Board of Supervisors Adjourned Meeting (Budget Work Session #3)   3/5/2020

Call the board order for March 5, 2020, 3 p.m.

budget work session number 3.

Of course we have, why don't we do what we've been doing in this room, remember microphones above us so speak clearly and volume and supervisors why don't we go ahead and introduce and we'll introduce around the table and we'll go from there.

District, Liz Palmer, Samuel Miller District.

All right, thank you very much.

I'm Lori Alshouse.

Today I'm going to work you through the slide deck and there'll be a lot of participation from many of us here at the table today.

So first of all, I'd like to just put some information out there as to where we are in the process.

So you can see that we're on March 5th and this is the review items on your discussion.

The main purpose of today's meeting is to go through the items on your discussion list.

and then we're going to finalize the advertised tax rate cap.

So this is the cap of the tax rate.

This is for advertisement and for public hearing.

And the third thing is to approve the proposed budget.

Again, this is for advertisement as well and it's for your next public hearing and for the next step in the process.

This isn't the day that you approve the budget.

This is just you approve a step in the budget, the next step in the budget.

And then March 11th we'll have the work session on transit.

If you'd like to have another work session on March 17th we can do that.

We have it held if needed.

April 13th is your public hearing on the proposed budget and the tax rate.

And then on the 20th is when you set the tax rate and approve the budget.

So here's today's agenda.

It will be a busy agenda.

We have a lot of materials to go through.

We're just going to start with a very quick overview of the budget that's been presented to you with the technical amendment.

and then we'll start through a list and what I'm going to do is share with you the list and then we have a slide for each item on the list just to kind of help set the stage for your discussion and then that will take us a while we believe because we want to make sure you have plenty of time for any discussion you'd like to have on it so then we feel like it'll probably be about a 4-30 break

wherever we are in the slide deck and then we'll continue that discussion and then probably by 5.30 or sooner if you like is when we probably should go to the motions we actually have the motions written in your slides so if someone would make a motion on the tax rate cap for advertising and then another motion will be in your packet for approval of the 21 proposed budget for advertising including any adjustments that you might make today.

to the recommended budget.

So any questions on the agenda?

Okay.

So I'm going to go ahead and start with the summary.

You've seen this slide a few times.

This is just the highlights of the budget.

It's balanced on the current tax rate.

It's focused on community needs, equity, and working differently.

It does fund the CIP Advisory Committee's recommended projects, and it supports our community partners and agencies.

You've seen these charts.

I'm going to go very quickly on them.

This is your all funds budget, your total budget of $452.7 million.

And this has been updated to include the recent revenue update.

And then, again, we talk a lot about the general funds.

So this is your general fund, again, that's been updated just from the most recent update.

There's the expenditure side so you can see different percentages of the donut slide there that are going to the different parts of the budget.

This is the position summary.

You saw this last night at the public hearing.

This is just the summary of the positions that are included in the budget document as it is today with the technical amendment that was done.

You can see the positions that are partially funded in 20 that we're moving forward and then the positions on the right of the recommended positions that are included in the recommended budget.

I'll go slower when we get to some other slides.

I know you've seen these before so I'm going a little quickly on them.

The CIP is also included in your budget document and as you recall the CIP is a plan.

It's a five-year plan.

This budget document includes your five-year plan.

It includes mandates, obligations.

It continues all your capital projects approved in fiscal year 20 and it does include the CIP advisory committee's recommended projects from that CIP process that we had previously to this budget process beginning.

and that, you've heard a lot about those four projects.

And then again, the capital budget is the first year of the CIP.

So the capital budget, you have an operating budget and a capital budget that you'll be approving.

So the first year of the CIP is $49 million as your capital budget and it includes these specific projects that would actually, we would ask if you approve it for your appropriation of these projects as we start the new year.

Thank you for bringing that up we did some color coding on it you might not be able to see it from where you are but the ones that are in the lighter it's a light blue you can see the legal service over hire fire rescue and engineering position it's also in light blue on the left side that the light blue means that there's other revenues that are helping to support those positions

No, not necessarily grants.

They're just funded by some other support.

Okay, got it.

In one FY capital budget summary, six million bike-ped quality of life projects included in transportation leveraging programs.

Could you explain that a little bit?

Yeah, that's the purpose.

So the transportation leveraging program is a program that we expect to get leveraging smart scale or other type of leveraging funds from VDOT.

So that's why we usually can, when we put money in the transportation leveraging program, we usually can bring in a lot more money by placing it there.

The CIP has over 22 million dollars in it.

The CIP is a five-year program.

plans or replace it in years for different years.

But the first year, the capital budget first year has a program that we had called bike head quality of life.

It was identified prior to this last year and now it's coming into your first year of this program and it is really focused on bicycle and pedestrian projects but we're placing it into the transportation leveraging funding

column, because we believe we will be able to use that as well to bring in extra funding.

And we also put that in the bond referendum, correct?

I mean, wasn't that part of that?

That was since then, then.

OK, because I thought we had a section of quality of life in that firm.

About this time last year, we're considered $12 million in quality of life.

$6 million was budgeted in fiscal year 20 of the current year.

Well, one other question.

It's a continuation.

And it's placed every year, at least in the four years of the five-year plan of just continuing that program.

We've done that program, and I'm OK.

It has kind of a lag factor to it but it places it in an appropriation so that we can.

That's another one that we actually leverage and get grants for and so they have an application process so there is a little lag in the actual spend on it.

Any other questions on capital or the CIP?

I know I've gone fairly quickly.

I apologize for slowing down.

OK, so what we've done in our very last meeting, which wasn't that long ago, there was a lot of items that were placed on the list for discussion.

And so one thing that was asked

Reserves and available funding.

And so we have put that chart together and actually you'll see a copy of one page of it that's at your, there at where you're sitting.

But we're going to start with just sharing with you some of the information about undesignated reserves and then we'll go into the list of the projects or the concepts that you want to discuss.

and also there was some questions about what types of reserves do we have, almost like deep pockets for any emergencies that may occur in the county, so I'm going to share a couple of those as well.

So this first slide up here is not one at your desk, it's the

first one of two pages and this is basically your you have a per your policy per board policy you have a 10% unassigned fund balance reserve and that 10% is a 10% of your general fund and school fund minus a transfer between them so it's it's 10% of basically think about your general fund in a large way and you can see that that's used for cash liquidity per

and it's at $36.4 million and it increases a little bit every year as your budget increases.

That's one of the first things that we do is make sure that we shore that up.

and it's one-time money.

It's not an ongoing pull, but it's one-time money that we have.

And then not too long ago, a few years, I think it was around 2014, we set up a 1% stabilization reserve.

And so this is in addition to your 10%.

And this is for one-time emergencies, unanticipated expenditures to meet level of services or to offset revenue fluctuations.

So that's about $3 million.

So you have both of those available in your kind of like I call your deep pockets as an organization.

So the $36 million is, am I correct in remembering that that's what we use to basically pay bills between collections?

Yeah, and that would, if something like that happened, that's right, the first thing we would hit is the 1% stabilization before we would even hit that.

This is part of the, you hear us talk a lot about the AAA bond rating of the county.

So when you say we'll always make sure they're shored up or we

You're at your policy.

You have a board-approved financial policy.

We would shore it back immediately.

Well, you would do it as quickly as you can.

We have in the policy, for example, for your 10% over a three-year period, you'd want to bring it back.

Sometimes you hear the state budget, they do something like that, that they might pull it back up again.

But as long as I've been here, we have never touched these funds.

The 1% stabilization was to keep you from touching.

That's right, that's exactly right.

That's right.

And we wouldn't go to this first anyway if we would go to other contingency reserves, other reserves first.

If you get in a situation like we did with the Great Recession, we work through a lot of other approaches and situations before we go to these.

The 10% is on the general fund and the school fund combined.

Any other questions?

So the next slide, and again this is a category that we're calling undesignated reserves, although you do have a stated purpose around these, but it's not real specific like some of your other reserves, say for a training pool or an innovation fund.

So these are undesignated reserves.

and we've done them in a chart we're hoping to hit the mark of what you'd asked us for at the last work session to kind of set them up as on the left side it's the category and then the title of the reserve, the stated purpose of the reserve, whether funding is what we call ongoing or one time.

So if you start at the top and there on the left you have an operating reserve.

It's the Board of Supervisors Strategic Priority Support Reserve and this is in your operating budget.

It's for strategic plan initiatives or projects and it's at $145,000 one time.

Then the next line is what we call reserve for contingencies.

It's an operating reserve and this is for unanticipated priority needs that occur throughout the whole fiscal year and you can see we have two different types of funding in that reserve.

We have some ongoing funds for things that may occur that we need to do on an ongoing basis and we also have some one-time funds in that category.

The third one on the list is in your CIP and it is called Advancing Strategic Priorities Reserve.

You heard us talk a little bit about this in the past.

It's for strategic priority projects or emerging needs.

This is for the board's decisions and this is $2 million.

And then the very final one.

Two millions what's currently there that we previously allocated sitting there in current fiscal year that we could use for board strategic priorities.

I see.

We have 1.8 that's not designated it came forward to be recommended to be put into that to build it to 3.8 so the other day the point was

So it's going to be real important when we get to our list that's coming that we really think about what's important to be decided on how that 1.8 is programmed versus getting 2 bogged down in what could be spent out of that 2 million account.

Yeah, it does.

And it was just when Laura said two lines.

Sorry.

Yeah, but I see.

Two lines.

I think it's kind of clear what, in past conversations, I think some of these projects are going to be more clearly where you go, well, maybe that 1-8 is not 1-8 and it's something else because we used that one-time money for this versus, no, I think that's a strategic priority of the project.

This particular page right here is copied at your place where you're sitting at the table so it could be as a reference because you know when you go through the slide deck we don't want to forget where it is so we actually left it at your table as a reference document as we start talking through the discussion items.

Yes, that would be a good example.

The current year there is some funding for the year related to the RIO 29 form based code.

Some of the proof from there.

Yesterday we talked about that taking, getting that possibly out of the other CVD funds.

So this is not part of that.

In addition to the $145,000, there is the exact numbers case, maybe $300 and some thousand dollars that was as part of the technical adjustment that was provided to the board on Tuesday.

Right.

Yesterday the project already endorsed by the board but not yet scoped was the update of the wireless policy that is in addition to the four projects that were identified for your

and that's where I'm going with it.

So realistically we could say we don't want to set up that CDB, put that 400 grand on top of that 180, then we'd have to divvy that out.

But it's the same conversation today without growing the 180 into it, we're going to say we're going to take that 366 for the community development work

We're not making the decision about that today.

Go ahead.

You want to clarify?

So the $145,000 up there in the upper right-hand corner, that is funded by general fund balance.

The $356,299 that was part of the revenue update on Tuesday, that is funded by related revenues to community development

That's helpful for everybody.

So you made my point much more clear than I would have ever done.

OK, so my next question.

I got a little confused on the discussion of the difference between the $2 million and the $1.8 million.

I'm sorry.

I lost a little bit in there.

So basically, tell me why you separated these into two columns again.

So the two million is currently appropriated by the Board of Supervisors as part of last year's budget process.

It's currently sitting in that reserve.

The 1.8 is a part of the county executive's recommended budget that the board can consider to do something else with.

And the board could also, if they chose, change the purpose of the $2 million.

None of this is ongoing.

and then this is in addition to that.

I got it now.

And things that would be used for that would be things like the roundabout that Ned talked about the other day or the convenience center or anything else that the board decides through this process to put on.

And we've talked before about connecting

If you're advancing strategic priorities in front of you, and we've named it that reserve, you have latitude is where that money goes.

But those nine big strategic initiatives, that's how we connected it originally.

So in the kind of things that you've mentioned, you can look at those and connect to those in some meaningful way.

So hopefully, it's enough of a framework for the board.

What is a good rule of thumb, when you look up at the chart and you look at the one-time column, we would typically use one-time money for one-time expenses and then the ongoing

is typically plugged for salaries.

The rule of thumb there, you know what I'm talking about because I know you have that prior experience because when you plug it with one time, next year we start in the hole.

Yes, yes, yes.

I think it's fair to say though that both the school division and the board of supervisors have really restricted themselves and disciplined not to approach things that way over the last ten, twelve years.

Okay, so if you're ready we can come back to these questions as we go through this because this will be kind of a

I'm going to go to the next slide and I'm going to slow down because this is a slide that we've staffed with really good notes when we were all talking the last couple of work sessions and put the items on this list for discussion.

So we have nine items that we identified that have been identified to say I'd like to discuss that further.

So here's the list and then what I have is a slide for each one of

So this is almost we just want to slow down a little make sure we captured everything so if you don't mind I'll just go ahead and read down the list we were asked to put the pay for performance funding and for let's discuss that a little bit further about that's pay for performance for employees the second one was let's let's talk as a board about the system-wide reallocation of the fire rescue personnel that was that second slide

that was talked about in many of the slide presentations.

The third thing was do we want to provide any additional funding to support the CDD work plan over and above the amount that was included in the technical assessment.

The fourth one was the Boys and Girls Club CIP funding request.

There was a request to have that conversation today.

The fifth one was the Additional Convenience Center, although we did have some conversation, it was identified as one that we want to make sure that we have the full conversation about.

Number six, funding to support more detailed study around facility planning.

We hope we had that one right.

If you remember, it was kind of towards the end of our last meeting where we were talking about the facility studies going on, but wouldn't it be something that we could maybe do additional funding to that to take a study a little bit further.

So I think it was around county owned land or county proper land, that type of thing.

That's right, with our ongoing facilities study.

When we get that report back to have more, I'm just in my brain grabbing this, to have a little bit more in depth.

I think Lance spoke to that.

That's right.

I mean, but you're just going through them like that.

Basically, I just wanted to make sure we captured them all.

Sure.

And then we're going to talk about each one on a slide.

That's why you have your funding sheet as well available.

Then the number seven was a conversation about the Affordable Housing Plan is still being developed for the policy.

Do you want to set additional funding in place to support that policy after it's been finalized and adopted?

there is some funding in it already and I'll share with that I'll share that slide with you but if you'd like to consider that.

Number eight is a conversation about funding to improve safety at Urbansville Road and Race Forward Crossing was a conversation it wasn't the last meeting I think the meeting before that there was a conversation about that and then we will talk about transit on March 11th but there was a conversation of do we want to consider any additional transit related and then number

Did we capture everything?

Medical.

I'm sorry, what was that?

I didn't hear you.

Ann Mallek brought that up.

I was trying to do some quick math here as I was checking on the coronavirus.

The seasonal flu death rate last year was 0.1%.

The WHO calculation of the coronavirus

I don't want to be chicken little but at the same time I don't want to underestimate the potential risk as Supervisor McKeel pointed out in our last meeting not just on the reduction of

I think we have to be very careful to ensure that we have a sufficient capacity for reserve.

So that's an item that we need to discuss.

We've had that discussion, we have to just keep it mindful as we move forward today.

Thank you for that.

Is there anything else that maybe we should not put on the list?

And it doesn't have to be that it's everything today.

Now I will say Donna and Ned can help me with this, but the school board also keeps Arusa off.

And we capped it at 2%.

I don't know where they are this year.

I was trying to figure out where they are with their reserves.

It seems to me that it may not need to be on this list but I guess if it could we should put it out there.

I know Ann had mentioned it, it came up in public comment last night, the question around

the ABRT and the bridge that Mr. James spoke to and the audit piece.

Now, I guess this is a more general question, not specific to that project, but if something like that came up where you go through a process and then after the fact, after things are programmed, you realize, oh, well, that's information that wasn't

I asked the question last night at the end, but was too tired and asked not to have the answer last night.

And you very nicely emailed me the answer.

If you want to just say it now, it was very clear.

If that's OK, I think we can just.

I printed out the email.

It needs to be parked here.

So however you want to do it, Chair.

You want to have the email.

Then this is what Laurie wrote, the bridge ministry's request reviewed by the ABRT received a rating of solid.

ABRT recognized strengths of the application as well as ways shared ways the application could be improved on page 12 of the ABRT report.

The ABRT noted that opportunities for improving the application include presenting a more thorough evaluation plan,

using appropriate metrics for evaluation and involving participants in the evaluation process.

And then Laurie went on.

So those were the things that I think the bridge ministry could address next year in a different way or at a higher level.

And then Laurie said,

We funded, you all recommended that existing agencies and programs that were rated exemplary were provided at level funding.

No new or expanded program requests were included and that there were four new agency requests that received a higher rating of exemplary that were also not recommended for funding.

And the audit wasn't considered as part of any of their... It was not because of the audit.

And I do know, Lori, that you all are always available

Because I know we can spend a lot of time helping agencies as they're needed.

And I asked the question just because I wanted to make sure that we covered it and we answered the questions from last night.

Are you ready to move to the next item?

So, for the first item, I numbered them on the left-hand side of your slide.

So this was brought up at the first word session.

I have a question on pay for performance funding that is not included in our recommended budget.

And I just put some information up here that we do have included in the budget.

This is just a reminder, funding to support, we have a VRS increase.

There's funding for a 2% salary increase and then funding to support $15 minimum wage

the pay plan and if we were to add a 0.7 pay for performance reserve the cost would be

And the 0.7 was determined because that's normally, that's been the practice.

It's been the reserve.

There's a matrix that our human resources department has established based on an employee's performance reviews and where they are relative to midpoint, how funding is distributed.

I was looking for Lorna because we do have a total rewards program that can provide some opportunity on a case by case basis to acknowledge exemplary performance.

that could include a time off.

It's available to all departments and if Lorna can speak to that, I've got to be careful because I'll say things pretty quickly, she's not been correct.

Would you identify yourself?

Lorna Jaram, Director of Human Resources.

We do have a total rewards program that allows departments to recognize employees for exemplary

We also have a very market competitive leave program in terms of what we offer for holidays, annual leave and sick pay.

Thank you.

I recognize there are a lot of

So you basically have some type of paid performance now.

This would be an addition?

The pay for performance that we were discussing here is what you might have known in the past as our merit program, where at the end of the year, based on the employee's performance evaluation, there is a rating that they get, and that would

Yes, it's kind of like a spot bonus, being able to recognize employees for good work at any time throughout the year.

You don't have to wait for that once a year performance evaluation and I think it's really important to have programs like that.

We do have to realize right now though that we are looking at a period of time when we're probably going to have more people out absent because of sickness and we do not want them coming in sick.

We do not want folks to be coming in if they are feeling bad.

And I recognize that my recent comment, when you're struggling to get all the work done, we looked at the overtime compensation for community development on last year's expenditures, to then give more people time off can have a negative effect on the cycle there.

Is there any other discussion on this item or do you want to move forward?

I will just ask one question of our county executive.

because we reached a point looking at compensation compared to staffing levels and felt like that we needed to, once we reached a certain threshold with the package, that we needed to shift our focus away from employee compensation and shift our focus toward staffing levels.

And it's a balance.

It's got some subjectivity in it.

That's a nice summary.

Yeah, the first bullet, you're exactly right, and the first bullet, funding to support the VRS increase, I see that as the foundation of the compensation program and that's making sure that we're

Yes ma'am.

I'm sorry.

This slide has also been included in several presentations so far.

This is a fire coverage system-wide reallocation of existing fire rescue personnel.

One bullet we did add to this slide is at the bottom there.

This was the one about the five positions requested by Crozet Volunteer Fire Department.

And you can see the information about what's included in the proposal.

And the last bullet says there's a plan for an automatic mutual aid agreement with Orange County that would be prior to any deployment.

That's good.

And will we be able to see, I mean, obviously our fire and rescue people are very, very capable of deciding what a good mutual aid agreement looks like.

And I'm not suggesting that they

I can't right now.

Here comes Dave.

So apparently, someone will get mine.

Good afternoon, Dave.

So we actually currently already have a mutual aid agreement with Orange County as well as all the other adjacent counties.

We were already able to request services and equipment from Orange County and have in the past.

So what we would do from here is just try to come to an agreement on a specific area and call types that we would direct.

and then assign the first due to the folks that can get to that call the fastest.

Yeah, I think we can look at specifically the drive time analysis from the bar

And then again, we have to be careful not to overtax in other counties.

We utilize it where it's the most benefit to our residents and the calls in the most severe nature.

So we wouldn't want to ask them to come down for routine and more non-urgent type calls because they're going to quickly say, why are you calling for us for these calls?

So that's the conversation I think that has to happen with Orange County.

We've already reached out to their chief.

They indicated to Orange County, their career chief, he's spoken with Barbara

And so I don't foresee any issues with that, particularly in those fringe areas we're talking about up near the top of the county line.

There's not a large call volume there anyway.

And we already request them for a lot of those calls, because you have to go into Orange County to get to some of those calls anyway.

On the fire side, they do not.

It's volunteer based.

So my point is, and that touches upon what Ned was saying and Donna regarding the virus that's coming up.

My point is that I think this is a bad year

to be doing this because of the fact that we don't know what's going to happen with the coronavirus.

And I think we need more EMS personnel, not less EMS personnel, because that's your first.

All that needs to happen is that one station gets it.

and that whole station was out.

So, for example, we, you know, prosé, something happens there and the whole team is out.

That's going to put a burden on other areas.

We don't know what's going to happen for the future.

Maybe when this is all over, a reallocation will make sense.

Go ahead.

So and then the reorganization.

Correct.

And that's based on what has come forward recommended.

So the additional five would get us to 17.

And if you didn't do the reorganization, you might have brought forward the 17.

But based on what the chief is saying,

with the current recommended funds that are available, that was the recommendation was to do the reorganization and we're adding 12 positions.

Well, you are because what precipitated is is the volunteer staff at Crozet asked the county, we're reassigning, but we're not reducing system-wide.

I completely understand that, but we're not reducing overall staff.

We're actually adding overall staff and reorganizing from a countywide perspective.

I'm very particular about this because I don't want it to sound like we're reducing positions in fire personnel overall.

I'm correct, right?

Last year, I can't remember what we did last year, but it was one place where the requests were not granted or fired.

So we shortchanged fire probably big time last year compared to what's going on this year.

So when you get down to the decisions here, if you want to get into adding five positions,

to offset that, what was that, 300 and some thousand dollars.

When we got our technical adjustments this past week, the recommendation was to go with two police officers.

Now you want to be clear what the decisions are.

You get into, okay, do you want a staff that is fine or do you want the two police relative to what we know our police force is?

That's just one example.

There are other FTEs that were brought forward.

Since this is operating, we want to make sure that we're

This is that point in the budget cycle where we have to start playing, OK, well, if you want to add here, we need to take away from somewhere else and be ready to do that, whatever the shell game is.

paid staff.

And growth.

And higher urban demand.

And I don't know the answer to this, but if you include the volunteers in the overall staffing numbers, I don't know how that works.

But there is some reduction because of the loss of volunteers.

That's my problem, is that they are struggling to staff two engines during the day.

compared to the Crozet that we saw all the data.

Because I think, Jeff, you were giving us the data regarding how busy the different departments were.

So refresh my memory, the Stony Point,

Stony Point's first two areas, they run about 300 calls annually.

And I will say that if we did hire additional staff to place at Crozet and did

And it takes 18 months to get them on the street also.

Yes, there are some and we try to look at some of those numbers.

This is a major heartbreak for them to even come to this position.

Staffing Prose because the numbers and I know they need that.

I'm not suggesting doing that.

I'm just saying that where this is in Stony Point, it's interesting because there's basically one road in.

And then you have Barbersville coming down from the northern part.

And if there's anything that happens along that, you're toast.

We also have a bridge that not all

and Holograms.

There's a bridge there where they can't cross that.

So there are challenges there.

And once again, I'm concerned about the fact that we don't know what we're coming up against regarding medical needs with the virus and everything like that.

Maybe nothing will happen.

Maybe something will happen.

It's almost like they're not getting service up there.

They're not getting the response time.

And I know the Chief has said that response time I think would be 21 minutes.

21 minutes is the adopted response times by the board.

That's 90% of the time.

If the Stony Point fire station were staffed

and we had a truck that could cross the bridge going into the Bendemarle-Hollymeade area.

I mean that would assist the people on that side also.

Our resources are more concentrated along the 29.

So I'm not as concerned particularly about trying to get a resource from Stony Point over there because there's already sufficient resources really to back one another up.

I'm probably more concerned about getting resources into Stony Point which, to be honest, putting an engine at Pan Tops is a closer resource than they currently have available kind of from a backup standpoint.

Do we have, we have a group going through classes now, training now, right?

Sorry, what's that?

Yeah, we started looking at some of that information today.

There's, in the current Firefighter I EMT classes, I believe there was roughly 30, I don't have the number right in front of me, but there's roughly 30 people in one of those classes.

I think there was only a few from Stony Point and East Rivanna.

And then we look back a year, you were talking about the pipeline as far as what that looks like.

We went back a year and there's still about 115 volunteers that come through our firefighter one and EMT classes annually.

There's six EMT classes and two firefighter one classes.

Speaking, I think it's five EMT classes.

Deputy Chief Puckett is sending an email just prior to the start of this meeting.

So active ACFR classes, Firefighter 1, we have 28 students without any from East Rivanna and Stony Point.

And I'll send this email to the board as well.

It's just one of these, many emails going fast.

So for EMT active classes, there are 13 students currently, one from East Rivanna and two from Stony Point.

Well, let me just add one thing to that active class.

So that does not include the classes that are currently at Western Animal Rescue Squad.

The county funds those, but they actually run the class.

And so we don't have really those rosters available.

But I spoke with Chief Alberts earlier today.

And in the current class, I believe there was two, if not three, students from Stony Point.

So there's five.

We'll provide that full email after this work session.

Anyway, I just think we should wait here.

I just really believe we should wait a year because we don't know what's coming.

And like I said, it's very easy for a station to become infected themselves.

That's your line of first defense.

And if they get sick, then we have nobody.

I would like more information, quite frankly.

I'd just like to read it and see this orange county.

I mean, I recognize you're saying something totally different.

I mean I appreciate the concern but frankly whether the threat is coronavirus or a massive flooding that happened two years ago it is up to our county executive to make sure his departments are ready for contingencies and we do have contingencies

and our system worked.

The contingencies that were in place handled the overtime.

August, a few years ago.

May 30th, 2018.

The Unite the Right.

you know, the demands on the police service and the fire service.

I mean, we have had things that are significant strains on the system, but our system's contingencies worked.

Nothing was ever brought to us to have to go outside of contingency.

We had what was in it to be able to absorb big hits like that.

And the coronavirus would fall into that.

I'm just trying to go in order with... Having sat through years and years and years of wonderful Chief's Board meetings, I would never be in a position to make any kind of evaluative decision about what you're doing.

That's Jeff's problem and Dan's problem.

So even though I feel like I have a whole lot of knowledge just enough to get in trouble, I think if we give good direction, we know they're going to do the very best job they can.

Now, if Liz is asking for more information to understand what the costs would be, or hit the costs, then that's a different item.

But it is an operating line item, so that if we're going to start exploring, keeping this on the list, somebody has to start proposing ideas of where it's going to come from.

Because it's not one time.

And that's fine.

And if there's no decision, I'm fine with it.

But that's what I'm concerned about.

We're exactly doing that today so that they know what we're going to be moving forward with and don't blind sign with something after a public hearing.

Do you probably have a discussion?

No, I recognize that.

I'm saying we have to start thinking of ideas to come up with.

And I wanted to go back to the MOU a little bit because what I heard was that we have MOUs in place with many surrounding localities and that this would be no different and that we've already worked with them before in the past.

Do we have the cost on doing what Bea has suggested?

$428,000 would be the ongoing yearly.

So what I would say then, if it's fair, since there is a public meeting on Monday, that it remains on the list.

It can, other than offsetting costs, right, tax rate increase is a way to raise revenue to cover an expenditure.

The ongoing piece that you just, that's a reserve contingency, so we have to make sure we understand where we're going versus the available monies, that money's programmed to be a reserve.

for the very thing the concern was about the coronavirus.

It's just not... Well, it's... We'd have to make that decision at the end of the meeting, whether there was board support to do that or not.

and I'll come back to it today.

This was one that I had asked to be put on the list my thought was that I'd like to see

and the rationale being that this is what CDE brought to us to stay at basically a 0% extra capacity level and an additional 150, 250 grand, something like that to get that up builds in a little bit of extra capacity so if something comes up during the year, because this is thinking about Rio Corridor, this is thinking about wireless policy, this is thinking about, there was another item I believe,

in there, that if we have something come up that seems to always come up with land use and things like that, that we would have something to go to that's already set up for that purpose.

So how I would pay for that, this is one-time monies, is the one-eighth that's going into the strategic priority reserves, we would take 150 or 250 of that

I would support that.

That's a good idea.

Yeah, I would support almost anything right now that boosts CDT because I think they really are challenged and it's where a lot of our concerns are as far as infrastructure and working with the community.

I will say that I think we're going to find that a little bit heavy.

There's no real sense of cost.

You know, something could come to us that exceeds that, but it would have to do with that.

But it would at least open up some flexibility.

That's only 120 some.

To me that's giving room for maybe one item.

If it goes to 750 or 700 then that's maybe room for two items.

How about 600,000?

That's 240 grand roughly.

And that comes out of the 1.8 here.

So that would put that down to a million and a half.

Mr. Chair, if I could remind the board that the four projects identified yesterday have not yet been scoped.

And just for clarification for the public and the board that comes from the sheet that we passed out early in the 1.8 number is one-time money that would be transferred over to community development for one-time external resource support for project.

It's projects that have language that need to be

We're contracting money and that's how it's being connected.

So is there support for that?

Moore.

Set out to do boys and girls club CIP funding requests.

Is that the next one?

So this slide has two sides to it.

So I just had it animated in for our overview of it today.

On the left, we heard there was some questions about timeline and history.

So we just put some information on the timeline on the left side of this.

And the actual request I'll animate up in a minute.

But you can see the history of the timing of the school division's involvement in the Boys and Girls Club.

Rosalynn is here.

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

Hi.

I'm Rosalynn.

It's hard to determine.

There's got to be some

and no cost, that itself is a substantial contribution.

contributed, whatever the term might be, $2 million to the senior center.

They had to come up with their own land.

We're being asked for $2 million here.

And by the way, I totally support this project.

I don't want to confuse my concern over cost versus a question over supporting the project.

But that by itself is a substantial contribution.

that somewhere along the way the county money that has come in as a revenue has been transferred over and been used for that and I'm just trying to get a handle on what the totality of this contribution on the county would be in it so we know they're asking for two million spread out over three years but I'd also like to know what some sort of value of the free use of land for 40 years is.

I understand, but I understand that there are other entities that may occasionally lease or rent or use our spaces and they pay a fee, so I would think that there could be some sort of a range that could come up.

We can look into that and work with the schools and others to see what we can think of.

So I went ahead and brought in the other side of the slide for the public that may be

watching this as well because you mentioned some of the information about the request.

So the side on the left is just the history, how from 2018 on to 2020, some of the steps along the way.

And I thought that was just important to share because there was questions about the RFP and some of the things that occurred.

So do you want me to just read through that or just go over to the right side?

That's just for information.

The right side is the actual request that came to you by letter.

through the email.

The course is $2 million payable over three years to support the building project.

It serves 300 youth daily and 500 youth annually.

The Boys and Girls Club is raising $22 million from private and

90% from private, 10% from public, sources to cover the planning capital, and at least five years of the operating costs.

They desire to secure financial commitments by December 31st, 2020, with a plan to break ground summer 2020 and a goal to open the club by the start of the fiscal year 22 school year.

And there's additional information that was placed at your table.

when I talk.

Liz, I'm having a hard time down here.

I'm sorry, I'm trying to quarantine myself over on the edge here, so I'm not talking loud enough.

Tell me what you just said.

I just said that I believe in my conversation with James last November, I think it was, that

Right now they have kids in one facility nearby, and they're combining those kids to a larger facility so that they're all on the one campus.

So there's approximately half, I think.

I was told 150 or so new kids in this facility.

West.

The point being made here is where are the kids now?

Where would they come from?

Currently, kids who would be considered to be members at this new Boys and Girls Club attend Greer Elementary School, Jack Jouett Middle School, Woodbrooke Elementary School, and Agner Hurte.

Kids from Agner Hurte and Woodbrooke currently are bused down Route 29 and attend the Cherry Avenue Boys and Girls Club at Charlottesville.

So many, many, many more kids need and have gone far out of their way to help their families and the club to attend an after school program.

4% of the kids right now who attend the county schools' EDEP program qualify for free or reduced lunch.

We serve about 75% of kids who qualify for free or reduced lunch.

So there's an extreme need that's been identified.

And one point that's not on that list is a February 2017

A little bit of background.

Yes, it would be about 500 kids.

Members, about 300 kids every day.

They come from all over the place and we would take the lead of the school system to partner with them.

We're not supplanting anything.

The vital programs of the Parks and Rec program of Albemarle County and the vital programs of EDEP in the school system cannot go away.

They are vital to our community.

We currently do, and the location is important for that.

Yes.

At the schools?

and I will point out that it's approximately 25% of all the children in Albemarle County Public Schools are on that campus.

I'd like to know anything about it, but it is affecting, I understand, affecting the cost in a very large way.

The other two high schools don't have a driving range, and at least it would be fine.

I'm on the wrong side of the line for this question, but it's a lot of zeros, so that's why I'm asking.

I'll attempt to speak on behalf of the board, but it's dangerous.

These are multiple locations.

Ultimately, the site selected was to the left of Jouett between Jouett and Ivy Creek School.

We felt at the school division that would provide us the maximum flexibility of uses for the rest of the campus.

The location of the driving range, while it is debatable whether the driving range is the most appropriate use of that spot, we felt like more future use of anything in that spot would be recruited to the school division.

Would you say that one more time?

I didn't quite hear you.

So they looked at multiple options.

Two primary options were on the driving range, which is a flat area in front of Jouett Middle School, and then a undeveloped spot, which was ultimately selected to the left.

Again, I can't speak on board, but my understanding of the deliberations was that the driving range, by placing the center on the driving range, would limit future flexibility

And that was a school board decision, correct?

It was not the preferred site of the club.

The relative costs were discussed by the school board or not?

is the $2 million and how you got to the $2 million.

Yes, so when we agreed with everything that was just said, the additional cost of this site was initially $2 million.

That is where the number came from.

Now the number after we have done further analysis

decision about how to move forward.

The program is absolutely fantastic.

You look like you're puzzling.

Well, because I know when you first started this, you were receiving the monies.

You were receiving the land for 40 years free.

No money was asked for at that time.

And I know you're really, really good at fundraising and you're doing 90% private fundraising with all our other needs.

Although I'm extremely supportive of Boys and Girls Club.

but maybe now would be a little bit too early to be asking us for money.

I mean, I'm sure you've already raised some money on your own.

I know you're going forward with the project no matter what.

Absolutely, if I could speak to that.

You wouldn't be here if there weren't

All the citizens, especially on behalf of the kids who need us the most.

Looking at the numbers of kids who are served in the county schools after school programs who can afford to go there.

Great.

There's a largely unrepresented group that's not there.

And so for 10 years we've been looking at what to do about this.

As you know, we are partners in three locations right now in the county.

Hundreds of kids come to our sites every day.

This is also a facility that will be regularly used, and I'm talking hopefully daily, by the county schools, all three.

And so there's a lot of value coming back during the school day to the county.

There has not ever been a Boys and Girls Club summer program on this campus.

It's the only one of ours that those kind of summer programs will be offering year-round.

The facility will be usable when the club is not using it for any, you know,

We also see this site if you ask people who are builders

to save families and transportation.

It will allow for access in a much more significant way.

And we're proud to be here.

But we would not be here if there were not a vast need that wasn't being met somewhere else.

So we're just asking for a part.

And we don't think that 10% is asking too much.

It covers a specific need.

We didn't want to raise the request to 3 million when we found out that E was greater.

I'm hopeful though it might be a different project.

You haven't completely raised all the funds.

Correct.

We were looking at precedent.

I've never seen a school system.

I'm familiar with counties.

We work in five counties.

We seek support and receive support happily from five governments to partially fund our programming.

I wanted to mention one thing because I had, and James thank you, this is really for the county executive staff, my next question.

I happened to read the minutes from last August for this meeting yesterday and I was reminded of the group from Crozet that came in that was that discussion day when they came in with a project that was a

provided a variety of athletic uses, but also I think it was a little over 300 afterschool spots.

And in reading my response at that time, I said, thank you very much.

This has been really wonderful.

It's a very professional presentation, but it's not the right time.

It's too late in the budget process, and we don't really have a process to deal with this.

and then Boys and Girls Club sent the letter last October.

And I talked with James and said basically the same thing.

And then I went into Jeff and I said, help us.

We gave money to the senior center.

We previous board gave money to YMCA.

How do we rank these things?

How do we compare them?

Clearly, Boys and Girls Club is wonderful.

Clearly, it's a need.

recently about a process.

And so to address Supervisor Palmer's point, would it be OK if we pulled what we've talked about recently in terms of the framework?

I probably can't pull it here because it's on.

OK, give us a moment.

We could speak to it really quickly and then get it up here.

Basically what we talked about was, first of all the senior center did come in during the CIP process but it was the amendment year so there was a little difference about it but they did apply through the old CIP process.

But what we talked about was

We actually talked about utilizing the Advancing Strategic Priority Capital Reserve and adding this 1.8 that was the conversation to that capital reserve and maybe that could be used for community requests that come in but we said the process we recommended was incorporate requests into an annual budget process and so that's why I don't know if you remember I put a few of those up on the screen before the Boys and Girls Club and other requests that these came in

This is, we are in an annual budget process.

Is now a time or not?

So that was a question.

Prior to coming to the board, staff would review and make recommendations using criteria such as how are they connected to the strategic plan?

Are there any leveraging opportunities or any other considerations such as timing, safety, urgency, and connection?

So that was kind of our approach.

We thought about here, this could come in this annual budget process or the next one, right?

So we're going to have another

The next process, almost as quickly as this one finishes up, we start working on the next year's process.

So if you come in right now, we thought because you are having work sessions and conversations, or you could consider having it come into the next process.

And we do have a letter that was dated February the 4th that we received that was pretty detailed as far as matching the Boys and Girls Club work to our strategic.

They answered that very clearly in this three page.

I mean they went right on through economic development, school space needs.

I will say that one of, I'm always talking about school space needs, one of the really wonderful things about this facility for us in that is around the Landsland Campus

is giving us, Ned, a community space because we really desperately need that.

It may be unfair to ask them to reconsider forcing the decision for

as far as upsetting the future use of that flat space.

Oh, you're talking about the driving range?

Yeah.

I mean, if they're trying to save that for some other building, well, I sort of get that.

But this is a building that they can use right away when they need it.

And it also provides a tremendous money savings.

And if they decided to use a different spot, they may get a much better building that they could even use better.

So could we just ask James, and I appreciate what you all are saying, could we ask James to address the design work that they've already done?

As easy as it sounds, it is complex.

So we entered into a process before the RFP was in place with the previous COO of schools.

and we came along and then they decided to do an RFP process.

That was fine.

That cost us a year.

We then got into the site selection phase.

That was another year.

So what we're doing is

We are very fortunate to be surrounded by people who respond to needs.

When we picked this site, it was with full knowledge that there

I understand that.

This is the club's perception is that we are very far down a path here and imminently, hopefully, breaking ground in the next, I'm not even going to say how many months, but the county infrastructure has been very supportive of this to the extent they can.

I had shared with James, and we talked about this a couple of months ago, the performance agreement with the Senior Center as a model that the board had gotten comfortable with with that particular board for three years, I believe.

And after they raised 75% of the board.

Yeah, there were, it was just, it was four milestones, four milestones in three years.

We entered into no negotiations at all, obviously.

But we could do that.

Sure.

Did I hear it correctly, Doug, that it was,

My understanding was it was 3 million more than the other site in total.

Which they thought was going to be 2, but it turned into 3.

They had planned on spending two, it turned into B3, is what I just heard.

And that's what I'm getting a head nod about.

Yes, and a lot of us didn't know that.

The need is so great in my community.

I have a few extra questions.

But we could move to four, I think, is what Duck said.

and knowing that there could be performance standards and such.

But if I'm not mistaken, if I'm reminded that pre and reduced lunch, pre, rag or hurt and whip are in your top five, your is certainly number one, then from a diversity standpoint there are three of the four, top four.

Next Wednesday we have the transit discussion.

Do you think that there would be enough time

to go over this process again of how we're choosing these things in that meeting.

It's scheduled right now for the full three hours the way we have the agenda set up.

If the board would like us to look at changing that, we could make adjustments.

That's true.

again is that one of the reasons for the ask at the center was that their big donors their primary donors encouraged that if the city and the county got involved that activated some donor activity so our investment engagement really allowed them to succeed and what their fundraising pieces were going to be so that's just my final

I get it.

I mean this is... I want to point today a little bit on what Liz said, because I think about two million to the senior

All of which are good programs.

My comment is not in any way to take away from the good they do.

They're all very important.

I come from Virginia Beach, much larger city.

I recognize that.

They had about a dozen city-owned incredible recreation centers.

We don't have any county recreation centers like that.

We've got some parks, but every one of those has got, you know, Olympic-sized pools.

So all of the schools, they have their swim and diving competitions there.

They've got, you know, multiple indoor basketball courts, fitness centers.

Each of the, and there is a fee to have access to that, but those are county facilities, and I have yet to see

our city facilities.

I've yet to see any comparable county-owned facilities.

We are continually making our money go towards outside groups, and I don't know that we will ever have county-owned comparable facilities.

Just a little history.

Long before I came on the board, policy was made that there

Hughes, and focus on partnerships with others for that leverage ability.

So the chair of the board, when I came out in 2008, was one of the proponents of the investment in the Y. And he took a lot of flak for it from his colleagues all around.

But it was because of that leveraging and having, and I think in many, many instances, we have partnerships

throughout the community, which provide services, Java and Senior Center are perfect examples that replace $10 million or $6 million operating expenses.

I mean, your Recreation Department in Virginia Beach is probably many, many, many, many.

We can have a different time conversation for that.

South Albemarle County has nothing to offer.

And just one more sentence, I apologize.

But it's on that, Donna.

It's on a recreation center.

Donna, I will remind you though, you have a Boys and Girls Club in Scottsville.

Oh, I know there's a Boys and Girls Club.

That's it.

Yeah.

Name me one other thing.

I don't want to get tied up in this.

We'll go down the rabbit hole.

So let's be clear.

We'll have a request for a school board member and then Donna's question about some figuring out a value

But, I mean, would that be something they can't do for a scoring?

We encourage, just by our size of our office and the processes we do, we encourage things to stay with it.

At least time-wise, if we can get things coming in at the same time, then you have a group of things to kind of look at.

So that was kind of our thought was whatever we do, if we can kind of line it up with our regular processes, it just wouldn't be an additional one.

The scoring piece was the information we put on that slide, I think we sent, it was the

We have this ABROT.

Yes, they do score.

And that's what I'm thinking is, obviously we can't use this, but something just to evaluate with all these coming forward.

So we have consistency.

It is, but I don't disagree with you going forward.

We need to have that discussion.

Okay well are we okay with, I'm just watching the clock because I can see it.

This is supposed to end at six and we have a lot of other items to discuss plus we do have these motions on the

This is a conversation that we've already had some conversation about.

We put the same information on the slide that you had before.

when we talked about the CIP.

So I'll just throw something out if we're ready.

So we've talked many, many times about one of the north, one of the south.

We had the conversation the other day about

There really isn't a good place positioned in the north right now.

And there has to be a lot more study on that one piece of property.

We're not sure if that's right for a convenience center.

It might be right for a whole bunch of other things.

We do have identified county-owned properties in the southern part of the county.

and if we that have been evaluated and were evaluated in the past in the context of this.

And so I'm just saying that if we were to say, let's move forward, the board wanted to move forward with one of those, you would automatically be taking the $300,000 that was property acquisition out of this formula.

And so I'm just pointing out that it would lessen this number substantially

I would say just given and I just want to point this out I think Lance would maybe want to have to talk with you about this another time I don't know if it's ready now but that may mean that there's a little less in 2022 and a little more than 120 in 2021

I'm not sure that was in the form of a question, Lance Stewart, Facilities and Environmental Services Director.

I would concur with Dr. Palmer's assessment about the 300,000 element for property acquisition built in.

Of the two sites that were previously publicly discussed, I've reviewed the studies that were done at that time, refreshed them in terms of cost acquisitions, reviewed some of the scope assumptions of those, and I'm pretty comfortable that we'd be able to fit either of those sites within the budget identified here, less of the $300,000 for property acquisition.

There would be some public process and a design process and a procurement process all to figure into the timing.

I'm getting to your question that might bump some need for funds up early, but I actually I think probably the design money of $120,000 and 21

If I could just caution you too, I appreciate Lance's input in looking at studies from many years ago, but they were not done at a design level.

I just want to go on record that we would actually need to dig into the site, dig into the design, understand existing conditions, and make sure that we can program accordingly for those sites.

Wasn't there a phase one environmental stuff done on those sites before?

and the modeling would be what's happening on Ivey

We have wonderful models.

If anybody wants to know what these are like, you can drive down to Nelson County with five of these little things.

And each one has four or five compactors, and people go in and out, and they love that.

And the convenience center, this would include not only waste, but also recycling.

Compactors for everything.

Nothing lying around.

So how?

Oh yeah, because there's no place.

They have to drive 30 miles to it.

Or leave it in the road in litter, which we don't want.

My bags have been in the truck for a week, waiting to get out.

I think for 21, it would be 120 for design.

As Trevor pointed out, a placeholder for FY22 for construction, I think that amount, I agree with Trevor that that's a strong number.

Operating budget might, could potentially slip in sooner depending on the construction timeline than 2023.

We would probably know by the end of the design process, be in a better position to answer both of those questions.

And I'll say also that I had a conversation this morning with Rivanna Solid Waste Authority director, budget director, and Phil McCalups, the director of the Solid Waste Program, about the operating cost estimates.

We really feel like we need to do a little bit more work that it may be a little high.

So I think in the course of, again, 21, if we had clear direction on the site, I think

have for a solid waste services at a more remote southern site to the transfer station, which is a cost that's really not a cost when you're just going across one part of the island property to another.

So that is something that we need to take a look at in terms of the revenue that's generated by the Tagabag trash program and the costs of the hauling.

But really what you're trying to accomplish right now is getting the 120, getting that design piece done that gets your foot in the door and that gets you moved.

So what I would say, and I'm getting a similar point for a few of the other items coming,

When this came up last time, to me, this conversation is a direct threat to our strategic priority for certain.

So my question would be, we could pursue it and it could come out of those funds, which there's money available now.

We're thinking about putting money in there.

The alternative would be you take the one point

It would just be the study and the discovery.

Appropriate use for one-time money and it's appropriate for the strategic priority reserve where the money is already programmed.

I'm looking at two other projects that I would say the same thing on down here.

They're not reducing the general fund balance that we're programming.

I'm just going to look at Lance one more time.

It's a little scary for me.

Where does it come out of?

And I have to admit, just to say that I recognize what Donna just said.

My top priority right now is the lives of 300 to 500 students in the urban ring.

And so I am perfectly willing

Okay, I've just got to get that in.

My point is that I almost see it as completely too different.

It's actually the money that we've carved out.

So I don't think they're competing for the same resources.

This has been my point about the strategic priority reserve we set up last year.

That can make a direct line to the climate action plan, which is the number one strategic board priority.

And that money's already there for programming.

We could have this conversation anytime we want.

We've got two million dollars there that that 120 could come out of.

But it's going to be built

I just want to add, again, you mentioned, and thank you for having me back, you mentioned how inspiring it was in other projects to have the stamp of approval in the county.

That's absolutely a talking point when we go out and talk with donors.

But I'm just saying that I want to start having things feel like they're competing against one another.

So I completely agree with you.

It's climate action.

It's just a different conversation for budget because that's current fiscal year money.

projected.

So you're saying that you'd rather see it come out of there than reduce the backfill for next year.

I'm fine with it as long as we're getting it.

And I'm just saying I'm having a little trouble with the distinction is not as important to me.

And I understand where you're coming from.

Don't take it that way.

It's something we set up just one year ago and we haven't done anything out of yet.

Because we have a current reserve currently available to us in the current fiscal year that we can make decisions about this board

and if it was long as the criteria we set up is that we draw the thread to our strategic priorities.

And like I'll use the project that I asked to be on here that's coming up, the Earliesville Road-Raised Ford Crossing intersection.

It's a transportation concern and project and transportation leveraging is exactly one of our priorities.

I see right now I could be having that conversation to get that funded through

It's a good question.

We've not actually answered that.

We've not discussed that as a board.

But if a board member requests it to be on the agenda, we schedule it.

That's for us to decide.

It's a board reserve.

It's a board decision.

I don't know how Donna feels about the process here.

If money were available sooner than July you would be able to move

This was part of the conversation that we had about like one topic kind of led to the other so this was from the last meeting that we had was funding for phase two studies of recommendations that's come out of the county's facility master plan.

This was the one that was talked about that was about a half million a year that

Lance had asked for as part of the CIP process that we went through and he estimated $100,000 for this right now that it could could provide some type of a facilities study on top of that other study.

And this says here opportunities to co-location of potential facilities may include

We were talking, I think that reference is what we were talking about with partnerships with Almore County Public Schools on the proffered land.

It's their land and our land.

I'm sorry if you don't cooperate with Almore County Public Schools.

Is this, Mr. Kennedy Executive, of the size that we need to set it aside as a separate bucket?

Or is it something that you would bend the right knee and the right face to as required, or whatever comes next?

I love this idea, but I don't know if we're going out of rabbit hole.

This was in response to the discussion we had a couple days ago.

There's an opportunity if the board wanted to reserve a plug number now that would give us room to move into design once we receive the master plan, it's at the board's discretion.

Otherwise, the master plan will reveal opportunities

that with that we could come to the board and say we think given the master plan we might want to focus on the design at this site or these sites.

With that we would bring a budget request or a budget cost that could then be appropriated if the board said choose.

100,000 is wallets.

What was the conversation that we have to tell

There's a couple of different things that I think we're talking about.

The Facilities Master Plan is looking at staffing, projections, and our property for potential uses.

So that's one element.

Jodi Filardo, Community Development Director.

There was a question that Supervisor McKeel had raised about whether or not Brookhill proffers expired.

Based on research that we have done, we haven't found that expiration date in any of our documents, but Ms.

And I had the one that the school division had.

Okie doke.

I guess my concern with the property and kind of why I was bringing it up is that there's obviously a lot of things to use that property and there's going to be different groups that want to use it in different ways.

I have, of course, said, boy, it'd be a really interesting place to look to see if we could put the northern transfer station or convenience center sometime in years to come.

We have very valuable land on Lambs Lane being used for a bus facility.

Very valuable land.

And you have good reasons to want to move that to a different place.

Hoping to try to figure out is how we were going to use that land.

And then it came up that we might have to make a decision on it or lose it.

And so that was my concern.

So I just want to make sure that the different options are used.

It's a large piece of land.

This is probably one that we could let go right now, it sounds like to me.

Yeah.

Yesterday, when we were discussing all this, there was a question of whether FES needed some money for things that might come up.

And I don't know what those things might be.

This one's not an urgent need.

But it's the same thing with community development.

We clearly see that we need to put money aside for them because we keep asking them to do more things.

I welcome Lance to respond to this too.

As it relates to the master plan study, that report will provide us, you know, a potential roadmap.

We'll, you know, work through with the board what that roadmap looks like and then can make decisions out of that.

How do we want to program money for 22?

There may be things that come out of that that we say

You know, we may want to use some money now in 2021 to move things forward.

What's the study supposed to be?

This was put on the list, additional funding to support the affordable housing policy, housing fund.

I'm just trying to get some money set up.

It's currently at $500,000.

We've got these other tools available to us, but once the housing policy is in play or other projects come up for affordable housing.

I think what's made when we got the last update on the housing policy is that'll be done over the summer.

Regional Housing Partnership is aligning their timing with that policy update to get what they're trying to accomplish and raise some funds for to hit the ground running based off of our schedule now.

It sounds like we're kind of moved ahead of some others.

And my idea is that if we can have some additional funds available to us that I think

I don't think I'm going to be able to make the argument and get the support for us to get ongoing money set up for this policy until this policy is in place.

So I've not brought that argument to us, but I do think we're going to see, just because of the way affordable housing is going, that we're going to have to start committing operating costs to this type of policy and the policy will help us inform that.

In the meantime, I'm uncomfortable knowing

how everybody prioritizes affordable housing that leaving just that 500 knowing how the other ones can be

I can think of one particular project that would take 300 grand alone for some permanent affordable housing units that's not time to out leash or put that on the table, but for $300,000 it could put into place some five, six permanently affordable units, 40 to 60 years.

So that's why I'm saying like the strategic priority place.

I'm comfortable making my argument and bringing that to the board if something came up for affordable housing.

But if I were to build that reserve up, I'd be asking to take that out of the general fund balance.

to get everybody to commit to that because the Boys and Girls Club would have to compete for that money.

If we're at least targeting the remainder of that 1-8 and then the amounts could be argued.

I had talked to Stacy like, you know, before we've spent this down, we got this up to a certain amount and with Southwood and others

So how does the 1.03 fund balance at the bottom relate to the 500 at the top?

Some of this is timing.

So when the 1.03 was reappropriated by the board earlier this fiscal year, that included the funding for the PHA Parks Edge project of $325,000 and it also would have included a housing reserve at that time that was larger than $500,000.

At the bottom of your slide, it says 1.03.

The one at the very bottom.

The 1.03 in combination with the two bullets above that are funding the combination of the three items up top.

It's funded by?

Yeah, the top three would be.

I was confused, too.

I'm sorry.

I was confused, too.

Sorry.

So this reserve's low.

I would like to get some money to backfill it in.

I think that reserve money could be used for the housing policy.

We've had constituent groups coming asking about trust fund.

That is one tool.

That would be an ongoing commitment to it.

It starts building a reserve.

You breathe back in.

There's other ways to punish a trust fund, though, not just with us using monies.

You can have proffered cash contributions go into a house fund.

There's other ways to get that fund going.

In the meantime, though, it's a way to get us kind of cued up, if you would, for this housing policy.

So one of my concerns is that we also don't have the climate action plan yet.

We don't have what we're going to do about that.

And so I guess I kind of feel the same way about that is I don't know what we're going to decide we want to do.

It's proposed, right?

In the current year, the award is already appropriated $500,000.

But it's still in the same basic ballpark of a range.

I don't know what we're going to decide to do.

I'm recognizing we've got the flexibility and reserve we've set up to be able to

We can decide that you know part of that 1.8 as you have said several times Ed can go into that knowing we've got some we've got FES study we've got

Well, I think where it's at now, I wrote it down as my, I put an SP next to it.

Stacey Pathea, Principal Planner for Housing.

You will see the very first draft at the end of April, so April 29th will be a joint work session between you and the Planning Commission.

Correct, and I know that there have been at least two requests for funding for housing projects that have come before you already for that $1.8 million that announced at some point was extra this year.

So there's a lot of need out there.

I get asked all the time about when are we going to have a housing fund?

What are we going to do?

And I can guarantee you that's one of the recommendations that came out of the stakeholder group.

They've actually offered to start now, since their recommendations are finished, looking at different ways that a housing fund could be structured and ways to fund it.

The extra $500,000 would put us at a million.

That's not a huge amount, but one it could be used to show to possibly leverage other money coming into a fund if one is created.

It also gives us something to start looking at what to fund in the future.

So it sets a ground level and if we come up with a list

ways to evaluate the applications that they come in so we're not just looking at a bunch of things.

This to me ties right to our strategic priority money.

I'm not waiting until budget time.

All we're doing is waiting on some good numbers from BDOT for this mini roundabout to come out.

Like I had said, there were some signs that they found a way to get funded through the secondary six-year plan.

Had they not, I would have already been to this board asking to fund it from that.

Kevin found a way to get that and VDOT found a way to get that covered.

But this next piece, they've been scoping this mini roundabout, doing some work on that, trying to figure out a number.

And I know that Ann and I have strong memories about a projected number that didn't seem too unreasonable to us a year ago.

And we're making sure they don't try to explode that number.

This is something that makes this, you know, undoable.

So we're going to stay on that because it's not, it's right in line with other projects we're looking at money-wise.

And I'm just waiting for a final kind of dollar amount for that.

I don't know if you have any updates on that.

No.

Kevin McDermott, Transportation Planner, Albemarle County.

We don't have an updated number right now.

They had gone back to Kimley-Horn a number of times trying to get them to rework what they had given us, which was a $2 million estimate for this.

What they've basically realized is that Kimley-Horn is a design firm, will not bring this down to a reasonable cost.

And it's fair to say that they do that because of the fact that they have to stamp this with an engineering approval, and if they say,

Oh, we recommend these things that don't meet standard and something happens that goes back to them.

So they're not really willing to do that.

What is happening right now is that VDOT is using some internal forces of VDOT staff to look at it and try and identify if they can come up with new right-of-way lines or a right-of-way plan to be able to get this

in which we could have potential donated right of way, which I know is on the table, and then they say that they could do the project with state forces.

We don't know exactly what that's going to come out to be, but that's where they are right now.

And it's up to you all.

I will point out that we have here the short-term and intermediate recommendations that are underway, like the signs that you mentioned, some other things.

I know you don't have anything in writing but do you have a commitment from right-of-way?

Has that been committed?

You all know that.

This is a timing thing.

Yeah, they are.

What we can do is

They've been progressing on this.

So it's just a matter of once we have the information, we'll bring it to the board.

Okay, I just wanted to say it's six o'clock.

I was hoping you can stay a little longer so we can get to the motions we need to do for the schedule.

We have one more topic, but maybe we can get this pretty quickly because we have a word session coming up.

There was a

A request to put this on the list of any additional transit-related reserves.

As you know, we'll have the work session on the 11th.

I'm happy to reserve it until the transit meeting.

It was just the action.

All right.

Does that sound like where we were at?

All right.

Can I ask a question about the funding for fire rescue?

It sounded like we were going to do was that we sent the information because the public meeting is going to be there Monday and we still have things coming back.

The conversation you will have to get ready for is that, this is me saying, you have to figure out how to pay for it.

Now we're about to have a tax rate conversation so Supervisor Common brought that up.

If it's not that is the answer then it's competing costs have to be reduced.

I would not do that either.

So Mr. Chair, on the operating side, and I think you said it just a second ago, you said this board is about to set your tax rate ceiling for the coming year.

That's one thing, mechanically, that needs to happen today, and that would be your tax rate ceiling.

And that would signal to the staff that when you do have future conversations, you know, 11, 17 at the public hearing, that you're going to be looking, if there is an appetite for the board to do something other than what's recommended, we would be solving that problem within the existing revenue and expenditure structure that we have.

We would just be going through some reprioritization.

that lowered or affected tax rate will be in your advertisement.

So just so you're aware that that will be written in the advertisement that is required.

And any questions on this before we proceed?

Okay, so we placed the current tax rate in here, but you can make any change to that if you like.

I was bringing that up to cover the cost that Bea was talking about, which would probably be 0.23?

To clarify, that would be two cents dedicated to local government.

Correct.

Normally a two cents on tax rate would raise.

Yes, right.

Thank you everyone for directing this.

So 0.2 cents, normally by board policy, would be split among the schools, the CIP, and local governments.

So, Bea, what I would say to you, if you want to make that motion, I will second it.

Why don't we do a poll first?

I am okay with advertising that.

I'm not saying, you know, just for advertisement.

found additional revenue in addition to the general surplus that we've had with Gary.

The fact that the school division brought us a needs-based funding request and they have additional monies to be appropriate on, so I'd have a hard time asking, and that's all within the current max rate, so if we're gonna have that conversation about what that could be used for, I think we just need to have the hard conversations about the shell game of what would have to be moved around and then board members can state their positions

So 0.854 per 100 of assessed value for real estate, public service property, and manufactured homes.

$4.28 per 100 of assessed value for tangible personal property.

$4.28 per 100 of assessed value for miscellaneous, incidental, tangible, personal property employed in a trade or business that is not otherwise classified as machinery and tools, merchant's capital, or short-term rental property, and that has an original cost of less than $500, and $4.28 per 100 of assessed value for machinery and tools.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

Yeah, so we want to make sure that what we say that we've made an adjustment to as part of this.

So this one is to

Ms.

Paul, Ms.

So, we made it through a lot of discussion.

I really appreciate it.

The work sessions were for your discussion and it felt like that we did have a really good robust discussion.

Our next step is our March 11th work session on transit.

We also were going to pull the placeholder the 17th and put that in play for your next discussion.

such as, if you're feeling bad, what should you do?

You don't want people going downtown because the hospitals may say, for God's sake, don't come now.

We've got 300 people in the waiting room.

So help us out with that so that we'll know what to say or who to send people to.

I think people would be a little more reassured if they had a little more planning.