Board of Supervisors Budget Work Session #4   3/22/2021

All right, thank you.

Good afternoon everyone.

I'm going to call this March 22nd Board of Supervisors meeting to order.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with ordinance ordinance number 20-A16, an ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

Supervisors who are electronically present at this meeting are Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District Supervisor Liz Palmer of the Samuel Miller District Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District

Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rio District, who will be joining us in just a few moments, and myself, Supervisor Donna Price of the Scottsville District.

Our chair, Supervisor Gallaway, will be participating from his office and does have some work items that may cause his temporary absence.

So in order to avoid disruption to the meeting, I will be chairing the meeting.

Also with us are our county executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our county attorney, Mr. Greg Campner, our senior deputy clerk, Mr. Travis Morris, and our clerk, Claudette Borgerson.

Thank you.

Good afternoon to the vice chair and the board.

My name is Andy Bowman.

I'm the chief of the budget division within the Department of Finance and Budget.

I'll be walking us through today's work session.

I'll wait one moment while Kim and our team pulls up the presentation.

Thank you.

And we can go ahead to the next slide.

I'll start as I usually do, just discussing process.

and today is work session number four.

I'll get into that agenda in a moment.

We'll be back again on March 29th for work session number five.

We'll discuss the Federal American Rescue Plan funding in more detail.

We have no other topics scheduled at this time for work sessions.

So the other items that are scheduled are the April 28th public hearing on the calendar year tax rate and the board's proposed budget and then the adoption of the budget tax rate on May 5th.

So to look at today's agenda on the next slide, we will start today with an update on the cigarette tax.

We'll move just to discuss the Department of Voter Registration and elections, their budget in more detail than we did a week and a half ago.

We'll then have a break scheduled if the board desires, then we'll spend the bulk of our time discussing the county's transit agency contributions.

I'll provide a brief overview and then we'll have time to hear from the Regional Transit Partnership, CAT and Jaunt, and then we'll wrap things up.

Thank you, Andy.

As Andy said, I'm Lori Allshouse.

I'm the Assistant CFO for Policy and Partnerships in the Finance and Budget Office.

I'm here today to give you an update on the cigarette tax option.

There are several people that are here with me who will be available to answer questions through this part of the presentation.

I'm just going to mention them now.

Siri Russell is here, who's the Director of the Office of Equity and Inclusion.

Jason Enofuntes, who is a Project and Policy Associate in the Office of Equity and Inclusion, Phyllis Savitas, the Director of the Department of Social Services, Jen Lin, who's the Chief of Revenue Administration, and David Blunt, who's with the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.

So next slide, please.

I'd like to start with just providing a little bit of background where we are and why we're here today.

During the 2020 General Assembly, they authorized the county to impose a cigarette tax of up to 40 cents per pack for counties.

Up until this time, only Virginia cities, Virginia towns, and Arlington and Fairfax County were able to impose a cigarette tax.

On December 2nd, we had a discussion about this potential to levy a cigarette tax.

And we talked about the consideration of this tax levy through the equity lens.

So we're going to be having some of that discussion today.

And we also spoke about actively supporting the development of a regional board to administer the cigarette tax for this region of the state.

We all know that the tax will be approved only after a public hearing and by an ordinance.

The revenues that we had built into the fiscal year 2020 budget was set to begin mid-year around January 2022.

There's a lot of steps that we need to go to to get to that point and to begin collecting revenues.

The cigarette tax revenues, we talked a little bit about different options on the revenues.

They are a general fund revenue and I just wanted to share some information about the revenues.

As you all know, the county had been working for decades to obtain approval from the General Assembly to provide a more diversified taxing authority for counties, more like cities, to reduce the pressure on property taxes for our residents.

Cigarette tax was approved as a tax that counties could do.

And this revenue is a general fund revenue.

And unlike the TOT, the transient occupancy tax revenue, and even the plastic bag revenue that we're also allowed to impose, this isn't dedicated or isn't partially dedicated to any one thing as it's just for the general fund.

So we're going to have some conversations.

You're going to hear some information as we talk about equity, about options for potentially using a portion of this revenue.

And what we wanted to mention is that based on the timing of getting this tax levy in place, if it is approved by the board by ordinance, the revenues will probably be a really good time to discuss and will be when we put together the fiscal year 23.

Budget.

So, expenditure options can be many.

You might remember December 2nd, we talked about various options that we could consider, and we talked about potentially they could be used for categories of youth program support, increasing

the efforts to mitigate cigarette smoking among other uses.

And there could be many options were asked to be brought back to us for the board for your consideration.

You're going to be hearing today about one option that we are looking to bring to your attention based on some of the equity work that we've done.

But again, there'll be some more time to talk about that.

And again, we believe it would be most appropriate for the fiscal year 23 discussion.

So with that, please move to the next slide.

So I wanted to start with the equity framework.

The guiding framework that we used to look at this was the equity impact assessment.

And so this is an assessment tool that the Office of Equity and Inclusion has put together, a part of our county-wide effort to more intentionally incorporate equity and inclusion into the work of our organization.

So as part of that process, we began our consideration of this proposed tax by seeking first to understand who could be most affected by this tax and how could those impacts be experienced and mitigated.

So what we learned will inform us in our understanding of potential negative, desperate impacts that might be mitigated or reduced for our community.

This cigarette tax proposal policy has been one of the first opportunities we've had in the county to implement this assessment framework.

And the Office of Equity Inclusion members are here today and they were going to also provide a more thorough presentation on the development of their tool and the implementation of this tool in an upcoming August work session for the board.

But you'll see it actually being played out today.

And you'll also see in a few slides that some of the affected populations that we believe for this particular tax will be the retailers, primarily small convenience store type retailers, and also the smokers themselves.

So next slide, please.

So the one group that we talked about actually in December that we believe could be more impacted than the larger retailers with this cigarette tax will be the small grocery and convenience stores.

So we believe that when cigarette taxes are increased, the smaller grocery and convenience stores could see sales possibly decrease due to customers maybe traveling to neighboring jurisdictions.

If in those neighboring jurisdictions, there's potentially less expensive cigarettes.

So one thing that we've done as part of this work was we actually surveyed seven Albemarle County convenience and small stores.

There's more that we would like to talk to, but we were able to speak with seven.

And they shared, we shared with them some information about this potential cigarette levy.

And then they were nice enough.

We spoke with managers and owners.

and assistant managers and they shared some information with us.

Three of them shared that they do believe that the cigarette sales actually impact their foot traffic.

That's one thing that we wonder is cigarette sales one of the major reasons that people are coming into their stores.

So three said that it does and they said it affects their foot traffic they believe by 40 or 50 percent.

When we asked them about whether or not they thought the tax would have an impact on their sales, it was mixed.

Half of them basically said they thought it would, and the other half said they did not think it would have any impact on the actual sales of cigarettes.

And then several of them noted to us the importance that they felt when we talk about mitigation or about things that could be done that the surrounding counties also levy the cigarette tax as well.

They felt like that would be very important or at least that we attempt to do that so that customers may not cross over different jurisdictional lines to purchase cigarettes.

So that was a nice bit of advice that we received from that survey.

Next slide, please.

And so the second thing that was done, and this was, I'm going to really do a shout out for Jason Anofentes, who's the project and policy analyst in the Office of Equity and Inclusion.

He did a lot of research on the impacts of cigarettes on specific groups of people.

And his findings were, and again, this is all based in research, that individuals that are low income are black,

Indiguis or people of color, the BIPOC, are more likely to be smokers than other populations.

And nationally, the highest smoking prevalence is among those struggling with mental illness or substance abuse.

He also found that cigarette taxes can lead to negligible decreases in smoking in the lowest income households,

and that the financial burden may often fall hardest on the poor, those in the BIPOC households, those experiencing severe mental illness and substance abuse disorder.

And he is here today for any questions you might have, but I have one more slide and then we can go to some questions and answers.

The thing about this equity assessment tool is you look for ways that it is impacting certain populations or certain groups.

And then you think of ways that how can you mitigate or help mitigate these impacts.

And one thing that Ms.

Russell and Ms.

Savitas of the Director of Social Services, they reached out to the Blue Ridge Health District

and talk with them about this and they discuss a multi-pronged program that could help mitigate some of these impacts and it would be targeted

for cessation, smoking cessation and mental health services.

And they would have policy systems and environmental initiatives.

And additionally, there's a tool and those in the room with me know more about the details on this tool called Counter Tools Program that the Virginia Department of Health already does in partnership with retail establishments to sell tobacco products

Basically, it's a tool to encourage marketing of other reasons to bring people into your stores and marketing other things other than tobacco, actually, at your stores.

And then the last thing that we talked about, and we've been wanting to do this anyway, is go at a regional approach as we consider this tax levy to really work with the region.

and going together with other jurisdictions.

So you'll hear more about that in a moment.

But I'd like to stop here.

I went fairly quickly, but this was a lot of information that was done by many people on this equity assessment.

And to see if you have any questions for those who are with me here today.

Ms.

Oshouse, thank you very much.

That was very informative.

We'll go around the order.

Thank you.

So Lori, do we, you're going to talk about how much, what percentage of increase you're talking about when you gave us the estimate of how much this would bring in in tax dollars.

Yes, we talked about, we looked at it through a formula basically that other jurisdictions are looking at with thinking about packs per person, population and those types of things.

Would that be the full 40% though?

Because we're allowed to put the 40% tax on it.

No, you're exactly right.

And do we know, I mean, I'm not at all surprised that poor folks

and people with mental health issues are going to be impacted by a cigarette tax.

Before Ms.

Savita speaks, to clarify, Supervisor Palmer, it's a maximum of 40 cents, not 40%.

Okay.

Well, thank you for correcting me.

Ms.

Good afternoon.

As mentioned, I'm Phyllis Savides, Director of Social Services.

I do not have that information at the ready, but I would imagine that if I could possibly reach out to the health department who might be able to kind of quantify sort of the numbers of folks in that low income and possibly the mental health categories that this would impact.

But I don't have that

Okay, thank you.

And I guess I would just make one comment that, you know, we were thinking about this for the general revenue.

And if we end up starting new programs with the money, or we start targeting the money, we've sort of, not that the new programs would be better, but we do run the risk of

you know, of not doing the cigarette tax for the reason that we have suggested in the past and that's all.

So anyway, with that, I'll stop.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

And I appreciate the thought and the connection with equity through series office

Clarify for me, I have just a couple of clarification questions.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, and I appreciate that there will be a big, little bit larger discussion about that.

And so at that time we'll find out, I was a little fuzzy about whether or not, does everyone charge right now a cigarette tax?

I'm sure they do.

They have to charge some sort of a tax.

Yeah, cigarettes have federal and state taxes already on every single pack.

And some cities and towns are permitted to also put a local tax on it.

So what we're looking at is the rest of the counties in the state are now permitted to also place a county.

The county can also place a tax on the cigarettes.

Yeah, we could even send a whole list out of all the cities and towns and counties.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, I'm interested in the counter tools, but we can come back to that, I guess, later as well.

So I think for now I'm fine.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Yes, I think you said me, but there was a hiccup in there, so I don't know.

I'm really interested in all the presentations so far, and I guess I don't have questions, but I think that successful smoking cessation programs and extra care for people who need it that's funded by this would be a worthy goal.

Yes, thank you very much.

I certainly, I don't see the necessity for developing an additional program, but we could certainly put a portion of the monies we collect into the Blue Ridge Health District because they already have programs.

But one thing I see, and by the way, New York has $4.35 per pack.

on their cigarettes.

We're talking about 40 cents.

I think Virginia was the lowest or second lowest in the nation for cigarette tax.

Smoking has gone down because cigarette taxes have gone up.

One thing I see missing here is the effect on children.

that really bothers me because cigarette smoke has a huge impact on children.

As many people as we can help get off of cigarettes, we need to help them.

And certainly by raising the taxes, I think that helps a certain maybe percentage of the population quit, hopefully.

I believe that's happened in other states, but Lori, you can give us statistics on that.

To me, this is a no brainer, but put the monies where they're going to hell.

Maybe we only need it in the Blue Ridge District for a year, a couple of years, I don't know.

Maybe after that, it could go into general funds.

But I'm definitely, this is something I support and I look forward to seeing the other, what else you have to share with us, Lori, thank you.

Can't hear you, Ned.

We can hear you, Chuck Galloway.

Sorry about that.

I apologize.

I'm just joining late.

I don't have any questions at this time.

I do agree with that first bulleted point, though.

Thank you, Chuck Galloway.

I will echo primarily I think what a couple of the other supervisors have mentioned.

We're all, I believe the consensus is clear, we're all in favor of this.

My concern is if we target the use of these funds that we establish a threshold, a base amount if there is an existing program as either a dollar amount, percentage of the budget amount, some other mechanism by which we can tell today

what we are spending on this program.

If it's a new program, of course, then we can start from the beginning.

And that we ensure that the funds that are generated through this tax are actually utilized for that purpose.

One of the frustrations that I think many people around the country have had

is when the government says that they are going to raise taxes for a particular purpose and then they don't actually use the money for that purpose.

So for example when the lotteries first came out everyone said the money was going to go to the schools.

Well the money may go to the schools but they've then decreased the contribution from the general funds towards the schools.

So you're kind of robbing Peter to pay Paul and I want to make sure that in Albemarle County we don't do that.

So we establish what our baseline, our threshold so to speak is today.

We identify where these funds are going to go and we don't end up shorting those programs by reducing other funds because of some other need and that we actually then can show that we're using the money for these purposes.

And then the second comment I would make is how appreciative I am

that OE&I, the Office of Equity and Inclusion, is a part of the very beginning of this thought process, this prospect of use of the equity lens.

It is so important that we do that.

So thank you very much, Ms.

Allshouse.

And I have no further questions.

Let me just take a quick look.

Supervisors, does anyone else have another question at this point?

Seeing none, Ms.

All right, thank you.

And before I go any further, I don't know if Ms.

Russell or Mr. Ninofentis wants to add anything on the equity lens.

I don't hear anything.

So I'll go ahead.

Sorry.

Go ahead, Siri.

There I am.

Sorry.

Happy Monday.

I would only sort of note our thanks to the board for their continued leadership.

in our community and especially in our regional community around incorporating equity and inclusion into our work.

And I would also note that we did hear some of the questions and points that were brought up here and that we will be able to provide some answers to you that were specifically related to the equity piece, probably in a memo or something like that.

Thank you, Ms.

Ms.

Halshaus, back to you.

Okay, could you go to the next slide, please?

So now what I'd like to do is kind of turn the page and talk a little bit about the work we're also doing at the same time on working closely with Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission on the development of a regional cigarette tax board.

We believe, the staff in Albemarle County that are working on this believe that it's very important and we really would like to take this regionally versus doing it individually as one county.

So the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission's leading this effort

to explore potential development of a regional board in this area.

We are lucky in that there is a Northern Virginia Cigarette Tax Board that we can model, we can learn a lot from.

They've been doing it for many years and they're very helpful and they're very eager to help other areas of the state.

So we have a model we can work from.

And I just wanted to give the latest.

There's been a lot of work going on, but on March 9th,

Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission Comina meeting.

And it didn't have everyone in the region, but it had a large sample.

It had Charlottesville, Rivanna, Albemarle, Orange County, and Louisa.

And we were reviewing some regional process flows.

So there's a flow of how it would work if you work regionally versus if you do it locally.

And also a tool that is used that you can do potential funding scenarios.

So you know the funding will be a little bit different depending on who will join and who will not join.

And so we started working with that tool and starting to do that work with Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.

And their next step is to reach out to localities

throughout the region, and again, even out just in the central, not just their region, but in this part of the state to obtain resolutions of interest from the governing bodies.

So that would be a next step we would take as well is to have that resolution and they'll send us a model that they'd like us to use and to submit that so that they can take it further in their development.

And I did want to also mention that there's the new state legislation, you know, there was things being considered this year's in the General Assembly.

They're really encouraging regional tax boards from the state and they're setting up a task force to develop methods to modernize the stamping and tax collection processes.

So there's also a real effort from the state to really encourage these regional approaches.

So I have one more slide and then we'll take another pause and then we'll be ready to move to another topic on today's work session.

So this is a timeline.

What we found out that we really we can't put our ordinance together or do a public hearing until we know exactly how we're going to administer it.

So in May, what we're thinking, because now it's towards the end of March, we would ask the board to approve a resolution of intent for Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission to say that we are interested in a regional board.

And then by July, we believe that'll be the time we really need to determine which way we're going to go.

So hopefully the process can move along very quickly at the regional level and we know that the regional level is going to move forward.

But if not, one thing that some of the board members said to us on December 2nd when we were with you before is if you can't do it regionally, go ahead.

You can implement locally.

So we could go locally for a while if we had to until maybe a regional board does emerge.

But again, we're really pushing for the regional approach.

and then in September you would hold your public hearing and the ordinance which would include the administrative process we would use and then by November the goal would be to stand up this administrative system and then it would be January 2022 to start the tax levy in Albemarle County

And it will take a while to get things started.

There'll be startup costs and those types of things to get it moving.

So one thing that we're thinking about when you look at your fiscal year 23 budget, so about this time next year, that the revenues, the system will be in place and the revenues, the decisions on all the revenues and the

how the board would like to dedicate those or spend those.

Again, they are general fund revenues could be discussed in a broader context with your fiscal year 23 budget.

So that's basically the last two slides was to talk with you a little more about the regional efforts.

Mr. Blunt is here to answer any questions and to share with you this timeline.

So this will be the last slide I have vice chair on this topic.

Thank you, Ms.

Alshausen.

I know we do have some other questions now.

In the very beginning of this discussion, I believe that we were told that there are studies that show that cigarette taxes do not decrease cigarette smoking.

Did I hear that correctly?

I'm happy to step in here.

Jason Inofuentes, I'm the Policy and Project Associate with OI.

The research that we did on the demographic side led us to a few studies, particularly one from the University of Pittsburgh, that specifically looked at historical behavior modification from following a cigarette tax.

And what it showed is that there is an overall decrease in smoking, cigarette smoking, to be specific, and not necessarily an overall decrease in tobacco use.

So some people might be switching to cheaper forms of tobacco, like

No, smokeless tobacco or cigars or cigarillos.

But there's also a tendency for that effect to have a paradoxical response.

So where you see the highest decrease in smoking is in the highest incomes.

And that was the point that we made on that prior slide that

That effect has a negligible decrease in smoking in the lowest income categories.

And so there is overall some amount of decrease.

I don't recall exactly what the

what the n of low income versus higher income, but I recall one particular statistic and that was that the overall decrease for a 25 cent tax increase was, I'm sorry, so for following a 25 cent cigarette tax increase, there was an overall decrease in cigarette smoking rates by 6%.

Okay, and one more question.

I'm sorry to keep going, but I'm just curious.

So what

Was there a start point on the price of the pack of cigarettes?

Is there like a tipping point once you get to a certain level?

I don't know what cigarettes cost in Pittsburgh.

The mechanism for this study, the method for this study was simply to take all of the cigarette taxes and then all smoking data for those regions across about a 30-year time frame nationally.

So they didn't have specific starting points.

Okay, thank you.

That's it.

Thank you.

I think my question was answered with that last response.

I think right now I am okay.

I may have more questions later.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So I guess does the state or what's the timetable or do we know Laurie about the timetable for this update task force from the state?

Because usually those things take a long time and they might answer some questions for us, but I don't want to wait around for them either if it's going to take five years.

Mr. Kempner might know the detail on that.

I don't know that.

Good, okay.

That's a great timetable.

Secondly, would it help the PDC

to continue to get organized if we step up our notice of intent sooner because it may take more months than we're thinking to wrangle other counties to join us and I just want to give as much time for the wrangling as is reasonable.

Sure.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the board.

The plan we have right now is we're going to, when the commission meets a week from Thursday, which will be April the 1st, we're going to have a presentation about the efforts thus far that we've been undertaking in conjunction with Albemarle and the other counties.

just to make sure that they're comfortable with the path that we're on.

And then probably shortly thereafter, within several weeks, we will be sending out some information and materials about the effort, as well as those draft resolutions of interest.

And probably would ask that those be considered and acted upon in May.

Excellent.

It sounds like you got it covered.

That's great.

Thank you.

Just as a matter of transparency for my brain, I think it would be really important that we have decisions about the general categories of where the funds would go before we go too far with the ordinance, only because people may feel as if there's a bait and switch

if we don't have it laid out ahead of time very clearly about where this would go.

And I will just give a good example of success.

Back in 2015, maybe, or 16, the county added 0.7 cents to the tax rate for water resources and stormwater programs.

And I think that's a really good model, very carefully managed.

And I know the money goes where it's supposed to go.

So I would use that as a example.

And the last thought is from all the data

My question, which probably doesn't need an answer, is the smaller decrease in smoking in low-income folks because they have fewer points of access into cessation programs and fewer obstacles to stop.

So I don't want to not do something because we haven't seen good data somewhere else so far.

We need to take it into understanding and try not to make the same mistakes other people made, but that we need to keep working along.

Thank you.

Yes, I think Supervisor Mallek brought up a good point.

We want to make sure that the cessation programs with the lower income folks does work.

If it doesn't work, no sense in doing that.

I also agree to lay out where the money is going to go.

I have no problem doing a regional approach.

I think that's really, really good because that helps the small businesses, convenience centers.

So I like the fact that if we lay it out first, we make sure what we're going to do works, but not necessarily tie us in because of something we find out a few years down the road is not working, then we can move the monies into education or something else that would be also popular with the residents.

So like I said, not lock us in forever, but let's see how this, if we do do it,

I have this regional approach, and if it does work, perfect.

And more and more people quit, perfect.

So, thank you.

That's all.

Thank you.

Sorry, I'm having trouble with my microphone here.

Okay, I'm good.

I don't have questions at this time.

Thank you.

Two things.

One, I would agree with the last comment that Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley made, which is if we identify a fund for which these revenues should be used and later decide that there may be a better use, that we want to have that flexibility.

And that would just kind of go along with what I had said earlier.

We then need to just ensure that we articulate that to our constituents so that they understand why the change is made and we're not

simply shifting money around.

Now, with regard to the regional approach, which I wholly support, you have to draw lines.

And no matter where you draw the lines, there always will be a question.

If our region is going to be the GJPDC, which is so helpful for us in so many areas, that's good, but it leaves out Rockingham, Augusta, Greene, and particularly for those people in the southern part of Albemarle County,

Nelson, and Buckingham County, and particularly thinking about the businesses down in the Scottsville town, if we in Albemarle County use a regional approach and levy a tax,

but just across the river in Buckingham they're not doing it then yes the regional approach looks good but it didn't really help all of our businesses so understanding that lines must be drawn and the region will be divided at some point I would also hope and ask that Albemarle County

coordinate or communicate with counties nearby or adjacent to us that may not be within that region so that hopefully we will all be doing about the same thing and we don't end up putting some of our businesses at a disadvantage because the county just across the line from them is not imposing a tax.

So I hope that's clear.

I have no other questions.

Let me just look around.

Sorry my... You're still muted.

Thanks Bea.

It had been working where I could use the space bar to unmute.

Thank you for the clarification on Nelson and Green.

I missed that as I was making my notes during the presentation.

So, but the point remains that if there are other counties that are not in our region, it would be helpful to work with them.

I just want to say one thing.

And I know that Donna and Bea were not around when we were first discussing this over the years.

And I have no problem with putting the money into something specific.

I'm not arguing that.

But we never said that the reason why we were instituting a cigarette tax was, or any other of these taxing authorities, was to

to put it towards smoking cessation or anything like that.

Most of those discussions, as I remember, were trying to take us away from anything we could possibly do to decrease the dependency on the real estate tax.

And so that's just a comment on my part, and it's not an argument not to do it, but I've kind of felt compelled to say that.

Thank you Supervisor Palmer and Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley has asked a question.

Do we know exactly what our region will be?

I mean ideally for Albemarle County we would want every county that touches our borders to be part of our region but then each of those counties probably has the same desire and at some point boundaries will be drawn

and adjacent counties will be in different regions for this taxing purpose.

Sure.

I don't know that we could say at this point in time what that boundary might be.

You know, the TJPDC counties are Albemarle, Louisa, Flobana, Greene, and Nelson counties.

As Ms.

Allshouse had mentioned, we've had Orange County as part of our discussion, which is to our north and east.

I've also had some discussions with both the Planning District Commission folks that are to our north, as well as those over the mountain to the west.

as they have started getting some inquiries from their county officials.

They are interested in what we are doing.

So it may be that we are able to ultimately have some of those folks show some greater interest in being part of a regional effort here.

And thank you.

Thank you.

Supervisors, any other questions?

I don't see any.

I have one Donna, just if this is done.

You know, I have not looked particularly

and who's in and who's out up there.

My feeling is that it's all confined within the borders of Planning District Commission number eight.

But for example, you have the counties of Fairfax and Arlington that are authorized to levy cigarette taxes currently, and I believe only Fairfax County is part of the regional board.

The rest are the cities and the towns that are levying the tax.

I'm not sure if all of the eligible localities

up there are part of the regional board.

Yeah, I was just curious.

Yeah, okay.

Yes, to piggyback on what Supervisor Palmer said, we do have to be careful because if we put money into this certain program, it's not working that well.

That's why I wanted the flexibility of being able to use it for something else.

The other thing I just thought of is regarding increasing property taxes, which is what we were originally talking about.

is that we don't know how much money we're going to be receiving from this.

If it's a small amount, it's not gonna make a difference on property taxes.

If it's a huge amount, there might be enough for both the regional approach and something else, schools or decrease in taxes.

So we just don't know how much the amount is gonna be.

I'm thinking, and maybe Ms.

Allshouse can let us know, but

I'm not thinking that it's going to be millions and millions of dollars.

So that also determines what we do with the money.

All right.

I believe we've addressed all of the questions.

We've raised the questions.

You've addressed them, Ms.

Alshouse.

All right.

That concludes this section of the work session, and I'll turn it back to Mr. Bowman.

Thank you, Ms.

I will introduce this topic, and then I'll turn it over to Jake Washburn, our county registrar, and his team, the electoral board, for any comments they wish to add.

And then, of course, we'll open it to the board for any discussion and questions around the voter registration elections budget as well.

I would say as we head to the next slide over the past year, the county's registrar and his team have been in regular contact with us in the budget division on a number of changes, both as we navigate the new early voting election law and others state guidance comes out.

I just want to thank him for continually keeping us aware of the latest info from the state and their needs and requirements.

This allowed us to plan to be responsive in both current fiscal year, fiscal year 21, and next fiscal year, fiscal year 22.

So to begin, just a very high level look at voter registration and elections budget.

The fiscal year 22 proposed budget includes $1.1 million for this office and their operations.

That's an increase of about 161,000 or 17% over 21.

This does include the impact of increased early voting, both in person and by mail, which as we've seen during the 2020 election cycle was very significant.

So looking ahead to kind of factor in what we've learned in the current year to how it factors next year's request, there's four other topics we've been in discussion with the Registrar's Office about.

The first of which is space and parking at the County Office Building on Fifth Street.

One of the reasons the electoral board really cites this kind of the success for that program in the fall during the November election was that the office space that was available to them and also the availability of parking given the county office building was in a different building posture than they would be in a typical year.

So county staff with the Department of Facilities Environmental Services they've been coordinating with the electoral board for a plan for the calendar year 2020 elections and understand that planning is agreeable to the electoral board

The second item that we've been working with registrars on is the potential for a second primary election to be held during fiscal year 2022.

This is one more than we would typically see.

We have addressed this through including the proposed budget one-time funding for a second primary, just recognizing that a second primary would be an unusual occurrence and really we saw that as an eligible use of one-time funding for that.

The next topic was election officer management software.

This is one thing is the number of election officers have grown as early voting, really related to the impacts of early voting.

having a better tool to manage all that goes into the day-to-day management of that.

We've been coordinating with our IT department, of course registrar's office, our project management office to look for solutions that would work for them and we will be recommending an appropriation in fiscal year 21 of about $33,000 at the April 7th board meeting and we'll have additional details around that at the meeting on the 7th.

and then finally uh there is some state mandated equipment replacement that is coming and I think this is probably the course of the year I think it's all the way back in summer that Jake alerted to this and we've been still getting additional guidance from the state as recent as the past few weeks but really this refers to the replacement of equipment for disabled voters and also an electronic public program find some funding in the fiscal year 21 reserve contingencies or for some reason there's not a need for a second primary election

can be repurposed for that.

Right now we would make sure, one, we don't want to purchase that equipment too late.

We also don't want to purchase it too early before the state has made all their determinations and kind of what is appropriate for the timing and the needs and equipment certification.

So we have a couple options of how that will be funded at this point, confirmation from the state and then Jake's team with the best way to proceed.

So that concludes my comment, but I will certainly open it up to Mr. Washburn and the electoral board for any comments they'd like to add before we turn it over to the board for questions.

Thank you, Mr. Bowman.

First, can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay.

Well, I'd like to thank the board for letting us address them for this work session.

We've got one thing that the electoral board was concerned about back in

December when I had put in the annual budget request was that you all might have a look at it and think, well, raise my rent.

Why are you asking for additional funding?

And just wanted to reassure the Board of Supervisors that it was mostly because of the effects of the new early voting law.

We were just operating in a different

Landscape now and was very glad to see that in the interim between that sending out that letter in late December from the electoral board requesting this work session that the I believe OMB has recommended

our requested budget, which is wonderful and very encouraging.

But in case you had any questions about these kind of large expenditures for the disabled voter equipment, the electronic poll book upgrades, those two are going to be required by

upgraded security standards that were adopted by the State Board of Elections.

And it looks like we're going to have to have those implemented

after July, pardon me, after June 30th this year.

It looks right now, we continue to get a little bit different info from Department of Elections and our vendors, but it looks like we may be able to use our electronic poll book program through the November

2021 election, but upgraded immediately after that.

But as to the replacement of the handicap assist voting equipment, it looks like we may need to do that sometime this July or August and have it ready for the fall election cycle.

so those were not they would in a perfect world they would have been better characterized as capital improvements and in the ideal world we would have had three or four years to put a little bit into the into the kitty every year to get that capital fund where we needed it but this kind of hit us pretty suddenly so and the

Election Officer Management Software is

Claris I think is here, and if you have any questions, more questions about that, she can certainly answer them, trying to manage all those election officers last fall with the system that we had been using for about 20 years, just about, we almost had a meltdown, and Claris and Erin and Lauren bore the brunt of all that, and we really

a better way to take care of all that.

Thank you, Mr. Washburn.

I have one question, but first I would say that I can't imagine anybody being concerned about your request for more money this year after what you guys went through last year and how wonderful you did everything on those

on the systems that you had.

So I certainly support it.

Could you remind us what percentage the budget went up in FY21 to cover all those, what we could cover in that, or maybe it was added after outside the budget cycle.

I don't have the numbers right smack in front of me, but as I recall, we grabbed some additional funding as a budget carry forward from the previous fiscal year.

and the Piggy Bank from that.

And then we got some funding from, some CARES Act funding from the, I think about $80,000 of CARES Act funding from the state, which had in turn gotten it from the federal government.

And so I don't think we had to,

Yeah, that's what I was.

I just couldn't remember how much that was.

But anyway, we're through it.

You did a wonderful job and I have no other questions.

Thank you, Supervisor Palmer.

Thank you.

I appreciate you all being here, Jake.

And I guess I have a couple of questions.

When it says includes impacts of increased early voting in person and by mail, I know that there was some discussion about mailing absentee ballots out.

Some states were doing that, and I'm embarrassed to admit I'm not sure where we stand on that.

Little bit about mailing ballots to folks.

In Virginia right now it is only, that's correct, it is only at their request.

Those requests went, you know, way up last fall because of one, COVID and two.

I believe that's correct, but what we had requested in the regular FY22 budget request, I believe was recommended by OMB.

and which is very reassuring.

The three additional bugaboos that we really weren't aware of until fairly recently were that we're going to be required to purchase upgraded handicap assist ballot marking devices.

and that was not in our FY22 request and they won't be cheap.

The price tag on that will be about $118,000 and it looks like we're going to have to do that sometime this July or August so that they'll be ready for the fall election cycle.

The upgrade to the electronic poll book program because the

heightened security standards.

It looks like we'll be able to use the current program through the November 2021 election.

But right after that, we will have to get the upgrade.

So it will be in FY22.

And the price tag on that is, I think, $67,000.

So that's not cheap either.

And that was not included in the FY22 regular annual budget request.

and third, the election officer software, the management software to manage the election officers was something that we hadn't really figured out.

We didn't realize how much of a time consuming

thing it was going to be this last fall until we were right sort of into it, where we had to not only recruit a whole lot of election officers to work on election day, but we also had to recruit a whole lot to work during the full 45 days of early voting.

And just managing that whole process has gotten much more complicated.

I think

When CLARIS started out 20 years ago, we had about 200 election officers in the county.

We've now got, I think, over 700.

And although we probably won't need to use all 700 in any election, they're still in the system.

We have to keep track of all of them.

We have to make sure we get so the whole

You have to get them recruited and then set a training schedule and then figure out who can work for the early voting and what precincts they can work in and to try to do that with individual emails and phone calls back and forth to all those people.

just about killed us last fall and then when we were sort of dust was settling and we tried to figure out what you know how can we possibly you know improve this system that's when in I guess

December and January we looked around and found that well actually the larger localities in Virginia have begun and even some of the middle-sized localities have begun using this election officer management software that is specifically targeted for this

for these many tasks all interrelated and that appears to work very well and will probably save us.

Again, I just, the amount of time that that Claris and Erin and Lauren and Ann spent trying to keep track of all these election officers last fall was, you know, we didn't

counted all up because there was so much other stuff going on that we didn't say well okay let's account for every hour you spent on this but I'm sure that it was probably a little over a full-time position in and of itself and all of the feedback that we've gotten from this particular app software has been very upbeat and

Thank you, Jake.

That information was very helpful.

I certainly am in favor of helping you all with your financial needs.

It's really important that we make sure that our systems are up to date, whether it's in your office, in your department, or the health department statewide.

All of these systems and management software applications have to be kept up to date.

It's just critical and many of them have not been.

So I am all in favor of this.

I'm just trying to make sure I understand if I had questions exactly what the different pieces are and where we stand.

But you all have done an outstanding job and we want to continue to support that.

And we want to make it as easy as possible for our members to vote.

in a smooth and effective way.

I think the pandemic has sort of peeled back that onion and shown us where a lot of our technology as well as some of our other gaps are, and we really need to get in and start fixing them so that we have a handle on all this.

But thank you very much for the information.

Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor McKeel.

Thank you.

I don't have any questions.

I am incredibly supportive of this and know how much work went in by people all up and down the chain last year to try to get training and reference materials out to all of the staffers and that's have you included enough in your request to make sure that you have

Apple funds to get the reference materials and the directions and all that stuff out to everybody because all those hundreds of notebooks cost money.

And I understand just yesterday, Governor Northam signed the bill approving Sunday early voting as well.

So that will increase the amount of staff we have to have to cover all those days.

So carry on.

Thank you.

Yes, I just have a statement to make that I was there at early voting and I will tell you, Jake, your office from what I saw looked like the old proverbial duck on the water where everything was smooth sailing, but I know underneath that you guys were pedaling like hell because I saw the stress.

on your face and some, you know, but everything was so smooth and ran so well.

And I know you work really hard and your staff also.

So kudos to all of you.

And I am supportive of this.

Thank you.

Chair Galloway.

The state mandated equipment replacement.

Not as far as I know.

The only help that I've heard is that they might delay implementation of one of these things until after the November 2021 election.

But as far as funding,

I need to look at that.

They may have put into the budget bill a little help for return postage for mail-in absentee ballots, early ballots.

They did that.

last fall as part of the emergency legislation in that special session toward the end of last summer.

But it was just for last fall.

I know that it was an amendment to the budget bill, but the governor has not yet signed the budget bill and the budget bill is about 10,000 pages long.

You've been doing this a while, Jake.

Your world is filled with state mandates, I'm sure, at different times.

Well, let's see, back when they were trying to encourage us all to switch over to electronic poll books from the old paper poll books where you had to scroll through every page to find your name when you went in to vote, they were pretty creative on that.

Because at the time, private vendors

Price tag on those was about $1,500 per laptop with the software.

And at that time, the Secretary of the Department of Elections had a great idea, went out and purchased every state agency that had a laptop that had to be replaced because of their replacement schedule.

They got them to give them all of the Department of Elections, refurbish them, and

cut a deal with some electronic poll book software person so that we got them for, I think, 50 bucks apiece, which was a bargain basement price back then.

Well, thank you.

I mean, so I guess it's a matter of degree of whether or not they will follow through with resources.

I just think it's whether it's, I mean, State Board of Elections, it's not, I mean, these mandates come down just like any other mandate the state puts in place, and then the resource burden gets put to the locality.

And that always needs to be pointed out because anytime we have to use local resources to offset mandates that come down from the state, that means those local resources aren't going to other local

needs.

Not that this is unimportant, not that I'm being not supportive, but the state should follow through when they do mandates with some sort of funding obligation.

Just an opinion.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Mr. Washburn, there are many things we do, but there is nothing we do that is more important than ensuring free and fair elections.

Having been an election official in several jurisdictions and multiple precincts over the years, all of whom did very well, no one does it better than Albemarle County.

The admiration, respect, and appreciation that I have for the integrity and reliability of our elections in Albemarle County

is as high as anything that I've ever seen.

And I really want to ensure that you, the board, your staff, the volunteers all know how much we appreciate that.

And as with the other supervisors, I support this funding request and I will add, well, raise my rent to my list of Jacobsons.

I have no questions.

Any supervisors have any other questions or comments?

Seeing none, Mr. Washburn, we thank you very much for your presentation today.

And Mr. Bowman, am I turning it back over to you?

We did have a break scheduled.

I would just want to clarify one comment just there's no confusion.

Mr. Washburn is correct that the bottom two items on this slide are not included in fiscal year 22.

We will be bringing back appropriations in fiscal year 21 to address them.

The reason that was done because if they need to move forward prior to July 1st we want to make sure they're providing that flexibility.

So just just want to add to Jake's earlier comment.

Thank you, Mr. Bowman.

If nothing else on this topic, Board, we are scheduled for a break at this time.

I would ask that we make it a 10-minute break.

I've got about 10 minutes after 4 right now, and we'll reconvene at 20 minutes after.

Yes, ma'am, it does.

Thank you.

We'll go on a break.

Okay, in your line.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The final topic for this afternoon's work session is a discussion around transit agency contributions.

Those are noted on page 127 of the recommended budget document.

I will kick things off on this topic before I turn it over to staff from the Planning District Commission.

Charlottesville area transit or CAT and Jaunt for their further comments and of course more discussion and questions.

So I'll start with one of the themes of the fiscal year 22 budget that was covering the county executive's budget presentation and we've touched on this a few times during the work sessions is that fiscal year 22 is a transition budget.

There's a lot we've learned in the 12 months in a pandemic that we didn't know or couldn't know 12 months ago

But the reality is even though we do know war, we're still in a pandemic in a time of uncertainty.

Examples where our economy is stabilizing, but it has not yet stabilized.

So like much of the budget and the recommendations we made, that framework of a transition year was applied to transit just like it was to many other services.

Knowing that right now transit services are continuing to adapt in the pandemic, there's been a lot that has changed around state and federal funding that continues to play out as we learn more, and that there are studies that are underway now that will shape the future of transit in the coming years.

But we'll get into that in more details when we hear from the agencies.

But just to briefly cover the highlights of the agencies in this donut chart and the recommendations.

I'm going to start with the smallest and work up to the largest.

And the smallest piece of this donut is really hardly visible in this chart.

The county is proposed to provide $6,000 to the Central Shenandoah Planning and District Commission.

and that provides the county's match for the Afton Express which is a transit route that will connect the Shenandoah Valley area with the Charlottesville and Albemarle area.

Localities on both sides of the mountain and the University of Virginia are planning to contribute to this effort as a match towards state dollars.

The second item which is visible in yellow near the top of the donut is the Regional Transit Partnership which is staffed by the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.

The fiscal year 22 budget includes $69,000 that's for the county share of current operations and also the second half of funding for the county's match toward the development of a regional transit vision plan.

I should note that in fiscal year 21 the county's match for two grants is already funded.

Those two grants are, one, the first half of the Regional Transit Vision Plan that I just spoke about, and second, there's an Albemarle-specific transit study that will be happening as well, and Christine Jacobs of the TJPDC will speak about those in a little more detail in just a moment.

So the next piece of the donut chart I'll speak to is CAT, which is the blue piece of the chart that is recommended to be funded at one billion dollars.

That reflects the county share of CAT after leveraging of state and federal revenues including CARES funding.

It kind of at the time we knew at the time the county executives recommended budget.

It also reflects CAT's efforts to improve system performance and reliability and in just their future state funding prospects.

I will add that staff has shared with county staff and we spent the better part of an hour, I believe, with the Regional Transit Partnership last February.

We're really for CAT and to share their time and all the analysis they've been doing with their consultants recently to look at the improved data collection they have on ridership.

the evaluation and transit planning principles they can use to better optimize system performance and there's really outside of the budget a time to have that work session with the board in more detail and how that will shape what transit looks like in the future.

But I just wanted to share that it's out there, Mr. Williams may touch on that in some of his comments today because it really was just a very informative presentation but much more detail than we planned to get into today.

And also speaks to where we are to transition here knowing these studies are underway.

Finally, the orange piece of the donut is Jaunt, which is approximately $2.2 million.

That's for the services they provide, which is paratransit services in the vicinity of Cat Routes, our rural area services throughout the entire county, and then also the commuter routes they fund, such as the Crozet Connects in the 29 North and the Hollomied Area Connects routes.

There's a decrease that is recommended or requested and recommended for John.

That reflects how they are applying federal CARES money to reduce local shares for all regional partners in fiscal year 22.

So I will turn it over to Christine Jacobs with Regional Transit Partnership.

Christine is the Inter-Director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission to elaborate a little on the PDC.

Ready?

Can you guys hear me?

Yep.

Very good.

Thank you.

As you said, I'm Christine Jacobs, interim director here at the TJPDC.

Prior to that role, I was here as the chief operating officer.

Some of you may know me through my work with directing the housing program here and the management of the rent and mortgage relief program.

That was the program that I was overseeing.

Now in this interim role, it's a little bit different.

I appreciate you all having me here to talk about the Regional Transit Partnership.

Can we advance the slide again?

Very good.

So first I will talk about very, very quickly that the RTP was established in 2017 after a regional transit coordination study that recommended a regional transit advisory board.

So that was established in 2017.

Then in 2018, some strategic planning was done.

By 2019, an MOU had been signed between Albemarle and Charlottesville for funding for the RTP.

and then in 2020 UVA was added as voting membership.

The overall vision of the partnership I think is important to remind ourselves that the regional transit system is the vision is to be an efficient high quality integrated regional network of transit services.

In FY21 our major initiatives were applying for and being awarded two different transit grants that we're very excited to be a part of implementing.

The first one is the Albemarle County Transit Expansion Feasibility Study and Implementation Plan and that is looking at expanding service in three particular areas Monticello, North 29,

and Pantops area.

And that is a Department of Rail and Public Transportation grant with Albemarle matching half of the total budget for that.

The timeline for that is to be completed by the end of this fiscal year and the advisory group was appointed by Albemarle County for that process.

The second grant that we're excited to be working on is the Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Transit Vision Plan and this is a budget of around $350,000 with Albemarle contributing a quarter of that matched by a quarter from the City of Charlottesville and the remaining half from the Department of Rail and Public Transit.

The Regional Transit Partnership will serve as the advisory group for that process and the timeline for completion is the end of next fiscal year.

so FY22.

Go to the next slide.

What we're looking into for next year is by administering these two DRPT grants we're really trying to set the RTP up and the TJPDC up to apply for implementation funding.

Both of these are planning type grants so this is going to be looking at other grant opportunities to move forward.

And then the RTP is currently in the process of developing its FY22 work plan that still needs to go to the RTP for discussion and approval.

But some of the items in that work plan include a spring virtual series with peer regions to look what what they're doing.

in terms of regional transit, looking at consolidated ridership reporting across all of our transit agencies, exploring smart scale opportunities as transit agencies are eligible for direct smart scale funding, exploring ongoing informational series, bringing other players into the RTP to do some informational sessions, and then looking ahead for the next strategic planning effort for FY23.

At this point I don't want to take too long but the one thing I would love to end on is we certainly are always grateful for the county's support of the Regional Transit Partnership and look forward to working with you.

Thank you, Ms.

Jacobs.

We'll go around.

No, I have no questions at this time.

Thank you.

I don't have any questions.

Great presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I agree and I would just add that that ridership reporting is a high priority to me because that goes into some of my questions later about how various aspects are attributed, how the ridership is actually happening, how the counts are actually happening.

Thank you.

No questions, very good presentation and you covered it all and thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I don't have any questions at this time.

Thank you.

And Ms.

Jacobs, I do not have any questions either.

Thank you for your presentation.

We all recognize the importance of our public transportation in the area.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

We are, but I'm going to immediately turn it over to Mr. Garland Williams.

He's the Director of Transit at CAT.

Welcome, Mr. Williams.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Board, thank you very much for allowing me to speak today.

My name is Garland Williams.

I'm the Director of Transit for Charlottesville Area Transit.

Today I'll be presenting CATS overview for the FY22 budget.

So if we'll advance this slide.

I've given you a brief overview of what how Charlottesville Area Transit is defined.

It's defined as a small urban transit agency.

In FY22, we had about 1.3 million unlinked passenger trips, which is approximately 3,635 passengers per day.

In our system, we have 327 bus stops, one park and ride lot, one transit center.

We have 36 fixed route buses.

We have 13 fixed route bus routes.

of which we've been providing service in Albemarle County since 1978.

Of those 13, nine of them operate in the county.

We provide service in a normal year, not the pandemic year, but in a normal year, we provide service 364 days a year, roughly about 19 hours a day, Monday through Saturday, and 11 hours on Sunday.

That's the next slide, please.

Our budget, the revenue associated with CAT for FY22 breakdown is approximately 1.8, almost $1.9 million in federal, $2 million from the state.

Those two numbers together is approximately 39.2% of CAT's total revenue.

The local shares, 24.5, which is $2.5 million from the city of Charlottesville.

and the request of $1 million from Albemarle County represents 9.7%.

We have directly generated approximately $130,000, which represents 1.3%.

Our CARES Act money, which if you remember from last year, we got a total of $5.3 million.

We are spending 1.5 of that in this current fiscal year.

and we're proposing to use 2.5 events to offset FY22 for a total of $10.1 million.

Next slide.

Our operating budget breaks down on the expense side.

There's an operating category, administration, maintenance, marketing, safety and security.

Personnel takes about 70 to 75% of our total budget.

As you can see in the operating side, $5.4 million is the largest expenditure on the personnel side.

That's all our operators and supervisors.

That is the largest bulk of our budget, $6.2 million.

The administration side is approximately $1 million.

The maintenance side is $4.2 million.

Marketing is $148,000.

And the safety and security is $225,000.

Next slide.

We are receiving an additional tranche of money based on the American Recovery Act plan.

So it is estimated at this point in time it's going to be approximately $5.3 million.

With our split, which is $75, $25 between us and John, Kat, acting as the direct recipient,

get the $5.3 million and it'll be appropriated approximately for we're just shy of $4 million, I think like $3,000 with CAT and then $1.3 million going to John's.

That kind of concludes my prepared slides and I'll open it up for questions.

Thank you.

I'm just a little bit confused.

Will you go back to your revenues?

$4 million is not in this.

So what we have proposed to do is take the remaining balance of the CARES money and the additional trust we're going to get from the American Recovery Plan, not knowing when that's going to hit us or come to us.

and use that to balance our budget over a five-year period of time.

The majority of the money will be spent in three years, FY22, 23 and 24.

That allows us to keep the amount of money that's coming from the city and the county down, keeping the appropriations to CAT at a million dollars to the county in FY22 and 23.

and going to $1.2 million approximately in 24-25.

Okay.

I have no other questions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Garland.

Good presentation.

I do want to ask though, last year, if I remember correctly, during our budget discussions,

And it was set in, I think for the first time, Alomarle County and

Pat had that discussion and you separated it out for us some way or another.

I'm trying to remember with my old brain exactly how that came about.

I think it would be helpful because many of us understand that

Albemarle County pupil transportation is an entity that comes under the schools and it's a separate funding mechanism and it can easily be, you know, it can be easily separated and described, right?

For the CAT transportation, because you have a contract with Charlottesville Public Schools, you run both systems.

So I guess in these presentations, I would really like some clarity just to make sure that I understand, or maybe certainly the board, where the line is and I mean, just some more transparency because it's not really mentioned.

And I'm not saying that there's anything wrong.

It would just be nice to have that clarity.

Well, that's a wrong word and I get that.

I do, but let me assure everyone that the public side of the house or CAT, all the federal funds are separate

There is a small portion of my salary that is allocated to the school system, but that's the only portion of this budget that's there.

Okay and we just talked about that for the first time last year and I understand that and I probably used the wrong word in commingling.

I didn't mean it so all I meant was that you as the director of CAT also run the Charlottesville public school system, transit system.

Okay, and I knew it wasn't very much, but I just think for transparency for the public, it's important for folks to know.

Thank you.

Yeah, I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

We're looking at the slide we're seeing now.

Can you explain to us how the split is determined between John and Kat?

And similar to questions I'm going to ask about your charts about the routes and the attribution of county versus city percentages of responsibility for the routes.

So the percentages were developed in an agreement between Kat and John many years ago.

It's codified in a written agreement between the contract, which spells out the 75-25 split.

CAT is the direct recipient, which means from FTA standpoint of view, we're responsible for all of the money that comes in, regardless of whether it goes to us or John.

But what's the metric that was responsible?

Because something may have changed in the 20 years or however many years since that was done.

And I just don't know.

So this is 5307 money, which is urban style money, which is normally used for running a fixed route transit system.

Jaunt gets to 25% because Jaunt is our provider of

ADA paratransit service.

So this slide is really only city operations.

City, County for ADA.

They can spend the $1.3 million on the ADA portion, but that's our normal 75-25.

There are less restrictions on the money that comes whether it was CARES or the American Rescue Plan Act.

So we have not seen the description of what it can be spent on yet.

The numbers that came out, the 5.3 right now, represent what the Senate Budget Office estimates the breakdown will be for the Charlottesville region.

And you don't have these charts in your package, but we received it in our package.

Big charts that look like this.

But I do have a couple of questions on there, if I may.

Sure.

So that I can better understand and explain to others when they ask.

And thank you for listing the descriptions of the routes, because that helps me a lot to know where I am.

And I guess 9 and 10 are the interesting ones.

I mean, downhill to Rose Hill is attributed 18% to the county.

And so I don't know what that means.

So the percentages represent the amount of time the bus is running in the county versus the city so the number of trips

It does on a daily basis, which continue to add up every single day or Saturday and Sunday, culminate into what you see in that first column, which gives us the total number of hours per year.

So you have logs or something on the buses that help you to determine that?

Because I know that there was a discussion for years about having passes that the riders would have that would allow you to keep track of them.

So a great question.

So how we're finding out what the percentages are is strictly by GIS.

And our AVL system basically, our AVL system is,

GIS product or GPS product and allows us to say when it enters the city versus the county, when it enters the county and as long as it's on the county it's counting the mileage.

We are working on getting the proposals to getting you very detailed information on ridership and placement.

Well, after all of Supervisor Mallek's questions, I don't have any.

Thank you.

Chair Galloway?

Thank you for that, Supervisor Mallek.

I'm good right now, thank you.

Mr. Williams, thank you for the information.

I do want to recognize the challenges that public transportation, particularly in the smaller markets, have and just want to recognize that and thank you for your time and presentation.

Any other questions by any supervisors?

Don't see any.

Thank you, Mr. Williams.

Thank you.

Hi, thank you for letting me join you this evening.

Many of you know me because I

I've previously served as the Chief Operating Officer and I've been with Jaunt for 12 years and stepped into this role in December and right smack in the middle of budget time so it's been a steep learning curve and a lot of excitement but I'm glad to be here to answer any questions that you may have.

Advance the slide please.

So this is just a quick overview of the types of things that we do for Albemarle County.

This past fiscal year to date we've had 246,000 trips.

We have a fleet of 88 transit vehicles, 122 employees, and 2,933,830 miles traveled and 82,692 revenue hours.

What that kind of

equates to is the ADA service for Albemarle County, as well as commuter routes coming into the city from Albemarle County from 29 North, Crozet, and we also have an employment run that comes in from Scottsville area, and also a lot of rural service, which we enjoy doing, demand response.

Next slide, please.

So this is just, we worked hard to keep our request level with FY20 so that there wouldn't be extra burden on the localities.

But we are including a staff wage increase because, as many of you know, we have struggled to keep parity

with other transit agencies in the area.

And I'm very, very focused on making sure that our drivers are paid a living wage.

And our health care costs went up.

We were able to ameliate a lot of this through using CARES Act money to keep the request level with FY20.

You know, I just put it, you didn't get to see Garland's full palette of slides and he did an amazing job of looking ahead.

And I just put out a couple of ideas of things that we are keeping an eye on.

Definitely looking at parity for our drivers.

Definitely looking at ways to keep our system fare free, at least coming out of COVID.

And I know that Garland and I

have spoken with some of his plans as well.

I want to make sure that we are prepared to be able to match whatever Kat might be thinking because I think it's important for ADA riders to go fare free as well as the fixed route goes fare free.

So definitely on demand.

There's a lot of

demand for on-demand, in-house too.

We can't wait to move forward with that.

And I know that's something that Albemarle is very interested in.

And sustainability.

I put in a request this year for a study so that we can look at what the infrastructure is and make sure that we're set up well and do an analysis of

where we can implement electric vehicles strategically and effectively.

And once we have that plan in place, it is our hope and desire and expectation that DRPT will have some electric vehicles on state contract that we will then be able to move forward and purchase.

which is preferable to retrofitting an already existing gasoline engine and vehicle.

So setting ourselves up for that.

Next slide, please.

So this is a quick overview.

Again, our overall request is the $2.18 million.

Again, trying to stabilize it and not increase it, utilizing some CARES Act funds to supplement it, to keep it even.

Capital requests are very

As you'll see in the expenditures goes towards vehicle expenditures and things like that.

Next slide, please.

So our expenditures, much like what Garland Williams was saying, a lot of it goes right into wages, drivers being, of course, the largest portion of our staff, smaller portion of administration staff, and other expenses, facilities, and things like that.

Capital, again, the largest portion would be for vehicle replacement, just basic support vehicles, carts, and

minor facility improvements in technology.

Thank you, Ms.

Davis.

Thank you, Karen.

I have one question about the parity issue.

With the 4% increase, where will your drivers be in comparison to others, given that the

Yeah, I actually go back and analyze that, especially after whatever wage increases are about to occur.

But I know that our starting wage for drivers is still $14.

And out of the gate, I would like it to at least be over 15.

Traditionally, if we bring someone in and help them achieve their CDL, then we do give them a dollar increase.

I agree with you how important that is and I would be interested in seeing what that actually does to the impact for Albemarle County.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Karen, thank you for the good presentation.

And I guess I have a couple of questions.

Help me with your health care costs at 14%.

That takes me back to the days in Albemarle County when hours were going up 14 and 15%.

And that's tough.

Just explain to me, are you all self-insured?

I don't really know.

Sure, and I'll give you my answer and then our chief financial officer is in this discussion too and she can chime in if I misspeak.

But basically we're right now, we're not part of the public option.

We did make gains to finally become a part of the public option or have the option to become part of the public option and then

In that year, our actual healthcare costs were significantly reduced.

Suddenly, the cost to transfer to the public option didn't seem like a viable option at the time.

But now that once again they're increasing in this way, it is something that our CFO and I are going to be taking a look at.

Yeah, it's hard for that to be sustainable at that rate.

I mean, it's a real concern.

And I suspected you were self-insured, but I wasn't sure.

so that's helpful um yeah and worth um some consideration um the other only other thing i would request is because it's a good opportunity would you and i'm gonna ask you to do it in about you know just a couple of minutes in a simplified manner could you make sure that everybody understands because we have people that are new on the board exactly your ada services and how that

ring around that works.

Because I think that's really important for folks to understand that the ADA services, well, I won't go into it.

Sure.

So I'll try to explain it as succinctly as possible.

And of course, Garland can jump in as well.

Basically, in the United States, if you have a fixed route system like CAT,

You have to also have an ADA service, a paratransit service.

And that is curb to curb or door to door service for people with disabilities who are unable to meet all their needs on the regular fixed route system.

So it's not a matter of I can't drive or whatever.

that I can't navigate the system or I can't literally get to a bus stop to work and to catch it and use it effectively.

And so there's an application process and that application actually goes to CAT and they approve or not approve accordingly, let us know who's approved and those people ride on jaunt.

Our hours are the same as cats.

If they, you know, run till midnight, we run to midnight.

The bare minimum of an ADA service is three quarters of a mile around the fixed route system.

And right now, the ADA boundary is pretty tight to exactly that right now.

That was a great description and for us it's just important.

Yeah, you did it very well and I appreciate it and thank you very much.

Speaking of this, thank you for the help that you provided me last week.

I had a citizen that contacted me and said she was newly blind and needed

figuring out how she could ride transit and with John.

So I appreciate that.

But that was a great description.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

No questions, really.

This was an excellent presentation.

But on the graph showing ridership since COVID, I was interested to see how the rural

routes and the commuter routes really stayed quite consistent throughout the months and the urban ones seem to have the largest spikes of all and it's only an example to me I think of how essential the door-to-door service on-demand service is for our rural residents because many of them

live in family groups but they can't drive to work and they really depend upon the joint services to get them where they need to go to go to work.

I mean many people are able to work but can't drive so I'm really grateful that this service is available and still plugging along.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you very much, Ms.

Davis.

And I also am very thankful for what John does and the on-demand service.

And actually, I'd like to see that expanded.

I think there's a lot we can do, especially with our rural areas, with the smaller roads, maybe even working with the school district to pick up the

with ones or twos of children that are way out in a rural area off on a road so you don't have to use the very large school bus.

Maybe that's something.

I don't know if you're exploring that or not, but yeah, I really like the idea of expanding the on-demand program.

So it's been very successful.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

I don't have any questions.

I will make a comment like the supervisor prior just putting in my endorsement of this on-demand program in the way that we would visualize or maybe conceptualize how this could work for county residents moving forward.

It's something we've been talking about for a while.

I know it's something that at least I'm very interested in because I think it could help solve some issues that fixed routes don't necessarily or fixed routes will not probably be the solution in some of the areas in our urban ring.

So it's just something that I'm putting in my endorsement for that I hope that while studies and we've got some grants that are going to do some studies at some point we have to start putting plans in place or actions in place

and just hope we're going to get there sooner rather than later.

Thank you.

Ms.

Davis, I don't have any real questions.

I very much appreciate your being here today.

While Cat and John collectively are essential for our public transportation,

By geographic area, Jaunt covers the largest area, and we just are so dependent upon the services that you both provide.

I do want to just make sure, and I'm sure you've probably already heard about it, but late last week we had a briefing from VDOT that Virginia 20 Scottsville Road is going to be closed for a scheduled period of March 29th through April 9th.

in Scottsville, just south of the Dollar General store.

And there are two detours that can be used, one for smaller vehicles on hardware street, which is very narrow at the fork down in the town of Scottsville.

So during that time period, John will need to use your smallest vehicles to get through.

Otherwise, it is a very, very long circuitous route.

for the larger trucks and other vehicles.

And I'd like to say you probably already were aware of that, but for my residents down in the Scottsville area, I'll be talking more about that in just a few moments.

But thank you so much for the services that you and CAP collectively provide to us.

I don't have any questions on this.

Looking to see any other questions or comments from other supervisors.

I don't see any.

So thank you, Ms.

Davis.

Thank you Garland, Karen and Christine for being here to present.

My final slide is just a wrap-up slide where we started today.

About two weeks ago this was a much busier slide than it is now.

Thank you, Mr. Bowman.

I will go around quickly to see if any supervisors have any other questions related to the budget before we do our round for general comments.

I have a comment that's related to the budget that we certainly aren't going to talk about now, but I hope we talk about it later.

Given that UVA, the county now, Charlottesville are all up at a 15 minimum wage, as we go forward into our budget discussions and, you know, the federal American Rescue Plan and whatnot,

I think it's something we really need to talk about about an agency that is as important to our community as Jaunt is.

And I recognize this would take a conversation with the city too.

And I don't know if staff has already done that and what kind of conversations have taken place behind the scenes.

But I would think that it's something that we should be finding out, understanding,

and considering trying to get jaunt drivers up to $15 an hour as soon as possible.

And I have no other questions or statements or anything.

Thank you, Supervisor Palmer.

I think I'm all right right now.

Thank you very much and thank you for being here, Karen.

Thank you.

on the budget.

Okay, so I know that we probably are not going to do anything about this immediately, but just for

Keeping this item in front of people's minds so that when things start to stabilize and we can do something a little more direct, I wanted to raise the issue of the staff person needed in engineering in order to be able to follow through on plans to reduce the square footage for soil disturbance from 10,000 to 2,500 square feet.

and we went through this over the last couple of years many many times and it was one of the items that the board felt was very important but would require the extra staff so we didn't do it and Amelia sent us a memo with all the background which I very much appreciate.

The problem is as we do not address this issue we are getting more and more situations throughout the county of really terrible unregulated

Erosion.

And then we have to turn around and much more expensively with structures and things in the urban areas and where the soil finally piles up.

Later, it costs more to fix it than it would to prevent it in the first place.

So I'm just pushing this idea back out there again for everybody to be thinking about because I do hope we will get back to this sooner than later.

Thank you.

No questions at this time.

Chair Galloway?

Chair Galloway may not be able to join us right now.

So board, we'll go around one more time for matters from the board not listed on the agenda.

I have nothing.

On the announcement that Supervisor Galloway and I will be co-hosting a town hall for the Early Spill Rio sections of the White Hall District and Rio District.

And we hope that people will come.

Seven o'clock tomorrow, the 23rd.

We've received lots of questions in the mail.

I mean, an email already, but primarily great interest in talking more about the firehouse.

So we thank you all very much.

Chief Eggleston will be there as well as

our senior staff to listen in.

And I hope everybody has a great day.

Thank you.

Nothing other than the fact that I have my town hall meeting tonight, Pantops CAC at 615.

Thank you.

Chair Galloway?

Nope, just again to echo the announcement that I'll be participating tomorrow evening.

along with Supervisor Mallet.

Thank you.

I have two items.

One, I want to give a shout out to the Monticello Ruritans and their president Wayne Shufflett who organized a highway cleanup yesterday.

There were about 10 or 15 of us out there.

We spent about three hours picking up trash, collected over 30 bags of litter,

which and there are the pictures.

Thank you Emily Kilroy of our Community Public Engagement.

These are just four of the people.

There were many more there and that's part of the pile that we picked up.

It looked beautiful when we got finished.

We did from 53 and James Madison all the way down to Rolling Road about halfway down to Woodridge Market.

It was beautiful but there's this unfortunate and sad postscript to this.

After we did the cleanup, I went into town, washed my truck, filled it up with gas, came back, and by the time I came back an hour later, there was already litter on the road.

And this morning, or this afternoon, as I drove into this meeting, there was enough litter that it was very noticeable.

It's just such a disappointment.

It only takes a minute just to leave the cup, the can, the bottle,

Whatever it is, until you get home, put it in your trash.

We have a beautiful community here, and it's just laziness on the part of some people that really takes away from the community spirit of so many others.

I mean, we had a great time cleaning up yesterday, but it was

It really kind of broke my heart to drive down the road an hour or two later or today and to already see visible signs of trash.

Next Sunday they're going to do it again.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to join them, but we met at the Slate Hill Baptist Church.

You can see the sign right there behind at the background of the picture on the right at about 8 o'clock in the morning and hope that others will be able to join us.

The second item, Ms.

Kilroy, if you can put up, there's the map.

As I mentioned just a moment ago with Ms.

Davis, on the scheduled time period of March 29th until April 9th, VDOT will be closing Virginia 20 Scottsville Road just south of the Dollar General store.

For local traffic, and it doesn't show up clearly on here, but 795 is Hardware Street, so local traffic can use James River Road and Hardware Street to get around the section of the road that will be closed while a major culvert is replaced.

But for larger vehicles, particularly tractor trailers, you can see that very long detour to get around.

So our community and public engagement is going to help try to get the word out to as many businesses as possible in hopes that people will be able to use an alternative route during this time period if you have large vehicles.

And Ms.

Davis, as you can see at the southern part of Hardware Street, it's very narrow.

where it comes back onto Scottsville Road.

So if you are your jaunt vehicles, the smaller ones you've got will really be better.

VDOT is hopeful that they'll be able to finish this work early, but it is scheduled from March 29th through April 9th.

And with that, I have nothing further.

Supervisor Malek, I see your hands up.

Well, just to ask you, has VDOT done putting up big signboards for these tractor-trailers to keep them on 29 until they get to Route 6 or something in order to not even come through Scottsville?

Yeah, and that is a long and we did talk about what VDOT is going to do to try and ensure that people know that the road will be closed during this time period to take alternative routes or alternate routes.

Yeah, this is that is not going to be easy for big trucks for that almost two week period.

Thank you, Supervisor Mallek.

Any other comments from supervisors?

And I don't want to get, I don't want to bring up another topic that takes a lot of time today, but Donna you make a really good point again about the litter.

And I'm just wondering, I know that staff, our staff is just workload is full.

I know the county schools workload is full.

I wonder if there's a way that the Board of Supervisors, us,

and the school board could get together and work on some sort of a media campaign against littering.

Be honest with you, if you can reach the children who can kind of embarrass their parents or their older brothers and sisters, sometimes you can make a difference.

I just remember when I was young, the littering campaign,

that was run sort of through the schools and in the community.

I'm just putting that out there if there was a way that we could connect with our school board.

And, Supervisor McKeel, that's a great idea.

And I tell you, we spent a lot of time talking about how when we were kids, you know, the don't give a hoot, don't pollute, and so many of those public service announcements that we used to see that made an impact on America.

So I will take that fraction and as soon as this meeting's over I will send out a joint email to school board and the board of supervisors.

Obviously television commercials, radio commercials, they cost money.

But there are things you're right we can do in the community that don't cost money.

Well, I was just going to say, you know, the radio, I think, still is required to do so many public service announcements or ads in a certain period of time.

So we may not have to pay at least for radio, or at least that's the way it used to be.

But I think we ought to, if we could just have, that's right, a get together, and be thoughtful about it, right?

Because we don't want it to be scattered.

Thank you, Supervisor McKeel.

I want to say that two things.

First, I don't know if they still do it or not, but the Wildlife Center used to have a really, really good presentation on how littering ends up killing owls and other raptors.

But, you know, owls, people like owls.

And it was actually very good and interesting.

And I don't know if they're doing that now, but

and Keep America Beautiful has a whole host of informational, educational stuff that you can look at and borrow.

So if we do this, I think it's a great idea.

Thank you, Supervisor Palmer.

Madam Chair, thank you for the opportunity for the staff to be here this afternoon.

I'd like to really thank our key outside agency partners who were with us this afternoon.

It's great to see them in the meeting and appreciate their consistent hard work and relationship that they have without more county government.

And to our staff, thank you for your continued hard work as we move through the budget process.

All right.

Thank you, Mr. Richardson.

I want to echo that.

I appreciate all the work everyone has done, our partner agencies, for being here today.

This meeting will be adjourned until March 29, 2021 at 3 o'clock p.m.

An electronic meeting pursuant to ordinance number 20-A16, an ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

Information on how to participate in the meeting will be posted on the Albemarle County website.