Board of Supervisors Budget Work Session #4   3/22/2023

We are amending the agenda for today slightly so that we will have a closed meeting after the work session.

Thank you.

The reason I'm pointing out this box is that these agencies we'll be discussing today represent approximately 44% of that $3.2 million increase.

I'll just also interject just so that I'm sure you remember this that $300,000 we ask for your permission to put that in the contingency and so the board agreed for that to happen and so I didn't want you to lose sight of the fact that that $300,000 which was used to balance is in a contingency account and as you move through the remainder of your work sessions we'll keep that in mind because there may be things that you're looking at that require

I will turn to our representative from Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission December 2024.

In the end of this year, yes.

As I said, this person would be there to speak on the county's needs and how that fits into this larger regional system and regional discussion that we're having with the RTP.

So I just wanted to kind of connect a few of those pieces about how we're planning to use this consulting dollars and this analytical power for the future conversations.

No, this is a good time.

Not right now, thank you.

I just want to make sure I understand financial.

So it would be a consultant.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

I have to answer my questions.

But potentially related?

So that would be the difference is to have that analysis ability in-house and not just rely on whether it's CAD or Jaunt to do that for us.

Nelsie, does that?

All right, Supervisor Malle.

Please proceed.

I believe we'll have time to get into more details of their request after their particular presentations.

Supervisor Mallek, any questions?

And that is what you were referring to when you talked about the base going forward for next year.

Thank you.

Sure.

And we'll that's where I mentioned that we will look for some direction from the board.

But so is that 549K?

And so next year, we're going to see that proportionate increase in our fiscal 25 levels unless the board wants to make a different decision about service level when we have the conversation in the fall.

All right.

Or is it solely dedicated for transit?

Yes.

So it's really just a timing thing, Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

Thank you.

And so we had, we knew we were getting approximately the $550,000, but we, so we put that in there.

Thank you.

So at this point, I am going to turn the presentation over to our esteemed colleagues from CAT and let Mr. Williams go to CAT.

So our total budget is 14.2, of which if you take out John, it's 11,995,775 is what CATS true budget is.

I want to make sure that the board understands though that the ADA services that Jaunt provides are contracted by CAT.

That's correct.

Okay because the pass-through makes it seem like it's something different and so I wanted to make sure the board understood that.

Thank you, Mr. Williams.

Supervisor Malle.

on a regular basis.

So we hopefully won't see us sending over reports that we weren't able to provide service.

I know they have strings.

So we're working through that model and we'll have some information that we'll bring back to

Are you working with or can you work with PVCC or the Workforce Center, VCWP, to help with training people that you need to have certain skills?

So I believe that they're looking at spending that program back up.

So we're hopeful that we can launch a program this summer.

So we're also working at it from that angle.

So that will then also require an expansion of jaunt route to cover the fringes of all those duties too.

So wherever we expand service, jaunt will automatically expand their reach for ADA purposes through the orders of a mile.

Thank you, Supervisor McKeel.

because you've said you're going to be increasing these areas.

In most places, ADA is a local cost.

Yeah, but where would we see that in the, where would it be reflected in that?

The cost.

And what, and where, in your budget or in Kat's budget?

Can I ask you a little quick?

OK.

All right.

Yeah.

Because we have run into this in years past.

Just real quickly, I don't think no creative changes the bubble.

Then the 200,000 population is in the service area, or is it the whole city-county population?

City-county population.

Actually, I'll have a map about that a little later.

The age of your vehicles, Garland, I think is pretty old.

We want to buy something that we know is reliable and that we can make sure that we can, or be able to, operate for 12 years.

Did I, in my misunderstanding, were you thinking about the really big size?

So we still want to do our due diligence before whatever we buy.

I do want to thank you because I do see in my district and in the Rio district, I guess, certainly my district.

That means that we don't have any other vehicles in there.

I know.

I kind of knew that because you told me that.

I called Garland one day and I said I'm so excited because you're using the trolley in my district and he said it's not good news.

Unfortunately I wish it was but it's not.

Because I really do think it's an appealing and somewhere where we ought to be looking at this.

We're seeing a little bit of that already happening on the city side here.

And we have fewer cars on the road.

And the more people I get on the bus, the more I can help out with that model.

So those are, as the budget is passed as it is, those will be implemented.

So those are our focus to make improvements.

There are probably a whole bunch of them, but could you just highlight a couple of those recommendations?

We can send those over and you'll see a number of recommendations from them.

One, when you're talking about, now switching to the microtransit, your starting timeline, what are you thinking about as far as?

Trying to get there as fast as we can.

Well, I know that, but I was just curious.

So we want to make sure that we make sure everybody is aware of the service before we launch.

Where are we staying because people are going to say we're spending all of this money and we don't have shelters and we don't have pads at our bus stop.

I'm really going to push that through in the July, August time frame is what I was talking about.

Yeah, my understanding is that VDOT has the building services and they have always looked at shelters as if you were building a house.

Yes, they do.

And we may need to put some pressure

The jurisdictions can apply more pressure than that.

So this would be something good for all the counties to be looking at.

I think Sean Nelson mentioned yesterday that it might be the letter of support from the MPO and certainly the jurisdictions as well.

We're ready.

because certainly Albemarle is going to be responsible for paying for the shelters.

We just would love for you to help with the match, the local match.

I appreciate your time.

Coming out of it, as the UCA has grown, I need to go back and reference, but I think it's grown about 12,000 riders, population.

Pardon?

Oh, it's gone up.

Okay, so we have, our partnership now is higher than it was.

This is the group that can get to our service.

Regarding the buses, I know you answered the question about hybrid buses, electric buses, have you ever considered LNG or CNG?

But I would love to do that

It's the city that is not embracing this, perhaps.

I would say there's discussions at the city level that are looking at the use of gas, period.

So eliminating the use of gas.

Whether it's transit, heating homes, anything.

Is that something that you're actively working with the school district on to send out information to the parents, say, you can ride this bus for free, get your kids to school?

We are their contractor.

Right.

The county, at this time, I don't think they have expressed interest in moving down that path and putting their children on it.

But if the city can show that it's safe and people are using it, certainly in the urban

So in our new improvements, we do add more service on the Panthops area.

That's the way the transit model works, unfortunately.

Any other questions by supervisors?

It might be worth as you're looking at these to take a look at ACRJ and see if we can provide some sort of bus to our bus stop.

Six days a week.

Anything else?

I'm so glad to hear that because having Taylor be able to visit somebody more is so important.

We'll figure it out.

Because there are a lot of families that are having to use taxi cabs now.

This is correct.

Appreciate it.

So it won't be, it's a closed loop now, but we're going to open it up so you'll be able to

We're starting to bounce back and we're counting more accurately now since we've done some

Our ridership is, we're still at a reduced service model, but our ridership is almost pre-pandemic levels, even with the lower ridership, with the lower frequencies that are out.

And so with that, I'm going to turn it over.

So maintaining our capital requirements.

Okay.

On that particular example though, the Buckingham service is exclusively paid for by rural federal funds to state.

But that doesn't prevent somebody getting on in Mill Creek.

Right, but I don't think the county has any skin in that game.

Or are there some federal funding things that might

But for right now, we don't have a federal funding solution.

The bill and the IRA and all those other things don't have anything to do right now that you're aware of.

We're not legally, in some cases, able to apply for an urban grant, but we have to coordinate that through CAT, and that's kind of what we need to kind of figure out how to do that.

So if agreement happens, then CAT could apply?

Right, and there are some complications to how that works, who owns the bus and how does the money get passed through and it's just a complicated thing and I will say that the city has been open to discussing this so it's been a good partnership at that point.

Supervisor McKeel?

Help me out with that, what that model looks like.

I don't think they've been deployed very much.

because it's possible to have a mix maybe for a while where you would have electric use in the urban maybe and the gas buses still down in the rural areas.

and the public can charge during the day except when we need to be there during lunch hour and then so there may be some opportunities and part of our implementation study is to look at those centers.

Yeah, you might look at schools in the rural area.

We base our buses at the Green County facility which bases their school buses so maybe there's an opportunity there.

Very interesting.

Because we did talk about that a little bit for Kat.

Collect the money much more than we actually get.

Just to make that point.

Thank you, Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

Urban and non ADA.

That's an area that we do not receive federal funding to support.

But you still provide service?

Yes.

Thank you.

You mentioned just a moment ago, just to keep my curiosity about once you go fair and free, not knowing the Java writers and.

So it's a complicated story, one that we have not dove into as we deal with these other issues first.

No other questions, I will comment that I think the rural areas are very much a carbon footprint issue as well.

The challenges that you face, both of you, and I really appreciate your presentations, but to me the major message that I got from that was the

If we get the consensus from the board that this is the direction to go, then this change will be reflected in the May 3rd budget resolution that we bring before you.

Supervisor McKeel?

I got it.

This was great.

Can we all know now why we need that position?

We're gonna move into our follow-up items and Mr. Berman is gonna lead this discussion but as I said board for desired time for a break to do the switch over this one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If we're live

There are just three items that are follow-ups from the previous discussions with the board and then just a final check-in on the schedule.

All right, thank you.

So that is a recommendation to be happy to answer any questions from the board.

Supervisor Malle.

So, as I said, I was hoping to have some time to look at this to be able to understand it and also see how the different applicants were considered for each of these polls.

Okay, before we move forward, Supervisor Mallek, are you asking for that as part of this

So I'm trying to claw back to some of the information that we used to get three, four, five years ago about these and be able to see what we're choosing somebody new versus somebody out of the area versus somebody in and why.

Okay, so we have one supervisor who's asking for that because I think what you're asking for, Supervisor Mallek, is a potentially very in-depth analysis of the entire ABRT process.

And you obviously achieved, the staff group achieved some recommendations and some not, but we had no information about what was involved in that conversation.

I'm asking this question so that we can respond to the board best to give you all the information that's considered.

But I'm sure that there are documents that already exist that you went through with this process.

Yes, let's start there and we can, yes.

And so it's really trying to seek a balance of different goals that the different offices have for how arts and cultural funding can help be a benefit to the community.

So is one of the things that's implied in these bullets of agencies who provide services that the county would ordinarily have to hire people to do?

The pouring of funding and services into those few folks was so strong that it still scored very well even though it wasn't serving thousands of residents, it was serving a much smaller number but it was more of an at-risk population and we felt like that they scored so strong in some other areas they scored favorably compared to programs that had a much larger service base.

That's where my time, you know, time demand on staff is behind me.

to help people answer questions.

So I always respond to those queries and I'm happy to walk through sort of where the scoring was lower in certain areas.

So they should have received something, a notice from you talking about that.

We don't automatically give that level of detail.

Unless the future process, but certainly in the current process, we can consider what additional information the board would like.

I don't feel I have the information I need to be able to make any contribution or specific question.

Supervisor McKeel.

I would just like to clarify one thing.

We'll see if there's anybody else that's interested in that.

If I may clarify, we did not receive a request from the Festival of the Book this year, which is why they were not considered.

But it says here they didn't request anything.

Okay, somebody else had made a comment about, I wonder why we were shut out this year.

I'm happy with that.

One question, Mr. Bowman, do you notify everyone when they have not been successful?

If you requested funding, you were contacted.

No other questions.

And, Nelson, we talked about at one point you

But that might be a good time to have that discussion as well, so we know going forward.

Yes, same time.

Yeah, because that would be helpful to know just going into the.

That would be great.

Great connection.

So that is one scenario.

And so that's where that came from.

And thank you all for performing this analysis so that we can move forward on both that public hearing and budget to support the board as they consider this issue.

All right, thank you.

Supervisor Malle.

I guess it was up until a certain point when it wasn't anymore but we didn't quite catch on to that for a few years so we've been sort of catching up over a long period of time and I personally very much like your inflation model and if others agree it seems as though that's why we have reserves for making these kinds of changes.

I'm not quite sure which one you're recommending.

If you were taking the level from 2007 to increase the net worth based on the inflation model, which is his top one.

So net worth not on income.

That income change.

Supervisor McKeel.

I mean, I'm just putting it out there because I'm not an expert.

The net worth being at that $200,000 level, I'm not sure why we didn't look at that.

Do you remember?

So we did two things at once last year, but we did not address the net worth.

We can do that if we get some thoughts from the board on that.

Or is that something we try this year and say, I'm just throwing this out there and I'll say so?

It goes through that, both the budget review as well as the board's review of that program.

All right.

Or increasing both.

You want to come back?

I'm going to, yeah.

I think you're fine.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley?

Go ahead.

Well, I think there's kind of the decision that you would make in one year, and then that would play out.

Right.

Right.

OK.

Closes.

So this is for existing applicants.

Okay.

Jen, do you want to make sure that we're not saying anything incorrectly?

What is excluded from the net worth?

Those above 10 acres, the assessment on that, the value of it, will include it as your net asset.

Okay, I didn't hear that last one.

I'm sorry.

If it is your sole dwelling and it's 10 acres, if it's value $2 million, it's still basically

Alright, so I own, my house is paid for, it's worth a million, two million dollars, and it's nine acres, and my annual income is below the cap, then I can apply for this program.

As long as your other assets are neutral.

If you don't have any of those and you just have a couple hundred thousand dollars, wait, what would be the cap?

Currently it's $200,000, so it would go up to almost $296,000.

And you don't have more than

I'm just trying to get the whole scope of the picture.

All right, so I was just trying to get an idea that I have no problem with wanting to go if you want to go to Net Worth because I understand

Supervisor Andrews?

Income, you can use a tax return.

Jen, what do we do to validate assets?

so that we have an application form that listed all those information so but it's still an honor system like they don't really tell us we don't have a system really can dig into we try our best to look at the information we can to find it but if they try to hide it we yeah we're not absolutely able to find that information can I may answer sure okay thanks

If we think that there is a bad character that is taking advantage of this, do we, and I'm sure it would only be one or two, do we have the ability to check into that and make them prove something more?

So it's in the code that if we discovered the fraud, we can go back and reverse.

So

And that the county should look at imposing a maximum amount that we fund in a year, and that if more people apply than we can afford, then there's a pro-rata share that's provided.

I do think

I also don't know what it does to our public hearing notices.

There's some logistics that we need to work through.

And I'm very grateful.

So we'll be prepared to talk about that.

I think the citizen researchers have based on what they saw other counties in Virginia doing, which is where those benchmark things came from that were $450,000 net worth in some other counties that we like to compare ourselves to, but not enough.

Are we good?

I'll turn it over to Mr. Richardson.

but we could scratch the 12th and then manufacture some time in the afternoon on the 19th and try to try to knock all of the loose ends out on the 19th and give you back that afternoon the 12th.

I was gonna say no objection because I do think that gives you all a little bit more time to work on this issue.

Supervisor Galloway, I know, wants to revisit the fields that Dartmouth has.

and the recommendations that we've made for Biscuit Run, then depending on the direction the board gives us on the 29th, we may need until April 19th to come back if it's got either infrastructure or operating dollars attached to it for things that you want different or added on.

So it appears the board is fine with dropping the 12th of April.

and 711A of the Code of Virginia under subsection 1 to discuss the assignment, appointment, promotion, performance, promotion, salary, disciplining, or resignation of the county's chief financial officer and the county's director of human services resources.

Clerk will call the roll.