Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. I call to order, the Board of Supervisors for this 03/16/2026 5PM budget work session in Room 241. With us today, we have supervisor Mike Pruitt of the Scottsville District, supervisor Anne Malek of the Whitehall District, supervisor Frank Missle of the Samuel Miller District, supervisor Dee Lapisto Kurdley of the Ravana District, supervisor Sally Duncan of the Jack Jewett District, and myself, supervisor Claudette Borgeson, is with us as well. Caitlin Malcolm, our Chief of Budget,
and Andy Bowman, our Assistant Chief Financial Officer, are with us at the table. We're thrilled to have with us the chair of the school board, Doctor. Rebecca Berlin, and the vice chair, Ms. Allison Spillman. And I note that having their back in the front row, we have four school board members, Mr. Bob Beard, Mr. Jim Dilbebeck, Ms. Kate Acuff, and Ms. Judy Lee. Welcome. From the schools, we have superintendent Matt Haas, Maya Kumazawa, the director of budget and planning, and Rosalind Schmidt, their chief operating officer joining at the table,
amongst others around the room. We are all very appreciative of our officers that are with us today, Christian Hernandez and Justin Gibson. Thank you, gentlemen. For those who have done meetings here in the past that see new microphones in front of you, we still must speak out loud and enunciate. These mics are not for room projection, but it is for the online, so we do still need to speak loud, enunciate, etcetera, so that we're all picked up. Also, we learned the other night that, even though it's March and, you know, you could have snow and 80 degrees in the same week in Virginia,
it can get warm in here, so we need to leave the doors open. So any members of the public, if you leave, if you could just leave that back door open as you come and go, it'll help with keeping some airflow and keeping things environmentally cool. And I will note that the school board clerk is here as well, Ms. Christine Thompson. Glad I looked over there. Sorry, Christine. I didn't catch you on the introductions. All right. With that, we're here today to our fiscal year twenty seven operating and capital budget. So, Andy, I'm gonna turn to you first or should I go right to the school today? I have a brief introduction and I appreciate your comment on the room.
I thought it was just me on the hot seat game real loud. No. But, more seriously Thank you. More seriously, just a brief introduction as I usually do with the work sessions. This is the third work session of the board of supervisors on the county executive's recommended budget. No action is requested by the board of supervisors tonight. On the eighteenth will be the first time the board will be requested to take action in the budget process. The board certainly said this several times. I said this for the public that the board will propose a budget and propose tax rates for advertisement. That will, restrict the board's budget process because the tax rate the board advertises is the maximum
that can be adopted. And if that rate or lower can be adopted. We think this is a key milestone because at that point, the budget transforms from the county executive's recommended budget to the board of supervisors proposed budget. The conversation will then continue through a series of town halls and the board will hold in March and April that staff will be supporting, followed by public hearings and adoption budgets on April 22 with the public schools scheduled to adopt the budget, on April 23 for the school findings. On tonight's agenda, we will, spend the first portion of the meeting, with the Office of the School Board representatives to go through that request.
After that discussion and q and a, staff would recommend a break if for no other reason than to change our scene in. What we'll then do is come back with some technical updates that are recommended for the board of supervisors considering their, record their proposed budget on Wednesday and also continuing a conversation that started with the board last week about parking lot items that the board may want to act on as part of the proposed budget on Wednesday or later in April. There is no need to take that action tonight, but a lot of that discussion is helping staff help the Board have as productive a conversation as they can on Wednesday.
And then we will continue with debt management and CIP chapters. And if we're not able to complete those today, we'll pick those up at Wednesday's work session. So just a few slides, to set things up for the public schools and really recap a lot of discussions that have had. Ms. Kumazalan spent a lot of time discussing with the public schools, the county executive's recommendation. I've explained that to the board of supervisors, board members, and school members who've been discussing with each other. But for the public who may just be tuning in, the allocation of shared revenues is the formula that's part of the board's financial management policies. The way this works is there are revenues that are designated to be split every
year, and they are those revenues we call shared. So the state revenues for public schools, those are designated for public schools. Those are not shared. State revenues for public safety or building permit fees for processing applications and community development, those are not shared. And so, we have that set of shared revenues, and we look at how those change year to year. Once step one of the calculation is done, we move to step two where we make deductions for changes in expenditures such as the City Of Charleston revenue sharing agreement, which reduces the county's ability to pay for its own services,
the tax relief for the elderly and disabled program because that's statutory revenue not coming in, the Economic Development Authority tax related forms agreements. And so what this is is there may be a third party, whether it be a telecommunications company looking to improve broadband, a developer for affordable housing or economic development, whereas there will be some tax revenue for a portion of agreement that is not split because it is being rebated to the EDA and the developer. Once Once that agreement expires, the revenue is split again and the good news for everyone is the overall pie grows. So step three is after those deductions are made sorry,
I skipped one. The Board of Supervisors has also dedicated tax rate increases over the year that are not subject to that split as well that are called out on the slide. That leaves the remainder through the math, that where 54% of the funds goes to the public schools operating budget, 36% goes to the county government operating budget, and 10% goes to the joint debt service and CIP capital budgets. The last item is very important to note as that guideline may be reviewed and with board of supervisors approval. Very helpful after this long range planning tool, and there are circumstances in a given year where the board may choose to do
something different. So this some form of this, split has been in existence since the nineties, I understand. It actually predates my time at the county, if you can believe that. But in the, we went back in our staff and say, this century, in the last 26 budget, how often does the board do something different than this formula? And in 17 of those twenty six years, more often than not, the board has elected to look at the circumstances in a given year and do something different. Sometimes it's been for the year the, extra revenue for public school operations. Sometimes it's been for joint capital, sometimes it's been for county government.
Every one of those 17 has got a different story around them. This is really just to give some context to how past boards have viewed this adjusting budget. Other recap slide of public schools, I've shared this data with their staff, I've shared it with the Board and the public at last week's work session. As we look at things like the revenue sharing agreement, tax relief, other investments, it's just the perspective of what makes up these schools operating fund and how that's evolved over several years. So as I said last week, local schools are primarily locally funded with more than 70% of the school budget being
provided with the general fund transfer. You can see that in the dark shade of blue and how that's grown every time. It's actually grown every year except fiscal year twenty twenty one in the initial pandemic where there was obviously the craziness we were all living in six years ago. Unfortunately, that revenue bounced back stronger than the decrease was in the subsequent years. The state revenue in light blue. I don't want to steal the school board's thunder because I know they're going to talk about that in more detail and how that is shaped by the local composite index. But those two really explain just about all of the pie. There's a little sliver in purple for the other revenues that come in related to schools. But primary local funding and state funding is what brings us to,
which is in fiscal year 2027 and the County Executive's recommended budget a total school fund of $304,900,000 So last slides I want to share are just to help the Board of Supervisors consider what options and what decisions will they need to make before April 22. And so, there's two decisions that go together. There's actually a total of four, but two of them need to be made by April 22. Two of them can be made by April 22 or later. So the first of which is a question on what is the total public school operating fund? So in the County Executive's recommended budget,
option A, I'll call it, is a total of 304,900,000.0. That's an increase of $20,700,000 state and local sources or 7.3% of the adopted budget. Option B would be the school board's request where they have balanced their operations on $307,200,000 that's an increase of $23,000,000 or 8.1%. Of course, option C, the Board of Supervisors can pick any number in between above or below as they would like. And so, just for some historical perspective, the good news is this is a smaller gap than where we were the last
two years. But also to be fair, if we were to go back years three and four, doctor Haas would point out he was able to present a balanced budget to the school board, because of, the last two years were so impacted by the state revenues. So that's really where the difference is. Where I I don't wanna make light of $2,300,000 would certainly make a difference whatever services, but there's a lot of alignment in where these two budgets are compared to where we've been at least the last two years. The second decision and this one connects directly to the one time trip to the operating is what is that one time transfer to the CIP? High level alignment, both budgets transfer the onetime funding into the CIP,
but where they disagree is in the details. So high level agreement, disagreement of the details. Option A, as we've heard the County Executive's request is 6,400,000 one time and the mechanics are a little different from the general fund to the CIP. The public schools are $4,100,000 from the general fund to the school fund than to the CIP. Now, I want to highlight between these options A and B. If you total up option A, that's the $311,300,000 Option B totals $311,300,000 All the dollars are there, it's just how they're being allocated and the scope for which they are used. Then option C, and of course,
the Board of Supervisors will consider, they can consider a different amount of that one time transfer. Transfer. So two other things to think about that do not need need to be decided by this budget process unless the board would like to is first, number three, what's the use of that CIP CIP place order? The county executives has just left that to be determined, to the board of supervisors and placed that in and out here. Public schools have requested that be dedicated for public school projects. Finally, on number four, this is one we haven't talked much because it's really more of a planning exercise than a budget is what happens in fiscal year twenty eight. So in the county executive's recommended CIP, this is a five year picture,
the recommendation is to take 6,400,000 including the recommended budget and then to replicate that in fiscal year twenty eight to then have that apply in to that placeholder of $12,800,000 Now the reason for that is because a lot of the strategy around this is being very wary of the local deposit net exchange that could happen in fiscal year 'twenty nine. So if that 6 point $400,000 in ongoing operations is spent in fiscal year twenty eight, it would not be available to assist in fiscal year twenty nine should there be an unfavorable change in BRS rates or local deposit index.
So that that's the kind of the rationale of that. Right now, option b, there is no public school '28, process, so they haven't had a chance to weigh in. I think it's reasonable if I dare speak for anyone of the schools that there's not there's not agreement on the details in '27, so there's probably not disagreement on the details in '28. I appreciate the affirmative nod. But this is also not something the Board has to decide right now. So I want to make very clear that on option C, the Board can revise that $6,800,000 all through next year's budget process in the CIP. It's a planned and placed order that can continue to be planned for. So my intent here is really to kind of help shape all of the things
the Board needs to weigh in terms of what needs to be decided now or by April 22 versus later. So with that, we'll do a quick presentation change and I will turn it over to Doctor. Belen. Thank you so much. Chair Galloway, members of the board of supervisors, staff, and the public, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this evening. I'm Rebecca Berlin, and I'm the chair of the Albemarle County School Board representing the Whitehall District. I'm joined tonight by vice chair Allison Spilden, who is our at large representative. Allison and I will be doing the presentation tonight. This evening, we're presenting the school board's funding request for the 2627 fiscal year.
Our goal tonight is to briefly share the context behind this request, the progress our students are making, the challenges we continue to face, and the investments needed to ensure Albemarle County Public Schools continue preparing students for the future. As we begin, I want to emphasize the school board's request is a balanced, needs based budget. The proposed operating budget for the fiscal twenty twenty seven totals $311,300,000 aligning projected expenditures with the shared aligning projected expenditures with the shared resources and revenues available to Albemarle County Public Schools based on the Board of Supervisors' recently amended financial
management policies. This request reflects the resources needed to support our students, sustain our work force, and maintain the services families rely on to assure a high quality public education for their children. The request you'll see tonight reflects this balance between meeting student needs and maintaining fiscal responsibility. Strong public schools are foundational to a thriving community. They prepare students for college, for careers, and for civic life while also contributing to the broad quality of life Albemar County. High quality schools support workforce readiness,
strengthen local economic vitality, and help sustain long, strong, stable communities. For these reasons, the strength of our public schools is closely connected to the long term prosperity of Elmore County. Our constituents want a community with economic stability, property values that remain stable, a ready workforce, an economy that is strong, and a high level of public safety and health. Research shows that a well funded, high quality schools support these five characteristics of strong communities. Research also shows that strong public schools play a major role in community prosperity.
As noted by the International Economic Development Council, families and businesses look closely at school quality when deciding where to live, where to work, and where to invest. The National Bureau of Economic Research noticed that better schools produce a strong future workforce but also affect where families choose to live by strengthening the housing market and where communities can build a stronger tax base. And so the vitality and economic credential in Albemarle County is strengthened by the quality of our public education system. Allison. ACPS plays an important role in advancing the county's broader strategic,
priorities. Indeed, many of the county's strategic goals are directly supported through strong public education. When we invest in student achievement, safe facilities, and workforce readiness, we are advancing goals that are shared by the school board and the board of supervisors. Too often, board to board budget discussions devolve into debates between funding county government needs under the direct authority of the board of supervisors or funding public schools needs under the authority of the school board. However, the reality is that we share in the work of putting the taxpayers dollars to
work for the people of Albemarle County. Through the budget process, the Board of Supervisors must prioritize public needs and priorities within the school division and determining how best to deliver the highest level of education possible with the resources provided. To understand the school priorities it's important for us to provide context to the school division. ACPS proudly serves more than 14,000 students across 25 schools and programs throughout Albemarle County. Our student body reflects significant global diversity with students representing 97 countries and speaking an
astounding 81 languages. Across ACPS, 6,432 students qualify for free or reduced price meals. This includes 4,232 students attending schools that participate in the community eligibility provision where all students receive prerequisites of lunch as well as 2,200 students who qualify through individual meal applications at other schools. In addition, 13.9% of our students receive special education services and 11.4% are English learners, reflecting the diverse needs of our schools supporting these students every day.
Beyond our primary obligation to provide quality instruction, ACPS is also called upon by our residents to deliver essential services that support students and their families, including transportation, meals, health and wellness support, safe and secure environments, and counseling services. Lastly, during our two YG meetings, the question of class size and the belief that belief that Albemarle County is among the lowest class sizes in the state was raised. I think it's important to highlight the reality of class sizes in Albemarle County.
Maintaining low class sizes is regularly raised by families as a top service level priority and so ACPS is committed to maintaining reasonable class sizes. Most school districts in Virginia do not report on class size. There's limited data on actual class sizes across the state. The most recent data set which was reported by the National Center for Education Statistics is from the twenty twenty-twenty twenty one academic year. That is reflected in the orange bar. It's kind of hard to see down there. To see where the Albemarle County ranks, the dark blue is the average class size from that same time frame.
And in light blue is where we are today. You'll notice that we have increased class sizes for elementary schools and middle schools during that time while reducing class sizes for high school. You can see that the notion that Albemarle County has the lowest class sizes in the state is not actually the case. Our focus is to maintain the class sizes we currently have as well as feel as we have as well as we feel it creates a better learning environment for students and a more manageable workload for our teachers. Our employees are the foundation of the work happening in our schools every day. ACPS employs a diverse workforce supporting student success across classrooms,
transportation, nutrition services, facilities, and many other roles. About 24% of our employees are people of color, and more than 64% live right here in Albemarle County. Our teachers are also highly qualified with more than two thirds holding a master's degree or higher. We exceed state teacher quality standards with ninety four percent of teachers being fully licensed, ninety nine percent of special education teachers being fully licensed, ninety five percent of our teachers teach in their field of education, and ninety two percent of our teachers meet the experienced teacher standard. We have a track record of introducing non experienced teachers to the profession and building
their credentials to become fully licensed and accredited teachers within our school system. This is a significant reason we are able to attract and retain quality teachers throughout the division. The quality of our teachers certainly has a cost associated with it, but teachers are the hallmark of any education system. We're encouraged to see retention rates improve reflecting our continued efforts to support and sustain a highly qualified workforce. Our students continue to achieve strong outcomes. For the class of 2025, nearly ninety four percent of students graduated on time,
exceeding the state average and more than sixty percent earned advanced diplomas. Graduates are pursuing a wide range of post secondary pathways including four year and two year colleges, military service, and workforce opportunities. These outcomes reflect our commitment to supporting Virginia's focus on enrollment, enlistment, and employment as pathways to success after high school. Research also highlights the long term economic impact of student success. Each additional high school graduate contributes more in lifetime tax revenue and is less likely to rely on public assistance,
underscoring how investments in education benefit our entire community. The work of ACPS is guided by our strategic plan, Learning for All. This plan anchors the work of the school division and helps guide in every major decision we make, including our funding priorities. It centers on three goals: thriving students, affirming and empowering communities, and equitable transformative resources. Together these goals focus our efforts on ensuring that every student has access to high quality learning experience and the support needed to succeed. I'd like to pause for a moment on our vision.
Our learners are engaged in authentic, challenging, and relevant learning experiences, becoming lifelong contributors and leaders in our dynamic and diverse society. In this vision, you see that ACPS focuses on how our school system focuses not just on our students' education today, but also how that education collectively impacts the child over their entire school career and beyond. Furthermore, in our academy models, where we are deeply invested, we give students those authentic and relevant learning experience our vision calls for.
As part of our strategic planning process, we regularly assess progress toward our goals. Our mid year health check shows encouraging momentum. ACPS remains strong among Virginia's top performing divisions with reading, math, and science performance trending upward and graduation rates among the state above the state average. But we know we still have a long way to go. ACPS, like Virginia, and states across the country continue to see deep count impact from co COVID closures. We are at the at the same time,
we know there is still work ahead. Our top priorities right now include closing the achievement gap with a focus on reading and math for all students. We are also seeing positive progress across the organization, including improving teacher retention and declining vacancy rates, while continuing to address capacity pressures in 12 of our schools that operate over 95% above capacity. The data shows that our investments from the past two years, increased teacher salaries, a new reading curriculum, and reading interventionists are beginning to pay off, but we know we cannot take our foot off the accelerator as these changes will
continue to take time and make a long term impact. Research consistently shows that improvements in student achievement contribute to long term economic growth. This reinforces the broader value of investing in strong public schools, not only for our students, but also for our long term strength of our community. I have had the honor to work with our five student representatives, Maxwell, Max, Amy, Claire and Leighton, not pictured. And I have seen the amazing impact their ACPS education has had on them. In speaking with them, it is not just their classroom teachers that have made a difference,
but it is also their counselors, their mental health specialists, the principals, the coaches, the art directors, the nurses and the interventionists that have made their success possible. During the budget season, there have been a lot of conversation by both the Board of Supervisors and the School Board and our constituents regarding the rising cost of public service. This chart shows the total county expenditures by ACPS in blue and county government in green. You will notice that the cost for public services, whether from the schools or from county government, have increased considerably over the past ten years,
largely due to inflationary pressures, compensation, increased health care costs and increased service demands. Public schools today are responsible for a wide range of services that extends well beyond traditional instruction from career and technical education and preschool programs to transportation, mental health supports and other services that help students succeed. ACPS embraces these responsibilities. When we say we value equity, we mean ensuring that every student receives the level of support needed to thrive and succeed. And yet, while the growth in local tax dollars dedicated to ACPS over the past ten years
has increased by 77%, the addition of local tax dollars to government has increased by 117% over the same period. As noted on this next slide, although ACPS maintains a greater share of local revenues, there has been particular focus on increasing county government expenditures well beyond the increase to schools. This slide presents the same information in a different way showing the percentage of county operational spending. In fiscal year twenty eighteen, schools represented 62% of operational spending. In the current fiscal year,
that share is about 57.6. And under the county executive's recommendation, it should be about 57.5% next year. Over time, the percentage of school operations spending shown in blue has declined as county government spending shown in green has increased. As county residents ourselves, we understand the need for additional investments in fire, police, libraries, court buildings and parks. However, this raises two important questions we must consider. First, are we hearing from the public that investment in our schools should slow relative to
other government services? And two, while we recognize and support the need for strong public services beyond our schools, does meeting those needs have to come at the expense of students of Albemarle? Schools are projected to receive about $11,800,000 in additional state funding largely due to a change in the state's local composite index or LCI this year. In fiscal years 2025 and 2026, adjustments to the LCI reduced the amount of the state funding of Albemar County Public Schools received. The purple bars on this chart show what funding would have looked like
in fiscal year 2025 and 2026 had that change not occurred. In fiscal year 2027, the state has essentially restored the funding level. So this should not be interpreted as a new trend in annual increased funding. Instead, we should expect more typical growth levels in the future. We raised this point because the state increase was cited as a reason to reduce the percentage of local tax dollars going to schools. However, when state funding declined in fiscal years 2025 and 2026, the percentage of local tax dollars did not increase to offset this shortfall.
Instead, the school's decision made significant budget reductions to provide a balanced budget. I think it is important to look at the significant budget adjustments that the school board has made as a result of funding decreases in fiscal 'twenty five and fiscal 'twenty six. In fiscal 'twenty five, we increased class size, we made cuts to the Elementary Foreign Language program, we cut Department FTE and we eliminated the Assistant Principal Intern Program. In fiscal year twenty twenty six, we eliminated the Elementary Foreign Language Program. We eliminated the National Defense Cadet Corp.
We increased class size. We eliminated Freshman Seminar from the curriculum. We made cuts to physical education to reduce staffing and made cuts to media, to STEP and to intervention programs. We eliminated the furniture replacement program. We reduced instructional coaching. We cut department staff and we reduced instructional field experiences. These were each and every one a very difficult set of cuts for the school board to make. This year, we are making adjustments to our Elementary Teaching Assistant program to reduce program costs.
Across the three budget cycles, ACPS has implemented $9,100,000 in reductions, many of which involve permanent staffing and program changes. As we prepared the fiscal twenty twenty seven budget, the division identified more than 25 proposals to support our highest priorities. Based on community input impact community input impacts, sustainability and fiscal feasibility, these programs were narrowed to five targeted strategic investments: math and data specialists, special education services,
Scholars Studio sustainability, tech and textbook purchase and a one time transfer to the CIP of $4,100,000 By maintaining these reductions made in previous years, we are still able to present a balanced budget aligned with available shared revenues. While we often focus on our new investments at this meeting, this year, I want to focus on the array of services we provide to ensure student success that must be included in our budget every year. We are proud of the per pupil investments we make to support every child every day.
These investments provide the essential services that families rely on, beginning with transportation to and from school, safe and comfortable learning environments, and access to instructional media and technology. They also support the educators and professionals who work directly with students, including nurses, counselors, reading specialists, librarians, physical education teachers, and special education staff. These positions represent the minimum staffing standard for every school, ensuring that students across Albemarle County have access to high to consistent and high quality services wherever they attend school.
I want to take a moment to highlight everything that goes into providing a day in the life of each of our students. A bus ride to school, an air conditioned learning space, breakfast services, textbooks and learning materials, clean drinking water and restrooms, lunch service and supervision, cafeteria cleaning and support, recess on safe, well maintained grounds, secure Internet access and student devices, a bus ride home and evening custodial services. If we take away just one piece of this puzzle, our students might not be successful. A student without a bus ride to school might not make it to school like
that day. A student without a breakfast service may be too hungry to learn. And a student without Internet access and a student device may not be able to access the materials that are now online through our technology services. So how do these everyday services translate into our budget? This slide shows the $311,300,000 funding request organized by the major expenditure categories. The services we described on the previous slide are reflected across these budget areas. The largest share supports instruction and the educators who work directly with the students,
while our other categories fund essential services such as transportation, technology, building operations, student health and support services. Together, these investments allow ACPS to deliver the programs and services students rely on, supporting every child every day. They are the programs our families, our staff and our community rely on to ensure that our students are successful throughout their entire ACPS career. These students are why Albemarle County is a place where families and businesses want to be. These services are what make Albemarle an economic driver in Virginia.
As I mentioned earlier, research shows that sustained investments in education have long term benefits for students. Studies have also found that students who experience increased schools funding earn more as adults, highlighting the lasting impact of strong public skills in our economic development in Virginia. Now listen. This chart shows how per people expenditures in ACPS have changed from fiscal year twenty twenty through the proposed fiscal year twenty seven budget. Over this period, the total increase is about $8,000 per student.
The most consistent drivers of these increases have been employee compensation, health care costs, and strategic investments in student support. Like many school divisions across the country, ACPS has made adjustments to compensation in recent years to maintain remain competitive in recruiting and retaining high quality educators and staff. We pupil expenditures with This slide compares ACPS per pupil expenditures with other Virginia school divisions that have similar local composite index LCI levels. Our LCI is about 0.64,
which means Albemarle County pays a larger share of school cost locally than the state. For that reason, this comparison focuses on divisions with LCI values between zero point five and zero point eight. As you can see on this chart, we are the orange. When compared with similar divisions across Virginia, ACPS remains within a comparable range of per pupil spending. Back to Rebecca. As we conclude, we want to briefly highlight the capital implications of the operating budget recommendations. As discussed earlier, the $9,100,000 in reductions implemented over the past two budget cycles has provided the flexibility to support
a onetime transfer to the capital improvement program. In the superintendent's recommendation, reflecting guidance from the Board of Supervisors during the Board to Board discussion on capital school need and school capital needs, a proportion of the projected state revenue increase allows a $4,100,000 operational funding to support school projects in the CIP. This is in addition to the existing 10% CIP allocation in the revenue sharing formula and helps ensure that new or expanded school facilities can be sustainably supported in future budgets. The The County Executive's proposal instead directs $6,400,000
from the school's portion of the shared revenues into a reserve fund without a specific designation or identified purpose. Given these funds originate from the school's portion of revenue sharing formula, we believe that it's reasonable to ask whether they should be designated to support school capital needs. As Chair of the School Board, I ask that you designate the $6,400,000 to the schools. As you consider the funding request, we encourage continued collaboration to ensure that both operating and capital investments align with the long term needs of Albemarle County students,
schools and residents. Thank you for your time this evening. We appreciate the opportunity to share this information and we'd be happy to answer any questions. In alignment with our roles as school board members, we're happy to answer policy questions, but we will be ceding operational questions to the cabinet as needed. Awesome. Thank you, Chair Berlin. We'll go through with our supervisor, see what questions you have and we'll go from there. Supervisor Duncan? I don't have any questions right now. Supervisor Malek? Thank you. Thank you for all this information. I will just point out a couple of things that I wrote down as I
was going, not necessarily I'm not trying to be argumentative. I just wanted to point something out. On your Slide 14, it certainly is an increase in the local government spending because of catching up for twenty years of not doing any of the things that we needed to do. I just wanted to put that out there because our starting place was so low that the percentage looks big. So that is important to know. So the Slide 16, did I understand that I mean, so the increase in the funding from the state was 11.8. Percent. So 5.4%
is still staying in the schools with the County Executive's proposal. It's not all going away. In other words, 5.4% is staying with you and 6.4% would be going to the capital if in your proposal. Just so I make sure I have that one. It's being presented as if it's ongoing. And I just wanted to clarify that this slide says okay. Slide 16. So I just want to clarify that the numbers indicate that 5.4% of the new money from the state is staying in the school department. Yes. Yes. Okay. Thank you. And Slide 23,
I probably misunderstood something that was just said in the presentation of this. This sounded like the school portion should all go into operations. But local government for decades has paid the entire capital for school, and we're one of the very few counties in the state that does that. Many just say, here's your money, build your schools, hire your teachers and do it. So this local government portion is already very small. And in addition, it's already taking the capital out for the schools. So just want to clarify that, that was my understanding and others may have a different understanding,
but I want to just put that out there. Thank you. I'm done. Supervisor Pruitt. Like Supervisor Malek, I was actually also intrigued by the Oh, you just had it over here. I was looking at it. The comparative growth of, county operations and school operations. I was sitting here brainstorming like what the underlying cause of that divergence. And it occurs to me, am I correct in thinking that we own your health insurance costs? Is that an element of that? No. No. There's no. We have an additional $7,000,000,000 a month.
Okay. Because I know that has been a big driver of our cost structure. Ours too. It's increased 30% to 40% year over year for the last few years, yes. Okay. Interesting. If anyone on staff has particular thoughts on where to put the finger other than what Supervisor Malek has already pointed out about the divergence of revenue growth, there's this or sorry, the divergence of expense growth, if there's a pithy answer to what kind of the underlying thing to look at there or what the big story to take out of that is,
I'd just be curious. So, first time I've seen this chart was today. Sure. I know one big answer would be the, increase in just a change in the volunteer fire rescue dynamic Sure. Yep. Where volunteers were correct many years ago. They were saving the county millions of dollars and multiple cents on the tax rate by being there. As those volunteers have continued to request, supplemental funding, the county has been able to buy time with four FEMA safer grants, leave totaling about $12,000,000. As those are inspiring, that's required a different level of investment there. Last year, the board also increased, the affordable housing, portion of the tax rate for affordable housing.
That's $1,200,000 in Illinois County services that would have been provided before. I can provide a more thorough response to the help, but those are just two big things more recently that have jumped out. Great. During our for the public situation awareness, right, it's really normal that in advance of these conversations that we have in public, we meet one on one with some of our counterparts and sometimes senior staff. And I said something in that conversation that I said, you know, it's not it's not helpful to keep these kind of, important dynamics to ourselves. It's helpful to say it to each other.
And and to that point, I also wonder if it's helpful to say it in public, which is a core dynamic that I am concerned about, for the long term planning of our shared budgets is that the revenue sharing split that we have with the schools is like several important policies in Albemarle County older than I am. It's been in place since I think at least the 80s. And it is a worry I have that the revenue split is more appropriate for a more rural county that we were in the 80s.
As counties grow and become more industrial and more diverse as we very much have more urban, our revenues will start to outpace the growth of our population and the demands on our government will start to outpace the growth of our schools' needs just because that population is going out a different line. And there is an element that I do think while I expect school revenues and school funds to continue to increase over time, I also think it might be appropriate to gradually decrease the percent
of county funds that are going towards schools because I don't think it's sustainable in the long term. And for the same reasons you've heard us say that we don't think our we have I have concerns about the sustainability long term decades of our revenue sharing agreement with the city. It just becomes irrational over time and at scale. And so a value I see of this year's budget, we say pretty clearly that it on that dollar diagram doesn't say 54% for the
first time in a very long time. I think that is an important signaling effort, but I also would like to balance that as we think forward with how we can continue to provide schools the benefit of the planning advantage of knowing you have a reliable split, I think that will be an important challenge moving forward. And of course, I'm speaking for myself. I'm not speaking for the entire Board in this moment. But I think there is a value in revisiting the percent while still making sure your schools are adequately funded and also figuring out how to keep that value of knowing how much money is going to come in so you're not
doing one month of budgeting because that is not lost so many of the schools has to be much more agile in budgeting than we do. And we don't want to I don't want to make that strain higher than it needs to be. For the that's the 1,000 yard kind of discussion. For the more immediate discussion, I think the thing that I would hope our budget is accomplishing is it is making sure that we are saving in a way that is adequate and sufficient. That one, we're sending that message that I talked about,
about a first step toward reshaping what that split looks like and two, I would value seeing adequate planning for the major capital projects that the school has requested. I will be candid. I think both our requests meet that concern, both our recommendation and the school's request, I don't feel too precious one way or the other on it personally. I will refer to my peers on the board. I think we're mostly 4.2 versus 6.2 or whatever the numbers are is not a,
I think, radical difference in the amount that we're setting aside to capital. So I don't feel too precious one way or the other and would be willing to support the school's request on this. But I think maybe the bigger discussion is the bigger discussion. I will jump in and say, I agree on the long term planning. I think that's something that we have all talked about. It's really hard for us to plan next year what our programs and what our school needs are when we're finding out what our share of the revenue is going to be a few weeks ahead of time.
If we had a three to five year plan, we could economize on a lot of things. We could make those plans far in advance and know, okay, we're going to have this much money for the next few years or this percentage of it. We can defer this program to next year. But not knowing year to year creates a lot of uncertainty. And I'm not going to speak on behalf of the cabinet, but I can tell you on behalf of the school board wondering year to year what our priorities are going to be because we don't know how much money we're actually going to get. So I would be, speaking for myself, incredibly in favor of long term joint planning between our two boards with a three
to five year plan of what our, expenditures are going to look like, what we are going to be getting from our local government would make things a lot easier on our end and would potentially save a lot of money when you're talking about efficiencies and things like that. I'm curious as you talked about the funding and the percentage and your policy was just updated in November. I'm curious why that wasn't included in November during those discussions as we were why this wasn't something that was brought up then and why it was brought up just
recently, the change? Yes. I'm happy to address that. We could park that question because we're going through to answer questions on your presentation. So I think we can get at that I have no other questions. We would like her to take a swing at it since it's your I will let you take a question. And I will also just say I raised a lot of things. Yes. Now I don't want to pretend I'm speaking for the board. Same. And but I also think that it's, indicative of our shared desire to work together to have more common ground in this budgeting process. And just to your last point was what? Remind me the last thing that you said.
Oh, my last point is I I don't see the difference between our recommendations as being worth Yeah. I mean, our our numbers are so close. We're right there. And I think what our request bottom line is that we want it designated for the schools. We can we can make adjustments in that 2,000,000 on our side if we know that this money is going to be put aside for schools and not in three to four years changed for something else. That would give us assurances and we can make cuts, I think, on our side for that $2,000,000 Just as you're going through your staff, I'm sure Galloway and I talked about questions and making sure we get thought I
didn't we don't there is no follow-up that I see for any of our initial questions so far. But let's just I just want you and I if there's anything we're not answering, making sure coming out of this meeting we have a list of both of them for Young. To this point, I don't think there's any question. There's big ideas important big ideas, but not questions. But just to our conversation earlier, just making sure that we come out with a if there's a list of questions that are obviously that we provide this back to. Great. Supervisor, Alpise or Kirkland? Yeah. Chair Galloway, before I ask my questions,
I know that, mister Bowman had his hand up in response. I I wanted to provide a more thorough response to mister Pruitt's question on, jump slide 27 or sorry. That relevant to that slide. That one. So this chart I I missed this chart is just the general fund. It's all county fund. So capital projects, debt service, other special revenues. Not capital. Alright. Debt service and other funds. So as the debt service, when you look and I have a chart that's gonna show this later, back to update something I shared on December 3. So for county government,
in this ten year period, there's a start of the debt service for the course projects for Biscuit Run for Avana Futures. Those are dwarfing any county project that has been done before. And so we'll see that in a little later, but the debt service is part of the reason the operation is driving as well. It's not just the day to day personnel and public safety. Thank you for miss Kumazawa for helping me, clarify my understanding of that. Thanks. I just have, I guess, point of clarification. I know on slide 17, you talked about reduction. And I just have a question probably. For me, it's important as a former educator.
Your you reduced your department FTEs $500,000 was that administrative or for classroom instruction and teachers? It was both, but I want Mr. Gonzales to answer a question. It was department administrative staffing or what we call department based. So positions that are not based in school locations. Okay. So administrative? A lot of it was administrative. Okay. Any classroom teachers? Those would have been reflected in the class size increase where it says teacher FTE. So we did reduce teacher FTE as well as administrative staffing.
So it's both. Okay. And what is your ratio for schools regarding sister principals in a school, one in each school or is there a number? We have one minimum at each school and then more based on enrollment. Additional based on enrollment, like for example, for the high school, something like that? Yes. So we have different standards for elementary, middle and high. So one is the base and then at elementary, if you reach a certain number of students, you get an additional. At middle and high, the numbers are a little bit different, but it is based on the size of the school.
Okay. But you don't have any second you don't have two assistant principals at an elementary school, right? We do. Okay. Expecting I know you're we're getting monies from the state. You're getting I get additional revenue from the state. Are you expecting any other additional revenues from the state? Because I know they haven't finalized a budget. They're gonna come back in April. And, I'm I'm hearing that there's going to be additional funding. I have no idea how much it would be, you know, who gets what. But I don't I have you heard do you have an update on that?
We do anticipate additional funding based on the two versions of the budget that have been pushed through by the House and the Senate. We do not make a state revenue update until the conference budget, which is the negotiated in between budget is published. And at that point, we would make an update to our state revenue projection. Okay. And that could be as much as? I mean, it normally it's around this time, but my understanding that is that there was not an agreement on it. So there needs to be further meetings on it. Okay. So that could involve some more additional revenue?
Yes. Okay. Thank you. And the other question I have regarding the four point one and six point four, From what I understand what you said, I think, earlier is the six of the six or of the 6.4, you would want to be able to use your 4.1, if that was all given to you, you'd want to use that for operational as well as CIP. Is that correct? No. Am I misinterpreting that? Yeah. Rosalyn, do you wanna Sure. So if I got it, that's that side. Of the 6.4,
the school board's funding request is that 4.1 of that would go to CIP and then the balance, would balance the operating budget. Would balance the operating instead of the entire thing possibly going to CIP for a new school? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Supervisor Nessel? Thanks. Just I'll begin by saying, first of all, I really appreciated the onboarding process that has gotten us to this point. I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of this in general. So thanks to Bob, thanks to Superintendent Haas and to Rebecca,
Chair. It's been really helpful. The two on twos were really helpful too to understand the budget, getting a little bit deeper. A lot of the questions I had, and I echo much of what, supervisor Pruitt said, I'll just ask a few general questions. One is, we talked about the 11.8 state funding. Supervisor Malek, that was that cleared that up. I have a question on the I know we're talking about being very close on the numbers overall. Right? But I'm just curious, the 2.3 that shifted from operating to capital What would is there a way to sort of give me a general sense of
what that 2.3 would have been used for had it stayed in operating? Or is it just too general to ask that? Do you guys take that? So that's the funding request. I mean, that's based on the funding request that we have now. So it would be you could go through there and find a $2,300,000 out of the whole thing and say, well, that's what we're going to use for. But the funding request was built on that. That I understand. I'm just wondering if this 2.3 shifts from the 4.1 to the 6.4 and what that 2.3
goes away, what are you looking at? I mean, that would be a lot of up to the board at that point where we decide, we as a board decide what we would have to cut. Okay. And we haven't had those conversations yet. Got it. Okay. The other is just several of my questions, I guess, and I'm not sure whether this is the right time to ask them, but I'm really so Slide 11 speaks a bit to the strategic plan and it talks about the learning for all. And as you think about capital improvements and I've heard some of this, I heard some of this back in December 3,
when you think about long range planning and facility planning and you mentioned the need for $4,100,000 for CIP. Is there a plan that thinks ahead three to five years or maybe this is what you were saying would be helpful to have that we don't have? So there so there's two piece. Right? There's the CRP Yeah. Which is the five year rolling plan, which will look at what we need to do regarding investments for new bills or major renovations. Yeah. I think the piece that, Ms. Philman is also is talking about in addition to that is the operational.
And we spoke about that at the 2x2s. And we do and then I'll defer to Matt, but you will see us do we do last year, we did some year over year, planning for things specifically like, Scholar Studios where we made an initial investment, and then followed it as well as some of the technology pieces. But I think being able to have a split that we could rely on year over year as well as I think we've all talked about how do we kind of post this budget begin to have planning
sessions together when we talk about our share kind of shared values, look at some shared number, either budget numbers, but also demographics and then do some longer term planning. That makes total sense. I guess Yes, I know, but check-in hospitals. Yes, Good. Your question was about capital. It was. So I'm trying to get my arms around the street. You've got a number that's 4.1 and I'm like, where did that come from? Right? Is that part of a long term plan? Is it getting you to a point where you need to be in two or three years? Or is it sort of a remainder that then shifts the capital? That was a great question. So in developing,
the draft funding request, and then I'm gonna kick it over to Maya because, she can talk more about our long term capital planning. For the funding request, recognizing that we, we did have an increase in the LCI that restored our funding, that because of the variability of the LCI, we wanted to make a significant couple of months ago, Andy Bowman talked about the art of the possible. Yeah. So it was really about, putting funding into it to have some skin in the game so that as we do a long term planning, we've we've got some funding in there.
The other piece is that, it would help us to control the or to smooth over the bumps that come with the shifting of the LCI that we've seen. So it was a funding amount that we wanted to ensure would be significant, but at the same time, allow us to pursue the operational planning that we've been doing. I'll kick things over to Maya there to talk about our long term capital planning. I would just say that the plan as school board approved was what was presented in December and those were, hey, here are all the five year requests that we're looking for and then within that,
yes. And then that's kind of the starting point. And then from there through this budget process, we determine what is what can be put into the CIP in terms of what the revenues are. And so I think this is just part of the process and the school board making a plan without revenues in mind. Yes. It's just a list. And then during this process we look at what are the available revenues that are going to the CIP? How can we contribute more to it which in both proposals of budget each proposal proposes additional funding to the CIP on top of the recurring 10%.
And so, it's kind of bringing the two together and having the two, the CIP and operating budget work better together. And I would just add that what backs up that request, the CIP request is the long range planning advisory committee that produces a biennial, report to the school board, looking at enrollment, looking at projections, looking at housing, all of that factors into it. And, in the budget resources that we have, there's there are, every every two years going back for a long period of time.
I think it's interesting to go and look at that to see ten years ago what what were the plans that, the LRPAC was working on and see see what has developed since then. We we had an LRPAC meeting last week, and that was one of the things that Maya and I talked to the committee about was, you know, you if you're it's hard to sense progress right now, right, when you're in the middle of, requesting funding or projects are being developed. But if you go back ten years, if you go back sixteen years,
you can see things that have already been done through the partnership of the school system and local government. That's all really helpful. Thank you. One, I guess there's three things that I'll just kind of conclude with. One is predictability and having the ability to have some predictability, I think is huge. The other is being proactive. So when you think about that looking back ten years, how much how many of those decisions on capital were or even operating were being reactive versus proactive and how can we be more proactive?
And then the last thing is just the idea of the long term planning, both operational and capital. That's it. That, supervisor. So I to kind of in my life, in my Board as well as in my work as a on the Board, I really believe in this moving from the reactants to the program. We can't always do that, right? We live in a society in which government funding is changing, but the more we can do that, I think the better for everyone. And so I think that's a piece that is ACF is really working to do.
Great. Thank you. Other questions that have popped up? Yes. I have one other question. Do you know approximately how much you spend on professional development or is that school by school? I'm going to look toward the finance team to see if that's a number we can pull out. We might have to get that right and I will add that to our ongoing list. Some of my questions get a little bit just into the weeds and it's not an opinion or any of that. It's just simply to understand it. Sometimes at our CAC meetings, of course, course, we're getting ready to do our town hall meetings,
we will get asked to just explain what you've requested, not necessarily give our opinion on it. Now they usually want our opinion to follow, but before I give an opinion, I try to just explain things. So there's a couple of things that I did look I have not looked through all of your 180 questions, I think it is, what it was up to, 179. It's 180. So I certainly find it acceptable for you to say, we've been asked that it's posted online.
So by all means. So in your initiatives and I'm calling them initiatives left over from my days on the school board or if we had anything extra over the base operation, we called it an initiative. I don't know if you're still using that old lingo or not. But the math and data support specialists, there was a school board meeting that I set in on some point over the last couple of months that had two positions that I remember it wasn't as part of budget. They were presented, I thought they were at Mountain View. Is this a continuation of those kind of positions?
Is it the same purpose? So, yes. And I'm, we do have our assistant superintendent for instruction, Doctor. Hayes here. If you wanted to talk a little bit about that or I I can do it, but I'd like for you to have a spotlight. Now while she's coming up, the positions that are at Mountain View, were they pilots for consideration? So I don't now this is my memory not remembering now that night and going, wait a minute, are these they're there, they're actual FTEs at that school? Yes. So for context, that was a work session. Annually, we have a midyear data report to the Board,
where we present the most current math, reading and science data, that we are doing two things. We're looking at growth of our students in the current year and also projecting, SOL performance at the end. And so, what we did was invited schools that were beating the district in terms of their growth and Mountain View is beating the district, with math. And so, the principal, doctor Kennard talked about two positions he had put together from his staffing. So what he had to do was forego, a little maybe some class size or work with the staff to figure out creative
scheduling so he could free up a couple of teachers to do this work. That's correct. And so, this proposal, would provide specific math support for schools in our, transformation school program, that do include Mountain View. Those positions are a little unique in that like a reading specialist in that they are math teachers, but they have to go and obtain a math specialist license. And they would assist our schools, in a variety of ways, helping with pedagogy, looking at our diagnostic tools and our assessments to help teachers be able to make
real time instructional change so that they can address student, academic gaps in that learning in that particular unit or over the course of the year. They would also assist students that may, just display some gaps in their learning. So similar, like I said, to a reading specialist, but completely dedicated to math for those schools that we know are experiencing greater achievement gaps than others in the division. And how many FTEs equates to the seven zero six? Six. And then have you got to the point where you would go,
oh, this is where your data leads you to place these? Correct. Yes. So we've done that, to look at where the need is the greatest, but we also put a provision in the budget proposal that we would track how this initiative is performing. And if we did not see a return on investment, then we would look to move in a different direction. The sunset provision? Yes, that's correct. So just for reference, it's A36 in the budget book. And the other thing that Fred talked about or Mr. Missal talked about and recently was having metrics for proposals.
And so right next to that, there is a logic model that describes all the facets of that work. And there on A40, not too far away is our it's a previous year's budget proposals dashboard where it has a stoplight chart, where we track the logic models to ensure that we're seeing progress that we want to see or the project is still relevant and whether or not we would adopt new changes to it, adjust or abandon. Brent is fine. Thank you for that. I'm just trying to get to the page for my next Did you say A40?
A40. Well, it's related to I have it here somewhere because I was going to refer to it. The staffing that you're putting into, the ACE Academy, And Rebecca helped me with this understanding. But the idea so I guess what I'm getting at, I forget now, is there like seven how many FTAs are going in? This is answered and asked on your website. I'm just trying to find that answer now, so I can build on my question. I haven't done a good job with all these tabs open. So if you try to do So related to the opening of Go ahead.
Okay. Related to the opening of the new facility, Ace Academy, Lamb's Lane, there's 18 additional FTE. So the tangible example I always give is we staff every school building with a full time nurse. So when you add an additional building, you add an additional nurse to serve that building. It would be an example of that. Thank you. And I've got that in front of me now. So is this and look, I get it because it's the same thing in terms of police. This came up from a citizen question and how we staff and then we have trouble hiring them and getting qualified people,
etcetera, etcetera. So not a loaded question. But by putting in your special ed and the nurse and all of that upfront, saying those are funded FTEs, are you anticipating to go ahead and just have all those positions filled at the get go? Even like how when do you find out, oh, we don't actually need this particular FTE there? And what happens in that case? You need the funded position because it may be there in year two or three. And I get that. But if it's not there in year one,
what happens to the FTE? So I think every FTE that we budgeted, we feel like we need on day one to support the base programming of that school. I think additional FTEs in year two and three would result into an increasing student population if that's needed, more instructional positions. But at a baseline, with the number of kids we anticipate, that's what that FTE count represents. But you're anticipating all of the positions in opening ACE are there from the get go from day one? All the positions in the budget, yes. I want to I think it's important to note too and this confused me,
so I wanted to bring it up is that as we're shifting these students to that new school, it's a reduction in FTE from the base schools to make up for it. So while it looks like we're adding 18 new employees, it's really a shift from one place to the other because at first I looked at that and was like, woah, that's a lot. But really it's less from Monticello or Woz or Albemarle to make room for that. And it corrects me as I got that. Correct. And so, yes, the instructional staffing in particular. And that's similar to how we used to do KTEC before the city took it
over was we would essentially reduce schools operating budget, staffing budget to ensure that that staffing would follow the students at KTEC. So that's a long standing model. Yes. And appreciate the points because on here it says that net new is 16.8% and that's after you adjust for your Right. And Rosalyn, maybe it would help with the explanation that you gave me in our two by two's with Sally when we were talking about how you came up with those positions. I found that really helpful and I think Ms. Duncan So anytime we allocate positions in the back of the budget book is a
pretty robust staffing standard, right? Similar to your assistant principal conversation, there's a formula for every position. So when we took this program, we looked at our staffing standards and we took it position by position and debated it. Just because the formula says it doesn't make sense, right? And so we gave the example of the nurse or the new facility does have an assistant principal and there was a debate about what would that person do. And so we had robust conversations position by position. So again, that's why I can say confidently we feel like all those positions are needed to
support that program from day one. And I've just never thought about this before. The positions at both your first academy at the Comdau Building, ACE, what's that one called? Similar to that. Center one. I couldn't pull that basically. Does Center one and then the ACE Academy do all are all these positions considered for SOQ funding? Well, like when we run into the state gives you a bonus, but they don't give it to your second assistant principal that we carry, etcetera, at certain schools for good reason. Do their principals,
assistant principals at these academies count as SOQ funded positions? I'm assuming the teachers do. And I don't even know if that's a good they are not considered a separate school under There's a center. So but it's really just goes into the total of teachers and all of our not all of our teachers are not covered by the by anything with the SOQ. All school systems across Virginia operate well above the SOQ. But Maya can give you a better sense of, like, what percentage of our teachers are covered with SOQ.
We don't look at positions and whether like by school or by position. It's really more of a division line. So there are certain ratios for the entire division of say 25% of the teachers are covered under the SOQ. It's not by school or by, you know, it's much broader than that. Are you counting the students that attend there still in their home schools? Yes, technically, but that's up to it doesn't truly matter how you count them. They're still ACPS students and they will count in whatever ratio is defined by the
SOQ. So whether we choose to count the students in at the centers or at their base schools, it doesn't really matter in terms of state funding because it looks at your division as a whole and overall ratios. I think I understand the logic and if I say something that makes it seem like I don't correct me. But if you have how many students are projected to be at ACE? Like 200, 400? We're up to five sixty requests at this point. So if you do the math and ACE didn't exist,
those 500 would be in the school building somewhere else? Correct. That's correct. Would it justify those 500 students a full assistant principal and principal position? Because you're adding one of each. Yes. So you're saying that if we didn't have ACE Academy in center one, there would be an additional assistant principal per high school? Not necessarily. It depends on the I mean, that's a position by position, conversation. So there's like threshold. So like, it did not reduce an AP, right? It reduced teaching positions at the base schools. If we did not open ACE Academy of Lambs Lane,
we would not be funding an AP position. So that would be savings. We're adding an assistant principal at ACE Academy on top of what the assistant principals are staffed at in current schools. So we're not moving assistant principals. So it depends on the position. That one we're not taking. Theoretically could be true for all 16, but you could be adding like a Skoll Security Officer at Albemarle or something like that. So I mean, technically speaking, you could have some of these would be added at the schools anyway, even if they weren't. Alright. I get it.
If I have any more curiosity on that, I will follow-up. The way you do class size with economic disadvantaged school populations and do that differentiation, I think I saw it in the staffing model. The same thing is done at the high schools? Yes. If you could go to slide 21, this is the per pupil expenses. This is an interesting way to show this. So I will just give some, highlights on this. So this this came, because one of the, I would say, most frequently asked questions that I would say, we receive as school board members from our constituents,
you receive from your constituents and we receive from you as I kind of track over the years is this big question and the change in per pupil expenses. And so kind of the school board asked Maya and the finance team to try to look into it and make it as clear as possible, right? It's as clear as mud. But what if we could say what are the biggest drivers over the past kind of twenty to twenty seven fiscal years, if you can pull those out and show what those are. And so kind of coming to the top are compensation we have made a significant
investment in compensation for our teachers and our school leaders and our staff, to keep them competitive in our neighboring jurisdictions. But I still say that we are still twenty fourth in the country in Virginia, right? Our teachers are underpaid. And then we've already talked about health care costs, right? The burden all of us are paying kind of on health care costs going forward as those continue to increase. And then new proposals, and so kind of Mr. Joe Galloway used initiatives, proposals, those are the things that we have brought forward that we want to add in
the most recent budgets. And those are things like our addition of reading interventionists, this year our addition of math interventionists, our addition of mental health counselors when that ARPA money went away and we needed to cover those costs. So I'm going to let the people who designed this slide talk about it a little bit more, but the intent of this was just to show to kind of agree, yes, our per pupil costs have gone up. And the reason why kind of our outlines are kind of in this chart.
Well, let me say a few things and then whoever is going to or you mentioned someone, There's obviously a lot of story or detail behind this graph, which you've just been walking through, which I appreciate. So to kind of further along that thinking, is the enrollment number specific to your student growth minus special circumstances? Because your special education number is going to be built in not just growth, but growth of students with special education needs. So is that the way you've broken it out, is that enrollment number just the pure,
I hate to say it this way, average student who doesn't need additional services number? You may answer or would you ask the answer? There you go. So what we, and we'll provide this. This is this is the the background of all those categories of what's exactly in each You think I can see that? I'm saying we will kind of see that. Third one now. Yeah. Alright. Line 17. No. But that that's all the detail for this? It's all the details for it. So what we what we did is we literally went by budget book by budget book. We took every change and try and tried to categorize it in a way that
would make sense, right? And so enrollment was your example. Is anything related to enrollment growth or a shift in demographics? So you pointed one exactly out, special education. There's been a lot of increase specifically with that demographic group as those needs have increased. So that figure does include special education growth, increase in special education services, increases related to CSA, English learner growth and then what we've called growth, but it's actually a negative number related to just our baseline enrollment.
Yes. So what is that oh, the baseline is meant to represent the just the pure data comparison of the number you had then versus now. Correct. So and that's the corresponding dollar amount to the reduction in students? Yes. Okay. BRS, I get reductions, I get enrollment, getting there. I would are you going to share that with us? Yep. That would be awesome. So I don't think I could don't have to spend more asking those questions right now. And I'll add that to our list of things to get out of you guys on. I would just add one more thing in understanding this chart is that our
enrollment has increased slightly, but steadily over this time period. And as your costs go up or as we add these services, if the enrollment isn't increasing at the same rate, that's when the per pupil numbers jump up. And so pre pandemic when we were growing very quickly, our per pupil amount stayed very flat because as our enrollment increased our expenses increased at about the same rate. Things changed throughout the entire Commonwealth post pandemic in terms of students there and the services needed.
And so I think this reflects the shift in services that were required after the pandemic and the shift in the rate of growth and how we were adding students. So it's not just the expense side, it's also the student enrollment side that impacts these numbers. Got it. And I appreciate the similar type because I think I found that in your ed resources piece where about half of the dollars put into ed resources were for the ed software subscription, which is like $3.86, almost $400. So then the remainder of that you're estimating is for the textbook increase in the
initiative. And does that like, how does that never mind. I'll follow-up with that question. The I'm going to state this is going to be more of a statement than and you can tell me if this is a way of thinking about it. I'm not I don't want to suggest it's the right way or the wrong way or the school's way or the local government's way. Related to the CIP dollars and the two different recommended budgets, if we track track just track the buckets that have been presented by the county executive and the superintendent, I wanna make sure that I've got it and how I understand it over a
three year period. Okay? The was and and and I don't we've talked a lot about planning. I I'm hearing the call out, which I agree with, about some different planning and some timing things. But the 4.1 that's recommended for capital in the superintendent's funding request, the school board's funding request, Is that just for year one? At this point, yes. At this point. Okay. At this point, it So the intent there would be in year two since that 4.1 is part of your which would be part of your base moving forward, that 4.1 would go into operations next year.
Could. We have not had an explicit conversation. I think what we did was just set a one time transfer again for future flexibility. So yes, one year. I would recommend though to reflect the strategy and the county executive's recommendation to do a transfer for two years, so that when the LCI resets we would have that money should we need it in year three. Again, not a conversation we've had with the Board, but as part of the strategy with the LCI and reacting to that, the two year set aside would make the most sense. Okay. I'm tracking you because that's what does that level I mean,
again, I'm trying really hard not to sound like somebody did or didn't do or whatever. But that it's starting to be along the parallel lines of thinking of what's in the county executive's recommended budget. Regardless of where it's earmarked or how much or anything like that, we're saying that we have an issue that's going to exist over the next three years that's not predictable. We didn't know this a year ago. We have done some financial things. In fact, we did it three budgets ago, I believe, where we started budgeting in one year, really more for impact in year two to get us to the third year.
So that level of thought is what is the type of planning that the local government side has started to do and do with regularity since coming out of the pandemic essentially. So I think part of my so here is how this would track then. If the 4.1 goes into CIP this year, and then just for sake of the point, the 4.1 goes into operations the next year, then at the end of year two, you've got 4.1 that you could use for capital. You've got 4.1
dedicated to operating. If the state's LCI adjusts not to your favor, you don't have operating dollars set up to compensate for that? Correct. Because it's in operation? If that's Well, you would. You'd have 4.1 if you decided to pull it back. Because you would but you're not dedicating that 4.1 in the second year, so now it goes away. So by the time year three comes along, that 4.1 is gone to you as an operating backup. This isn't just an annual budget process. Process. And I would say if the 4.1 were approved in this budget cycle,
then we would have a conversation to say, okay, next year should we do the same thing in preparation for year three? So you're saying if we gave you 4.1 in the CIP the way it's recommended and you dedicated to CIP that next year, that four one's going as new dollars for an additional CIP amount? It might. Well, I know it all might. Yeah. That's part of what we're reacting to. We don't like the mites, Maya, because that's what gets us into tricky trouble every year. But we might, that might happen. Yes, but I think that's what starts. We're going to get in front of our Board on that question. So I mean,
the nice thing about it is that if you if it's set aside, then you have the flexibility in the second year to do it as opposed to putting it into the operating budget. But if it goes into the operating budget, then at the end of year two, you only have four one set aside for CIP? Correct. And the four one's built into your operations. Right. Then if an LCI does change, even if it's not drastic to your negative, you don't have that four one to drop front from because you plowed it into operations to your portfolio. You're assuming that we're putting the four one back into operations. That decision hasn't been made.
You're right on assuming that. I said that. That's my assumption. The first assumption I made was in year two, you put it into CIP, then you have 8.2% set aside by the end of year two. So I've got two different lanes of thought going on. Right? And right now all that's in the funding request is for sure the four zero one going to CIP, the remainder going to operations. Correct. Because it's a one year request. Yeah. But with all due respect, I mean, your recommendation for the 6.1 isn't even going to schools right now. It potentially could go to schools, but it's also a might.
Just like this is a might. It might go to operations and you might put it with public safety. I love that you're anticipating where I was going on our bucket now. So in our bucket, we put $6,100,000 aside for CIP. We do that in year two. Now we're up to $12,200,000 set aside for CIP. 12.8, six four, six four. So that coming into year three, if the LCI doesn't adjust, there's 6.1 waiting to be used for operations. Oh, I know. There's, what, there's probably three or four mites in there.
Mhmm. Right. The but that is a way to think about it. Yeah. So my whole point, right, is that first off, year in and year out, regardless and we've been doing this kind of multiyear thinking in our budget for three or four years, we are finding that year in and year out, it's squishy. And it's reactive to what we are facing in a given year, which isn't squishy, which is reality. So how we plan with that and how we work on that, yeah, it sounds like we should probably do a better job with it. But what the county executive has set up
would mean that by year three, and I'll see if I can elaborate on my mites again to be clear, 6.4 into CIP, not earmarked for anything. Another 6.4 setting us up 12.8 of reserve for CIP projects the way it's listed right now, stated that if the LCI swings back to our disfavor that year $3.6400000.0 would be ready to help compensate for it, right? That's the path of thinking. And all I'm trying to do is restate what our county executive has said to
us, say it out loud so that people knows that nobody's confused on this side what the county executive has recommended. And I would say and or but. What we are saying is because of the stated policy right now, which is fifty fourthirty sixten, technically that 6.4 is part of should be part of the school Schools want it. Yeah. The money. And because of that, that is why we are asking for it to be designated however we decide, you know, at the supervisor or to hold it in a CIP specifically.
I think at the end of the day, like that is the difference between like as we went back to that slide, between kind of your the company's asking of our Because yes, that $6,400,000 is coming from the operational budget. We were saying we're going to put $4,100,000 in CIP. You're saying you're taking $6,400,000 of our operational budget and putting it into something else. And I think that's where ma'am. And I would also say the reason why we made a big deal that like even with all in the last two difficult years,
we were able to be really fiscally responsible and save $9,100,000 Some of it was onetime, but much of that carried through. And that is why in a way we have the ability to then say, hey, we could take this $4,100,000 out and put it but what we're just saying is, call fair, fair, like you don't mean like draw the line like based on when we started the discussion, technically, it's a 50 four-thirty six-ten split. And so in that situation, that fixed point, Clark,
is the Schools portion of revenue and we are asking respectfully that it'd be your mark for schools. And I'm going to get rep you all in here in a second, but I got to continue with this level of thought or I'm going to lose it. And then once it's gone, it's gone. Because then there was the timing question about when y'all found out that this particular split was going to come. I am not, at this point, going to get into the staffing debate that happened. I think it's clear, and there's emails to support it. And if there are questions about that,
then our salves can work that out and get back to us. The piece beyond the 6.8 or the 6.4 number going over in terms of being held back or going into the general fund revenue, you all were aware of what we did with the dedicated tax last year. You were aware that we wanted to pull that forward the next year And directed the county executive to do that. So that was last April, May. That impacts your split ratio as well. So was that aware to you or understood that that was moving forward and we
weren't moving forward the point four for the schools as a dedicated rig? I would I would say, it was not as clear as it needed to be. Okay. And not a gotcha question about how to spell it. Not a not a gotcha person. That's what I would say. But when it becomes about, like, planning and what is being communicated Correct. Because now I'm not making this all up. We all had individual two by two meetings and different things, I think, surfaced in those meetings. But there seemed to be without well, it's there was general a comment about some being confused by that.
While I feel like I have to say publicly, this board was clear what it was doing when we made those decisions, not just for the dedication of the tax rates last year, but the call out for bringing and carrying it forward into the next years until we say otherwise was clear. And that is something that I think I chalk up into the column, Chair Berlin, when you say, yes, moving forward, what can we learn from this twelve month cycle to make sure we do point wise? So I think when we true up and we prove our final budget at the
end of the year, you all kind of do it like in a week or so. I mean, depending on where the state is at. Correct. Right? But at some point you finally go, bam, budget is done. And I know in years past, especially when there have been larger gaps, it's never been clear to me how we got to the balanced part. So that's kind of the thing on our part for understanding, I think, could be in there. So I'm taking these as notes out loud that these are points where the boards might think about how the heck do we get together on those type of things. And again, on the timing of a few weeks before or a month before,
I mean this is not something that knowing how budgets have worked now from both the school division side and the local government side, I know that a county executive budget or a superintendent budget is not exactly well known in September or October. Right. You do a lot of work through the end of the year to decide what you're going to do. So there's going to be a point in time where some information, the mites in a given year are going to change. And that can be that can be painful to deal with, especially since, as I said at our at our county executive's recommended budget,
that the process that the state does for our charges for both ports sets up an inherent tension between the two of us. That no matter what would happen, that is there. I have some other comments to make, but I want to invite other supervisors in. You've heard a lot. You've heard your fellow supervisors ask questions. There may be additional questions from the Chair and Vice Chair of the School Board that they'd like to introduce. But let me just do a check-in with everyone. Supervisor Duncan? No. Good tracking. Supervisor Malek? No, I don't have any questions right now. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt?
I don't know. Supervisor Lopisto Curry? So just a point of clarification, going back probably about twenty minutes, regarding, the new ACE school will be one principal or assistant principal. Is that coming from the high school since they're going to be or not? In other words, how many assistant principals are at the high school? Albemarle has Albemarle High School. How many APs? We'll look up that exact number. Yes, we're taking students from Albemarle, but it wasn't enough of a decrease to to reduce the,
number of APs. Okay. So you still the number of APs at Albemarle, even though you're Five. Reduction in students, that would still remain the same. And then you're adding an AP at ACE. Theoretically, if ACE and center one were to combine, there would be one AP. Yes. So you really are doing it by building, not by In that particular position, yes. For that particular position, yes. Okay. In the elementary schools, do those have a ratio? Yes. Yes. Okay. At some point in time, if you can. Yes. Thank you. The thinking around that is that there are certain staffing in terms of administrative staffing
like assistant principals. Those assistant principals still have the students going to ACE Academy every other day. So they are still reporting to the base school. And so based on those detailed discussions that Ms. Schmidt was talking about on what's needed at each school, those it's not like a new school where those kids are just all going to the new school. It's a hybrid model. And so it does add some redundancy in administrative staffing. But for example, with Mountain View when the kids are actually moving from one school to the other,
in that case an assistant principal would move with the students because the enrollment at that school is actually changing. So it depends on the type of school that's opening and the position and how their responsibilities are going to change with the new building. And so that's a great example. So currently Mountain View Elementary has one principal and two APs due to their size. They are over 800 students. How many? Two. Two AP one principal and two APs. How many students? Over 800. And so when the new school opens, each school will have one principal and one AP.
So in that scenario, we hired a new principal, but the number of APs has stayed the same. So your ratio must be around, what, two fifty? It's both based on both, total number of students and we do a differentiation factor, so based on free and reduced lunch population. So a school that has a higher at risk need, has additional support? So it's, assistant principal, and this is all in Section G. That's we have our staffing standards. We have a staffing standard for every position in the school system. So for assistant principal,
there's one per school, there's two per school at 700 students. And then if it's if you have, four greater than 300 economically disadvantaged students. Okay. Is there a reason for that? Are you having additional discipline problems? So there oh, you go ahead. Yeah. I wouldn't necessarily just tie it to discipline. There are many factors that students, bring to school that require additional support. Sometimes it may be discipline, but also being able to work with students and families
whether it is, social emotional supports, whether it is, providing additional resources working with our community. Sometimes we have partnerships with Region ten, different organizations that those positions help support. So it's not solely tied to discipline. Okay. And so have them, mental health? Yeah. That that is that is correct. And so some students I mean, we have several students that fall into different categories of of need and such. Yeah. And we and and you and I have talked about this recently where it is true that elementary schools have an assistant principal.
However, prior to doing that, we had if you look at the slides that talk about all the things that schools provide, we didn't include year round testing. I mean, when I was a teacher, we didn't have SOL tests. We had exams a couple times a year. That was about it. But now the state has growth assessments, through assessments. We we have midyear assessments. We have reading assessments. All those things are going on. In a small school, if you don't have an assistant principal there, the teachers manage all that. And so you end up farming out for a pittance to the teachers a stipend
and say, hey, you get to be our testing coordinator. Well, then they're spending inordinate amount of time on testing. So one of the things in our conversations with principals at the school and teachers at the school, staff at the school, they requested consideration to have an assistant principal at the school. And we built that into our budget fairly recently. It hasn't been, it was, I think, just prior to the pandemic that we added an assistant principal. And what that allows teachers to do is to focus on instruction. Okay. So your assistant principal does all the testing.
Is that They do everything, you know, and then, you know, whatever the principal assigns. So it's it's all those duties. And what that does is allows teachers to be teachers. Right. No. Understood. Understood. What you need you're what you're saying is you need an administrative position for that as opposed to, like, an instructional Yes. Okay. Because the the other thing they do is they also evaluate teachers. So they're able to do that because of their endorsement. Thank you. The help of management. I was just gonna take it back to, ACE Academy for a second because that's Lance Lane because that's where this question we
kind of began with Jared Galloway. And then also just a reminder because this is meant as we think about enrollment, employment, enlistment, like this academy is really talking about employment as we think about the needs of the like the principal and assistant principal are going to be doing everything Doctor. He spoke about and Doctor. Hayes spoke about. But in addition to, they are helping part of this work is about internships and job based placements and connections with the business community as a way to make sure we are preparing our
students for life. And so that piece, another reason that, that ACE Academy needs to start kind of with that bundle of staff is to make sure from the beginning those students are getting, what they have been promised at that academy because that teaching is just a little bit different. And because we are making sure we are having a good relationship with the community and that we have internships and externships as part of that. Yes. I look forward to seeing that data. And we do have to indulge the board of supervisors, we do have our principal of the ACE Academy at Landslade here,
Stephanie Carter. You might recognize her. At one time, she was the director of KTEC. Hi, guys. Welcome. Welcome. Well, Ben, supervisor Missal. Great. Thanks. So I'm going to rip off a little bit of what Chair Galloway was saying relative to the 4.1, the 6.4, the 2.3, a light bulb went off in my head and I think everything I do relate somehow to real estate. So what I would say, I mean, this is essentially maybe simple oversimplifying, but hopefully it'll be helpful. It's contingency, right? We're talking about contingency planning. So when we do contingency on major capital projects, we have hard soft hard soft contingency,
soft cost contingency, This will Matt will get this and you'll understand this. And also now escalation, right, because who knows what tariffs and what the market's going to do. So there are categories and there's rigor behind those categories and there's discipline and there's a common decision point where you say, am I going to spend that or am I not going to spend it? And it's based on convention. So 10% hard cost going into a project under construction. So there's structure there. The struggle that I'm having is I don't feel like that's there. I feel like some of what we've got is the reason I asked way back
about that 2.3 and how that was going to be used and what's the 6.4 really based on it? Is the 4.1 tied to some sort of convention? That's what I'm struggling with to get my head around to try to get to what is the right number. So I just wanted to say that for what it's worth. It's how my head got wrapped around it. 30,000,000 is the number. 50,000,000 is the number. Yeah. Right. To target. All right. So to just wrap up a couple of comments, I think it is important to know that on the local government side, we've always had police,
we've always had fire. They've because a lot of times we talk about FEMA and what we're dealing with and addressing in that. But in just my personal eight years of being on the supervisors, and this didn't exist when I was on the school board, the two biggest issues that are here, one helps us and one's a real problem, is economic development was really not in existence nine or ten years ago. And economic development can yield us more revenue that will help us all. But that is something that did not exist as a strong point my first year on this board and wasn't even really being discussed when I was on the school
board in 10/11 or 12/1314, and '15. The other one's affordable housing. Affordable housing, Mike, has become the issue that year in and year out is the top issue that sucks the oxygen out of the room for just about everything. Wasn't there eight years ago at the at the high I mean, I'm sure there were some advocates out there who were going ignore this at your trouble and boy were they right. But it just wasn't it gets a lot of airtime for us, month in and month out at the Board.
So those are two brand new things. And if you want to talk about, like somebody had asked the question about are you being asked by your citizens to divest or to slow investment to schools. Well, first off, we're going to go through some public comment periods coming up in town halls, so we'll see what they're recommending. But I can tell you that for the past, what, six years at least, we've been getting strong pushes to put millions of dollars into the affordable housing initiative. So that's just a reality that we have to make sure we understand.
And I'm sure there's a lot of different commentary on whether that's good, bad, or maybe some are indifferent about it. But that's just a reality that exists. The third piece I'd throw in that is note that in some ways is similar to your increasing enrollment population, or maybe not as increasing, but students that show up who need more needs and services. We see that on the local government side as well. And it's just part of having an urbanizing ring around the city and the reality of what's happening where the growth is targeted to the development area. So while we're adding citizens,
just the same for you, depending on where they're at and what they need, it's a different hit to the cost structure than just adding one person, right? So I offer that as a way to say, I think we both have shared pains in what we contend with in terms of costs and what your relative rise in those costs are. The other piece I would say to the joint planning part, especially as it relates to the CIP, because that's a two way street as well. And the only way to do this without it sounding,
tension filled that I am aware of is to say the state's charge to y'all is to bring forward that needs based funding request. The state's charge to us is that we're the ones fiscally responsible for the whole county. That's our charge. If we did joint planning and we said, well, we'd like a say in how you spend your money, you'd laugh us out of the room. You'd be right. But for us to try to come over to your side of the fence and say, well, we're going to give you $6,000,000 new operating dollars and here's how we think you should spend it,
I would say to anybody doing that, that that's an opinion and not really our business. Right? Because I understand what your charge and responsibility is. Well, we and you should hold that dear big time. On the board of supervisors' side, that is also how we look at it when we say, well, we'd like to open up the responsibility of that fiscal planning piece. So we have to find a way to go, okay, we have to stay in our respective lanes and adhere to our charges by the state, and figure out how to communicate probably back and forth.
By December close out, end of the year, the two things that surfaced from the last joint meeting in December was priority and capacity. And you're all response and letter back to us talked about that. It's it sounds like, purpose And, legitimately that predictability is part of that now in terms of the three things that are there. But I don't want us to forget what our charges are, what our lanes are. Because when you stand in front of voters, the question is how well did you do at your job and fiscal responsibility of how the monies were spent was part of that question.
When we stand in front of our voters, it's where's our tax rate, how much are you taxing us, what are you using it for, right? And how are you holding to the fiscal policies that you've set up in terms of the big picture? 10%, right, is our cap on debt. The 2% cap is on the total, about of the now I get my 10% my 2%. Say it again. The assessed value. The assessed value. And staying strict to those policies is our job. And we've stated that that's going to be the case. So those are the types of things that we have to be record we have
to contend with when we're dealing with folks. Your school students last year in the town hall meetings, by the way, that we felt came in and advocated for climate change. Most of them. It wasn't about school budget. It wasn't about because it sounds like that's been part of the curiosity. What are you hearing from people? So last year, it wasn't them saying fund the schools or getting into that, but boy, they were like give money to the climate change initiative. And one caught me on it. He was great, man. You wanna talk about catching me flat footed. One of your students did it last year at North Fork and asking me about
our climate policies and asking some really kind of data driven questions that that I did not know the answers to. Right? So that's what we're hearing from students. I think generally speaking that the public right now is we do have advocates coming hard for different money in terms of housing. We are going to get into it a little bit later today about what we are going to do on it. And yes, there are advocates out there for schools. But it stays at the general level of fund this, fund that. It doesn't necessarily get down into, say, pick this over that kind of thing. They want it all,
if you would. Or they don't want it all and they just want their money back. That's the all that they would like. So as we go through the town halls that start this Thursday, we invite the school board members to come join us at those, to listen to what public feedback we're getting. Of course, we have more public hearings and emails coming in. And I'm happy to share those pieces with the school board as we hear them if we don't feel like you are getting it from our side. Likewise from your all side. Staff, any, Mr. Superintendent or County Executive? Any items you'd like to give the opportunity?
Any final thoughts or words? No, sir. Thank you. Andy, anything on this item that we need to well, I appreciate the request coming forward. Yes, I'm sorry. And did I not give you guys a chance to do another piece? No, I was just going to what I was going to say in closing is going back to your kind of economic development of affordable housing. We here in CU affordable housing, I was just looking at the numbers, almost we had 400 students who have been served by McKinney Vento. Like we see those kids and we serve them every day. On the economic development, I'm just going to go back to where I started and high quality schools are
part of the and high quality schools are part of the economic development of our community. That is why people want to move here. That is why people want to retire here. That is why businesses like AstraZeneca want to come here. Here. If you ask any realtor, the number one thing people are asking about in this county when they they come here is our high quality schools. And what kind of we as the school board ask is that we continue to invest in those schools because it is the it is the engine both for for today and for our future. Yeah. I think all six supervisors not in agreement with you on that.
Mhmm. However, our tax base is dwindling on how much money we're accepting from people. And it climbed on residential and property tax and declined on commercial. And if you don't have a strategy to bring those businesses in to diversify that, then we're really going to be stuck because there is going to be a point in time where those folks come after us for the tax rate piece. Well, we know costs are going to continue to plummet. Supervisor Mallet? Just one thing. I always think about the events that imprinted on my brain in 2008. One of them was all those years ago,
we had on our CIP the court project for twenty five years. So this is I mean, the Pay Me Now, we've gotten there and now that's a huge impact on our CIP budget and that. And the other is the JO improvements that had to be done for the safety and success of the process over there. And those two things together, Trevor, are probably $100,000,000 So it's in addition to the $196,000,000 for the new schools, etcetera, it's an example of how things have evolved in just twenty years.
And we have to try to do our best to keep up. Any additional items? The debate doesn't stop today. If there's questions you all want to raise, please by all means, because that's what we're doing in the budget process. I think we could commit as a Board that the Chair and the Vice Chair can get together with the Chair and the Vice Chair, the School Board once both budgets are final and kind of say, compare notes on to what what could potentially be done better process wise, and see how that goes forward. Awesome. Thank you again for your time. Sorry to staff. I've probably taken too much time,
but this was important, I think, to do. But we'll we'll take a recess now. All right, everyone. We're going to come back to order. Thank you all for your patience as we work through that big chunk of the budget, so we should need to take some time. Andy, am I coming back to you to do the transition into the next item? Yes. Just switching the presentation. Oh, thank you, miss Fountain. So, restarting, we wanna take a moment to update the board of supervisors on some recommended updates to the recommended budget. I would call these technical in nature. And what I mean by that is that every year,
we get to a point in the budget process where we have to stop things. And then we learn things that had we known about them in the February, we finalized the budget, we would introduce them now. And so, the good news this year, these are all net positive to the board. But I wanna take a moment and walk through with the board so they understand what they are. So, most of these changes are in general fund. The first item I would acknowledge is not an update, but something the staff does on a regular basis is continuing to review our revenue projections. So we, we met last, last week just to see if there's anything else that came in February to suggest
there is a change either in the current year or next year, and we show no evidence of a change needed to our revenue projections. So that's just to acknowledge that work was done rather than a change. So on the expenditure side, we have a net savings. The first two are some regional public safety agencies. And so, the regional jail and the Blue Ridge Juvenile Detention Center are building their budgets as part of the county's process, as part of also the budget processes and the other partners in those agencies. And so because of that, it's common to have a, what I'll call you, a pretty close estimate at the time of the budget,
but it will get revised as they continue to refine through their budget committees and their boards, which the county has representation on. And so based on what we've learned in the last month or so, really, we can refine those estimates whether it'll be about $300,000 savings combined among the two of them. Next, for Charlottesville Area Transit, as they are a part of the city, the county executive's budget comes out before the city manager's budget. So county staff continuing to work with the staff at the city were able to identify there's about a $150,000. Well, I'll just call it a refinement.
It's not a change in service. It was just tightening up the numbers as the city finalized their budget. The final one is a change the other way that was really an administrative error that, I'm I'm kinda bit I'm a little embarrassed, but we gotta own up and do the right thing. Where as part of the human services funding process and all of the eligibility requirements, there is a set of of requirements for eligibility the board has approved. One of those is to have a completed audit. Fiscal year twenty five, the reclaimed token initiative, was funded as part of this process at $25,000. And, last year, they were actually removed from the process because they're unable to complete the audit.
It was just about completion, it wasn't about anything troubling on the audit, it just wasn't done. So they were removed from fiscal year twenty twenty six. They did, however, got back in good standing and so, had we not missed that in prepare performance, and the fact that they, did the good work to get back in good standing to be eligible again. And so this is one where staff would recommend reinstating that funding. If the board includes us in the proposed budget, I will reach out to Reglan and Hope to apologize to them as I'm sure this caused some unexpected confusion and frustration. And again, the board says framework and expect staff to execute on that.
So I apologize we missed one in the budget as well. So the net result of all of these changes in the general fund, is just we have to put those savings somewhere. And so for the time being, staff has moved them into the reserve of contingencies. I'll talk more about this in a minute. But this becomes a source as the board continues to refine its parking lot. The board can shuffle this funding as they see fit. The other adjustment does not impact the general fund, and that's in a special revenue fund because there are restrictions by the state where, this county will receive funding from opioid abatement.
And, we did not have a good estimate at the time of the budget. We can now, believe we can rely on about a $125,000 next year for the restricted programs. So those additional expenses and the revenues that funded are being recommended to be added to the proposed budget as well. I'll just pause there in case there's any questions before we move to the parking lot. Supervisor Duncan? No. Supervisor Malek? No question. Thank you. Supervisor Proust? Hope you would abatement or are we restricted in what we can do with that? Sorry, I didn't hear the question. Hope you would abatement. Are we restricted in what we could do with that? Yes, we are. Could you walk me through it?
Ms. Vivek, as the subject matter expert on this, would you Broadly, we're restricted in using it to address behavioral health prevention and treatment and the strong preference for something related to substance abuse and then even stronger preference for opioid. Is I see it being set aside into a reserve, right? Like are we are there designs that we're angling on how to eventually leverage this funding? Or is it still in the early planning stage? Supervisor Laveza, currently? No questions. Supervisor Missal? No questions. Alright. So as we move to the parking lot, there are some areas of funding the Board of Supervisors could access to fund any
changes they are desiring. So I've broken this down into some ongoing and one time sources. First, for the ongoing reserve contingencies, that amount is greater now because of these technical adjustments. I spoke about this last Wednesday and, you know, historically, there's in the ballpark of a minimum of about $250,000 used in that for things that come up during the year. So I would recommend to the Board that they maintain a few 100,000 or so for things that come up, but above that, this is this would be a very reasonable decision to allocate some of that differently, or the boards could choose to maintain that and make a decision later.
But that's a tool that would be available to them. Of course, the board could also reprioritize any else that's being used for only one funding in the budget. One time revenue, very similar, about $510,000 at the one time reserve, just like we were last week. We've also discussed there's one time money planned across different things in the budget, the Board could shuffle those as well. The one reserve we haven't talked about because it's in the CIP is there's just under $400,000 remaining in what's called the CIP Advancing Strategic Priority Reserve. This is something the board has used in the past to advance initiatives.
Obviously, the Board could also reprioritize how capital projects are. But just for a moment to go a little deeper into that capital reserve, just like I did with the reserve contingencies last week, this priority reserve was established in fiscal year twenty twenty and it's been used for a pretty variety wide variety of things shown on the slide, including some last year that the board adjusted in the budget process. So this is another one, it's one time money, but it would be available for the board if there was anything that they desired. So moving to the parking lot topics, these are items the board has identified, not as a collective, but just as these are things we'd like to discuss further in the context of
bushel adjustments. There were, community non profits, two were identified in the meetings. We are a therapeutic docket, the Foothill Child Advocacy Center. Say, through today, I received a list of others the board would like to discuss further. I will not read those aloud yet unless it would help the board. But it's, those are bucket of agencies there. Some are follow-up questions that we owe the board, others are where the board may like to see an adjustment, or both. Next is the Affordable Housing Investment Fund. There was a little discussion of this last time. That's something the board choose, to discuss and amend further. Also, just flagging because now that schools have made their request,
there is that question about their operating and capital transfers. And then, also, the board may consider either tax rate, either in total or any desired rate modifications. And so the Board does not need to take action on any of this right now. I think from staff's perspective is really what can we do to help the Board on Wednesday, whether it be other items not identified on the list, are there items where there a consensus from the Board to do something versus perhaps only one individual who may desire something and the other Board is not comfortable? That's can be also decided on Wednesday, but knowing that,
we anything we can do as staff to help you all knowing that the board has not also heard the entire budget at this point when you see IP in debt. And so I would just probably at this point turn it over to the chair to see if there are other items that we do have identified, other items that need to discuss now, or just anything else staff can do to help the board get ready for Wednesday. Okay. So in an effort to kind of operationalize or contextualize on the past, I'll have each of you, if you haven't maybe thrown anything out there yet, let's get it out there on the table. Two, if you've got things that you've kind of throw have already put on the table
but wanna speak to, I think is a good time to do it because others can then start thinking about it, before we have to make any final decision. And then what was the third one that you just oh, if you need requests for more information, I guess that's Yeah. I know we received some that are under the works, but just anything new that has, kind of kind of popped up. Yes. Alright. And we'll give some grace to supervisor Duncan as we go through everybody else. If we need to come back, we can. Supervisor Duncan? The only other one I still would like more information on is Microcat. Like, I did see the email and presentation and stuff.
Is there a way to get, like, the more detailed report that's kind of behind the slides, especially on the you know, where they're coming and going from and also other demographics on the users? So not to answer all those questions on the spot, but our ability to answer those questions, if you could comment on that. So the I I will have to get back to you on that. I'm I'm not sure we can have it by Wednesday, unfortunately, because we we're relying on getting information from the third party vendor, and sometimes that takes a little bit of little bit of time. We've asked them for the Alamar The US specifically about Alamar High School.
So we will have that data very shortly. But, it's possible before Wednesday, but I can't make promises. We'll try our best. We might have that from previous report. I would have to go back through what the RTP has received in the past. Well, I guess that's my question. Do you want our most recent report as of the last time it was updated to the board? Or do you want I think that's the one that you emailed. Right? Yes. So you want something in addition to that? Yeah. Yeah. I guess I didn't I haven't read it super, super closely. So maybe that's in there. But, yeah, I guess the most the most recent data there is.
Yeah. That the most recent report we provided to the board had was more, broad strokes other than total number of rides. And so the specifics weren't as tight other than we had that, what I call the spider web chart that showed all the lines of where the rides are coming. But there's additional data behind the top destinations, top drop off points that kind of stuff that we could provide. It wasn't necessarily fully baked out in that presentation. Got it. Is there anything else? No. Supervisor Malek? Thank you. I thank you very much for continuing to work on the goodies I've sent to
you this afternoon and this morning. I know that's extra. From last year's budget discussion and again last week, I raised the issue of county taxpayers funding city focused organizations. And I want to bring that up again in relation to these many pages, 106, 107, two seventy one, all these for agencies because my big point is I represent the Whitehall District and by extension the county taxpayers. I do not represent or have fiscal responsibility for residents in another jurisdiction.
So we are always being told that budgets are really tight and we need to make careful choices. And I'm just throwing out some ideas of ways that I think we might choose differently. The second point is I really support increased arts investment in the county. We often do not do what other counties even much smaller, less affluent, wants to do around the country to support our art practitioners and also the culture benefits that they provide. This was particularly evident during COVID.
And we made very good use of the COVID dollars that came. Other counties just chose to do it differently and that's the way it is. I understand it's up to the agency to provide county attendance information, but we shouldn't be just saying, oh, okay, never mind. I would really I think that's important information that since it's been raised for three years and running, I guess I'm surprised that we don't seem to have it available. I couldn't find anything in the books for the Paramount for Live Arts for the Virginia Discovery Museum for the UVA Film and Theater Festivals.
Although I think the theater festival is predominantly local that we don't bring that is it doesn't bring in faraway people to do that. I do support consideration for funding for the CVL band. It's 140 years old and it does bring in visitors from far outside the local economy on a regular basis. They have monthly concerts. All their concerts are free. I think that I received, maybe it was this morning, an e mail with some extra details because somebody sent me in the grocery store
and asked about it. And I said, well, I need more details. Go get your director to send more details. So that's what's in that e mail today about the concerts that they have. It's a favorite activity for grandparents to take grandkids to. The concerts I've been to mobbed with intergenerational outings. There are musicians and attendees from all over the region. Over in the Valley, lots of musicians come over Far East as Guichlen to come into the area to provide this music for us. They do it for the love of doing it. My all those years of panelists,
it certainly didn't provide me with the skill that I that they have to do that. Most of their concerts are located in the county. They travel to schools. They would love to have concerts at Monticello High School, but it's difficult with the high school schedule to be able to get those schedules worked out a year in advance, which is what they really need in order to have their music ready to play when they need to do that. They introduced children. I've seen the petting zoo before the concerts where various instrumentalists will bring their instruments down and mobs of children go and see what they're all about and hear what
they sound like up close. When I joined the Board in 2008, the band got $16,000 It had between $16,000 and $20,000 annually for decades. When the recession came, it was cut to eight but they really need this for their operational expenses, almost $50,000 or for the concerts alone. While the Front Porch description tells a lot about music for preschoolers and other groups in the county, there's no parallel explanation for the X Art Park. The park is a county space. There's city restaurants and businesses all around,
but I don't know what it does for our County residents. I raised the value of Live Arts last year. I have attended one play there in the last thirty years, but it is not easily accessible for County residents, Similarly, for the Discovery Museum. Similarly, for the Jefferson Center, which has proposed to have a huge increase in dollars this year. Yet, I don't have any information available about how that is helping the county. Every county agency who wants to rent Carver or the big auditorium has to pay a big fee. So it's no different than wanting to have a meeting at the Code Building or
the vault as far as competition with non subsidized spaces. And I love the Paramount, too. It's a city institution and a very successful historic restoration. They used to do wonderful educational programs for all the elementary kids in the county, buses. I was a chaperone for twenty years of various classes and going down there, wonderfully well attended. I would be happy to just fund that, but that's not happening anymore as far as I can tell. And yet, they still read their facilities
and also charge a per attendee fee for their programs there when county agencies want to have something there. So returning to the category of bringing in extra visitors to the county, The film festival brings wonderful visitation to the city. And if I had information about the bump in hotels for that weekend in county hotels, I might feel differently. But despite asking for that for a long time, we don't have that either. The Festival of the Book, I feel differently about because it does take authors to schools and really has an impact for county children,
and I really appreciate that. All these agencies do good work. I know that. The question is if county residents tax dollars should be used to accomplish it. And that's all I have. Thank you. Please think about it. All right. So in terms of what you some of this is county service numbers, and I've seen that raised in a couple of other emails. Is that something we think we're going to be able to get at by Wednesday? So some of those we add, I think the more focused, few particular agencies, whether than all will help. And some of those, well, in their applications, they provided some,
and we'll do the best. I'll say if it helps the board, you know, the relative to the changes in the budget, the agencies identified to date are smaller than some of the really big shifts that could be considered in the budget. I say that knowing there's only two member two board members have spoken, not four. But it's one too where if there were adjustments desired to arts and cultural festivals beyond Wednesday in the proposed budget, there's still time for the board to work through that before April 22. There's to be a much larger realignment of things in the budget that could take a little more time to talk through.
Yep. So I'm I'm just kind of kind of listening to figure out how we can best support the board. You know, that some of these things are underway. Got it. Tax rates specifically for Wednesday. So a follow-up question, I understand. So, but as far as the policy decision, when would you propose that that happen? Not before Wednesday is what you're saying what I'm understanding. Yes. So, I think if there's information we can provide that leads the Board to a different direction to put in the proposed budget, I think that would be appropriate for the Board to build that in there. In the event we're not able to, provide everything,
the board will still have an option to refine that. The proposed budget is, is not set in stone. Things can still be amended from there. It's really when you get into those items where the tax rate becomes an implication, that's where it becomes much more. And that is the volume of these requests so far, not having total them up, is not going to be $3,300,000 which is 1p on the tax rate. Right. But as they say, take care of the pennies and nickels take care of themselves. So I mean, this is my whole upbringing here. I can't go where you're going as far as I was only $1,000,000
because it my philosophical question is what I've been raising for years and I'm trying to get it on the table now so that it doesn't just disappear until next March. Thank you. And hearing the call out that if it's inside the technical adjustment dollars, that that's we have more time on that than if we need the tax rate fees. Yeah. Supervisor Pruett? Yeah. I I will say slightly off topic has been raised just to the previous point. Well, well, I'm not sure we need to necessarily I personally don't know that we need to, adjust any one necessarily I personally don't know that we need to adjust anyone down inside of this
budget cycle after we've already told them one thing. There I do think could be some value we've talked in the past in the recent past in comprehensive and economic development planning about the arts and the role of placemaking, in our future. I do wonder if there is perhaps additional criteria or some additional strategy that could be used to leverage these organizations that we partner with to kind of push them more in the direction of thoughtful placemaking that is county focused, while continuing to try and make sure we're meeting the ask on resident service,
right? Like, hey, festival x, can you do can you commit to one event per quarter in the county, something to that effect? To prepare for Wednesday, it's already up there, right, tax rate and dedicated tax rate modifications being something that is, of course, a critical decision point. I don't want to get in a position where we're all equipped with what a penny on the dollar on the property tax rate is, the sorry, the real estate property tax rate is, which we know we've received
requests from the public to dedicate a cent on the real estate property tax rate. I would also like just some data that we can have on the screen on cents on personal property tax rates and also the breakout of revenues raised on personal property and machinery and tools since those walk hand in glove. And also, I think we're anticipating that machinery and tools becomes a more significant part of our tax basis as we diversify, especially the industries we're diversifying and being ones that implicate machinery and tools more heavily is something that's breaking somewhat frequently.
I am not sure I have a particularized like ask in mind, but I know that staff in this board is pretty familiar with the fact that I believe we are always underfunding ACERP, the emergency needs program. I might feel differently if I felt we had more deep service on housing, right? We have broad service through housing investment. We have deep service through federal programs that we administer, but we don't have county administered deep service beyond a server. At least that's my very,
I would say, pithy, kind of summary of this. If we had If we had a grant program, I might be less bullish on this. But otherwise, I might want to be in a position to entertain a discussion of additional fundings and current demands on ACERB as I am every year. Okay. That's all I got. That's helpful. We can pull some data on that. If I can jump back to answer your question, just for perspective on the cultural agencies because I don't my comments to be received is flipping about the dollars there. But the total unfunded of cultural agencies is $260,000.
The board has not identified all of those on the list. Some of that $2.60 comes from a whole agency. And so that's one where the board has got some flexibility in those dollars, to make directions if they feel they would like to based on the additional information staff provides. The band, isn't the band like a strikingly small difference between what was funded and unfunded? $3,000 $3,000 They cut it from eight, which is critical. Right. It is significant for the band. But to your original point, it is a rounding error for the county. Supervisor Lapis O'Kearle? Yes. I would like to see this list.
I know a lot of us know because we have gone to these places, attended these things, but a lot of us do know, some of these a lot. And, I'll just speak for myself. I'm not aware of all of them. I, I've mentioned this before that the one CIS Nova, I have no idea. I've read about it. It seems to put everything on the school, the teachers and everything to develop things, which I'm I'm against because I think they have enough to do. But I would like to see, and I mentioned it to Andy. Do you wanna speak to that?
Is that the CIS Nova? I I I absolutely can. Okay. So communities in schools is a national best practice program that's more tested in a number of settings. It's, been initiated in a couple of schools and now more public schools. It has, proposed an expansion. It, provides essentially a conduit between schools, parents, and community based resources so that community resources that would traditionally been have been a referral per, agency for kids and their families out into the community actually come on to the
school site to provide the service during the school day or close to the school day to ensure connections for kids and families to the needed service. And so it has, positive outcomes for school attendance, school attachment, and achievement. So they're they're basically doing what, someone else at the school. I mean, making sure the kids come to school and and if there's services that they need. What what concerned me is reading about it, it just said that we work with the staff. The staff develops a program, what they're going to do,
what they need. I don't know. I seem a little onerous, maybe not, with your explanation. And if certainly, if it's beneficial to children, I mean, that's what I'm all about. So, you know, possible. Okay. Maybe. But what I would like to see for this, because I may learn something from where my fellow colleagues that, you know, how they feel about something. Like, I'm passionate about the Charlottesville Ballet. Why? Because I know a lot about it. And the fact that they they help, they're at the center of Belvedere. They help people with, you know, Parkinson's. They help,
people 50 and over, you know, for dance classes and and everything. I know none of us qualify. But, you know, for people that are 50 and over, they they have those classes, and they help children. They give scholarships. And 58 almost 58% of their Charlottesville Ballet are students' children from Albemarle County. So that one I'm in it. It wasn't funded to the extent that they wanted because they wanna expand on, these other free programs for adults,
people with disabilities, intellectual disabilities, and such, and do all this through dance. Mhmm. That's one thing. But what I guess what I'm guessing what I'd like to see is maybe a chart whereby everything is listed and then maybe as as supervisors. I don't not that I wanna give us more work, but we put in there what we would like to see funded or, you know, not the amount, but just put an x in some, you know, and and see who votes for what. And the reason why I mentioned it and I'd like to see that chart ahead
of time because, like I said, I may ask Anne or, you know, or Ned. I may say, well, you supported this. Tell me about it, and what do you like about it? I know we can read about it, but it would be nice to be able to have there's so many that we have here, and I have asked Andy for the information of how many effects how many of these places affect people in Albemarle County, either students, children, adults, whatever. Paramount Theater, I'm in favor of that because,
you know, everyone in Albemarle goes to the Paramount Theater also. And and the Virginia, festival of the book, Field Festival, those are big that attracts other people from Albemarle County even though it's not in Albemarle County. But I guess I'm trying to find a way of us having our getting input in a systematic way. Am I making sense? Or Yes. That's what I would like to see that because I want to see how everyone else votes too. And I'm not saying they increase funding or take away from funding necessarily,
but I mean, there may be some things on here that nobody votes for, in which case maybe that funding could go for something else that we all support. Okay. I mean, I understand what you're saying. I can do a poll at some point here. But, I have an opinion and I understand. So, is there anything other items you want to surface? I'm are we surfacing all kinds of items? I mean, do you have other items that are specific to the parking lot topics that we need information for to prep for, for Wednesday? Well, I did ask Andy regarding the percentage.
I mean, there's things like the fountain fund on our own, the women's initiative, and I know about that one. And I just have questions. Front Porch, the Jefferson School. So those are some of the things I have questions about. Are we gay are we getting are they contributing to for citizens in Applemore County? Yes. The we'll provide the best data we can by Wednesday in response to that end, which is what I hear the same as supervisor Malice West. That's separate. Basically. Yeah. Please let me know. Same type of thing. Good.
Yes. Thank you. Supervisor Missal? Yes. It seems like there's a lot of alignment. Just to check one thing, the sources, you mentioned when you add all the sources together and you subtract that roughly $250,000 you said to keep us a floating fund, we're at about $1,480,000 that we're talking about under potential funding sources. Page 12? It will be correct going. Yes. Quick math, ballpark of there. Just thinking about it. Just pay attention to the ongoing versus the one time. Yes. Understood. So several of the ones I've mentioned are up there.
Computers for Kids, there was a budget technicality that was stated by one of my constituents. I don't think there was because We We received that. We're working on that. Thank you. Just curious as to what that means. And I think they're asking for $25,000 They serve 38% of their students are outmodal residents. Affordable housing, yes. AHIP is another fund that I think is fully funded in here. They haven't asked for additional funds, but I think keeping people in their homes is critically important, just
new affordable housing. We talked about the therapeutic docket, we talked about Foothill Children's Advocacy, 100% on the arts. I was on the New City Arts Board for quite a few years and really support that as well. So the Seaville Ballet, the Charlottesville Band, I'm on board with all of those. Don't like opera, so no, not that one. Do you want to be ballet? No, I'm kidding. Opera is great. And that is essentially my list. Thank you. Supervisor Duncan? Can I just ask a sort of big picture question to make sure I'm not confused?
On when we had the work session kind of about the nonprofit funding, there was a slide that showed the process. And it said something about in the summer, the board gets to have input into sort of like the categories, the tiers, sort of how the process works. And then after that, you have the group of people, the community people that sort of score these and kind of decide how they should be funded and who should be prioritized and not. And is that, understanding of how the system is supposed to work? Yeah. So our our job is staff is really gonna take the board's,
sort of policy direction from that framework and execute And then to check-in that process, the staff doesn't determine anything in terms of who needs funding. It's a recommendation for the board's consideration. The board can then go from their perspective and, apply their own judgment. So it's this point. And then once we get through this, because I'm I'm getting the feedback and thinking about how to explain this document. I don't know. We'll just turn in on other things. We'll have an opportunity in the summer to review this process. But in the meantime, that doesn't make away the board if they would like to desire to do do something different. They have that ability right now. Okay.
I guess, just sort of from an outsider coming in, it feels like I don't feel like it's my job to nitpick what community members and the process that staff has to say, we think these should be funded, we think these shouldn't be funded based on what organizations we like or don't like. And so I'm just trying to, like, figure out the role of the board, but also, like, not, like, managing staff's decisions. Yeah. I would I'm gonna turn back to the chair because I know that that is one that boards have had discussions among themselves about what is their role.
And so I would sort of pose that question back to the board. I I think board members in the past have expressed, I think, both views in terms of their terms and how they approach that. So I I don't have much to add other than I would look at the board for their opinion on that. I think it's tricky because there's different things going on. One, pure just dollar amounts and we have a process defined that we follow and then it equals what's in the budget recommendation. Right. We have questions about the data. We have questions about the process and is the policy being executed in the way
that we understand it. So those are three very different things. So I'm hearing some requests for data, which would be appropriate for the budget piece. I'm hearing some about process, which would not necessarily be something we wrestle and tackle in the budget time. Then I hear specific advocacy for groups. And to supervisor Duncan's point and to the others raising certain ones, the staff, if I were staff, I could be like, well, I'll tell you what, why don't we just have all the applications go directly to the board, we'll level fund it every year at zero,
and you figure it out. Because when we start going beyond the process, that's what we're doing. Now it's becomes who advocates the most from the community, who advocates the most from the board and a combination of it all, who understands ballet or opera versus who doesn't. I'm more interested in chalk art on a wall. I mean, it becomes in the arts, it can be it can be interesting Yeah. Versus agencies that are providing services that, but for them, would cost us more. So that's a different level of service,
etcetera. So, I mean, in my eight tries at this, I'm happy to do whatever the board wants to do. If you want to level fund everybody at zero, and then you have and my task is I have go through all these agencies and determine based on their recommendation and what I know about them and all the stuff from their application, determine the dollar amount, I could do that. But that's gonna be a lot more work than I've ever put in on that section in the budget in eight years. Or we can go, alright, we have a policy in place that attempts to make it objective that everybody can
rely on in similar fashion that the schools are asking for from a predictability standpoint. And then we can argue about, well, is that being executed? Is the policy what we want? And can we trust the data? So, I mean, we have to wrestle with that. I love that the data is being brought up because that's what's going to lead to whether or not we should fund it or fund it at at a certain amount. I think that's an appropriate budget question, right? If we want to get at, well, how something's weighted or what the process is or anything like that, we need to set up more time to deal with that at a later point.
And if you all want to go ahead and advocate for a certain agency to get more dollars, then I would suggest starting to draft your email that explains to all the other agencies why you're not advocating for increases to their request. That was Ned's opinion, not the chair's opinion. Well done. Yeah. That's a good point. Hi, Lynn. Yeah. Yeah. I just think it's important. I respect the process. Okay. So we did they did go through a process that I respect because that helps a lot. But I also feel that I don't know what their criteria is if they're basing
it on who's what what organizations are helping residents, children, adults, whatever, in Albemarle County. So if it's not now, I just really have a problem funding something that helps mainly or only Charlottesville residents because I just believe we should be without taxpayers on. So we'll get the data on that. Yes. Mhmm. I want to first just endorse the positions advanced by Chair Galloway and Supervisor Duncan.
I don't want the board in the business of making these discrete decisions. I like frankly being insulated by it and I like knowing that there's technical expertise going into it. And I would also again reflect that the process we currently have is actually a greater level of board shaping on it because we went through the process of this board informing what the tiers are. That was kind of the compromise that we previously reached out to us. And maybe I'm being either ignorant or unkind with this, but the appendix in the budget says how many county residents are the recipients of these
services. I don't understand what data we're missing. I can go right now and tell you what percentage of on our own residents are So that can services, agencies that is included. And so this is one where the arts and cultural perhaps we need to focus into the process. And that's where I think most of the questions around the Super Agnel Acosta currently gave a list of the e levers including I mentioned just now on our own. That was one of the ones listed. CIS Novo was listed. I can tell you right now if you like how many county residents benefit from those because it's in the budget book. All right. So for agencies that were brought up that it's clear,
maybe that's the ask back for the staff, just a general reminder, hey, here's the page number those are on for these organizations and for the other ones you've got, I think what you need to work on. For myself, if you could go back to the list that added up this page, yes, 10. 10 is where I was going. I think this is a I'm just throwing it out because it's a reaction to the adjustment for Charlottesville Area Transit. To me, that's going to be an ongoing cost increase in years forward. I'd like to not my opinion is we don't dedicate that.
We set that up as a transit reserve or something small, whether it may be even specific for micro cap because I know we're going to get to understand fees and things like that. But in any case, we know that transit services are something. And while I'd hate to program that somewhere else, and then when that happens, we don't have that little even that tiny little bit of a cushion. So I'm just throwing that out there for maybe Wednesday, we could all make a final call and at some point for that particular dollar amount. So that would reduce the ongoing, right, by $150,000,000 because that's not CIP.
So then you'd be down to $7.06 60. But I'm just like I said, this is where we start having to program those things. I have what I need for in terms of making calls. I don't have anything new to surface. Is there anybody that wants to talk tax rate or mix of dedication, any of that that you want to surface for Wednesday? No. All right. So we can discuss it. I mean, it's pretty clear. I think if I remember your 1p on the car tax piece was $113,000 That is correct.
So that is the number to kind of map up just because it got thrown out kind of in the mix of some other stuff the other day. And then what was the other one you raised? M and T. M and T. What's that? Do we have is the same equivalent? It's rolled up into $113,000 So it's oh, it's in there. The total personal property of 40 ish million machinery tools is only about 700,000. So it's In my opinion, I still think we do cars and we do machinery and tool. And then it's all one thing that goes out. Do you purchase that separately? Good. Mister Davidson? Yes. We we do look at those separately because,
the machinery the machinery and tools, we have a very limited number of taxpayers, and so we're able to kinda hone in on that a little bit better, than the thousands and thousands of vehicles we have within the county that come in and out. And so we in the budget book, that is called out separately as a, line in the revenue items. But when we look at the overall value per penny, because they're all of combined together, that machinery tools is rolled up into that 113 k per per penny. Great.
And then, the Ford strategic reserve, how much is the math? Like, 200, 301? 394,000. Now I would say there is no minimum that needs to be kept in that. That's just been slowly drawn down over the years. I thought we had a board strategic reserve. If I is that reserve? We I might just be getting my terminology screwed up now from a couple of years. We had in the CIP, this advancing strategic private reserve, and has been slowly dwindling down over the years. But that's what the $3.94 is. So it's just been calling it something else over the years. And the board reserve that we used to spend down pretty low, is this now or it's something else?
The what is once upon a time was called the board reserve is now really the reserve for contingencies. That is the place that is the place to go to if there is just anything unexpected where that happens during the year. Because we spent that down big time last year. Okay. And that's what's page 10. Is used to be the board reserve, but now it's okay. Okay. Yeah. The the bottom there, those reserve continue to be those numbers match with the one slide. Okay. Alright. Do you have what you need to be ready for Wednesday? It is. One thing is I know we can move forward a lot to process today, but one other thing to keep in mind,
and we'll have this clear on Wednesday if they are considering, tax rate changes, is because tax rates happen in a calendar year, not a fiscal year. And so if the board were to raise, hypothetically, a penny for something, that would generate $3,300,000 of ongoing funding in fiscal year twenty seven. That would also generate roughly 1,600,000.0 of one time money in fiscal year twenty six. So that becomes available for the board program as well, because the board's gonna set a rate in April that will be collected in June and December. So that's just for just full transparency what the impact of those rate changes look
like. Could you say the number again for this year? It would be about 1,600,000 roughly half of the, 3.3. Sorry. One time. One time money. Yes. So I was gonna say if you could maybe and it's probably I know it lives in different places. Maybe just put that in an individual little email to the board that explains depending on the tax rate equals this. Sure. I would include what the dedication is because if you don't dedicate it, then it's got the split, and that's conversation. If it is dedicated, that means that the split, you know, for one year, the split doesn't go through, etcetera. But 3.3, was that the number? Yes. On the normal split,
you have to take the 10% and then split it off unless you dedicate it. So just to maybe put all that in one place with the car tax, so that members can do their mapping if they'd like. So that when they walk in Wednesday, they can say, well, I'd like to do this and here's the reason behind it and where the dollars go, including your one time? Yes. That's good. Thank you. Yes. Strictly for thinking about and having now 19 times heard the description of the dedication that you made at the beginning of the school session. For the very first time,
it was related with the property tax relief waiver as money we do not receive. So that jumped into my brain. Well, that's similar to the deferral income for the land use program and perhaps that should be in that category too, that $14,000,000 So just dropping that grenade for people to think about and I will leave it there. Okay. I don't want to think about that one. Yes, please. I don't need it. You put it in a different time. Yes, not now. I think not now. Summertime. Alright.
What are we where you are time wise, I've just, you know, not done a good job today getting us because we're still not getting debt management or CIP walking through the budget. That that's correct. And I would say my presentation on debt management. I mean, it goes together with capital. I would say I could do it in five to ten minute well, I'll say probably eight to ten minutes. So it helps the board, board's time, not mine. So Do you want that presentation this evening so that you have a few days to to ponder it knowing that you can ask questions you have time on Wednesday to follow-up and ask questions? The alternative is we get the presentation on Wednesday and deal with it that day.
The presentation. We have it in the budget book. Let's do it. We'll do the presentation and then we'll go. Sorry, staff. Debt management. We've actually moved this up out of order instead of the CIP because debt is really what is increasingly driving the CIP. So from right out of the county executive's presentation, we talked about five projects driving the CIP in debt. The Quartz project, all these projects have been referenced today. Quartz project, Ravana Futures, and the three schools, two of which will open next year. One of which is the design for the Northern Elementary School in fiscal year twenty seven.
Altogether, these total, just under $300,000,000 of capital projects, and they are the by far the five largest, projects that are taking place in the county's, CIP recent history. So this is a chart I I referenced earlier. I shared this on December 3 that has been updated really to show what the board's investment in capital has looked like. Capital, as I've said before, kinda goes up and down a lot as projects stop and start. But debt service is a twenty year commitment when the county issues it. So that where you can see how this has evolved over time. I'll start with the blue line, that is the public schools debt service.
If we can see that coming out of the recession, that was level for a while. It increased after the twenty sixteen general obligation bond referendum where it funded some of the projects on the screen. And then we can see that debt was retired for a few years, so a few years where the county did not issue in debt. And then in '22, there was a series of additions that were borrowed for for Crozet, Red Hill, and Scottsville. So we see the, debt increase again, and now we are seeing this really ramp up with the construction of three schools and the renovation funding. With that blue line, now turns to red to be the projected. And you can see where the next three issuances,
one of which will take place this spring, another one in 2028, which will increase 29 debt service, and then 30 into 31, how much that number is driving us. County government, similar story, where we see that orange line historically where that's been a little more relatively flat. But we can see really since fiscal year twenty five with the borrowing cost of the courts, the, Ravenna Futures property, this could run. We are seeing seeing a similar increase there too. And so the schools continue to be the majority of the CIP, but we're not we had the chart earlier of county debt service increasing as well. That is what's happening in this chart.
Another way to look at this, and this is a chart that is not in the book about what is the county's current debt service. Let's zoom in on '26 where we are right now in the next five years in the CIP. The blue is the county's current debt service right now at about $34,000,000, and that debt will continue to get retired and what we're paying now going to about $27,000,000 in fiscal year thirty one. So what's gonna happen in these next three debt issuances, driven primarily by these major projects, is we're gonna be issuing a total amount of debt. It is almost gonna be about $27,000,000 itself by the time you get to fiscal year thirty one.
And so, with the roughly 54,000,000 that the county would have in debt fiscal year thirty one, half of that is gonna be issued in this upcoming CIP. Just give you perspective of the total investment with the board is making in the CIP and debt service. This is also gonna explain explain in a little bit or maybe on Wednesday why there aren't as many projects in years four and five of the CIP because more of that funding is going to fund annual debt service payment versus new capital projects. So I wanna highlight, as this top of this debt, it's increasing. It is all well within the county's financial management policies.
So I wanna assure the public of that. You can see in the, the area where we are kind of sitting headroom is the chart on the left. Debt service is a percentage of revenues, 10% is a policy cap. It's a good benchmark from triple triple a localities, and, we we are below that. We're also below that on the outstanding debt of the total tax base. We're, we're looking at the total outstanding debt versus the annual payment. One thing I wanna make, very clear, and I'll make this again a little bit when we talk about capacity, these lines in the out years only look as good as they do because of the investment in economic development in AstraZeneca.
That was not bringing in the additional revenues, increasing the tax base, there would be a lot more headroom that would be tighter, particularly in the years fiscal year thirty and fiscal year '31. So continuing the theme of, we have that debt capacity, how does that connect? Again, it's the triple triple bond reading that the county holds, city holds, the university holds as well, the county being one of 54 in the nation. And all the benefits to Springs, whether it be flexibility to the board of supervisors because the mortgage payment is less. That allows them to have other, other savings or some other savings that they're able to support all the other strategic
objectives better because they have that flexibility. The county gets a better interest rate than they would if they had the double a rate. It's able to buy more projects and get more done over time. And so I'll I'll be brief in the interest of time. But I will take a moment and just spend a little time about capacity and affordability and frame it a little differently because this is a question that continues to come up, because it's it's no secret, you all just saw it as we've had in recent years. The county has been well below the red line and we have capacity. So capacity, thinking from a municipal bond structure is really, you know, what can the government borrow legally or prudently without,
sacrificing its rating or in its debt ratios or any sustainability? I may have lost some people in that explanation, so I'll make it kind of the individual, what does that mean? If you are a person and you go to the bank to get a home loan, what are you pre authorized to? So if the county were to go to get a loan amount, the bank would probably say you can go up to 10% at a triple triple a rate. Affordability is a very different question, where for the county government, it's what debt service can we make while supporting everything else the board needs to consider in balancing the budget across the six strategic objectives and,
also just as overall financial health. And so, most folks, I would imagine, as you you may not, get be getting a mortgage for what bank is authorized to at the maximum. If they've had to weigh, what can I afford to pay monthly given everything else that I need to plan or save for in the priorities that I have in my life? And so this is the balance in terms of capacity and affordability framed for an individual, not just a government. And so this really speaks to, the final slide I have in debt service is really there is, in fiscal year thirty one, what does that look like? There is capacity as we are at 7.2%.
And so, to go to 9%, the Board of Supervisors would be have, $68,000,000 of, bonds they could issue and still have that capacity. Obviously, they could go up to 9 percent if they wanted, and that number would be even greater then. The thing I wanted to point out is, capacity is only half the equation. Right now, there's not the annual funds you would need to pay that debt service or to pay it to operate that facility. And once that capacity is gone in fiscal year thirty one, it's a twenty year commitment. And so it'll take time for other debt to retire for that window to open in. So that's one as we think about,
as I said early in the meeting, when my first slide is just the board doesn't need to decide whatever the placeholder may be in the CIP, how that is used or when. Part of this is a long range multi year plan exercise just like the courts, Truvanna Futures, the schools, those were not projects that appeared overnight. This would be really continuing a dialogue that'll go beyond this budget to really shape what is the best way when that capacity opens up to give time. I think it's also really telling in this example about why you don't plan to go to 10% because just as we saw a very favorable change in revenues with
AstraZeneca and other things that's creating more headroom. The opposite could also true if there were major disruption in the economy where those lines, even even they don't shrink, they don't grow as fast, so that'll create more. So this is why we do multi year planning. Every year, keep refreshing the plan, to what that looks like. I will say there was a, a request that, in the interest of time, I'll cut it out in my comments today, but it was around a different borrowing rate. How much does that borrow? That was a question from Sherry Galloway at the November, sorry, November February 18 meeting. We'll include that in the board q and a so we can show that difference as well. Also, maybe a topic on Wednesday as we talk about the,
county's next bond issuance for the board to authorize that. And so, I'll pause there for any questions on debt. Questions and then be happy to say we could come back with written responses if they're going to take a lot of airtime tonight. Supervisor Duncan? No question. Supervisor Malek? No question. Supervisor Pruitt? No question. Supervisor Lupisto Kirtley? No question. Supervisor Missal? No, sir. All right. Great. Would you like to go into the CIP? Alright. This was included in your time estimate, right? No? I will, because, miss Malphin is going to do a good portion of this one. How long is this presentation going to I thought I'd give you advice then.
What do you think? I have an hour. I'm gonna I'll be really brief. So back in December 3, we talked about the art of possible. I appreciate, doctor Haas remembering that quote earlier, and this was actually the last slide we ended up. And so this is one about how does that art of the possible look like in the recommended budget. And, option a, we were looking at and the takeaway, I should say, was it's not either or. You really gotta do all of these if you wanna build a major capital project, whatever that may be. So legislative priorities, state budget is being monitored for whatever that date of the 1% will be.
Reprioritization of future revenue growth is one we've talked about extensively today. The $6,400,000 into the placeholder both in fiscal year twenty seven and '28. We talked about well, we haven't talked about yet the reprioritization of the CIP. The schools, had a project upcoming with the Northern Elementary School. They've also said the high school is the highest priority. So staff has recommended is to take what was before, 16,000,000 in renovation funding and zero that line out but apply it to other public school projects. And so this is one where you have, the $8,000,000 coincidentally is the increase for the cost of the Northern Elementary School.
And then the $8,000,000 for a school placeholder is at year five. And so this is where the art of the possible begins to put together is you've got 8,000,000 in a school placeholder. You've got 13,000,000 roughly in a to be determined placeholder. If, the if in the next couple of years, the sales tax comes to mind, all of a sudden we're talking potentially $15,000,000 of things that did not exist back in December, obviously, for the board's consideration. Options d and e, I won't talk about because those are much longer range than, than today. So quick introduction to the CIP. The capital budget is the only item that is appropriated.
What is in fiscal year '27? You will also include in the capital budget just items that get reappropriated in, fiscal years. The CIP is years two through five, and so when we adopt a, plan last year, fiscal year '7, '27 through '30 become the starting point for this year. Just as when the board adopts the CIP, years, fiscal year twenty eight through '31 becomes a starting point for next year's CIP. And, you know, all these funds work together as we talked about today. It's not just the capital. We have to figure out what what is the ongoing debt service payment? What does it cost to operate these projects as they come online?
So our assumption was to start with the adopted CIP. Staff has done our work to update project cost, borrowing, and so on. We had, the joint meeting with the school board on December 3, and then to the extent possible, what can we build in? So summary on the expenditure side, if everything is different than CIP, this is in detail in the document. But we first we've updated the cost for ongoing programs. They may change year to year. So comparing the four years in the CIP that are the same, county government, maintenance replacement program is decreasing. That's really just due to look at the timing and some adjustments we're making to the fire rescue apparatus program.
The public schools had requested increases in school buses, technology, and their other items in the schools, maintenance replacement budget is fully funded, including school buses. We increased the, funding, as I mentioned before, for the Northern Elementary School with the $8,000,000 reprioritized orientations. Then the other new projects I wanna highlight, Boulders Road I spoke about last week. It's $41,000,000 but it is coming $20,000,000 from the state, $12,000,000 from AstraZeneca, $500,000 from the EDA, and the remainder coming from the economic development fund based on what the board has invested in past years. Mentioned the school placeholder.
We have the other placeholder of 12,800,000.0 that we talked about earlier. There's one about a million dollars of community nonprofit capital request that miss Malcolm will cover. We do have a new, maintenance replacement project for the fire rescue system for self containing breeding breeding apparatus. Phase one of the two phase project that will begin at fiscal year thirty one. Fiscal thirty one is $2,000,000. Then the Northern, Convenience Center is still included in the CIP, but the construction was delayed from fiscal year twenty seven to fiscal year twenty eight, primarily because the operating impact to run that is a little more than half $1,000,000
and we foresee that as a major challenge in the fiscal year twenty budget outlook right now. There's a choice that could be made versus something that is required. Chart I share every year is that ongoing programs, continue to be a major part of the CIP. You know, we talk about maintenance and replacement, this shows that it's 55%, gunning gear. Largest category of which is school maintenance and, replacement. The revenues that make up the CIP are primarily borrowed proceeds. Cash equity is the other, which is any one time money from the board of supervisors or school board in the formula amount. This year, that state revenue and the local revenue were much larger than usual because of the
Boulders Road project and the contribution from the, state and AstraZeneca for that road. I'll share as well when it comes to the board's ability to really have discretion, the cash equity and the borrower proceeds are what can be moved. The, state revenues and local revenues tend to be tied to particular projects such as the city share of the Darden Tower Park or, the school grant they get for school bus replacements. Replacement. On the expenditure side, public schools continue to do the majority of the CIP. It is a pure coincidence. It's 54%. That's totally separate from the revenue allocation. And, community development is larger this year because of the Boulders Road project.
So six strategic goals that the board has seen, every budget presentation since they adopted the strategic plan. The, CIP is here's the highlights for the schools. Northern Convenience Center would be I'm sorry, not Northern Convenience Center. Northern Peter pattern would be designed in fiscal year twenty seven, constructed in '28. Would take a while and then open in the future fiscal year. All the green boxes that are ongoing programs that are fully funded, and then the school place order of 8,000,000 by the reprioritized renovation funding is all the way out there in year five. County government snapshot, totals a 160,000,000. Miss Malcolm is gonna talk through these projects at a high level,
but I'll draw the board's attention that when you look at, back on this slide, in years three through five for the schools, There's maintenance replacement, there's a placeholder. County government, you look at years four and five, it's maintenance replacement and a placeholder. This is the impact of that growing debt and how it is constricting the ability to move forward on those other capital projects. Because that 10% by formula is increasingly funding the annual debt servicing the cost. Miss Malcolm, I'm gonna catch my breath. Okay. So I have, seven slides to go through to talk about the specific projects that are in the recommended CIP. Andy has touched on all of them already,
so you're not gonna hear anything brand new here. Just to lay out the slides for the board, in within the box, you see the project name. So in this case, Foulders Road. We also will have on the subsequent slides the years in which funding is included in the CIP for those projects and then the dollar amount represents the total amount across all those fiscal years that's included for each project. So as Andy mentioned, Boulders Road is the first project. This project brings its own revenue with it from the state, the developer and local government. It's to build an extension of Boulders Road out to 29 and that supports Ravenna
Station and the Ravenna Future property Ravenna Futures, excuse me. On transportation, this one is at $18,000,000 $18,100,000 and includes funding in fiscal year twenty twenty seven and in fiscal year twenty twenty nine. The idea behind the transportation bucket, which includes the transportation leveraging program, is that we need to have a set amount of funding that is flexible and consistent to support high priority transportation projects and initiatives for the county. These types of projects are typically high cost projects that require significant financial commitment to
develop and implement over time. There's a couple of projects you see listed on the slide that are included with the current CIP. And as you know and have been in discussion with our Community Development Department, the Board will have an opportunity to weigh in on projects that will be prioritized, excuse me, in fiscal years '31 and '32 as part of the ongoing process with, CDD. Just to give a little bit more detail about this, every other year, the county can apply for funding through various state and federal funding programs. I want to highlight a couple of examples. One is the Transportation Alternatives Program or SmartScale.
Those are both competitive grant programs. The next bucket is the VDOT revenue sharing program. That's less competitive than the prior bucket as a source of funding and it allows for transportation improvements, which award a dollar for dollar match for participating locality for construction, maintenance or improvements to state roads up to $10,000,000 My team tells me that this is usually an area of interest of the board. So in the budget book, you'll see information on projects that are in the transportation leveraging program and that are still carrying a balance from prior fiscal year appropriations.
So those include U. S. 250 Pantops Corridor, the Bergmar extension to Airport Road, Bergmar Path shared used extension, Commonwealth Dominion Drive, Old Lynchburg Road project and Hydraulic Road Lands Lane and funds for those projects will continue to be appropriated as required in the board's normal business. So next, Andy spoke about this a little bit, we have a Northern Convenience Center. So the idea here is constructing a solid waste convenience center in the Northern part of the county similar to what we did a few years ago in the Southern part of the county.
For this project, we've already funded the design of the project that was back in FY twenty five. The CIP still has the construction, which as Andy mentioned is being pushed from FY 2027 to FY 2028. It's 1,300,000 and we're really recommending that push so that we have another fiscal year to plan for the operating impacts of that facility, which are estimated to be around $500,000 a year when we have to pick those up. The next is the Central Library. So this is for renovation funding for the main branch, which is also the regional headquarters of the Jefferson Madison Regional Library System.
The building is co owned by the county and the city of Charlottesville, and the building itself, as I said, is half owned by the county. 57% of the circulation of this library is attributable to the county residents. So I wanted to point that out. The CIP project includes $10,500,000 for that renovation that is the county share only and it's contingent on a few things that are listed on the slide. The first is that the city meets us at the same funding amount. The second is that, we have an approved MOU with the city pursuant to the regional library agreement. And the third is that the library will leverage other sources of funding to provide
for the renovation project. So specifically the city and county have said that our portions of the funding will cover adding public space for additional meeting rooms, technology upgrades and new services. Some of the sort of unfund things about a renovation like plumbing, electric, security, networking, HVAC, which are very important to the infrastructure of the building. And in total, that $10,500,000 you see on the slide is broken down between design work in FY '27 and construction plan for FY '29. Okay. The next is the athletic fields at Darden Tau. So as you all know,
this is a phased rebuild of the existing grass athletic fields at Darden Tau Park. It's been done over a four year period starting in FY 2025. In FY 'twenty seven, the total for the project is $800,000 And this is another one that has some city county split. And so the city covers 69% of this project. The county covers 31% of the project. I was just gonna go. You're gonna go. I was going way to go. Of all the things to mix up. Sorry. I'm sorry. Excuse me. Okay. The last one is, an amount of $1,400,000
for workplace facility renovations to county office buildings at McIntyre Road and 5th Street extended. This is really initial work around coming up to speed with the space utilization study that was done a few years ago and is planned for the facilities and that's in FY 2027. And then finally, you've heard about this so much. This is the CIP priorities placeholder, the $12,800,000 that would be put into the CIP over two years, placed in FY31 of the CIP for the board's determination at a future date.
So the next thing I want to cover is the community capital process, which applies to nonprofit agencies. So for a little bit of history, in the 2022, the board created this process as a way to establish a more formal process for community nonprofits to ask for capital funding from the county. In 2023, staff and the board further refined that process and you continue to refine this framework as you do with the human services funding process and arts and cultural agencies. There are eight statements that nonprofits must,
meet to be considered for this funding. They are on this slide and the next slide. Maybe in the interest of time, I won't go through each of them one by one, but I do wanna kind of highlight a few things. First is that in addition to these criteria for the specific project, the organization has to meet all the other eligibility criteria that we've already talked about for arts and cultural and human services funding process. So they have to go through an audit. They have to be in a program in place for two or more years, etcetera. In addition to that, for this specific set of funding, we really want to see projects that are in alignment with the capital's the county's
overall capital improvement program. So for example, we want to see things that are shovel ready. We want to see projects that are leveraging funding from multiple sources. And we also want to see kind of something Chair Galloway spoke to earlier. We want to see that the project is meeting a need in the community that the county may have to otherwise meet if we do not recommend it for funding. So that's kind of some highlights here. The last thing I want to draw your attention to here is number seven. The projects need to increase services provided to county residents, not just maintain ongoing services.
So on Page two sixty nine of the budget book, you'll find the highlights on these recommendations. Staff recommend five different projects for funding in the '27 through '31 CIP. Four of those are recommended for funding in the first year FY 2027 and one is recommended for funding in FY 2028 and again in FY 2029. So I'll talk a little bit about each of these. The first has been at Stillage. The funding, which is $250,000 in FY 'twenty seven will go towards the physical construction costs of the next phase of the All Abilities multi generational play and recreation space space.
Excuse me. The next is the Dogwood Vietnam Memorial. That's also recommended for funding in FY 2027. That funding specifically would help establish the pedestrian bridge and parking area immediately adjacent to the Dogwood Vietnam Memorial, in its current location at the Southeast Corner of McIntyre Park. The next is the Salvation Army. This is proposed for half of its funding in 2028 and the other half in 2029 for a total of $500,000 across the two years. That's for the design and construction of the new emergency low barrier shelter. The total project is estimated to be 42,000
square feet and provide emergency shelter for the unhoused. The next is the Stony Point Volunteer Fire Company. So this $50,000 would replace the facility's existing roof with a more energy efficient system and protect the building and equipment housed within the station. And then the last is for the town of Scottsville in FY 2027, our recommendation for $87,000 and that would cover repairs to the levee system in the town of Scottsville, including concrete repairs and ceiling to both the levee wall and the pump house. So that's my last slide on the CIP for any questions you all have.
Appreciate you moving and scooting for this. Supervisor Duncan, any questions here? Yes. To one, could I I think I know this information, but I don't have a sense of it before I started. Have information on the Lamb's Road study, particularly the current one that's being funded for the smart scale and kinda where that's at. And then for the Salvation Army, I thought I saw something elsewhere where we were giving them, like, 110,000 for something. But of this $28,000,000 they need for the building, are we only giving them $500,000 That's what's included in the recommended budget,
the $5,000 That was their request. Yes, that was their full request. That was their request. Okay. Thank you. That's all. And the license on smart scale? The things that are studied potentially for smart scale. We did a study on because that could impact credit revenue sharing or I don't know that that would amount to a smart scales project, is it? Or might have been confusing So it must be sudden here. K. Yeah. It's revenue sharing. What's in COVID in the hydraulic road plan? The plan is in Supervisor Malek? Do you have any or if if there's information available,
please share with later, leveraging for any of these? Because at the Venice Village, I don't know if they have outside funding for some other part of it or whether the county is paying for all of it. Yes. I know that Dogwood got 600,000 from the state. And the original plan four years ago when they first brought this forward was to have equal amounts from the city and the county. But I don't know where else there is. So nobody is meeting, okay. So our recommendation is consistent with the city's recommendation. I will say and yes, we do have detailed information on the total project cost, how much is being requested from the county,
how much is planned to be asked for from the state, other sources, private funding, etcetera for these projects. Great. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt? Quick thing that I one is not meant to be heard as adversarial and two, I don't need an answer tonight. This is for an e mail offline. But I'm probably going to get a question about it. The delta between the request and the funded amount for Scottsville, I just like to see the rationale, so I can answer that question. Big question that maybe is an answer for another time, but I will be interested as we're planning for,
I would say, one last big squeeze out of our capacity, right? I think that is a fair way to put it, capacity, not affordability. I'd be interested to get a sense of that alongside annual offloading. How big of a corner we're painting ourselves into? Are Are we going to put ourselves in a position where we can know where we only have the capacity annually for ongoing programs? Are we going to have capacity for more medium sized capital expenses like Phase two and three of Biscuit Run, I would that would be something I'd be interested and concerned about,
just how much remaining room we're going to spend. Is that more for this budget process or is that more of a longer term? This is a longer term question. But as we're continuing to entertain and plan and realize that reality in this budget, I I want to know whether or not it's even a good idea. Right? Like, if we're going to give ourselves, what, 10,000,000 of breathing room on capacity, that sounds like it might be a bad idea, because that would be something that potentially paints us into really dark corners, and what kind of future, ability we might have. And also,
this is more of a comment, but I know the distinction and our ability to, to issue general obligation bonds rather than traditional bonds has been talked about and the potential on the affordability side impacts that could have. I also recognize that for this budget cycle, the question is out, right, because otherwise we'd be arresting projects, if we tried to transition from one to the other. It would be an interesting thing to talk about moving forward, but also again, this is as I'm going through this budget process this year, I'm thinking legislative priorities. Other states can issue general obligations without,
that localities can't without having to go through, referendum, which means they can do it for ongoing capital projects, which realistically couldn't be put to a referendum. So, it might be something that would be prudent for us to consider as a legislative priority because it would keep our borrowing costs down in the future and it's currently something that we're statutorily disabled from a paternalistic state that doesn't trust us. Supervisor Missal? Only to say ditto to what, supervisor Pruitt said regarding how big of a quarter we're backing ourselves into. You mentioned that a couple of times.
It's good to see that. I think that's part of the the strategy of having these placeholders Yeah. Is to buy the time for the board and don't immediately program it knowing that, it will it will be extremely challenging for the board to match the increased investment they've had in this CIP. Mhmm. With those five major projects in year six through 10. So how can we begin to plan the Yeah. Change to what that future looks like in things such as the art of the possible. And so part of the reason those things are not designated at this time. That conversation is gonna extend due on April 22.
So the one thing I would add going back to supervisor Pruett talking about offloading. You've heard supervisor Malek say several times when she got on the board in o eight right at the start of the national recession, 08/09/1011, that the capital program went way down because the county cut positions, schools that were in survival mode like a lot of counties and cities, That debt that would have been issued at that time would be be would be getting ready to be offloaded on twenty year debt. Mhmm. That's not there. So it will be very interesting because the debt wasn't issued.
And so it'll be very interesting interesting to do the analysis in year six through 10, to see, not just god bless you. Not just offloading, but also to what capacity we may have. And that's something that I think this board really needs to take a look at, and that's why it's so it's why it's so important for us to model, not just the effect of the industry out at Ravenna Station, AstraZeneca, but also to continue to push that really hard to fill in some other gaps out there because of the fact that it's gonna be so tight for a period
of time, not just in the first five years, if that makes sense. Yeah. Alright. So quick things. Page 19, Slide 19, I should have done this on the last pass, but a couple comp this is a comment. So I wanna just or wait. It wasn't 19. Where was your one that showed the out year with the capacity and it had, like, a little yellow circle like that? There it is. This is to your point about how this is modeled with the AstraZeneca project coming in. The hope part is AstraZeneca will help us start to realign that diversification we're talking
about. But I get concerned, not concerned. I wanna remind folks that AstraZeneca isn't the end of it. Mhmm. It's the first domino. So AstraZeneca alone justifies the purchase and will pay for the purchase of the property in the long run. But there's still acreage at us at the site that we have that we purchased. And every time a new project comes in and drives revenue to the county, we'll help that modeling that's going out there. It could just keep changing the diversification so that it's not so much of a
burden on real estate. But if that stays flat and it starts to help, it will help our capacity. It's just not in the model yet. When Maya and I were chatting about the mites, Well, if we get another big project out there, the mite is going to change what we might be able to do in an out year. Not to mention North Fork across the road and the other sites in the county that could ultimately be the third or the eighth or the tenth domino to fall. So those are all things that, you know, folks are talking like AstraZeneca was a one time deal.
That was just a really good hit on a really good pitch so far. But we have other pitches coming that we're going to benefit from. Transportation leveraging. The concern on this one, this is if I had to equate it to something that to the school board side, this is our renovations and additions piece that's frustrating to get at. We have so many transportation priorities that we're to rely on what the state provides for us, they're never going to get done. So you've all heard me harp on the smart scale and the billions of dollars
localities are having to put in with their application just to try to get the approved funding from the state. But this is where that would live if we put that into a smart scale application and no future projects are currently existing in there. So RCIP is going to have to contend with that because I don't see the state having any change in how they're funding transportation, at least on this current budget cycle, that it's going to continually go back to the shoulders of the localities to fix. And what did Kevin say in that meeting? We had like 160 something things on our transportation priority list.
And then the, nope. That was a question I didn't need to ask. Those were my few comments. I I don't think I had a question in there. Awesome. Wrap up for tonight or You might have one quick question. Sorry, Supervisor Malek. Yeah, go. So on Slides twenty five and twenty six, it reminded me when we're talking about these future school projects, the 1% sales tax in limbo now is whether it will allow new and old payment construction or it has a forbid prohibition against supplanting,
which means we should not officially make any plans to do anything with schools and commit something that then we can't use the sales tax for. So keeping a blank slate for a while until this sorts out and gets nailed down. Otherwise, we're shooting ourselves in the foot. Thank you. Just looking to my left and right, any additional questions? Alright. We're ready for the for y'all to Yeah. We'll be at Wednesday. Congratulations to the board. It's been ten hours of work sessions, additional time in public hearings to go through this budget. We're still answering questions.
There's a list. The work is not done. There's all the public engagement in town halls, but it's a pretty big feat to go through whether you've done it one or many times. And so we'll continue to provide the, feedback we've got Wednesday with the list. I've given anything I forgot to say. Thank you. Well, we appreciate staff's patience with us as we work through it in my handling of the meeting. I know these are long days during the budget, but we do need to work through it. So the extra time tonight saves us probably even more time in a future meeting. So thank you very much. From the board, any matters not listed on the agenda?
Mr. County executive, any items? All right. Thank you everyone for good work tonight. Adurn, 03/18/2026, 1PM in Lane Auditorium. Thank you.