk through that completely yet today, but if you did choose to do that, we think that's an important conversation for you to have another work session on because there's a lot of information that you'd want to discuss, I would think, on that particular item.

So let me share with you some reasons why we think it'd be good to add March 27th at this point.

We believe this could give additional time for both the board and for the staff.

It would give you additional time to receive additional feedback from your constituents during the March town hall meetings that we know are scheduled and before you actually approve your proposed budget.

It also would give you time for further consideration of the items on the list including any additional items that you might want to put on the list from March 1st or today.

And then for staff, this gives us some time to update projected revenues if there's any updates based on two months of additional information.

We have some more actuals so we can look at our revenues again and sharpen our pencils and see if there's anything else that

is available there that we could consider.

And also the state revenues are still changing, so it would give us a chance to update any projected state revenues based on what we're seeing this month.

The second thing you would do for staff is allow us to update any projected expenditure changes.

We've had a couple, does that mean?

We've had a couple changes already that we've shared with you and this would provide us a chance to look at any of them.

Are laptops as confusing to visit as the cell phones are or not?

Are other laptops and things?

Whoa.

Everybody feels as if they can sense the tension, but this will allow our listeners to hear better, perhaps, if it works.

Hopefully, it'll stay quiet now.

All right, this will also provide additional time for staff to update projected revenues as well as update projected expenditures based on any new information that we have.

It also would give us time to collaborate with the school division to review some updates and look at some things on capital needs and determine if there's anything else we can achieve jointly by shared operational efficiencies and those types of things.

So it would just allow us a little more time to collaborate together.

So before I go forward, is that acceptable to adjust the schedule?

Comments, questions?

I will probably be more interested in it.

I'm very concerned about our CIP and

that we're gonna need next year, so I know I'm gonna have a lot of questions about the CIP, so.

and others.

They're on my calendar, so happy to do that.

This may be, I'm wondering if this one is mine, Claudette.

Maybe it's frustrating, you can't really tell.

I don't know.

Yeah, I did, I turned it off and I turned it back on and it seems to be.

I do think we're investigating how to make this better.

So we will point that out for anybody that's listening.

Okay, so the schedule has been adjusted.

I appreciate you accommodating that.

So where we'd like to go now is to pick up where we left off at the March 1st work session.

And we were about to talk about the capital budget, which is your first year of your CIP.

The capital budget is what will be included in your 19 proposed budget and the budget that you appropriate later on in May or June.

So just to take a quick look at the capital budget, it's $57.7 million.

You can see on the left the revenue pie chart, where you can see a lot of it is planned borrowed proceeds, 74.5% of the revenues.

You can see the other uses of fund balance.

And when we say fund balance there, we mean the capital fund balance.

and other general fund transfer and local revenues.

On the expenditure side, you can see that 74.7% would be for the school division and that's primarily due to this high school improvements project that we're all talking about that would be something for you to consider and it would actually start in fiscal year 19.

Basically, the budget starts in 19.

A lot of the expenditures will probably come on track in 20.

but we really have to budget when the actual project begins so that we can go under contract.

So you have to have a budget in place to go under contract.

Yes.

This is primarily associated with the high school improvement project.

There's also maintenance and replacement costs that are ongoing that would be included in there for 19.

On page 264 and 265 of your document, if you'd like to look at the actual numbers, it's a column that's fiscal year 19.

That particular document in your budget shows the CIP.

And as you know, the CIP is a plan, but the first year of that plan, fiscal year 19 is the one that we're talking about today.

So you can see that there's maintenance and replacement of county facilities and parks included.

The high school improvement project funding would begin in fiscal year 19.

The other potential quality of life referendum projects that we started to talk about last, on March 1st, they will not begin until 20.

So you don't see them actually showing up in your 19 budget.

The water resources, funding with available one-time money for fiscal year 19.

So we'll be cash funding the water resources project work in fiscal year 19.

There was also a volunteer fire rescue facilities maintenance pilot project.

We mentioned that on the first.

That would be in 19.

There's funding for the transportation leveraging program, which was formerly called the Transportation Revenue Sharing Program.

And we shared with you why that change in the title, again on March 1st, because more than just transportation revenue sharing, we hope,

that we can take advantage of with that program.

And then we wanted to mention that there's two projects that we'd like to recommend being funded in 18, which is the current year we're in today.

Instead of waiting to 19, the Public Safety Tactical Robot and the Public Safety Mobile Burn Building Training Center, we bring appropriation requests to you to do that in the current year.

I don't have any other slides on this school year 19.

I know we talked, it's kind of hard to bridge the gap.

A lot has happened since March 1st as far as power and all the things in your community.

But that's all I have on the capital budget.

The importance of this is this is what would be included in your budget.

and I think the most important item that we have to continue to talk about is the high school improvement project funding.

I have a quick question.

This process here, we were, I'm not sure when we discussed this and if the board has any interest in discussing it, but we had talked about the four and a half cent increase that was going to be necessary for the year after this.

That concerns me a lot and I'm wanting to know if we should be having, if the board has interest in having a discussion about

where do we need to do anything this year with this CIP to try to look at that?

I myself don't think this community can handle four and a half percent increase with a storm water utility fee and with whatever increase in the assessment's gonna be.

I just think that's too much.

And so I'm concerned about where we're going here for the following year.

I don't really know when that

Two components of that, one is a three cent tax rate increase associated with general government and school C.I.

projects.

And those are projects that

have been underway.

A good deal of that increase regards those 35 million in projects that were previously approved through referendum.

As you recall, we had anticipated that increase would begin in 19.

So deferring that creates a resource need in the capital plan over that five years that increases.

Now just let me make sure I understand.

The referendum was one and a half cents as I remember and you're saying three cents.

Well, again, so the three cents is in part the referendum project, in part those projects that you will set in place or propose to be set in place here in 19.

and In 20 that will require additional resources to cover some of the debt service that may be associated with those projects in 19, but also to provide the necessary cash that's needed for 20.

The other part of the four and a half cents is a one and a half cent increase associated with storm water.

Now that assumes there is no storm water fee in existence at that point.

That funds fully the storm water program additions.

Now there is a component of storm water that's continuing to be funded through the .7 cent in the general fund.

If we were to expand the stormwater program to the extent that you all have indicated you'd like to see it expanded, then that would require another roughly $2.9 million in fiscal year 20.

We're proposing here that that be entirely funded through an additional penny and a half tax rate.

Okay, so your options are either A, to provide another mechanism for funding a stormwater piece.

And that would of course be a stormwater fee.

Or you could decide not to expand the program to that extent.

The four and a half percent does not include, I mean did the stormwater fee, we wouldn't have that one and a half additional cents and if we decided to phase the program it would be something different than that.

Correct.

That which you've already set in motion and that which is proposed in the next year and two years.

This is a slide from March 1st that I just put as a reference slide if you needed to talk about it today.

We are.

In addition to the one-time infusion that we've been able to put has enabled us to defer the tax rate increase for one year.

So natural growth does help us.

In this scenario where we think we're still going to need 3 cents and 20, we are anticipating a certain degree of natural growth in our real estate values.

And not have as much as you anticipate.

For fiscal year 19?

Yes.

Would you like me to go back to the slideshow?

Is there any more conversation about this?

I guess my question would be, we have the three cents built in, we need to do that, and the question is if the board as a whole decided that maybe two and a half cents was all we could deal with in one year, we would have to look at that CIP and see other areas that we wanted to postpone.

both for 19 and 20.

I think that you, as far as the 27th when you move to your proposed budget, the important thing for your proposed budget is fiscal year 19.

The proposed budget's one year of your CIP, but it does impact the rest of the plan, so that's an important conversation I believe for March 27th.

We also suggest you consider March 29th to talk about bond referendums and those ideas for the future as well.

Either of those days could work.

If you couldn't get to your proposed budget until the 29th, I think that would still work with our looking over at Greg with our schedule for the proposed budget approval.

29th gets a little tight with getting the add to the daily progress.

So 27th would probably be better.

Is there any more conversation about this?

This is an important conversation.

Well, I'd make one observation following up on Liz's point and that is when we review the proposed budget and we're looking at 2019 and we go through department by department,

and we identify staffing needs.

We ask those needs to be explained, establish a rationale for the addition to staff to determine whether they're justified or not.

What that does is it generally generates an incremental increase in governmental spending automatically.

It is a inherently inflationary biased approach in terms, because you're adding staff, I'm saying that's adding to cost.

And then we come to the CIP last and then see the actual projected five-year costs of shouldering increase overall governmental costs.

and what I would suggest were we've actually got things backwards.

I would almost suggest that we actually reverse these two steps and in the future look at the projected debt and CIP costs first because Liz you have identified 4.5 cents fiscal year 20.

but then fiscal year 21 adds two more pennies, fiscal year 22 adds two more pennies so over the next, not this year but the three years on the horizon we're looking at an 8.5 penny increase and yet here we are the first three sessions we've added with my addition not including the digital services librarian position which is

and Albemarle County shared costs and funding's dependent upon other partners.

We've added $2.6 million worth of new employees without anybody else being factored in.

So that's about a penny and a half.

So we have looked at the budget, we've added personnel at a penny and a half and now we're coming back and looking at the tail end of the budget and going wow,

fiscal year 20.

We're looking at 5, 4.5 cents.

But what I'm submitting in is by the way we're doing things, we're automatically building in additional costs in the future.

And once they're in there, they're silent.

They're not observed.

They're really not subject to our scrutiny, questioning, justification, and analysis.

It's just automatically that they're there.

So that's where I'm saying I'm not

Please understand I'm not criticizing anybody but I'm just saying the process automatically is biased towards increasing the size of the staff and then when we come out the back end we're looking at it and going oh the implications of just the current budget that we're projecting we're going to be having incurring these costs in the following years.

So I think I would submit, I appreciate Liz's point being raised, but I think it's deeper and more significant than that.

We need to talk about that because we need to really be sure that every position we add that we really can justify it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

that we're getting increased governmental services that help people out there in the public and help our staff be more efficient and innovate and be creative and provide the level of service that we want.

So I don't want to go on any further.

I think I've made my point but I do think when we look at the process we see that we're backing ourselves automatically in a corner.

Not intentionally, but the way the process is currently configured, we back ourselves into a corner.

And then we go, wow, look at all what we're gonna have to confront down the line.

And to go along with that, we have 17,000 more people just in the few years that I've been on the board who have come here, moved here, been born here, and the services they require has compounded all of that issue.

I actually wonder, talk about bias, and this is not a criticism either, it's really just a question, is when we see certain departments that seem to grow faster than others, is there a bias in that regard?

and not to pick on finance, but I think it's very good to justify those positions.

It's very hard for where I'm sitting to tell, I mean, I pretty much have to depend upon you guys to tell me what's the most efficient use and where those staff people need to be.

But when I look at the finance department and then I look at

and unfunded mandates, for instance, for the sheriff's department and want to know, well, they got one deputy, but they wanted two, but now they have to transport people across the state with temporary detention orders because the state legislature has passed wonderful new rules for mental health services to try to improve that.

So is there a bias there in the way that we put these positions into

into the budget.

I prefer the word perspective just because I think bias is sort of pejorative right away.

Okay, all right, there you go, perspective.

But I'm sure that the folks across the hall here or this table here are taking all of these positions in that yellow packet and having to figure out which ones are absolutely essential for right now.

And I disagree a little bit that everything is baked once it's here because we have considerably repositioned

members of the staff over the last 10 years to move into higher demand areas or not fill some positions when people retired, et cetera, because of fall in demand and certain things.

I guess I'm just responding to, for us to try to evaluate the importance of all these different positions, I find that very hard.

It is hard, absolutely.

I don't have the knowledge base to tell you guys what you need.

for your departments.

I simply don't.

I'm not expecting to gain that.

And just for clarity, the positions on the yellow sheet are not in the recommendation.

Right.

Just so people are aware.

Anything else?

How does this chart change if the bond referendum, the newest one were of interest?

Where does that tax, where would that fall?

So make sure I understand it.

You're talking about the potential future bond referendum for the school improvements project and these other quality of life bundling.

Yeah, because they're included right now in the recommended CIP, which is a plan, not the budget part.

But the CIP is a chapter of your document.

and that's actually based on the projections of what if we did that quality of life referendum and would the tax rates fall in the same place as they do now if that so that's planned on okay the referendum were to pass this is how the tax increases would fall because when it when we pass the referendum that doesn't mean you borrow right then you borrow and we're doing very careful spend plan

So you borrow just in time when you need the money.

So we don't want to borrow it upfront and not need it for a while.

So this is based on a borrowing plan that's called a spend plan, that the actual time that you actually need cash is when you actually will do the borrowing.

I thought it might be helpful to make one other comment about the way we approach both the general fund budget and the capital budget.

As I think you all know, the general fund has a transfer over to capital.

And we do that intentionally by formula and we do that consistently from year to year so that we can establish an extent to which the general fund supports a capital program.

So when we look at the general side, the general operations side, we try to use natural growth to develop our budget and to do it in such a way that it doesn't trigger a tax increase to the extent we can, which is what we did this year.

And then we send over our transfer over to the capital fund and then look at that in some ways in isolation to say that given what you've transferred into capital,

against the project needs that are out there, this is how it impacts the tax rate.

So this is, you know, this three cents that you're looking at here, again, is associated strictly with those, with that transfer and then those additional projects that were identified as being necessary.

Can we move back to the other slides or would you like to discuss this anymore?

I actually brought in some other slides too.

I had the, where are they?

I brought the quality of life referendum products.

These are just things that we touched on on the first and information about the timing.

I thought that these may be of interest when you talk about the capital budget.

Again, you're approving the capital budget, which is fiscal year 19, but your document does include the CIP.

And the CIP's a plan, but usually when you approve this document, you're approving this plan, so it is important to keep this in mind.

And they're updated every year, because as revenues change, your out years will change, and expenditures change, but it's important for you to have that thought about the CIP as well as the capital budget, when you're thinking about this.

Anything else on moving along here?

Are you all right if I go back to the slides?

We can always go back to this again.

This is your meeting for your discussion.

Get back to where we were.

So I was moving in.

So I just finished this highlights of the 19 capital budget slide when we talked then about some future tax rate potential impacts.

and the other chapter, and again, we just basically are following the book according to your chapters and I heard loud and clear that we might want to do it in different ways in the future.

We basically are just kind of going through the book and we're almost done.

So if you think about the last chapter in the book, one of the last ones is the debt management information.

So we have a chapter called debt management and it starts on page 297.

And I don't have a lot of slides on this.

I just have a couple.

And basically, this chapter is good for you to look at the existing debt that the county has.

So we have some existing debt from past years.

And it gives you the animalization schedules for your past debt.

So that's something you can see in this chapter.

The finance department's very involved in putting this chapter together, and we have some finance representatives here in the room if there's any specific questions about it.

But you can see we have about $200 million in debt right now.

This is from the past.

and this chapter includes information on this existing debt.

It also has your debt service schedules, policy information and the schedule.

So if there's not any, there might be questions on that.

And the other point we just wanted to make that we intend to maintain a 10-year payout ratio or about 60% at the end of each adopted five-year budget.

So we do watch the payout schedules.

And some debt is on seven years, some is on 10, some is on 20.

and so debt is being retired all along.

There's been debt that we've refinanced along the way to get lower interest rates and so all that's been taken into account into your schedule.

The next slide I have about debt capacity and this is a look ahead.

We just talked about looking backwards on what is your existing debt.

These two slides, you have policies

that are approved by the board in your financial policies.

And two of the things that we always look at, and those of you that have served on the oversight committee have seen these slides, we look at debt service as a percentage of revenue.

So when I say debt service, that's the amount of debt payments you're making year by year.

The one on the left is the percentage we, our policy is that you don't go over 10%.

Your debt service is not over 10% of your revenues, your general fund revenues.

The red line on there is your cap.

And so we can't go above that and still be within your policies.

So you can see, and this is based on the current CIP that has the bond referendum projects in.

You can see Albemarle is on the blue line there.

The dotted yellow line is other AAA averages across the nation.

So you can see that we're staying below our cap.

We get a little closer to it in 22, but we stay in a good place.

And this is calculated on existing debt and new debt.

If you go to the right side, you can see another calculation that we use.

And it's outstanding debt.

It's a percentage of your assessed property in your county.

There's your cap at 2%.

And you can see the blue line again.

It's Albemarle County.

You can see that we're riding below that cap.

It's been pointed out that you need to always look further ahead on this.

This is just a five-year snapshot.

So you think about year six, year seven, that this could be something that as we think more and more about the CIP that we look even a little further ahead.

And it's hard to do because a lot of it's based on projections, your general fund revenues and all that.

But based on our projections, right now we're currently under your cap.

So my question was, those are based on the four and a half cent increase though, right?

And I wonder if we, if as a board we say, since we can't get down into the weeds too much as Liz has been saying,

If we said though that it doesn't realistically seem feasible to add more than two and a half cents or three cents or whatever the amount is but certainly four and a half cents doesn't seem reasonable that if we did it at two and a half or three what would those charts look like because we're creeping up there and that doesn't take into consideration the possibility of an economic slowdown or a decrease in the

I understand that, but you still have the ability to look at projects that were in the plan further out.

Yes.

Yes.

All we're doing this year is making decisions, formally about 19 projects.

And I appreciate the thought that we want to look ahead so we're not surprised by bad things which would happen, but also we don't know what the choices of our voters would be in the referendum and which of the five categories they would support the highest, and that would help us with prioritization as well.

And I can think of many, many items which have been on our CIP list for the years that are now in Never Never Land because we've evolved away from doing that particular thing.

Just one quick question on that debt service as a percentage of revenues.

We see the fiscal year 22, it goes above the average a little bit and then it comes back down.

And I realize this can be very fluid, I understand that.

But my tendency is to look at that and say oh my goodness in 22 we're in trouble when the reality is it's probably not interpreted that way.

There is one problem though in here and that is that as we look at 2017 debt at the end of 2017, $207 million and then fiscal year 23, we will have an increase of almost 50% and we continue to add staff, 17.5 of the staff members proposed this year will not actually be in the county office building but that means 12.5

will be and how long we can continue to assume that this building has a carrying capacity to handle and accommodate additional employees and what isn't in here in this debt management strategy is the potential additional costs associated with having to borrow money for some portion of a new county office building.

Now it is

Certainly the value of this property will do nothing but continue to go up with time provided the real estate market remains viable in the United States.

But that is still not going to cover the potential cost.

for a new county office building.

So we're going to need to find funding and the logical place to find funding might be to go out to voters for support for a referendum.

So I just raised that, that that is a, going through here, that's a continuing, coursing through here is a continuing concern for me that we're looking after the schools and they certainly need to be looked after, but we also need to be thinking about our county employees and ensuring that they're in

a professional setting that lends itself to their ability to maximize their potential and to work in an efficient and effective manner.

And walking through this building, I'm reminded that the rabbit warren becomes more of a rabbit warren every year as we add people and we find another place to tuck them away.

So I do think we need to be very mindful about that, that everything in here

the ceteris paribus all other things being equal but you know that county office building is replacement is going to be a project that I would submit we may get to within this next five-year period of having to confront it.

Is there anything else that you'd like to discuss about the debt or debt capacity?

The next slide will just be moving on.

We'd be moving away at this point from the capital budget and the CIP in your discussion and we will pick it up again on the 27th.

But is there anything else you'd like to talk about with capital and debt before we move to your list?

And the next slide is a list of items that were identified in the first two work sessions.

So we'll be moving back kind of to the operational side of things.

So this list is in two boxes.

And what we did is we took notes through the first two work sessions.

And you identified, you'd say, we want to put this on the list for further board discussion.

We had answered a lot of your questions through emails and at the table.

but there was an item that you wanted to discuss further with your fellow board members you asked to put it on this list and this is kind of how the policy or how the process goes right now this is really for your conversation amongst yourselves and we have staff members here that can answer questions for you so on the left are unfunded position requests and we thought put this on the list we want to see and have further conversation of some of the things that aren't funded

aren't included in the 19 budget.

And we did send this out to you, and this is the information on the yellow sheet.

So the yellow sheet goes along with your box on the left.

And then the information in the right box are some other items that aren't on the yellow sheet, but they're items that you wanted to talk more about, and we've sent some information to you about these items.

So they're agency budget review team agencies.

So we had a request to put that on the list for future conversation for the board members.

Park, a cultural agency, consider reallocating Charlottesville Opera funding to Paramount Theater, Virginia Cooperative Extension 4-H program increasing some part-time hours there.

And then there was another one that wasn't exactly about a position but it was Mr. Galloway's suggestion is that we talked about the fuel reserve fund and there was some funding in that in the current budget and just some

I was thinking of, if you're not gonna use that this year, and next year you're gonna be covering that with your 1% stabilization reserve, is there something you can do with 18 money right now as the year is ending to help fiscal year 19, which I think was a great question.

So we just left that on there because it was something on the list for future conversation.

I actually just brought up the Sheriff's Department and I was looking at our Wednesdays meeting which is when we're going to hear from the Sheriff's Department and so I'm wondering if we can get an explanation of why one was chosen

If there was some, what I'm concerned about is unfunded mandates.

I know that we have had some changes from the General Assembly, which I think are wonderful changes.

However, they have impacted that office more.

So I wanted to find out what process staff went through to decide one versus two.

I'll speak to that.

This is actually a response we provided over the weekend which some people may not have seen.

I can talk through that now generally.

You know really as part of the start of our long-term financial processes in the summer is really when this starts.

We'll start in OMB and we'll send out kind of a request we call a resource plans.

We ask our departments and constitutional officers to

Based on the next five years, tell us what you think you need given the board's strategic priorities and what we need to move those forward.

Tell us what you think you need to meet your current workload service demands.

Any ideas you have related to implementing transformative initiatives or something where we're doing business differently, and then just any of the other emerging needs that don't fit in those four categories.

And so we get those in in the summer and the very first thing we do is we sit down at OMB who works with all these departments and kind of do a first pass to say.

And I'll say the other thing we ask those departments is don't just submit those to us, tell us how they relate to these potential budget goals and also prioritize them for us so we have your input into as decisions are made we know what your priorities are.

So we then as OMB will take a pass of staff to take through and prioritize those that are the most compelling, those that have the strongest tie to the strategic plan.

And we'll prepare an initial list and we'll turn that over to the county's leadership council, which is a group of department heads and the county executive staff who then get together and take another look at another lens to kind of step back and look at that through the board's strategic plan, through the workload issues and everything else we talked about.

All of that feedback is incorporated along with considerations of other expenditure obligations and mandates we may have to meet.

Certainly our available revenue and just any other considerations we may have in the budget.

And we'll put together what we call the balance to your fiscal plan.

That goes before the board in November.

In December, we have a series of work sessions, which gives us that long-term look at our financial picture that we talked about earlier.

It also provides us with feedback from the board.

There's things in the budget that we're not hitting the mark on, or, I'm sorry, things in the two-year plan we're not hitting the market on that provides you an opportunity to get feedback before we head into the annual budget.

So really after we get the feedback from you all in the two year plan, we then sit back down, take a look at what our available revenues are, any new information we've received from departments, changes in other areas of the budget and obligations we may have, and just kind of factoring all of it in, looking at our budget goals and connecting those that are the strongest connected to the, in this case this year, our three main budget goals, the strategic plan, supporting transformation, and then sustaining the quality of the organization.

And then we present the recommended budget.

I'm just kind of, I'm kind of torn because we're not gonna hear from them till Wednesday.

You know, we have them on our agenda

Well, this is so often like so many other departments that we've dealt with this year when we have some 70 positions that were requested and as we've looked at available funding, you know, very hard decisions had to be made.

They're not always easy to make, certainly, and it's not an exact science.

We try to, again, as Andy said, try to look at all of the different factors as best we can.

Madam Chairman, just a point of order.

If in fact this board has a public hearing scheduled for Wednesday, is it appropriate that we be involved in making a decision prior to a public hearing on Wednesday?

I mean, I'm really uncomfortable having a discussion now about this item when it's on the agenda for Wednesday and to be presented and for people in the public to be able to weigh in on it and in any way make a decision.

My specific question would be then, if I'm coming up with a specific question, has there been changes that they've realized coming down from the General Assembly since they provided the information to y'all?

Spring, or whenever it was, has there been any changes too?

And that wasn't in the packet.

And the other thing that wasn't in the packet, of course, is how staff made the decision.

So, let's see where, there she is.

What was your question?

I was trying to make a very specific question so we didn't, because I know you're going to be before the board on Wednesday.

Since you've made the recommendation to the staff, when was it last?

The original requests are certainly in December, but we do have an ongoing dialogue.

They'll be submitting their operating requests.

I know we discussed this with you all, I think it was in October or November, I guess we met with your all's operating review.

I'm just concerned about unfunded mandates basically and how you guys are dealing with that.

So have there been any changes since then?

You'll hear about it Wednesday.

What my request was back for the budget process is our continuous workload increase and our reserve division volunteer hours and numbers have decreased.

and our TDOs which were under an MOU with the county PD because per code it's the primary law enforcement agency that handles TDOs.

We are under an MOU with those that we would take care of those for the PD 24 hours a day, seven days a week except for the local transports that are going from region 10 to either UVA or from Martha Jefferson region 10.

So and TDO since 2008 has increased for our department by 206%.

So which is causing a demand on staff to take away from their court duties and job responsibilities to then send two deputies on a TDO.

Yes, our workloads increased.

I'll certainly probably have more questions for you on Wednesday.

I am concerned about unfunded mandates and how the different changes are affecting this department.

And also that I was, I didn't totally understand, but we can talk about this later, on your volunteers and how many are actually operating as deputies in the courts.

I guess one question for all of us to keep thinking about is

There certainly is a lot of uncertainty which I have about the individual line-by-line decisions that we're still talking about and debating, but do they affect the proposed tax rate?

Are we expecting to live within and advertise for the tax rate which has been proposed to us by the accounting executive and make what changes we need to make over the next few weeks after lots more discussion within that dollar amount?

Or is there some proposal to do something different?

Andy, you had a great explanation about how, thank you, about how we use our strategic plan and the work that we're trying to accomplish and I know lots of decisions aren't easy but thank you for your explanation.

I guess in relation to what I just asked about, I would consider just taking out the boxes, the things off the list that I had put on for now because I don't want either of them to impact the total.

So if there are things that might impact the total, let's go to those and leave off number two and three.

I think the ABRT process is really strong and I've pretty much had my questions answered as far as any other concerns.

No.

I do think that the ABRT, some of the funding

and I do, I'm not criticizing Marti's process, I think it's great and I completely support sticking with their process but I don't know that some of these smaller things that are identified in here as where they say they should be funded and they recommend funding and they are not

should necessarily be taken off for discussion because of the impending tax rate, $10,000 for something that the ABRT recommended funding where we decided not to fund it.

I was just saying, Liz, my questions have been answered.

I'm very concerned about the budget so first of all it goes without saying but with the ABRT I think we're we're talking about relatively small amounts five thousand ten thousand dollars compared to tens of millions of dollars for capital improvement projects and it's you know it's difficult to compare the relative value of that even one position in any department is going to be

more than the total of everything I would recommend that we fund.

I think the Legal Aid Justice Center, this is pretty minor, but they're up

32% in terms of the number of Albemarle County residents that they're serving.

And we're increasing their, I don't have all the details here, but I believe that it's recommended as a constant amount from the previous year.

I think we could raise it to 3% at about $5,000.

So that would just be a 3% increase.

They're rated solid.

I think we can't look at ABRT as this is their recommendation.

They're saying that at a minimum this is our policies that we should add something, but when they say that

One particular group is solid, it deserves help, and that if their service has increased dramatically, they're asking us to decide whether we think that's worth an increase.

So I think Legal Aid Justice Centers should go up to 3%.

The local food hub, I think what's not included in that

is that the specific program they're talking about of feeding people with ongoing illnesses, low-income people that don't get enough nutritious food, but it's very different.

When you look at the revenues from the local food oven, it says it's almost three million dollars, but

That isn't revenues like for most nonprofits.

Their other revenues are often donations or services provided.

The local food hub is a real economic development generator, too.

Those $3 million of their revenues are people in retail stores that are buying their products.

They're buying those things from local farmers.

So it's supporting our whole agricultural

area.

So I think they deserve funding.

They requested 13,000 or that we are funding them 13,000?

It's a new program.

So I think even if we just did $5,000 to get that, show that we support them and they can use that to raise more money, I think that would be valuable.

So that's what I forgot to write down, 5,000 there.

Seen Barreras, I mentioned that before, is rated solid and they recommended funding if available.

Again, I think $5,000 would be symbolic that we're helping that very active and low income

constituency that they have.

Frank Sullivan, who's one of the leaders, I've talked to him extensively, and he worked in South America for decades, speaks Spanish fluently, works with them, and they are a very active organization.

I think they're kind of off the radar, but help tremendously.

They had a get together that was sponsored by the city, but took place in the county last year.

there was over a hundred people there very interested in all kinds of issues affecting the mainly Latino community I think that would show that our support for them and lastly YMCA child care at the Jefferson School again solid rating moderate impact but they're requesting $30,000 they have

48 new Albemarle residents in their program.

I think they deserve support, so I'm suggesting, I don't know if you wrote those down, those specific amounts that I suggested, and I don't think that is contrary to what ABRT is recommending, and that's a total of

Would you like to make that a motion, Norman, and we'll vote on all of those?

Well, is this the appropriate time or if we're putting off the decisions?

But this is, I guess, a question.

I could support all the things that you suggested there, just as a, but that doesn't, as Ann pointed out a few minutes ago, those kinds of things is not going to affect the tax rate that we set today, because it's a relatively small amount.

You'd have to identify where the funding's gonna come from.

While it may be a small amount in the big scheme of things, it is an amount of money and the place where that money would come from has to be identified.

So the question would be, obviously, where would you put it?

What was the amount you suggested for the YMCA?

Ten thousand, okay.

And then a three percent increase for legal aid, just kind of overall their total amount.

I am very glad to receive the information and also be thinking about other things that could be sources of transfer.

I'm not sure I have to, I don't think we have to decide right this minute.

No.

Just so I understand, if you want to add in, it's up to the board member to find where that money would come from, go elsewhere and find that.

I would like to add one more thing for just consideration that's not on the list.

Very recently we found out that the Vanderlin all-in-one bin facility in Fluvanna closed, which was a lot of where our trash from Albemarle County was going.

And we have received at least a handful, five to 10 emails, questioning this.

I know the Daily Progress is going to be doing

I have absolutely no idea if Rivanna could even up their schedule for opening up the IV diaphragm center.

Right now we have $80,000 for 2019 to open up in the spring.

And if Rivanna was able to open up a quarter early, a few months early, then it would be

It's always possible for us to find that out first before Trevor's going to explain life.

Trevor Henry, Director of Facilities and Environmental Services.

In response to the question about could we accelerate IV, there's potential to do that.

Normally it would come with a cost.

It involves things like working weekends and maybe doubling up shifts or overlapping things.

So it would be a matter of working with Rivanna and the contractor to see what could be accelerated and what the cost would be.

Just to manage expectations though, bringing it in early, you may be able to get a few weeks, maybe a month, but I doubt it would be months earlier.

So just to manage expectations.

We could see what an acceleration schedule might look like and what it might cost.

It's supposed to be,

done by the consultants and given to Rivanna in July of 2018.

When that kind of trickles down to the board at Rivanna, Solid Waste Authority is another issue.

But they will, I'm just giving more information to the board, they will have a master plan done at that time.

And I don't know that we would at all be ready to

That's information that I'll provide to the board as soon as we get it unless we want to tie it to a future work session.

And the other thing is while I'm here, I apologize for some of the columns issues today.

Staff, FES, IT, and the clerks have been working together on alternatives.

Did a programming analysis, actually did a proposal for different systems.

They have settled on one that's gonna take away all the microphones.

So it'll be an omnidirectional system that actually sits in the ceiling.

And they actually went down in, I think it was in either Lynchburg or Roanoke, they saw it.

in real time and seemed to work really well.

So it's not gonna help us in this budget cycle, I apologize, but we should have that on order and have it installed here in the spring.

That's great news.

Excellent.

Thanks.

Thank you everyone for the research.

Madam Chairman, I do want to raise one issue, the moral hazard issue here that if we look at funding programs that were rated by ABRT at a fair to moderate level, there are programs that did not receive any funding that were rated at a solid level.

We are picking automatically winners and losers, which is what the ABRT was designed to prevent.

and I just want to raise that point that that then creates confusion out there in the nonprofit community because if you apply and your proposal was rated weak and then or fair and the board turns around and funds that program

That's a disincentive for people that have worked hard, submitted a proposal the first time, maybe week, next time it came in as fair, and then they got it together and it was solid and perhaps then it got funded.

We're going on a slippery slope here when we start picking as a board winners and losers outside of the ABRT process, which is designed to be neutral, impartial for both the city and the county.

I would certainly not support anything that wasn't recommended by the ABRT, and I think that that list was all things will

All of the things I said were solid, and I think we should see it as advisory.

We still make the final decisions in the same way that the different departments propose staffing levels, propose budget levels.

We make decisions.

It's not absolute that we're always going to exactly go along with everything the ABRT says.

We haven't in the past.

All the suggestions we get for the budget are we have to make the final decision on it.

I don't think there's any aspect of moral hazard in there at all or precedent setting or anything.

We're supporting groups that we feel are serving our community well.

And I think Gretchen addressed a couple of those when she was here and spoke to us the last time.

If we're gonna talk about the ABRT programs again, then maybe we could ask Gretchen to come if we're adding, because now we've added the YMCA once again.

The one other thing was the IT department.

I thought that was in here.

We were praising our IT director.

and we asked him to speak about that, page two.

I'm having page problems here.

I can read.

I'm capable of this.

The help desk analyst.

I guess I just wanted to point that out that our IT director, we brought him up before us and asked him to explain his needs again.

He has been working very hard on the broadband authority and is I know because we get emails from him all over the weekend at all kinds of hours and I guess I guess we're passing that up and I guess I wanted to bring that up because I wanted to make sure my other member on the broadband authority was

okay with since I think Rick you brought that up at the last meeting.

Okay.

Mr. Culp is here too if you have any specific questions for him.

I guess we're, I'm, I'm, was very frightened by our projections for next year so I'm,

When we initially discussed some of these positions, I don't think I asked this question.

Like the police department or other departments that have multiple requests for new positions, and we only staff some of those positions.

Because a lot of this was asking for the rationale, what the positions are, what was the story.

When the decision was made to put the positions that are funded or recommended, did the department agree

So just for example the police department if they if you if I forgot the total number they asked for let's say seven and we are gonna fund two did we say okay if you get two of the seven what two do you want is it fair to assume that our recommended staffing from in the county executive matches what the department heads decisions would have been if if they got that those those positions recommended yes

Madam Chair, ladies and gentlemen of the board, Greg Jenkins, deputy chief of the Albemarle County Police Department.

The question was raised, Mr. Galloway, do we prioritize those positions?

Yes, we do.

And we prioritize the two funded positions that are in the budget right now, so far, that are moving forward.

Those are the two priorities, is the getting our patrol shifts staffed where we can continue with our geographic-based policing.

Those are the two priorities.

And then everything else was below those two positions.

I'll just say a little bit about IT.

Certainly that is one of those departments that has been evolving very quickly here over the last six months.

The authority has been among those things that has generated a lot more work for Mike, certainly as we all know, than perhaps was first anticipated.

The issues about how time and attendance and records management will unfold were questions for us as we went into the budget.

Some of the thinking there was to what extent might these systems and programs create some efficiencies that we may yet not know yet as they are implemented.

So some of this was what I guess came into our thinking as we made these decisions.

But I would acknowledge that

Their department is stressed.

Mike is doing a lot of different things.

There are shortages in their help desk program and in his OA assistance.

I'd like to I guess ask Jeff or Doug or Bill to respond but my sense is here and from informal discussions that there's a concern about the budget and

Rick has brought up some important issues about staffing.

We're trying to balance, it seems like, ongoing operations, which is mostly staffing, CIP and our debt service, and then what the tax rate, what's an acceptable increase in the tax rate, and I guess

I'm not sure where that goes next, but I feel a little stuck of which of those, if we feel like there's a problem here, which I think we seem to agree that we can't ask for so much of a tax rate over the next couple of years.

Where are the places that we can push to either postpone capital investments, to save money on operations, which just means mostly payroll?

Are there, you know, in the same way that Captain Jenkins just said, you know, they prioritized their staffing roles.

I think as relates to the tax rate increases proposed over the next several years, there are a few major drivers behind that.

the proposed referendum projects.

There's about $40 million included in the program to support those projects.

The second is the stormwater program, as I've mentioned.

This plan is carrying the burden of that program.

You have some options there as to whether, in the case of the referendum projects, you do all or some of those.

or in the case of the Stone Water Program, whether you do those or not or what level of service you provide.

The other major driver, of course, is $90 million of a school project, which is not insignificant.

That's coming at us.

I mentioned last time that we have, the schools have done the best job they can in identifying the components of that project and when they should happen.

There might be a way that we can look at how those projects are specifically phased.

And again, it's premature for me to know whether or not that's possible or not.

We will learn a lot on election day if we decide to have a referendum.

I'm not trying to kick the can down the road except there are only so many knowns right now.

And one thing I cannot do is to make a decision today based on thinking I know something that's going to happen in two years.

I'd rather make very good decisions with the best information we have for right now and deal with 2020 about a year from now or six months from now when we begin to learn more that's real.

I think absolutely that choices will be made by others as well as ourselves as far as these capital projects and this has been an ongoing thing all of us knew who were on the board in 29, 10, and 11 zeroing out the CIP was going to create incredible pain.

When we finally got brave enough to try to remedy some of that postponement and this postponement is costing us millions right now as we start to try to turn the ship and try to do the things.

Last year's referendum was based upon bricks and mortar needs that the children were already here.

It wasn't dreaming about how many were going to be here in ten years.

They were already here sitting on the floor.

so that was part of that whole postponement thing so many of the staff positions which are put in the budget are because the board and citizens through the board and board members have continually said we need to do a better job in this we need to do a better job in that we're creating problems because we don't have this particular program or that particular program citizens have to deal with this and so I understand how we got to this 300 pages here and I appreciate the process but

I also know that things do change and I don't want to sound like a Pollyanna but lots of times they turn out which is a surprise always because I've had lots of heartburn over the years but things do turn out better than sometimes we anticipate so a plan for the worst and hope for the better is a good idea with the stormwater there are quite a few changes or quite a few decisions which will have to be made going forward

One of which is that there's a very large amount of that stormwater money that's actually paid for by the taxpayers instead of by the people who are getting the inspections done.

And I do hope, I've talked to staff about that and hopefully there will be proposals come forward about changing that to be more of a pay-as-you-go process instead of dumping those general fund expenses, which we have today, 800 or 900 thousand dollars of them, into a stormwater fee that then

almost over blows the impact level.

We also need to think about the fact that if the stormwater fee happens, that amount will come off of the tax rate.

So we'll not be doubling if there's a 1.4 cents attributed to the stormwater, there will be a reduction in the other side because we're not taxing people for the stormwater bucket and then taxing them again for the utility.

So that will have to be worked out.

So where we are now today, I'm not seeing a lot of questions popping up here, is that by the time we leave here today, we need a motion to advertise a tax rate for public hearing.

And the rate that we choose today to advertise can go down, but it cannot go up.

Just to make sure everybody understands that, I know everybody at the table understands, but just so the public understands.

So once we vote on a rate to take to public hearing, while we could choose to lower that rate if we wanted to, we could not raise it at the next meeting or down the road.

It seems like to me we're kind of there.

Yeah.

Alright.

Diantha?

You all said it very well, so I don't need to repeat what you just said.

So I'll move on to the next slide.

So this is just a slide.

We shared this information with you in an earlier work session.

Just a little bit of background on the real estate property taxes.

The fiscal year 19 budget's recommended tax rate is the current rate, or 0.839 per 100 of assessed value.

The lower or effective tax rate

This is also something that you advertise and this is an important rate.

If it was effectively bringing in what it's bringing now for the current properties, it would be .8117 per 100 of assessed value.

Each penny on the real estate tax rate yields approximately 1.8 million in estimated collectible real estate tax revenues.

We do have a tax relief for the elderly and disabled program which we discussed

at an earlier work session, we have almost a million dollars in that program.

The real estate property taxes based on the current projections is estimated, expected to generate about 52% of your general fund revenues.

7.5 million or 5.2% increase over fiscal year 18.

You can see what those increases are based on.

4.5 is due to appreciation.

which is a 2.2% increase in calendar year 2018 reassessments, an assumption of an additional 2.2% increase in calendar year 29 reassessments.

Three million is due to growth or new construction in land divisions.

So that just gives you that background again about your real estate property taxes.

The next slide is just how you would make the motion if you wanted to make that motion.

And I do wanna mention, I don't mean for that to happen,

that you also could make the motion to include the assessed value of the taxes for personal machinery and tools today, but you don't have to do that.

Usually we do that all at the same time.

Do we have a second?

Second.

Oh, excuse me.

So we're not going to do the whole one with the assessed value.

We could do that as a separate one.

We had both options.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay, now, is it a good thing to go on and do this as well so that that goes to public hearing?

It's a good idea.

So then I will just say, let's see, I move that the Board advertise the following rates for public hearing for the 2018 tax year.

$4.28 per 100 of assessed value for personal property and $4.28 per 100 of assessed value for machinery and tools.

Second.

Yes.

And just as background, because I know people would like to know that if someone could email around to all of us the most recent median residential value or any other facts of that type that you have so that people could then do the math and be very clear for themselves about how we might compare

So we're done early with the requirements for today's work session.

Do you want to have any more conversation now that you have set your tax rate for advertisement

on the list or would you like us to just continue our work and bring that information back to you on the 29th for your proposed budget?

I personally would like to bring that back saying that I have to go through an awful lot of emails over the weekend so I'd like to spend some extra time not putting any electricity for the last three days and still not having internet at my home and et cetera.

I think I'd like a little bit more time to look through.

I'm happy to do more homework as well.

All right.

So I have a few things, Madam Chair, if it's all right.

Please.

Now that the tax rate's set.

I'd like to clarify, I don't know if my point relative to the fuel efficiency fund was made.

and how I heard it come back to me today.

In the current one-time, the usage of the current one-time monies, we're setting up the new sustainability fund, which is 1%.

That equals an amount.

That will cover the fuel efficiency fund once it

It expires this year, we get you through it.

And I remember the meeting with this came up, Rick said well we can't spend it yet because another storm by the end of the year, which was not my intent.

But it seems logical to me that however much is in that at the end of the current fiscal year, the total was like 256 I think that's in there now.

Let's say 200,000 remaining at the end of this year.

It seems logical on the accounting line that it goes from the expired

Field Fund to that Sustainability Fund to help us get the 1%.

But my point is that would mean right now there's $200,000 in one-time monies that we're not using because we've got to tie it up to equal that 1% amount.

That's where my problem comes into play.

That creates then a $200,000 fund that would probably grow to the next year's surplus.

whereas that's a way to fund things that are on somebody's list right now.

If I wanted to get some money, one-time money to something that's not currently recommended and I know that I have a fund that's likely going to help pay for that 1%, then I'm limited in having some dollars available to pay for some things in the fiscal year 19 as a one-time cost.

Is that clear?

I'm not asking to spend money out of the current

Contingency Fund, but there's likely to be money there, which I think should go to the 1% fund, which should free up, because then we'd be at 1.1 or 1.2%.

Now, I know that this doesn't fit nicely into the accounting methodologies of the world, but I'm not an accountant.

So I'm trying to figure out a way to be creative with how we could potentially still use some one-time monies that we know could be there, whether that's building up a contingency fund and saying that the end of this year, that if we wanted to spend X dollars and it's in the fuel efficiency fund and we know that's going to cover the 1%, maybe we could then go to that and say, okay, now we can make these approvals and work that into the budget process if there was

I'm not expecting or anticipating an answer to that, but I just want to make sure that the thoughts that I have behind that are clear and how we can be a little bit more nimble instead of waiting a whole other year for monies that we know is going to fall to a positive end of year variance, to use your terms.

or our accounting terms.

So that's one point I wanted just to make sure of.

At some point I would like, I don't know if this is a budget, I don't think this is a budget question, but the piece I want to have a continued conversation about the information that get to us from the DSS monies.

I think it's 329,000 is being projected to be.

That's after taking out the Medicare and the health insurance piece and personnel that could be there at the end of this year that goes unspent.

I'd like to have continued conversation about that along the lines of what I introduced earlier in the budget cycle.

So I don't, like I said, if that's not a budget question, then that's I guess a request for a future agenda.

My third item is that I want to thank Steve Allshouse when I asked questions about how revenue forecasting was done.

Steve provided this publication to me, an elected official's guide to revenue forecasting.

which is very interesting.

I don't know if this board in the past as the newest member has had more of a thorough conversation as to how our revenues are forecasted.

When you read through an item like this, just as Steve mentioned, there are both subjective and there's both data and subjective analysis that goes into them.

Forget the other word.

Objective and subjective?

What's the data terms for that?

Quantitative.

Quantitative.

I couldn't think of the word.

Quantitative and qualitative.

But what's interesting here that I bring up along lines of when you make forecasts for like BPOL or sales tax or things like that, there is subjectivity that goes into the forecast.

Subjectivity, while the quantitative side is probably not my forte necessarily, I can understand it, but I'm

when you get into regression analysis and all these other types of things that you do, I'm not running those formulas.

But I do work in the subjective realm.

And at some point before the forecasted revenues get to this board, subjective calls are being made by people that I obviously trust and don't question their expertise.

But I feel like board members probably need to have a say in that subjective call.

So whether or not that anticipates this budget cycle or not, I think it would behoove the board to hear more about what subjectivity is going into the decisions, as well as learning more about the quantitative side.

And then the board can see if there is a need for the board to have some say in the matter.

Like I said, I don't know if there's little to do that yet.

Now that a tax rate is set,

you know you either have to move money around with where you're at but if projection was different which I'm not saying that I would support a projection being different but that could change how the dollars are there to be used.

I actually think that's a pretty good suggestion.

We have had a lot of information on how the budget, how the revenues are forecasted, but nothing, I think, in the detail of that book, and I'd actually like to have a copy of that.

Yeah, I've never seen that book.

That's a good study.

Yeah, I didn't know how to get these, if there's a way to get these.

We can get those for you.

Because I had to return those when I was alone.

So I think that would be really good to at least read that first and think about it and then budget cycle.

I would think it would be the next budget cycle.

Well, it might even occur before the actual revenue projections are done so that you have some much more in-depth understanding about all the components of revenue and how they go about analyzing.

I think hearing more about the volatility or I think the revenue projections are, and all projections we do are kind of at the top of the bell curve be most likely, but they don't take into consideration whether there's a high probability of it being higher or lower so much.

I don't know how to

to handle that, but I think that's where so much of the concern about the budget comes from is what happens if things go bad?

The stabilization reserve that we just set up I think will be very helpful to us because it is a revenue as well as expenditure stabilization.

That's our vision.

But the volatility is one of those things that scars you and I can't leave it behind.

So I'm very reluctant to spend down balances and I would dearly love to be assured that the state pass-through was going to continue so we could take that $300,000 and staff hire NDSS.

So that would not be any happier.

If someone can figure out a way to do that, please tell us.

That would be great because I don't want to leave

money sitting around in a bucket.

Thank you.

I think Ned made some really good points.

And just from way up here in the ozone level, as we're going through our strategic plan and our process, some of this is good to tie in how subjective decisions are made by staff because we have determined the strategic plan.

I'm just saying that it all ties together, I think.

and some of that conversation would be great to have, Ned, as we're going through and deciding what changes we make to our priorities as a board, remembering that that's what guides staff in those decisions.

And so, just to keep that in mind, but it wouldn't be bad to have a conversation among the folks at this table about how that plays out.

Other questions?

I guess my final concern is obviously the just as we say well how do you if you want some of this ABRT items to go with the money but I mean we also still have a significant school funding gap on the school division side so if there's going to be brainstorming about how now that the tax rate is set if this board has the will to assist with not just one time but perhaps also reoccurring monies for the school division

There's got to be some plan or some ideas of how to make that happen that the board could weigh.

I would agree with that given their situation right now with the state.

Is there any updated information from the state at this point?

You know, Rosalind, since Rosalind's here, I asked this question, I'm sure, I don't know if I still understand it, I asked it of Rosalind the other day.

In your funding request, there's $600,000 approximately for one of the centers, the pilot center.

But moving forward, the remaining of the centers are in the CIP request.

Rosalind Schmidt, Director of Planning and Budget with the school system.

So in the operational funding request, there is a pilot high school center.

The intent there is that it's leased space.

So I think that's why it's operating versus capital.

I think capital could be an option too.

So it'll let you just get up and running faster to do it this particular way versus going through.

All right.

I'm just curious, if you're talking about capital, have we had leased space in our capital and our CIP?

I guess we have, haven't we?

The library or the warehouse?

I'm just curious if we've done that before.

I'm just curious.

It was actually just confusing the way the counter worked.

So Madam Chair, this is Jeff Richardson and let me take a second to make sure that the staff is clear between now and the 27th and now and the 29th.

What staff will be working on between now and the 27th is to update our projection revenues based on two additional months of actuals

in our current fiscal year.

We're going to be looking to update that and incorporate any updated non-local revenue projections coming back on the 27th.

So we will be teeing that up at the beginning of our meeting when we come back on the 27th.

We'll also be updating any projected revenues based on any new information that we have as well.

And then we're going to set some time aside.

And we've already done this, already began the planning process.

And I've spoken with the school superintendent about the school's leadership and the general government leadership to get together and to look at funding for next year specifically with the additional million dollar composite index shortfall that's been created through the state.

and so we'll be working on that.

We'll be coming back on the 27th.

On the 29th as we go into the CIP, Board of Supervisor McKeel made an interesting point about the strategic plan and the alignment of resource requests specific to the strategic plan.

So one of the things that we'll do coming back on the 29th is we will look in our strategic plan along with our budget alignment and be prepared to come back

and talk to you about continuing or new initiatives tied to new resources in next year that may give you some some things to consider as well as you're also taking a look at the CIP in your planning for CIP I'm not saying that that's going to solve all of the challenges that you've got looking into 2020 but it'll it may be a refresher for you to take a look at that

because 29 positions is a lot of positions moving into next year but at the same time I walked out of the meeting that we discussed it with the board chair and I said that was an extremely difficult process for us to go from the number of positions that were requested to a final recommended list.

It was a very challenging process for the leadership team to go through that.

Have I missed anything?

Other questions that Jeff needs to write down to bring back to us.

Very good, and things we didn't talk about at all in the Pollyanna side of the world.

We are making investments now and for the very first time ever are actually doing some things differently in hopes of getting a different result on economic development than pretending somebody else is gonna do it for us.

And maybe that will also be an element which we can't count on.

But if other people's and other counties' success in making investments that then generate sizable returns on investment, that will be something that will help us going forward.

And it's very scary to be making that, but if we don't, then we're stuck in the same mud that we've been in for a long, long time.

So this is just a whole other basket that we haven't touched yet.

It's interesting because a lot of what we talk about about our struggles is all about an urbanizing county and more population and more services needed and a higher level of services.

Whether it's recycling or education or I mean sidewalks.

matters to the board, item three.

I have one but I will wait.

I guess I want to just make one more comment before we do that since we're not in too much of a time crunch here.

is that while we're an urbanizing county and we do see that many urbanizing counties have much higher tax rates, we do have a very large rural area that still anticipates a rural tax rate.

Okay I do want to just bring up one thing and in relation to the storm and the power outages this weekend we have all new faces across the table here than we had seven years ago for the derecho but I wanted to ask each of you to dig around and Dan's probably not here anymore but Dan Eggleston probably has the thickest file of anybody and Kirby's file that passed to the new

emergency preparedness person whose name escapes me at the moment after the derecho seven years ago there was an incredible series of debriefing meetings and we talked a lot about things that we should be planning for for the next one and so we've all received some correspondence over the weekend about whatever happened to all those things that were so adequately discussed in public

and the needs for our urban residents and almost especially for our rural residents who are such a long way from where any help is and are elderly and very unlikely to want to leave their

animals or their neighborhood to get help.

The possibilities for standing up more of our schools and our fire stations for possible emergency centers and I don't mean large palaces but to be able to enable each one to have

Showers available, not gobs, but some places where, I was so glad to go to a neighbor's and have a shower yesterday.

I was like a new person after five days without any water.

So it is a reality of life in the country that we all expect.

It's not something we want to have anybody change for us, but when things go to pot,

If we can figure out ways to make some small, affordable, incremental, operational changes that will reduce the misery for people when the next one comes along, that would be terrific.

Also at the Dominion side, and I think at the

And thank you for bringing that up.

I would like to say that we touched upon fire stations and volunteer fire stations and the continuing board discussion about using county money to improve those facilities, many of which are not handicapped accessible, but would be good places in rural areas to have emergency.

places for people to go.

And I think that would be a great discussion.

We now have Yancey School too, although they didn't, I'm sure they didn't have power, I don't know about the school, but they have a generator I'm sure.

And I do go back to, I think you both made really good points, and I keep going back to the fact that we have asked staff to look at the impacts of climate change and how we're dealing with that, and this ties directly into it.

We're having more increased storms, more flooding, the storms are getting heavier rains, and staff's gonna be presenting to us, I think, some recommendations.

I do think though that this event tied together with what happened with the congressional Amtrak train in Crozet, it does identify a need in terms of emergency communications within the county and probably having a series of

At least one three ring binder with different alternatives listed in there that when, for example, you have power outages as in a derecho high wind event like this, you obviously can't depend upon messaging for most people.

out there via your website.

You cannot assume that people have the electricity to be on the website to know, oh, by the way, these high schools, elementary, middle school gyms are available and open.

So there needs to be worked out ahead of time.

Basically, public service announcements build in there and electronically prepared ahead of time to be plugged into a computer and just tweaked according to the event, sent to the media,

and ask Radio Television to help get the word out that if you're living in the Batesville area and you're without power, then you can go to this emergency shelter for the evening.

We were really lucky.

We dodged a huge bullet in terms of just one person dying.

Adam Crozet, but what happens if that had been a train with coming the opposite direction or going out and there was fuel oil in it and it triggered an explosion.

So things like that I really do feel in terms of communications is another part of this

to be able to let the public know exactly what the opportunities are, where to go in your area so that we can respond quickly.

We can't put it all every time, let's say on police department or fire rescue, the county's got to be there taking the lead and guiding the process.

And that's what I think the communication we receive correctly pointed out, the need there in this case.

Just to affirm for people that if they needed that and they wanted a shower, they wanted a location where there might be a generator providing heat, this is where they could go.

You want to have it in a three-ring binder.

You just pull it off and it's all there.

It's ready to go.

Part of our problem, not to interrupt you, but part of our problem too is in a small town

like in New England, you generally have people that have lived there for many years.

We have new residents every year, 1200, 1300 people, so you do seven years since the derecho died, multiply it by 1300, you're almost to 10,000 people that have no memory about this, they wouldn't have any idea

A lot of people did sign up for the electronic notification but we need to reinvigorate that as well get notices out and so I think using the board members as message delivery pushing in addition to whatever the communication things are that go out through the press making sure that we have

information from Allison or whoever's doing it.

Here's what's new today, the kind of thing that Felix was sending out for Dominion every few hours for the last few days.

Really does help and that will help to keep us engaged so that when we're each personally dealing with watering our cows or whatever the distraction is, we have that constant reminder, oh yeah, wait a minute, I gotta do something else too to make sure that people do get this word out.

Going on the radio is a great way to reach people.

So thank you very much for adding that to your busy list, but I think it's important.

Mr. County Executive, do you have other things on your part of the agenda?

Very good.

Then we can now move on to closed meeting if needed, Mr. Campbell.