Good afternoon, everyone. I am going to call to order the Board of Supervisors for this 03/09/2026, 5PM budget work session here in Room 241. All board members are present. We also have mister Jeff Richardson with us today, our county attorney, mister Andy Herrick, our board clerk, miss Claudette Borgeson. We have a multitude of staff with us today. I wanna thank officers Dylan Shiplett and Enzo Hizari for being with us this afternoon. Thank you, gentlemen, for being here. And I do want to recognize that we have our Commonwealth Attorney,
Mr. Hinsley, with us as well as our circuit court clerk, Mr. Zug, as we're dealing with their portions today. If we have questions, they are available to us as well. But yes, we're ready to kick off our work session number one and see how it goes. So Mr. Richardson, am I going to you or am I going right to Andy? Right, Mr. Boomen, sir. All right. Good evening. Good evening, the Chair of the Board. My name is Andy Bowman, Assistant Chief Financial Officer. I'll be kicking off the presentation today. Others will be introducing themselves as they step up to the mic,
because we'll be sharing a series of topics today. I'd like to start every work session, where have we been, where are we going. So to date, this is work session number one. The county executive presented a budget on February 25. The board held a public hearing on that on March 4. No action is requested by the Board of Supervisors today. That's going to be true in the work session number two and oh, thank you. Well, hold on. Do we need to speak directly into these or does it pick up? No. This isn't like your traditional mic and I should have caught that in the beginning. So we speak in here like we normally would,
but just like when they were in there, I'm just going to say make sure you amplify and project and enunciate well. And I'm going to call out Mr. Grant and tell him to give us a review because this is a new sound system. And I know if he's not listening live, then he will be paying attention later. So, please send your feedback in on how this new sound system is working. But don't feel the need to pull it. You don't have to do that. Thank you. Sorry, Andy. No. Thank you. Thank you for the subtle hint as well. So no action is going to be requested by the Board today or in the work session number two or number three. That will change work session number four,
where the Board is going to be asked asked to take action to propose a tax rate and propose a budget for public hearing. At that point, the budget becomes the from it moves from becoming the County Executive's recommended budget to the Board of Supervisors proposed budget that will then be adopted on April 22. This date is very important because when the Board advertises a tax rate, the Board can only adopt a real estate tax rate at that amount or less. And so if the Board at that time is willing to entertain a higher tax rate, that eighteenth work session is going to be pretty key.
Key. After that proposed budget is set, there will be a continued series of town halls. There's a work session in April if it's needed, and we'll conclude with public hearings and the adoption in April. Before we dive into content today, I want to spend a moment on just the process of the work session in terms of what has worked well in the past. Staff is going to present a level of detail in between what the county executive presented in his initial budget and the full three fifty page document. And so I guess you could think of this as a miniseries adaptation of a three fifty page novel. So we'll do our best to give as much time as we can for board
discussion, presenting information in small chunks. We'll be listening for the board very closely, of course, to answer your questions about the budget. And if there's any question that we can't answer on the spot, we will post that online so that the public can see the transparency and how we're responding to things. The other thing that staff is listening for is what I'll call the list in quotes for potential adjustments. So as we walk through chapters of the book, the Board may desire to see more or less or just a change in something in the budget. What we have found has worked well in the past is to capture those things along the way and bring those back as a package with some options for the
board's consideration in work session number four. There's also not an expectation if the board wants to add something, there's not an expectation on the spot they must identify something to reduce to fund it. Generally, if we can come up with a package and get a sense of where the majority of the board is, that will help us do the best work on board session number four. Again, this is based on what's worked well in the past and will, of course, adapt to the newly seated board. Today's agenda is, going to walk through these chapters on the budget, very high level, the total county budget. We're going to spend our time on general fund revenues, general fund expenditures with a focus on compensation. Our HR Director,
Jessica Rice is here. After that, it would be a good time to take a break if the board desires, and then we'll pick things back up with public safety, including our chiefs will be here, then judicial. Again, I appreciate our constitutional officers being here at 05:00 for the last item on the agenda. Thank you for being here in your partnership. I guess, I'll just say their requests are fully funded. Just put that out there now. On the draft agenda, we did publish a non departmental chapter. Based on the content preparing for today and preparing for Wednesday, staff thought it would be best to cover non departmental on Wednesday, just given the length of topics in-depth today.
So, the last thing I wanna do before we dive into content is really just take a moment, though they don't like to be publicly recognized, I need to publicly recognize the team in the Office of Major and Budget. They are the team who, helps create these presentations, authors the book, responds to the Q and A, does all the work with our partners in the audience just around the year. That's Caitlin Malcolm, our Chief of Budget Ryan Davidson, our Deputy Chief of Budget Senior Budget Analyst, Lauren Zant Senior Budget Analyst, Tia Mitchell Budget Analyst, Thomas Sunsworth and of course, our Chief Financial Officer, Jacob Sundner.
So with that, I'm going to take my first pause before we talk about the total budget, just in case the Board has any questions about process. All right. So, I'm going to start at about the 30,000 foot view with a few slides from the County Executive's presentation. These are really just a summation of all the balancing considerations that go into putting in the fiscal year twenty twenty seven recommended budget. And I hope that the Board of Supervisors, as they think of whether you're seated on the Board or whether you're observing as a candidate or a Board member elect, you can see a lot of the Board's discussions reflected in this budget. Starting in the bottom left, we have the six strategic plan goals and we'll spend a lot of time in
the budget tying those to where the money goes. We talked with the Board at two meetings in the fall about the five year financial plan, how we have a different plan and a different long year outlook, but the short term outlook is very cloudy and uncertain. We talked about, revenues and the economic outlook in October with doctor Bailey. Obligations have been a big part of this budget for both county government, public schools, and the capital and debt program. And we'll spend more time, talk about those in the work sessions. And finally, our financial management policies. The Board of Supervisors updated these in, November 2019. They become really the backbone of a lot of our financial planning,
and I want to spend time today because this is the first time we are proposing use of the budget stabilization reserve in this budget. So I'll walk through the why of that. Three budgeting strategies that will be a theme that the Board hears through the next three work sessions as first of obligations, again, whether it be for picking up FEMA safer grants or fire rescue, supporting community public safety partners, opening two new schools, funding debt obligations for the, the major capital projects in the coming years. Multi year planning, as we think about, how do we get to the more rosy revenue picture when economic development projects come
online and the tax phase changes, how do we begin to navigate that, how do we plan for the situation for the school's very strong state revenue growth, so that we can be better prepared should the LCI or local composite index be unfavorable for them in the future. And again, strategic plan is going to be a guide. You'll see in a lot of these presentations, numbers one through six in the upper right of slides once we get to the expenditures, that's going to tie to the strategic plan goals. So let's talk about the total county budget. And this reflects every dollar that will be coming to the county, operating, capital,
debt service, any special revenue or restricted funds that will be part of schools and County government in fiscal year twenty twenty seven. I want to take a moment, not going into detail on the revenues, we'll do that with each major fund area. We'll do the expenditures, take a closer dive at what the County Executive presented about where does the County's tax dollars go. The answer to the question is first, education, dollars 0.52 of every dollar, operating capital and debt 27 will be for that big orange piece on the left. Next largest category is public safety in green at $0.14
The next largest category after that is community development. That's not the department, that's the entire area of the functions of community development. That area is larger in this year because that amount includes just under $41,000,000 for the construction of Holders Road that would not be part of next year's budget. I'll clarify that the $0.1 for county government operations that includes both county administration and also the entire facilities environmental services. That is a department that has a dual focus of supporting maintaining our facilities, but they also do a lot of, proactive environmental services programs, water resources,
public works functions as well. Health and welfare and parks and recreation are the remaining ones on the right. So a question, maybe on the board or the public's mind is, this total budget is going up $86,000,000 or or 13.5%. Why is that? And despite all the numbers and figures, it's really three primary changes that explain that $86,000,000 increase. The first is that general fund local revenues, which are primarily tax revenues, are going to increase 7.6%. Now in a few slides, I'm going to take a moment and I'll talk through that in more detail.
The second major change is there is almost $13,000,000 in new state revenue support for the public schools. That's about $11,700,000 in their primary public school operating fund. The remainder is what's called special revenue fund where there's some sort of state or federal restriction around how that money can be used. And then third, I mentioned Boulders Road before. This is $40,800,000 capital project in fiscal year twenty twenty seven and the sources are really coming from all over. The state is committed to provide $20,000,000 to that project. The developer, AstraZeneca, has committed to provide $12,000,000
to that project. The Economic Development Authority, they have contributed $500,000 to that. And the remainder of that project is going to be covered by donated right away to the county because the county owns the land at the Rivanna Futures property. There's money that the Board of Supervisors has previously appropriated into the economic development fund that has been recommended to reallocate to fund the cash and the debt service for that project in the recommended CIP. And so this is just a clarification. I think I may have made it the first work session that there is a contemplation of another 4,150,000 to the economic development fund, that is an entirely separate decision than Boulders Road.
All other changes after those big three are essentially flat. So the total budget, why that's going up, that is the reason. We don't really spend a whole lot of time though in the work session talking about the total budget. The general fund is really the primary focus, and that's for three reasons. First, that's where all tax revenue comes in that is not restricted by the state. Second, that's where the board of supervisors has the maximum amount of policy discretion. And three, when it comes to the public school operating budget or the debt service fund or the CIP, the general fund is the primary funding source of those. So with that,
I will, move into general fund revenues, but I'll do another quick pause just in case there's any question on the total county budget. Any questions? Yes. What was the state contribution for the $44,800,000 $20,000,000 Okay, $20,000,000 Okay, got it. Thank you. I guess just to confirm, the 48% for the revenue for Boulders Road is included in that total for 48.52%, yes, so for the 13.5%? Yes. Yes. So, another way to think about it, if Boulders Road was not part of this, the increase in the budget would be a little more than half of what it
is on the screen. And that's very common. There are years where you'll see major changes just due to the timing of capital projects when they stop and start. Next year, you would see all else being equal, the plan moves forward. There will be a big increase in school CIP when Northern Elementary School moves to construction, just as there would be a decrease following year when that comes out. All right. General Fund revenues, this is the longest chapter we're going to cover in the book today, and so I'm going to split it in two. I'm going to talk about other local taxes first, and then we'll go through a round of questions with the Board, and then we'll talk about the other non local taxes I'm sorry,
non local tax revenues. In the General Fund, the budget is balanced on the current tax rates for real property, personal property, transit occupancy and food and beverage. And I'll note food and beverage is at the cap. This is the chart of the doughnuts or the bagel, the wheel, however you would like to think about it, of general fund revenues that totaled $512,000,000 in fiscal year twenty twenty seven. For me, there are three takeaways when I look at the Stonet chart. The first of which is that local government is primarily locally funded. State and federal revenues only make up 8% combined of our budget.
A lot of that is directly related to the Department of Social Services, and we'll speak to that more in a moment. Second is that, of all those local revenues, general property taxes are the largest contributor at 69%. The third takeaway is one that's actually not on this slide. I went back last year and say, how did this doughnut chart compare to where we were a year ago? And there's one change. A year ago, other local taxes was 18%. It's now down to 17%. That 1% went from went to general property taxes, which was up to 68% and was now up to 69%.
So I want to spend a few moments and talk about revenue diversification and really build on some of the comments the County Executive shared in his presentation. So we spent a lot of time, whether it be through the five year plan, with doctor Bailey, with the Ravana Futures property, and the economic development strategic plan, all about why tax based diversification matters. And this chart really summarizes the cost of community services with our changing tax base. We can see that from 2015 to 2025, the real estate tax base has become much more reliant on residential and multifamily. It increased from about 65% to just under 74%.
Agricultural had a decrease from 19.7% down to 15% and commercial and industrial strength from 15% to 11.3%. I'll share that we have not finalized the land book because the appeals process is still underway with our county assessor, but that we're seeing that trend continue in calendar year 2026. With that 11.3% in commercial, would be probably closer to about 11% even by the time that is done, and we've seen residential and multifamily inch up more by a couple of tenths of a percent. The reason this is so important is not just the revenue that comes in, but what does it cost to deliver the services to these various classes of property.
And so for residential and multifamily, it costs more to serve those than it does to collect tax revenue. The primary reason for that is public schools. We have a well funded public school system, to quote Doctor. Hass, if he's listening today, and it's one where, because of that, just the cost per pupil and how they translate to the taxes is very different because that is the tax base where children come from. Agricultural and commercial industrial are much lower. Those are ones that are revenue positive when they come in. So a commercial revenue can help offset residential service cost. So this is not to say that growth happens or economic development happens without regard.
This is the plan in the economic development strategic plan that focus on particular sectors and where that comes from. Another way to look at, tax based diversification is this slide that I pulled out of the budget docket. And, sorry, this is not the easiest thing to read. Hopefully, it's a little better for people online. This shows a very long history from fiscal year four all the way through fiscal year twenty twenty seven about how general fund revenues have changed by category. We can see in the top line in blue, so three takeaways on this slide as well. Top line in blue has increased from property taxes being 56% up to that 69%
in fiscal year twenty twenty seven. That growth has really come at the expense of two categories. First of which is state and federal, The gray line there, we can see in fiscal year four, that number was at 16.7%. It's been on a steady downward trend to where we're at 7.9% in fiscal year twenty twenty seven of the general fund funded by state and federal revenues. So, pretty significant change of almost a drop of more than half. Not as dramatic as percentage, but also of interest as the orange line, which is other local taxes. That was 23% and over time has decreased now to 17.3%.
Now, I want to take a moment to dive into that a little bit more. The reason that one has really been harder to grow because Albemarle County is restricted by the state of Virginia because we are known as a Dillon rule state. So for those who are not familiar with the term, a Dillon rule state I say I'm talking to the people online, not just the board. I know you all know these very well. But the, the Dillon rule is really where a governing body can only do those things granted by the state. And so these are the tax rates for the other local taxes category, the amount they are projected to bring in in fiscal year twenty seven,
what that rate is, and whether it's the maximum allowed by the state. And for all categories, transient occupancy, which is not recommended change in fiscal year twenty seven, all of those are at the state cap. So that is not an option that is available for the Board to explore other than transient occupancy. Although, if they wish to explore that through long term legislative programs, that could be something such as the 1% sales tax that would be for school construction, currently debated in the journal assembly. So, let's get down to some details of the numbers of what makes up these revenues. I'm going to focus first on real estate tax revenue. Real estate tax revenue is assessed based on fair market value established by the Virginia
Code. In January, the County Assessor, Peter Lynch, spoke in great detail about the assessment methodology, how the process works, the appeals, so I'm not going to recap that today. I will take a moment though and put in the quick plug for the Real Estate Tax Relief in the Elderly and Disabled program, it's an expense that appears in the non departmental chapter. So if you are someone here listening online or you know someone who may qualify for this program based on the criteria in the presentation, please contact the Department of Finance and Budget. We will assist you with the application process and the application review that takes from
there. It's a number that the Board has worked to expand that authority or not expanding authority, expand the eligibility criteria and that's actually up to $2,800,000 of tax relief the Board is now providing for folks who qualify. We'll talk about that more on Wednesday in the non departmental chapter. Real estate revenue is projected to increase $20,500,000 or 7.6%, that is primarily due to the 6.2% reassessment in calendar year 2026. Sorry, there's a typo on that slide. I'm sorry, from calendar year 2025, it's a typo in my mind.
The reason that number is even greater then is because we also have an impact of new construction, land divisions and other adjustments that will increase the tax base. So in the actual rate for real estate, again, that is recommended to be at 89.4. But I want to take a moment and really define this term of lower tax rate in quotes. This lower tax rate is defined by the Virginia code, and it is, established as part of the ad on the tax rate. And what this means is, what would the tax rate be if the board were to set a tax rate
that would offset the increase in real estate assessments? So the County would still receive increased revenue from new construction and land divisions, but that rate, which in this case would be a decrease to offset their assessments, and that is $0.842 for $100 of assessed value. If the Board would desire a change in the tax rate, the value of the pinning is $3,300,000 I put up here, the Board has a allocation of shared revenues, that is used, to guide, with what goes to capital and debt, public school operations, and county government operations. Those amounts are if the board would follow that split.
I will share that historically, most of the time when the board has made changes in the tax rate and has not gone through the split, the board has decided to dedicate that for one purpose or another. So every tenth of that is worth about $300,000 So that information is available if the Board desires to make that change. I'll move to personal property next. This one, I have to admit, is a little more complex than real estate because it has some different categories and some different relief programs. So again, the rate is recommended to remain the same, dollars 4.28. The assessment method here is the Virginia code authorizes a few different sources and assessment
methods. Now, Morrow County, we are using the clean trade in value as published in January of JD Power's Used Car Guide. And that's for vehicles, motorcycles, other classes of personal property who have other methods defined in the state code. So this is a source that is increasing from fiscal year twenty twenty six to 2027, by a total of just under $7,000,000 or 17%. There are four factors that are driving this and a lot of this is based on activity that is actually taking place in fiscal year twenty twenty six that will more than what is changing in fiscal year twenty twenty seven.
So these four factors, first, are the collection rate. The revenue administration team and Department of Finance and Budget is always looking at the tools available in the state, our procedures and we have seen or people just happen to be paying more on time, we are seeing our collection rates uptick and that is reflected in this projection. The second thing is an increased number of vehicles. We have seen, just through our regular practices, whether it be businesses or vehicles, always doing audits to make sure things are garaged and located in the proper jurisdiction. As it turns out last year, there were about 500 vehicles more than usual that were picked up and added to
the county's roles that were already here. That plus businesses and others is why that number continues to grow. The third reason is the really the source data that we're getting from J. D. Power. If you were to go back prior to recently, we would get data from J. D. Power, it would really be about the make and the model of the vehicle. What we're getting now is from the assessment tool is much more refined level connected to a VIN, and so you can get data about what a trim level looks like. And so rather than a make and model being assessed really the same regardless of trim level, we are seeing much more of a different agent in that trim level.
So the higher your trim level is, the higher your tax bill will be. And then the fourth thing is we are seeing changes in the vehicle market, where the Board or others listening may remember that about three to five years ago, it was pretty tough to get a new car. Supply chain issues, all of those issues were out there. One of the prime used car markets are cars that are three to five years old. So just as there weren't new cars three to five years ago, there's not as many used cars in that three to five time frame. And so we're seeing definitely a shift in what the macroeconomic base of car makeup
is in terms of used versus new in car prices. So that is the explanation for the increase for, vehicles and motorcycles and other personal property. There is tax relief that is provided by the state And, this is provided progressively. So if you have a vehicle that has a value of $1,000 less, you do not receive a bill that is due to the county. The state will provide full relief. Next, if you have a value of $1,000 and above, for the first $20,000 of that, you'll get 39% relief from the state.
Any car values above $20,000 do not receive relief from the state. Taking a look at the other categories, 84% are from personal vehicles, but there's a few other small ones. Property, which is really just vehicles owned by, businesses. They are assessed the same as personal property, and, the rate must be the, the same as that tax rate. They do not receive relief. Two other small categories are machinery and tools, boats, airplanes and manufacturers. If the board would like to set a different rate for those, they can only go downward from the personal property rate. Right now, all of these rates are equal at $4.28
of assessed value per $100 of assessed value. Again, if the Board would like to change a penny on this tax rate, it would be $113,000 per penny, those will be announced by split and again, the Board has their discretion to whether that is split or dedicated for particular purposes. One more slide before we take a break. Other local taxes, I'll take a break before we turn it over to the board for questions. The, This is a tax, group of taxes that really in the pandemic and coming out of the pandemic, I had a lot of charts and graphs to talk about how sales tax was changing, food and beverage, consumer business licenses.
But this is one where this year, it's really just modest growth and things are kind of saying slow and steady, I would say modest, not slow. There's a few taxes where we're seeing some weakening, there's others that are just coming along, but I would characterize these increases as relatively modest. And in the other local taxes, these are the sources that make up 94% of that total. So with that, before we go into other local revenues, state, federal and fund balance, I will turn it over to chair because this has been a pretty deep dive into other local taxes and I'll be happy to answer any questions. No questions. Supervisor Missal? I guess I'll ask this now and you can tell me to punt it until
later. As we talk about increasing whether it's personal property, any of the taxes in general, what has been the trend? I mean, is it pretty has it been pretty stable over the years or has it been sort of of up and down? Yes. So going back on real estate taxes for the last, I want to say ten years, but I'm going to fact check myself, there's been two increases to the real estate rate. The first of which was, I believe in the fiscal year twenty twenty budget process, where there was a general obligation bond referendum and it was foreshadowed in that referendum that there would be a tax increase to fund the capital and debt impacts of
that. So the Board approved that, I believe it was $0.015 It took a it was a year later than planned, but that was the first $0.015 that was approved. And then last year there was an increase of 0.04 that was allocated $0.032 for public safety, 0.4 for public schools and 0.4 for affordable housing. Yes. I was really thinking more about personal property. Thank you. So personal property is one where we're back and we researched this and from the nineteen nineties, I think it changed the first year except in 2020,
let's say '2 or three, but there was a time where used car values were spiking probably upwards of 30% to 40% plus. The board at that time dropped that rate 0.86 with the idea they needed to have some temporary relief from that, rather than collect it all and do the rebate or collect it all and just collect it all. And so what happened over the last couple of budgets is the Board had gradually increased that funding back and now it's been restored to the $4.28 where it has been for the majority of the time in its existence. Okay. I think that's it for me.
Supervisor, you're not paying? What is the cap for the transient occupancy tax? There is actually no cap on the transient occupancy tax. Do we know what other sort of large counties around the state with their percentages? We can. I can provide that to a follow-up with the board. I will share last time we looked at this, it's very common to see cities and counties, who are adjacent to each other have the same rate. So right now, the city of Charlottesville also has a 9% rate. But we can provide that data for different metro areas, Northern Virginia, the beach, and show where those are historically. I will take that as a follow-up.
Thank you. That's it. Supervisor Mallory. Thank you very much. On Page 19, I may have missed something. You talked about the number of vehicles being registered in the county, so there's more enforcement of It's both. And I I would ask when we look at the back, Jennifer, you have Jennifer Maffini, our Chief Revenue Administration, has the full permission to say there's a detailed response that could better be followed up there. But would there be anything that you would add other than it's both factors? Jennifer with D and E, chief of revenue administration. We a big part of it is due diligence.
D and B has changed their process in how they put in addresses. So they have a new system on the back end that verifies locality or your garage jurisdiction more than it did before. They did that last year. Okay. That has cleaned up some of it. So when you go to the dealership and you buy a car and you tell me you live in Charlottesville, Virginia and they just put everybody in the city, and then later on, we have to find them all because the that's our most common scenario. And then we also do have the ability we have access to the state police
website, DCEN state police system, where we can go in and inquire. And when we get notifications untaxed vehicles such as in Florida, we do follow-up on those and try to do our due diligence to determine if that is something that is technically located in Almar County. So it's an ongoing effort at a lot of different angles. If there's something more specific you wanna know, I can Thank you. You covered. Thank you. That was great. I appreciate it. Supervisor Croft? Yeah. One question then, like, one statement that comes to mind.
First, can you remind me I I feel like I remember learning this. Is TOT, revenues earmarked for specific purposes? There are a portion of that is. And so, the state code, the county has a 9% tax. The way the state code is written is the 3% of that tax between 25% is restricted for travel tourism purposes. Understanding money in a budget is fungible and can be moved from pot to pot, I'm also curious is the is the portion of do our tourism based expenses,
exceed the portion that we are currently putting toward that from TOT? I would need to go back and see what else we may cover. I mean, really right now our goal is to kind of assess what is covered by that 3% because anything above the 3% is unrestricted for whatever may be used there. But we could take that as a follow-up as well. What I'm thinking of is, is there still a pot to even fill if we increase this rate? It's part of how Yes. So, if the Board were to increase that rate further, that would not be restricted to, the state just when the Board moved from a few years ago,
it was 5% to 8%, the board increased it to 8% to match the city and then with the city both moved to 9% together. And everything from 5% to 9% was unrestricted just like the 10% and so on would be unrestricted. Helpful clarification. Thank you. The other kind of just based on where we are in the PowerPoint, I think the normative statement I want to make is, we every year have legislative priorities. We've had the same set of legislative priorities almost exactly during my whole tenure on the board because everything we're asking was getting vetoed. I think we're expecting to see a lot of the things we want,
we get in the coming cycle. And I think we need to start thinking, oh, what are some more particularized things we want to ask for? And a lot of our revenue powers, I think, could be more expansive or more nuanced. Just from this presentation too that immediately pop off the top of my head is personal property and machinery and tools are coupled. I don't want them coupled. I want to hire M and T than personal property. I want to be able to provide tax relief to individual residents who have cars that they own while making sure I'm getting as close to the Laffer curve
as I can, on the major industries that we have that we would like to have that diverse revenue, supply from. But I can't do that right now and the General Assembly could let me do that. That's something I would like. Currently, if I'm remembering correctly, if a car is owned by a business that is, not a Virginia based business, even if it's Virginia based, but if it is, incorporated in a separate, state, that card cannot does not have to be counted as garage tier, if I'm remembering correctly.
There's a lot of, like, Maine based small business, or, Maine license. Every record this town of Scottsdale is licensed in Maine. Because they don't pay taxes on it. And they don't have to be, because of how garaging works. That is a loophole that exists to the benefit of, of business. That could be closed and it would provide some some marginal, improved revenue that could also provide additional tax relief toward, the rest of our residents in the future. These are the kinds of thoughts I think we should be having now that we have a slightly more sympathetic administration as we move forward.
Like, what are the frustrations we have during revenue generation and how can we, correct those frustrations? Alright. So we will move next to other local non tax revenues. This category of revenues is just under $20,000,000 growing in a little little over 4%. Just some examples of what primarily makes up this one on the slide. There are two things I want to highlight for the Board of Supervisors that do not need to be finalized today because we do have future, work planned. We've included in the budget $80,000 which would contemplate a charge for Microcat services effective midyear.
Now I would recommend to the board that we discuss this on March 11 in the context of total transit expenditures. I know we have some representatives from the transit agencies here at that time. But it's also not that we would decide that on March 11. This would be one conversation in the future ones we would consider. And also really targeting this for midyear to allow ample time if the board wants to move forward with this to really shape what is the best way to balance that. The next item is, about community development fees. So there was a study done on community development fees several years ago and recommended a regular updating of the benchmarking for the cost of service.
It has been several years since that has taken place and so, staff is recommending and has communicated to the developed community when the budget was released that effective January 1, they would look to do a benchmarking for the cost of those services. So on the board of supervisors, March 18, there would be a little more information about this but requesting the authorization to hold a public hearing. That public hearing would be held on April 15, which is the same night as the tax rate and budget public hearings, because this is all part of the budget. And we'll discuss that a little more in the coming.
Those are two things that I want to highlight for future discussion with the Board of Supervisors. Next on state revenues, again, the 6% of the budget's about $30,000,000 and they are essentially flat for county government. Should say county government and a portion of these are shared with the schools, where they're not designated for particular county services. So half of this comes from the personal property tax relief that I mentioned before. The next largest category is reimbursements for expenses, both administration and direct service in the Department of Social Services. We also received designated support for public safety departments, constitutional officers, and the registrar.
And then we also received some taxes that are collected from the state and remitted back to localities for telecommunications and vehicle rental tax. So the state budget is not done and it's very rarely done it seems when the county's budget is adopted. But looking at the draft budgets in the House and the Senate, we're not anticipating a major shift in our state revenues at this time. Some of the big items they are consistent in such as public safety support is level funded in both of those. So the personal property tax relief would be a major statewide issue that change, it's actually been the same amount for almost twenty years now. And just some of those other items,
there will probably be some variance as there typically is, but we're not seeing a major change based on what we know as of today. Moving to federal revenues, this is another one we're watching closely. In the general fund, this is about $10,000,000 and 99% of that is funding that's in the Department of Social Services. Again, reimbursing the cost of administration and also benefits that are going through the County the Department and passed down. These are actually going up 9%. This is not a really a change in the reimbursement methodology. If we were to go back last year,
I would say that we were, we, we, over budgeted what we received from the state and under budgeted what we received from the federal government. So we're seeing a little bit of leveling out of that this year. Because again, you can see the state government the state money in total was flat of 0.2 growth and we have a little bit stronger growth in the federal. So we're continuing to watch this very closely as there's questions about SNAP administration, which is supplemental nutritious. Thank you, Ms. Mathem. And we're watching that very closely and we'll continue to keep the Board updated. Beyond the general fund, just to take a highlight about where our federal revenues are and where the County's
biggest vulnerabilities would be and special revenue funds for county government, which again, those funds from the state and federal government, which have a lot more guardrails around them. The housing choice voucher program is 89% of that amount, which provides a lot of really critical assistance to folks in need in our community. The public schools operating fund, we'll hear from the schools next week. They have Medicaid reimbursements for special education programs. And then they have a portion of a little over $12,000,000 in their special revenue funds for the programs that are listed. And they can best speak to any risk areas in there when they're available to
speak next week. So finally, we're going to talk about general fund fund balance. And so this is a visualization that is new this year, of really how do we clarify what makes up the county's general fund, fund balance. First, to define what that is, there is $98,300,000 if you were to look at our budget, if you look at the end of fiscal 2025 in the county's audit of $98,300,000 that is the result of really every year in the past, all county revenues received in the general fund minus all county expenditures made out of
the general fund. So I've color coded this really to kind of put the size, where are the dollars and what is the Board's flexibility in those in the financial management policies. So first, on left in the red is the unassigned fund balance policy of 10%. This is set by the board's financial management policies. This is sometimes informally referred to as the hurricane fund. It would be recommended to never touch this unless you actually had to for cash flow purposes. So imagine there's a hurricane that washes out a major highway, breaks a dam, imagine there's a wildfire that burns down a couple of shopping centers,
things that are very fortunately low probability, they do happen around The United States, that's why you have that reserve, those really dire emergency situations for cash flow. The second is in orange, because again, having two reds, the visibility was not great, but those are things the Board is already obligated in fiscal year twenty six. And so the Board of Supervisors will reappropriate funds from one year to the next to carry it forward. The Board of Supervisors and their financial management policy, the portion of that is the 10% and the 2% grow year to year, a portion of that is needed to be reserved.
And so that is, I guess, could theoretically be undone if the Board were to revisit decision made this year, but really that's kind of the decision the Board has already made and sort of hands on in this process. Next, we have in yellow, the 2% rate of stabilization reserve under the Board's financial management policies. That's in yellow because it can be used, but it needs to be used with some discernment and I'll talk more about what that is in a moment. Then we have in green, there is $10,700,000 above the, really the policy requirements of the Board of Supervisors. So So we talk about one time money into the affordable housing investment fund,
one time money into climate action, the economic development fund, and some other one time cost. That 10.7 is the source for all of that. And there really is no restriction on that as long as the board is using that for a one time expense. Some of that is also going into the CIP as well. And finally, there is a school policy reserve of $4,200,000 the school board is allowed to retain up to 2%, and that lives in a, really, a sub fund of the general fund. And that is available for one time expenses, the school boards will request that if they would like to address that for items in their budget or do something different.
So, let's take a moment to look closely at that budget stabilization reserve since we put a yellow light on how that is used. I can't guarantee we're going to turn all our investments into those charts, but we'll see. I'll say that from the team in the back who makes all these slides. All right. So the financial management policies. This is the words right out of the Board's policies. I'm going to highlight the most important things. This is using the budget stabilization reserve is appropriate in a difficult budget year. Staff would advocate that we are in one, because without use of this budget stabilization reserve, without an increase in any tax rate,
there would be a notable reduction in services. And that's really that cost to maintain the quality of services, that is really what we're speaking to there. It's also appropriate because we do have a forecast right now with the changing economic tax base where there is reason to assume that our revenues will, grow differently. If that was not on the horizon, staff would not be recommending using this budget stabilization reserve. This is find a way to bridge from where we are right now to the out years of the five year plan without a major impact or disruption to services. And finally, the clarification that if this balance is to be reused or used,
it needs to be replenished as quickly as possible. So the plan here, and also there's risk in using this, it's a yellow light, so I'm going to lay out how we're mitigating risk to give Board the confidence in staff's approach, is that, first, a portion of the reserve would be used and would be done over multiple years. So the plan would be first in fiscal year twenty twenty seven, based on the fiscal year twenty twenty seven recommended budget, the total amount of that reserve would be $12,000,000 based on the 2027 revenues. Dollars 3,000,000, one quarter of that or 0.5 of the two would be recommended to be used in fiscal year twenty twenty seven. An additional quarter,
identical amount of $3,000,000 will be planned to use in fiscal year twenty twenty eight. That remaining 1% would be recommended to be untouched because should there be a shock from the federal government, a unexpected turn into the economy and other things, that's still a resource that's available to the Board to help navigate all this uncertainty. And then when we get to fiscal year twenty nine, the idea is we would be no longer using that budget stabilization reserve, we would be back to full funding of ongoing revenues for ongoing expenses. So second is staff is signaling the intention that we that budget that balance would
be refilled as quickly as it could be. And so right now, as we think back on this slide of the 10,700,000.0, in the future, before that 10,700,000.0 could be applied to the CIP or other strategic priorities, you would first need to refill the budget stabilization reserve. Then third, this is just a plan and the exercise of planning is important as the plan itself. So as we would if the Board approves this plan, we'll come back in the five year plan, we'll come back every annual budget process and figure how do we need to adapt this with additional new information.
So with that, that actually concludes the revenue chapter, and I'll turn it back over to the Chair for further questions. All right. Supervisor Lapisia, correct? I did want to ask, on Page Slide 23, the micro cap charge for services. I know that's you'll be looking into that. And but are we going to be comparing what other counties do, other places do regarding Microcat? And do we have any idea how much we might be charging because we've gone two years without charging, it's been a big success. Do we have I'll ask Ryan Davidson,
Deputy Chief of Budget, who's been lead on this to not this initiative, but transit in general to Brian Davidson, Chief of Budget. Yes, we've been working with Via who is our microcat provider and they have been doing benchmarking of the other localities across The United States that have a similar microcat and micro transit product. And so we're kind of benchmarking our fee our initial fee structure off of that trying to keep it as simple as possible. We'll go into some more detail on Wednesday, but we're really looking at kind of an initial two dollars charge with some potential discounts for certain things such
as multi riders and other potential concessions that we could make. We haven't fully we're still doing research on this. We have the general structure in place, but we also wanted to be able to have a conversation with the Board before we came out with a full structure of what that may look like. And so we'll have a little bit deeper dive and we will have representatives from the from our MicroCap vendor here and from Charles Hill area transit who runs the service for us here on Wednesday. And when does our funding run out for that? Do we know? So, we are currently now fully paying for this with the county's dollars.
We are now we have now used up all of the grant funds. So, all MicroCat services are now being 100% funded by the county, which has now allowed us to have greater flexibility in these services and one of the things we were not able to do while we're still drawing down grant funds was charge for the service, because under our grant application, we had told them that this was going to be a fair free service while we're still receiving those grant funds. And now that we're out of that, this has it's the first time we've ever had the possibility opened up to be able to even look at potential fares for micro cut. Okay. And you may not know this, but does our ridership keep going up?
We are seeing we'll get into this a little bit more when we talk about the micro cut, but it's we've hit a plateau. We see a lot of more demand and there's that level of the demand we can meet versus how much unmet demand is there versus the calls because we only have so many vehicle hours that they can put on the road with this service before they're able to not be able to pick up a ride or be able to meet a ride request. Okay. And one other question, I understand state revenues were getting we know some monies we'll be getting, but then we don't know the final bill until after we finish our budget.
Is that correct? Did I That is. And I mean, historically, based on what I know is on March 9, we're not expecting a major change. It's always possible something could. That's also one of the reasons the Board has reserves. It can also go the other way and we could find more money after the state's done. That's all. Thank you. Supervisor Missal? Thanks. Just on the Supervisor Peruvian's favorite slide, I have some questions on the red, yellow and green just real quickly. One is the 10% unassigned fund balance, how often is that modified? Have we increased the percentage over the years or is that sort of a lot?
So that that policy has been the same. I've been with the county almost twenty years. And I can remember one point, it was 8%. K. It went to 10, but that was probably more than fifteen years ago, but I can confirm that. I'm giving the, I'm giving the thumbs up from the budget team, sir. Okay. I'm just curious how closely it's linked to increasing costs. So if it's to be applied for whatever infrastructure improvements because of a hurricane or whatever, then is that I'm not suggesting the increase that, but is that something we're considering to be notified? Yeah. I think really depending on the incident,
we would, there's in any incident, there's the median emergency response and then there's the continuity of operations that follows that. And given on the circumstance, whether it be from FEMA assistance, other recovery, you know, the time of year something would happen would matter based on when the county's collections would come in. And so we would probably have that as part of our assessment processes or kind of operations planning. And forgive me if you said this, is that have you benchmarked other, like, is that typical for other counties to have something in that percentage? I think it was about two years ago, we had our financial advisor prepare a summary that we can share that with the Board.
I'll say we were, I would say, within line of what was found. We can share that again. Good to know. And then, related to the yellow and the green, I just didn't follow when you said you would use, I think what I heard is to add back to the budget stabilization policy reserve. Mhmm. In future years, you might use some of the amount above policy reserves and obligations to fund that. Correct. Correct. If it's there. So I guess a way to think about it is pretend we used budget stabilization reserve last year. Yeah. In the '27 recommended budget, we would need to reduce the one time money from some source out there that
it's funding. Okay. It's just order of operations what the priorities would be. Got it. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. Good. Supervisor Duncan? Can you just explain what the school policy reserve fund is? Sure. So this was created, I'd say, sometime during the twenty tens where, the the schools are not allowed themselves to carry a fund balance. And so what the board said is that, we, will allow you to all carry a fund balance and up to 2% of your budget can be retained in that amount. And if that amount is above 2%, it will be sent to the school's CIP,
unless the school's direct or schools request otherwise. And what we will see in the school's budget, I think it's a little under $1,000,000 right now in next year's budget, we will take that and use that for you know, you know, furniture replacement in schools or, like, the desk, cafeteria tables, that sorts of things. But they're really using that, for one time cost on a small basis. Is the 2% is that something that, like, the board set or the school board set? It's set by the board of supervisors. Is that allowed to change? That would be up to the board of supervisors. Yeah. But I should say the board of supervisors has full control.
That's not dictated by state or federal. Okay. That's all, Kevin. Supervisor Mallick? Thank you very much. This the red in the screen is what I, in my mind, call the Louisa earthquake one because $40,000,000 grand electric school got demolished in The United Kingdom. And that's the sort of thing that I think has to be the level of chaos that that's used for. See, in going forward, I'm sure that you all have gone through a lot of worry about the chaos coming forward from state and federal. So
I guess I would seek some reassurance at some point that we're saving it up because of what's gonna happen. So there may be I don't want the whole map some other day, but if there's a little map that you can share that will help us understand that we are well protected, based on what we look at as we lose everything, that would be And reliving the twenty ten to twenty fourteen when the school reserve was established, during the recession, they had $9,000,000 that was not shared. And we could have built budgeted that for $90,000,000 of borrowings built in.
So that's where that whole background came from, and I think it's your help. Supervisor Broad? I'm not sure I have any questions. I'll just say, I know Seth has heard me say this. I think most of the board has heard me say this. I've I have a strong inclination to spend rather than save. I think if we're going to ask for the public's money, we need to have something where you're using it. There's always urgent needs. And so I've been an insistent. Opponent of, the the yellow, the budget stabilization reserve,
specifically, it's at 2% rather than 1%. But I'm really delighted to see us use again. This is, I think, the first time we've used it. I know this is coming up. Right? And so I'm going to say that. I'm I'm pleased to see it actually serving its intended purpose, which is to be spent. If I may add a comment to, Supervisor Malek on some of that reassurance. Coming out of the pandemic, we realized we really did need to save more and we did move from 1%, so we the Board moved from 1% to 2% in 2022, It really kind of updated the guardrails around that yellow box to enable situations such
as this budget. Supervisor Mitchell, do you have another question? Yes, I just have one bounce back. So the $54,900,000 is sitting somewhere in the town. And I assume that's invested? That's correct. We have a team who is, managing our investments and our debt, and the Virginia code has, pretty stringent requirements on how that can be done. Okay. And the board in this financial policy has really prioritized this first, the security of that investment, the second, the liquidity of that, and then only third, after those first two are met, the the rate of return that we would get. So really the way I would characterize it is we almost have the high yield
savings account that we're using right now and exploring other options like CDs, very relatively real risk things. And the return on that doesn't go back into adding to the investment fund balance. It goes towards funding other Yes, correct. We have interest revenue budgeted that is funding our current operations across multiple funds. Got it. And the last question, the school policy reserve, that also sits in the counties, I guess, Yeah. It appears in the general fund, but it's really just for reporting. That's never been taken out of that and used for any other purpose other than public schools or to the public school.
So are there operations at the request or the CIP? And again, there's a process where, you know, if they were ever to use that, they request the board, the board appropriates that. If they're ever over, they have the option to request to keep it or send it to the CIP. Okay. Thank you. Supervisor Mallick? So, quick follow-up on the use of yellow. I have imprinted in my brain two finance directors ago, constituent 95 years old, with some my father wrote it, He called me to his kitchen after I was elected and gave me the riot act about never ever ever get in a situation again in Albemarle County where you
have to borrow money to be paid off because of the disaster that that caused, I've got a couple. I realized I didn't do my email set of questions. So page 89, and this can be followed up. But under public service tax, which is the real estate and tangible personal property owned by railroads, utilities, etcetera, it looks like I understand the explanation there, but it seems to be on the tangible personal property side. I'm looking for the reminder of how that real estate is assessed,
just like we assess residential and commercial can be assessed differently. Does that make sense? We can take that as a follow-up. In terms of determining the value, the property value. Like, this is a Peter Lynch question. They might say we do it like homes, do we do it like commercial? I don't I guess I've just never thought to ask that question before. So it's more a curiosity than a I'm not a 100% sure, so we'll take that as a follow-up. So I don't misspeak. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wasn't expecting that one today. A lot of these are afraid for follow-up. 93 page 93, 94. So and this just surfaced in supervisor Missal's question because there's your revenue for the
use of money and property that you guys were just talking about unless I'm thinking of a different category. My question here was in follow-up, if I could see the breakout, the percentage, what's the percentage of use of money, what's the percentage of property? Just tell me more and write a little more detail. Just to clarify, that category between rent and interest and the other subsets? Yes. Okay. Yes. Thank you. I think somewhere in a recent consent agenda item, I remember seeing the use of money. It might have been a financial report for year to date.
Quarterly financial reports do include an investment report as part of that. But we can give, I think your question is a little different in terms of what are the types of uses of interest property and the other revenues. Right. That's just the breakout. When I saw the numbers, I was like, I don't know where we are at. I'm remembering like a ballpark $3,000,000 or $4,000,000 that might have been the added when we changed how we were investing some money or we started using an additional tool at some point that might just be what so I'm just looking for more commentary on that. And then Page 96, which is payment. And honestly,
I've never really dug in to understand this more because because the state revenues are just there's not a whole lot. But that payment in lieu of taxes, when it says services charge service charges incurred and it's not they're small amounts. I mean, and I don't want to get into the bigger, you know, political conversation of that that sometimes the city likes to get into with the university. But I am trying to understand when we say service charges incurred, I want a little more color commentary on that as well. I'm like, what are we talking about? There's a formula dictated by the state that we can provide that will map out
what that looks like. What it covers and gaps and how it's arrived at. Yes. That would be awesome. And then I don't think I have no. I'm good. Thank you. It's actually there's on page 98. The county gets around $54,000 in a payment in lieu of taxes from the federal government. That's for, taxes and parks within the county. And so, that that is where that appears. But it is on the list as opposed to just the courthouse. For the federal yeah. The federal bill exists. So the FMP is on our category this summer. Yeah.
I don't, I'm not certain whether we receive pilot for that. I would need to follow-up. Pilot standing short for payment in lieu of taxes. Alright. Senator, supervisor, miss Holt. As we get into some of these, sometimes your questions can generate off of other people's questions. So just give me the heads up if you have a follow-up. If everybody is wanting to follow-up, then I'll just swing back through for organization. Go ahead. Thank you. I just have one quick question back. I think I heard you say that the money that is let's say it's $55,000,000 that's invested, the income of that investment annually goes towards operating budgets in some other areas.
I think I heard you say Yes, correct. Did I also hear you say that that income is actually limited in terms of what it can be used for? No. It would be we would allocate the income from where the source, so whatever balance in the CIP would get its interest. We are at fiscalations and so we're investing money for the ECC. So that their balance receives interest just like the counties would and so there's no restriction on that. Okay. And has any of the income off of the investments ever been considered as an down net return where you could potentially apply that income to some particular use?
I would say what we've seen, not in terms of, I would say, the endowment, but knowing that interest can be volatile and especially where we've been in recent years, we have really taken approach to treat sometimes interest as one time income. And so a good example is in this year where I didn't discuss some revenues, but right now it's clear '26 based on the stronger than reassessment, the stronger personal property values. And because the Federal Reserve has decreased interest rates later than was anticipated in the budget, we are having more interest income. And so staff is recommending taking those one time monies and putting that right into
the CIP to help fund one time cost there. Got it. Thanks. But we are not allowed to bond and then take our bond proceeds and invest them because and get higher back when the balances were different, you had 2% loan and higher percent. And so I remember there was a prohibition about that. Yeah. There's a term called arbitrage, which is basically you can't borrow to make money. And so there's lots of rules and restrictions and actually some exemptions where you can use that. And so it really comes to, compliance that we have as part of, again, what our investments team does to make sure that we are not, we're following IRS guidelines.
I'll say that's what you're doing. All right. With that, I will turn things over to Chief of Budget, Caitlin Malcolm. Good evening. Caitlin Malcolm, Chief of Budget. If I can walk you through the expenditures that are in the general fund for the recommended budget this year. For the rest of today's work session and our work session on Wednesday, we'll be covering the chapters that are in the expenditure section of the budget. And of course, those are balanced to the revenues that Andy just covered in the previous chapter. So as you can see on this doughnut chart, the largest expenditure in our general fund is the transfer to the school's operating budget. The next largest after that is for public safety and followed by the transfer to
the capital and debt program. We're gonna go chapter by chapter through the recommended budget document. Tonight, I'm first gonna start with an overview of compensation, very quickly and then hand things over to our director of human resources, miss Jessica Rice, to talk you through the details behind that more. And then we'll take a break if the board desires. After the break, we're going to come back and cover the public safety chapter and the judicial chapter, and you'll hear from the chiefs as Andy indicated earlier about what's going on in public safety as well as our chief operating officer who's going to give you an on the public safety staffing studies. So first,
kind of going back to what Andy said previously, we use the strategic plan as a guide when working on and recommending the budget to the board for consideration. As you know, there are many more things and priorities in the strategic plan than we have money for. And so the goal here is really to balance among the different priorities and make progress in all six goal areas in any given budget year. You'll see in the middle of the workforce and customer service goal is in the middle, and we're going to cover that first tonight with an overview of the recommendations for compensation that are in the budget. It's really important that we support our workforce over time and the Board has been
very supportive of that effort in recent years. So that's why we're starting off there tonight since it affects many of the chapters in the budget and then we'll take a deeper dive as the work sessions continue. So in the budget, in recommended budget, we have $2,900,000 that's going to provide a market based compensation adjustment for classified staff. Ms. Rice is going to go into more details about that, so I won't get too in the weeds there. But essentially, every two years, we review certain positions within the classified staff of the county. That plus the cost of living increase that we're suggesting in the recommended budget of
2% plus a one time bonus are the dollar amounts that make up that 2,900,000 and that's for classified staff only. We'll also get into more details tonight about the recommendations for our public safety staff. Within this recommended budget, we also have a total training budget of $1,400,000 that's flat from FY 2026 and that supports all training and development efforts, helps with employee retention and recruitment. And again, we're maintaining what we're doing in FY 2026 in that proposal. And then finally, there's an increase of 8% to the employee self funded health care fund.
I believe Mr. Galloway asked in a prior session how much does that 8% amount to? It amounts to a change of $2,100,000 for the health care fund in this budget. So that's included in the recommendation. And then finally, something that's not on the slide but is worth mentioning, the Virginia Retirement System rate is updated by the state every other year. We just received a rate update and the rate actually decreased by 1.33 percentage points, which got us a savings of $1,000,000 and that's incorporated into this budget as well.
So now I'll turn things over to Ms. Rice to walk you through the compensation recommendations. And then when Ms. Rice is done, we'll pause if you have any questions for me or for her. Great. Thank you, Caitlin. Jessica Reyes, the Director of Human Resources. I wanted to start tonight with, sort of a review of the Board's adopted pay philosophy. So there are three of you on the Board right now that were not here in 2022 when we actually went through a comp in class study and adopted our current pay philosophy.
So in 2022, we hired a consultant, to come in and do a full review of our pay practices, where we sat in the market, our pay scales, were we competitive, were we not. And the results of that actually ended up being a recommendation of two different things. The first one was restructuring our pay scales themselves. We were way off base with the market and as a result, we had a vacancy rate of almost 20% at that time.
It was very, very significant. The second recommendation from that consultant was to adopt a market that we compare ourselves to and we're looking at how they're paying and there if you can see them up on the screen, there are 23 different, I want to call them agencies because what you'll see is our public school system is up there as is the University of Virginia. And this grouping of localities were selected and recommended because of a few different factors.
First, their proximity to us. Secondly, it's about the services they present they provide and their size and cost of living and all of that stuff was factored in there. And so since 2022, everything that we have done related to compensation was through the lens of looking at where do we sit with this group here. So back then the Board took an action to approve this market. And then the second item that the board took an action to,
to approve was where do we want to be in relation to the agencies on here? Do we wanna pay a lot more than them? Do we wanna pay average of them? Do you wanna be just a little bit under? And so what the board approved was that we would be the average, like, market average for these localities and the reason for that, there was two reasons. The first one was that it was just offset against some of those other folks
on there that maybe have a higher cost of living. Northern Virginia is pretty heavy on that list. And then also we had affordability considerations as well. On the bottom of the slide, you can see some data. And this is from FY 2023, 2024 and 2025. And this is the impact or the results of adopting that philosophy over the past three years. Like I said, we started with a vacancy rate of about 20% at the end of FY 'twenty
two and then by the end of FY 'twenty three, our vacancy rate was down to 8.1%. The goal is to be between 8% actually, the goal on the vacancy rate is to be between 35%. And then the turnover rate goal is to be between 812%. And so as you can see over the course of the three years there, we've made significant progress in where we are in retaining our staff and actually being able to recruit for key positions that are required in the County.
Go ahead, Caitlin. Okay. These numbers on the screen are actually what is proposed in your budget. I believe this is one of the budget documents in the book. And so what I wanted to ground everyone in, so for the Board, for our folks in the room and for the public that are listening is that we actually have two different pay plans. We have a classified pay plan and we also have a public safety pay plan. It is really important to recognize that they are different, They're structured different. They are maintained different.
They are benchmarked a little bit differently. And overall, they're treated differently, for various reasons. And I'll walk through what that is here in a second. The classified pay plan essentially is a scale, that consists of pay grades with a minimum and a maximum in them, and then our staff are placed on that scale based on what current market data says. As Caitlin alluded to earlier, we maintained benchmarking with this market based philosophy so that at least half of our
positions are benchmarked every year. And so what's recommended in the budget, the first bullet on there is the $600,000 and that is for that market benchmarking that we do every year. So this was year two. This is the second year of the actual benchmarking. We completed the first half last year and we adjusted pay for those folks that needed it last year after the benchmarking. And this year, this is the second half of the group that was benchmarked.
And so we went in and put in that recommended movement, on that classified pay plan. The second bullet under classified, reflects a cost of living adjustment. And so what happens with the cost of living adjustment is that the entire scale moves and it is based on the economy and the economics and the competition in our area. So it's not individual positions, it's the whole scale moving based on exactly what it sounds like, the cost of living.
And then the third bullet on the classified pay plan is for a bonus. For a one time bonus. So it would be a one time payment, not ongoing costs. And this is, in response to the state has it in their recommended budget right now. The same thing as a one time bonus and as a result, almost all of the other, localities on our competitive market have proposed the same thing in their, in their budget proposal and so this is in response to that.
Now to switch over to public safety, again, this is a different pay plan. It's completely separate from the classified pay plan. In public safety, we have three different scales that we're maintaining because we have three different agencies that fall under the umbrella of the county and that is our fire rescue department, our police department and our sheriff's office. And so on the first bullet up there, you can see that is the recommended budget amount to move the police department pay
scale as a result of benchmarking that we do for public safety every year. It it is a little bit different because they have a step scale, very similar to what teachers see and other, paramilitary organizations see. And so these numbers reflect a, moving the entire scale rather than just moving one position. Okay. What that equates to is an 11% increase in the pay scale. I think that was a question that came out before. And that again,
that's a result of our benchmarking that we have completed over the during the fall. For fire rescue, that second bullet is $1,000,000 in there and that is to move the fire rescue pay scale, to be comparable to market and that is a 5% increase for them. They have different, operations, they are different departments, different functions and honestly their markets are different and are calling for different actions right now. And then finally, the third bullet on the slide, the 700,000.0,
that is for a programmed 2% step increase by virtue of them being on a public safety pay scale. It is a step scale in which, when personnel are qualified, they move one step up in the scale. It reflects a full twelve months of, gained skill and experience and also based on, proper performance as well. That $700,000 includes for the step movement for fire rescue, for ACPD,
and the sheriff's office. And Kayelyn? Okay. So this is just to kind of let you know what we're seeing in the market right now. So for FY 'twenty six, that we're in to finish out the fiscal year and what we can expect in FY 'twenty seven. I will say our current data in that box on the right hand side, our vacancy rate, which is as of March 6, this past Friday, is 4.9% and our turnover rate is 8%. And so what you can see in that box,
if you were to compare it to the FY 'twenty five closeout numbers, is that our vacancy rate has increased and our turnover rate has decreased. And you're probably wondering how does this happen, right? Well, we did have some public safety new positions at the beginning of the fiscal year, that y'all granted for the county. We have not been able to fill those yet. We are having some challenges in particular in, in police in being able to recruit our police officers. And some of that is resulting from the,
competitive market. We do have a handful of folks that have collective bargaining right now, which is playing a factor. And I believe our police chief may be addressing this in a little bit. I don't want to steal his thunder. So that's partly why we're seeing less turnover, but our vacancy rate is a little bit higher. One of the things that you'll see in the market itself is, our classified pay plan, like our positions are starting to stabilize. We're not seeing these wild salary swings that we were seeing for the past three years, and the proposed budgets that have been put forward from our competitive market all include
between 2% to 4% of a cost of living adjustment. And as I stated earlier, they also are including a one time bonus, to reflect sort of what the state has put forward already. On the public safety side, fire rescue, is thankfully a lot less volatile than it has been in previous years. I know that we've been really successful in our recruiting efforts and the key to that is to ensure that we remain competitive with all of those localities. And then on the law enforcement side,
it is becoming more volatile. And this is where we're putting a lot of intentional effort and focus because we are having some difficulty recruiting and their pay is still fluctuating. There's, the impact coming from collective bargaining. And also, we have sort of a new competitor around us that we did not have before and that's the federal agencies. We've lost a couple there and we are still losing a couple, to the state and we're doing our due diligence to hedge that off as best
that we can. I think that is my last slide. So I will take any questions that you all have. Great. Yes. Okay. So one is I was curious, does the staff training and development that $1,400,000 allocation, is that fully utilized on a given year? Is there remainder Okay, great. Thanks. And then in terms of total compensation, so other than just the percentage increases in the pay, are there other retention strategies that Are there other retention strategies that you're utilizing to help with retention? Yes. So one of the things, that's partly why they have that number up there for training.
That is one of the things that we consistently get feedback on as people want to feel that they're being invested in, that we're training them, that they have a career here and can stay here. We are also revamping our reward and recognition program as we speak. There's been some work done on it this year and we're going to continue to do that and hopefully bring that forward to you all after the beginning of the fiscal year, being mindful, of course, of cost as well doing that. But there are some efforts in place to try to work to retain the folks
that we do have here. Yes. Yeah. The vacancy rates, is that normalized for any reductions or increases in that PEs? Oh, no. Vacancy rate is actually the, the number of employees, the number of vacancies that you have. Okay. And it's divided by the board's approved number of FTEs. And so we track that, with the assistance of our budget team. Cool. And then the last question is just, so cost of living was 2.8% this year, do you? Just sort of part of that was the 2% was to help the project but
also provide the so you don't necessarily keep the consumer price index number? We don't. While it is a factor, we're mostly looking at what other localities are doing and really comparing ourselves to where they sit Because even though the cost of living may have gone up 2.8%, our staff may have actually gotten some of that earlier on during the comp and class increases. And we're being responsive to what our the city is doing and UVA is doing
and the state is doing as well. Supervisor Cummings. I just had a question. This is probably super basic. But could you explain what classified employees are? How many do we have? How many like non classified employees? And did they also get any sort of raise? Yes. That's a great question. So classified employees are they are any permanent employee that is not in the public safety pay plan. Benchmarked and they are slotted into our pay scales. They fall under our county policies.
So that's what a classified tech means. And then what was the other question? Like how many classified, how many nonclassified? And then did the nonclassified employees also get any kind of cost of living raised? I can answer part of that. And the other one, we're going to have to get back to you. So our total classified employees are about $850 something. Non classified, those would be your temps and seasonal workers and interns and things like that. Ideally, we try to include them in cost of living adjustments,
but it's policy driven. And so I would need to get back to you in order to show to share with you what the history has been for them. That's all I have. Thank you. Can I add something? I would just add a little bit of the on the public safety pay scales. They are sworn officers and firefighters. And so that is driven by the state code as well about what is falls under law enforcement and then everyone else. So there are police department employees that may be on our classified scale as an
example. All right. Supervisor Powell? Thank you very much. Let's see on Slide 31. I remember a number of years ago when applicants come in with extra skills, multilingual or something like that, that affects where they enter the pay scale and we're able to give them due credit, right, at the very beginning? Yes. Okay. Second, for turnover, does turnover include retirements? Or is it just people who leave or something? Help me out with that.
Yes. So turnover includes everything. It would include retirement, if we have an employee that passes away, resignations, terminations, it includes everything. And so there was I think between FY 'twenty '4 and 'twenty five, there was a little bit of a spike And that was a year where we happened to have more retirements. That's a great question. Thank you. You're welcome. Supervisor Pruetz. Are there unimplemented elements of the new, public safety salary cost there? No, there aren't.
The Board implemented the first part of it the year that we got the results. I believe that was F in 2023, in May 2023. And then the Board implemented the approved to implement the rest of it that same calendar year right in December as it was turning 2024. And again, it was really, to help us be able to fill the vacancies that we had. At the time, I shared the 20% vacancy rate.
And I think to kind of put that more in context, we're a staff of eight fifty or whatever that is. We had about 130 vacancies, a lot of them being public safety as well. So it made a big difference and you can see the trend in the data of the impact that that made. From the new public safety study that we just received at the end of last year, are there unintended elements that tend to salary additionally? I don't believe so. That's the juicy Yes. So the comp in class study,
that was a couple of years ago and that was fully implemented within a year to year and a half. And I think Christy is going to go over the public safety staffing studies in a little bit. I do not believe any of the recommendations talk about compensation. It's really about workload and resourcing there. This is very basic. And I realize it makes sense, but I just want to make sure I'm stating something that is correct, because I I just haven't thought about it We fully control through our HR and our pay scales all constitutional offices.
Is that accurate? As in, we are the people who decide what a sheriff's deputy makes? We are the people who decide what a prosecutor makes? Yeah. So we do if they have an agreement with the county to provide that service. So for their staff, I believe all of them have an agreement with us where they fall under our pay scales, the staff. And then the constitutional office themselves, the elected officials, they have different they have a different pay plan that they follow.
I I think in my mind, that might I realize I haven't thought about that either. I might have been able to just, like, like, to how we work with schools where we might say, oh, yeah. You you get eight decades, and that's how much that costs. But at the end of the day, they're the ones who are executing payroll and salary. But that's not the case. Yeah. So for the public schools, we do not do any compensation work for them. I I do think it's just worth kind of putting a pin in. This is certainly something that I talk about in a lot of public messaging. The federal impact both on has come up twice now for us,
how it has affected our vacancy rates due to, immigration enforcement sniping our qualified personnel, and how it's affected the administration And we are a very wealthy place that is also deeply desirable for people to live here. If Albemarle County is facing these kinds of obstacles, if we are struggling to retain police talent and afford retaining police I I worry about thinking what our other regional, regional peers who do not have these,
these benefits we do, how they are struggling with these customers. Right? The town of Stratosville, by law, That was my son. Sorry. The, we were kind of one of the first out of the gate for the compensation study. Other counties have since followed suit, as have a lot of our partner agencies. So I think it's time to ask, I know what the counties have done. The other counties have done, at least self reporting from the EDC. But since all of those agencies have now done their compensation studies, working on their individual budgets, I know they've left compensation to get caught up in the market as well.
It's fine because we share those expenses, but that's gonna increase for us too. I don't know if there's a way to get at that and tease that number out to understand what it has done to us. Or so as probably a high five that, oh, we spent too much money on this. Because we have found some of those agencies, like the EVs, were woefully underpaid, but per capita, we're the largest contributor to that. So in their budget requests, how those agencies have managed it ultimately hits our bottom line.
I'm curious about that. We well done on the vacancy rate. I'm trying to kind of champion it because it's there. The, you answered that question, so obviously that was a comment. The con this two percent one time bonus, is this purely covered by the state, or do we get into some shenanigans like it does when the, you know, the general assembly and their intimate wisdom will give public educators an increase because, you know, they're so generous, But they don't cover all the people that are actually hired in public education. So this is proposed in the state budget. And what it is is that it's any position that is funded by the state.
So what happens is our partner agencies and the schools, and any of the state agencies have, will be receiving this 2% increase. And then, if the county wants to, wants to participate, the state would contribute 2% for the positions that they, support us in their payment. And then the county would be responsible for sort of making a department whole. I'm going to give you an example. Senator O'Shanami.
Yes and no, right? I'll give you an example. So our state may fund 75% of one of our, one of our offices here. And they would give the 2% of the pay increase to the county to cover the increase for the 75%. And then the county would be on the hook to either come up with the money to give 25 the other 25% the pay increase or, only give it to the 75%,
which creates its own problems, I'm sure you can imagine. So the intent behind it though was really to be because a lot of our competitive market are following what the state is doing for some of that reason exactly is to mirror it and take away the ambiguity, the inequity and all of the other things that go on with it. It is a the nice thing about it is that it's a onetime. It's not an ongoing expense where we would own it forever going forward in their
base salary. Just a question back on the bonus. So on the workforce stabilization personnel budget slide, which is 33, I think. So I'm curious, the $1,100,000 how is that dispersed? Which slide is that? I'm sorry. The one third of the Oh, yeah. So that is everyone that is in our classified pay plan. So it's not public safety, but it is everyone in our classified pay plan. And what's happening there too is, that bonus would be there for the classified pay plan and then the step increase down below is for the public safety folks.
So they sort of mirror each other. So my question is more about distribution based on narrative or how do you allocate the long term rental? Yes. So cost of living is actually just in response to inflation and the how expensive it is to live in the area. That's 1.2, right? But the I believe that the answer is all staff. Oh, okay. Meredith. No. It's not Meredith. It's not Meredith. Okay. It's AllStaff. And and there's, usually, it's, some criteria about time of service in a year, but it's it's mostly AllStaff.
Great. Thank Thank you. And supervisor, please, sir. Yes. I just wanted to, mention that actually was, entered by, supervisor Jonathan that, I think we should be very proud of the fact that our police officers are not all rushing to join ICE, that they feel very comfortable here, very well respected here in spite of the fact that they have a $50,000 bonus for ICE. So I'm very proud of the fact that we do a good job of retention for of our place house insertion.
This is a great deal for all of us. Okay. Anything else? That's it. All right. We can move Just a reminder, Just be mindful. Thank you. We're back. And, Andy, am I going back? Caitlin. I'm sorry, Caitlin. No. No worries. Thank you. So we're gonna start going through the chapters in the expenditure section of the the book tonight. The first one that we're going to cover is public safety. So I want to take a minute and explain the two donut charts that you see here, for the benefit of the board and the public because we're going to use these donut charts in the same approach for all the chapters in the budget.
So on the left, what you're seeing is a gray and blue chart that shows the entire expenditures in the general fund and you see a blue carve out for public safety, which represents 17% of that general fund expenditure budget. And then on the right, in the multicolored donut chart, you see what's contained within that 17% of the general fund for public safety. And so as you see on this slide, 41% of that donut is represented by the police department, 42% is represented by fire rescue and the
remaining percentage, 17% is our partner agencies within the public safety chapter of the budget. So you may remember, when Mr. Richardson gave his presentation to you a few weeks ago, there was a really busy slide with a lot of different partner agencies named. Some of those partner agencies were our public safety partner agencies. They represent about 17% of the public safety budget overall. Tonight, you're going to have three different four different speakers in this section of the agenda. So I'm going to walk you through at a high level, the overview for the departments and the public safety partner agencies.
And then interspersed with that, we're going to hear from our Chief Operating Officer, Ms. Kristi Shiflett. She's going to update you on the public safety staffing studies implementation and then you'll have an opportunity to hear from both, the Chief of Police and the Chief of Fire Rescue about some of the data that are driving the recommendations in this budget for their departments. So first, I'm going to hand things over to Ms. Shiflett, and she's going to update you on the public safety staffing studies. Good evening. So I wanted to connect us real quickly back to the compensation discussion that we just had and follow-up with kind of a comment about this,
the Board of Supervisors approved the implementation of that comp in class study over nine months. And so that did cross over two different fiscal years. But what I'm going to go into in a minute about the studies is really not about compensation because we had just done tremendous work on that. And so the study reviewed industry standards and best practices and made recommendations for infrastructure deployment and staffing that will address the changing risk profile of the county as it
continues to grow and change year to year. The company that we hired to do the study was named Emergency Services Consulting International and we like to call them ESCI. So if you hear that referred to today, that is what we're speaking of. We actually had two separate studies that the board heard about, in October 2025. They focused primarily on fire and police, but they had two separate teams with separate different groups of expertise that met with
our police and fire departments. And so we brought the study recommendations to the board in the 2025 and we, this also gave a lot of expertise to benchmarking. I can't today even name all of the benchmarking within the study because I think it covered about two to three pages in each of the studies. But we looked at a lot of federal and state benchmarking as well as different localities in our area and definitely localities that provide the same level of service as
Albemarle County needs to do. And so they compare us to those jurisdictions in Virginia. The consultants perform data analysis by using data from our emergency communication center and the different data points from our departments as well and all of the information that they track. The Board of Supervisors and the public received these studies in October 2025. We reviewed the recommendations with you and we asked the Board at the time to give us a minute to digest and review those studies. They're very expansive and long,
and also to create an implementation plan. So today that's what I want to start sharing with you all is what we have done since those studies have been put in place. So we're going to highlight really the work that's been done to date and what has been prioritized for FY '27. I've, gathered the prioritized tiers here today that are listed across the board there on the slide. And I wanna talk to you about while the police and fire department had a little bit of variance on the tiers, We are focusing on these top four especially in the current state that we're in
FY '26 and '27. So Tier one, as you can see the highest priority for both departments is to add and maintain staffing to respond to the growing demands. The FY '27 budget includes small investments and additional staffing for the police department with three new officers and fire rescue is requesting a plan to pursue an additional FEMA funding for six firefighters. The priority on compensation that you've already seen today is to, focus us on retention given our financial outlook will take time to fill the study's
recommendation. It has 39 police officers and 35 for fire rescue, to, over this period of time in the studies. So that is substantial and we recognize that. And that is why we instead decided to focus in on let's look at our compensation. Let's make sure that we're staying competitive. And let's maintain the officers and the fire fighters that we have. And so for that core stability tier, we can't really talk about adding 20 to 30 more police and fire until we
are able to fill the vacancies that we have. And both of our chiefs of the departments are going to speak to this in a minute. And then so you'll see we have small increases in staffing and then we have the market adjustments that we've already talked about today. For Tier two, we are focusing on leadership depth. And so both departments talked about coverage and the supervision and leadership components of their departments. Police has created coverage already for one shift since the study came out and we'll be able to do so in the future with all shifts as we have additional
staffing. We're also moving the Office of Emergency Management out of Fire Rescue as an independent office to support both fire, police and the community. And so those are things from the study that we're able to implement quickly. In Tier three, we had a required focused work effort on how administration within the departments of fire and police and within other functions in local government work together. And so the studies as you'll read them talk about internal support. And so we want those that are sworn as we spoke about earlier focusing on
the services that sworn police and fire need to do. And so we've been reviewing how we have dedicated resources on administration. So what we've already put into place is a dedicated HR manager. And this is someone that lives within our HR department, but she only serves fire and police at this time. And she is learning really the intricacies of their functions and making sure that they're getting the support that they need. We have also hired an outside consultant to look at this workload analysis.
It takes a lot of effort to dig into the details and do some process improvement work. And so we have done that by looking at specifically our HR, our IT and our finance functions that serve the police and fire department. And so we're looking there at is there the right balance of what's within the department versus what's in the other internal services groups? Is there ways that we can improve efficiencies? And is there a way that we can shift work around in order to support
them differently? So again, this is within that lens of what can we control without adding anything else. And so that's the work that performance and strategic planning often focuses on is how can we be our best selves before we talk about new resources. And so that's the work that we've done here today. And then additionally, we've looked at, with both of the chiefs a real commitment to understanding our sworn versus civilian staffing in those departments and making sure that we're being efficient with those decisions as
well. And so we want to make sure as you already know sworn positions require a lot of certifications, a lot of special training. And so we want to be thoughtful about who's doing what type of work. And so that's the work that we've done as well. And we have identified opportunities to target and remove some inefficiencies. We've learned about ourselves a little bit. We want to also make sure that we're being compliant and that we're removing risk and also removing increased stress for the staff. So we'll complete these improvements by the end of this fiscal year in June.
And then the last year that we have there, it calls out that many of the recommendations take time. And long range planning. So the intent from the consultants was not anything that would be done overnight. It is going to take us a significant commitment to move some of these things forward in both departments as our community grows and changes. But in our five year planning process in November, staff built the cost of those additional personnel that I mentioned, the 39 and the 35 into our five year plan.
And so for this Board to understand those positions are baked in, that they are phased in as an increase in staffing levels to address these operational needs. The additional positions are one of the factors driving that gap, that 3% gap that you'll see in years three, four and five of the five year plan. So that is really all that I wanted to share about the EFCI study. It is something that will be our roadmap for many years as we work with
the different departments. But they're going to add a lot more complexity to this and their sections for today. I'll pause now for any questions that the Board may have. Supervisor Mussel? No. Thank you. Supervisor Duncan? No. Malek. Supervisor Malek? For ACFR, does the cost in the pie chart include ABRS, or is it only personal operations? That would the ABRS needs to be checked. Okay. Thank you. Supervisor Pruett? Work here is roughly equate to years. No. No.
I think the core stability is that those positions over a long range, I think it was seven years in our study. And then the leadership and training is I think like the leadership I spoke of is something we could do pretty quickly, and we can probably do it next year with additional staff. But some of the training components, to be able to do different things like multiple recruit schools, for example, is going to take a real intentionality and commitment, that we it's probably going to be in three to four years.
And then I'll also add that the internal support is one of the ones that we picked up quickly because like I said this is something we can control. And so we took that one and moved that one up as an example. Can you repeat what you said when you said gap in staffing and out years? Yes. In the so when the study came out and it had the thirty nine and thirty five positions, which is significant change, What I was saying was that our budget team took those positions and built them
into the five year plan, so that we could prepare just like we do CIP. We put them in the out years, so that we have time to facilitate that. And so the additional positions are one of the factors driving the 3% gap that will you'll see in years three, four and five of the five year plan. Not sure you can answer this now. Not sure if I should I'm going to pose it here. It may come up later. We're adding three positions. In the staffing study, we understand what the current level of services that we're trying to meet or what
we're dealing with, what the reality is. Each position should do something to that reality. And that's what I'm curious about. Because as we move forward over because it's not I think we all recognize we're not gonna fix this in one budget or two this is gonna be a long term case. I get that. But when we dedicate a tax rate specifically for it and then we do something about it last year we added positions, this year we're adding another. Part of that story has to be,
okay, we've added these positions that should should equate I mean, it's simply in complex because, I mean, the cost what you're dealing with could change. So your cost of service might not change just because you've had I get that. But in theory, the theoretical is if all things remained equal, one position should be able to hit that metric. And I'm curious what that is or if we even know that or can tease that out. What I will share is, 100% and our intention is that we are tracking that as a county,
for all of our studies that we have done where they suggest things and then we say, what do we do with that? I think if we give our chiefs the opportunity to share what they want to share today, you're going to have some of those questions answered about the return on investment and also their plan specifically for those positions. Okay. Thank you, Ms. Shiflett. So I'm going to give a high level overview of the new resources for the police department and then I'm going to turn things over to Colonel Reeves to give you an update on operations and again that data that are kind of driving the recommendations in the budget.
And then we'll pause for questions for me or Colonel Reeves and then we'll move to fire rescue. So, as you know from the recommended budget, we have three new police officers recommended. We are going to continue to implement the recommendations in the public safety staffing study that Ms. Shiflett spoke to. And then we are also increasing their pay to the recommendations that Ms. Rice spoke to earlier. A few things that are not on the slide that I want to call to your attention and they're mentioned in the budget book, There are a few other minor things driving an increase in Police Department's budget this year. One is an increase for the costs associated with health and medical for required physicals
for staff as well as increased cost for mental health services for the police department. In FY 2027, there's also a planned replacement of two K-nine units for police and so this budget includes the cost associated with that and the related supplies. And they also have a small increase in their operating budget for things such as bulletproof vests and TASERS. So now I'll turn it over to Colonel Reeves to give you an overview of the operations. Thank you. Next slide please. Yes. So before I begin, I want to take this opportunity to thank, Mr. Richardson and, his staff with the County Executive's Office as well as the team in finance,
HR, Christy and Jacob, who are here today for really leaning in on this challenge that our police department, your police department is is facing right now. So what this first slide shows you is the current state of the police department as of today. That first number is the total authorized positions by the Board of Supervisors. You have 171 sworn positions. That does not factor in the civilian support staff. This is purely for sworn, officers and detectives who deploy out the street. Out of that 171,
we currently have 149 of those positions filled. Out of those 149 positions, 11 of those are either in, police training academy, field training or on light duty capacity. So after you filter out those middle two numbers, right now, we have 138 officers that are deployable 20 fourseven across three shifts. So that is the current state. Chair Galloway, earlier on asked about he referenced the the ESEI report and when it was authored. I I would like to remind the board that the study was done last February.
So the data that they use as, miss Shiflett alluded to also is actually a year old. We were a different department back then. We have a new Deputy Chief of Police in place. We also have additional bodies in place. But unlike last year moving into July 1, we were fully staffed. And then after July 1, we started seeing some retirements. We did lose a handful of officers to the federal government. And we've seen officers, going back to the retirement, this is a national trend of law enforcement professionals retiring at the earliest available opportunity.
Typically, that's at the age of 50 with twenty, twenty five years in. And, there's a variety of reasons for that. There's different National Institute of Justice as well as the Police Officers Association, International Chiefs of Police. There's data out there about the complexities with our profession and why more and more people are not applying for to be police officers anymore, quite frankly. And we are not exempt from that as your police department. We are seeing lower turnout for recruitment days. We are seeing a shallow applicant pool and quite frankly,
we're seeing people that should not be police officers applying for police officers. We just had a test the other weekend where somebody had a felony sex condition on their record that applied for law enforcement. We had another applicant admit to doing acid the night before he came out for testing. Yes. So that is the caliber of talent that's out there. Unlike other jurisdictions, one of the other challenges that our police department faces is in our selection and background process. We are a risk adverse police department,
meaning we go above and beyond the minimal standard that the Department of Criminal Justice Service has had for background investigations. We do polygraph examinations, which eliminates a lot of people to include certified officers that we would have missed and hired from other agencies for committing crimes had we not had that polygraph examination. We have physical fitness standards. We have an oral interview panel, things like that, that separate us. So yes, it does extend the hiring process, but it's also ensuring we're getting a higher caliber of officer coming through that door. And in order for us to be competitive and this is where HR's team has
come in to look to see if we are being competitive against other agencies. And right now, we are not competitive in our starting salary. So all things equal, it's harder for people to get in the door. We have higher standards in our Police Department. But what this budget proposal does is help close that gap to make us more competitive in the marketplace. So that is where we're at with our current staffing level. And go on next slide, please. So Chair Galloway, again to your point is what are you getting for these resources? I remain fortunate and ever so grateful for the outstanding work that the men and
women of the Alamar County Police Department do for this community. Even with our vacancies, last year they did a tremendous job of being proactive while they're out on the street, solving crimes, working with the Commonwealth's attorneys to prosecute crimes and really taking a data driven approach towards selective enforcement. So throwing a broad net out there, we're being laser focused with data on where crimes are occurring, how we're deploying our resources, the limited number of resources we had to make the most impact in our community. So what you're seeing is last year we had almost 93,000
calls for service, which is a dramatic increase from the year before. That's a 23% increase. And overall, in one of Mr. Richardson's previous presentations, he referenced the 19% increase over the past three years. So what you're seeing is these calls for service continue to climb over the year to year over the three years. And that's where the ESEI report comes into play that as the population increases, as businesses increase, as we bring more people into our jurisdiction, the calls for both PDMI Rescue and other resources,
quite frankly, through the county are going to continue to increase. So it's going to put a strain on our But again, I am so proud of the work that our officers do. Those Part one crimes that are down for a second straight year is tremendous. Gun violence ever since I was sworn in Chief of Police four years ago, gun violence and gang violence has been the number one topic when I go out to community meetings in our community. At twenty twenty three to twenty twenty four, we saw a 9% decrease. This past year, we saw a 30% decrease in gun violence because our officers are putting in the work. They're getting guns off the street, they're getting drugs off the street and they're putting those responsible for most violent crimes
in our community away. So again, this is the great work that our people are doing with the limited resources that we have. Next slide, please. Previously, I spoke about response times. If those of you that were on the Board last year recall that we used this as a measurement of how quickly our officers can respond to those priority one calls. Priority one calls are those types of calls for service that have injury, bodily harm and those life or death situations. They range from a motor vehicle crash with entrapment or injury to a domestic physical
assault, stabbing, homicide, those types of calls are your priority one calls for service. In Albemarle County, what you're seeing is within the urban ring or that center of the county, that's what typically draws in the majority of our calls for service. It pulls resources in from the rural areas of the county. Something that we've touched on before but did not go into depth today is as a county, how are we breaking up our geography in our response. We've talked about urban, but potentially looking at urban, suburban, rural and remote jurisdictions for not just public safety,
but all across the county. So that work has yet to be done, but that's something that we're actually going to look at. And that's going to change some of the response times in the rural parts of the county. Because as you see in the rural parts of the county, even though we want to hit a ten minute response time, meaning one officer somebody picks up the phone and says my house is getting broken into and it's 02:00 in the morning that that midnight officer can run license sirens safely all the way up to Whitehall in the middle of the night in under ten minutes from wherever they are in the county and get there safely.
And I see supervisor from Alex reaction. Yes. But again, that is the reality. So when you start talking about these resources in the ESEI report is putting them in individual beats within these sectors of the county to enhance those response times and increase that service throughout the entire county. So that way our Westside officer isn't up on the Northside by Fashion Square Mall and a Priority one call comes in because most of your typical violent calls for service or Priority one calls require at a minimum two officers to respond and not
just one. Next slide, please. And this is my last slide. What is the Dalmatte County Police Department focusing on this year? This year, priority one is our recruitment and retention. We have to have people, we have to have men and women, out on the street providing public safety, public service. We cannot continue to operate, you know, at diminished capacity. We have to do something different. So we're assessing the way that we're recruiting and we're looking at ways, again, thanks to Mr. Richardson and his team and the HR looking at ways how we're retaining employees. Employee health and wellness, that is subject that's near dear to my heart over the past four years.
We made tremendous investment and not just employee physical health by contracting out with Aquila to work with our officers as a third party company. There's a fitness instructor and dietitian to work with our officers as well as the new clinics that have opened up to give our officers those resources. We have two police psychiatrists on hand, completely anonymous, no charge to staff combined with the work of the clinic too. Yes, we have seen increases in usage, but that's a good thing. That means that officers and staff are using these resources and it's all confidential and
they feel safe that they have somebody to talk to. And then finally that training and emergency preparedness, that is something that both Chief Puckett and I continue to focus in on with Rescue Task Force training that's currently on that cross training with staff plus working on a variety of threats and challenges that we are facing as a society in the same age. The world is unfortunately not getting any safer. It's becoming more and more unpredictable. It's coming upon us, public safety to really scan that landscape and be as prepared as possible for whatever threats may emerge.
So with that, that is my last slide. And, we can, I could take whatever questions that you all have of anything that I just covered? Thank you all. Do you have some pause here for police and then we'll Supervisor Lovisa currently questions? I know it well. So, thank you very much for the presentation. And, it's interesting to know, why those extra officers are needed if we wanna have response times increase and everything. So thank you. Supervisor Missal? Thank you. Thanks, Colonel Reeves. Sure. Really helpful. I just have a few questions.
One is, if you're balancing increasing calls for service with challenging resources, are there other ways that you've looked at, I guess, what's the word I'm looking for, sort of managing that that that resource shortage by adding to IT or adding to educational programs for the community. I'm just curious other you know, because you you can't just add another X number of officers. So what other ways are you thinking about reducing that? Yes. Those are some of the one that comes to my head is the work that this workforce workload analysis work
that Bathsheff alluded to right now is we have officers that are sworn they're doing functions that non sworn civilian people can do. And through attrition moving those FTE positions into sworn positions, that's step one. Step two and something that again I've advocated for the past four years is looking at the realm of technology and how we can use that as a force multiplier. For example, drones. Back in the day, many, many years ago, I was on the SWAT team and things that we did, humans did, they were high risk, very dangerous. Now we have robotics that we can utilize.
Speed cameras is the third example in the school zones is the third example I have. Instead of having an officer situated on Rockfish Gap and situated in front of the Lamb's Lane campus running radar looking for speeders, we have technology that can do that. So we'll continue to look at technology advancements in technology to use as a force multiplier, but also look at ways that we can use that to enhance services in our community in a responsible way. That's really helpful. So when you're considering resources and it's not just officers or personnel, you're thinking of those other aspects as well.
Is there do you feel comfortable with the amount of financial or funding that's allocated to those other resources? Yes, sir. I do. Okay. This current executive's office, and I'm not just saying that because they're here. I share it with my staff. I do share it with my staff. They have done an outstanding job supporting my mission and make sure that officers are well trained. And I'll speak on that very, very briefly. As a Chief, prior to me taking over as Chief, we strayed away from fundamental training for a long time. Some of that was driven by the pandemic and some of that was driven just
because of staffing and we use that as an excuse to not train. And and that's just quite frankly unacceptable. So I want to make sure that our officers are trained on drivers training, those tactical skill sets they need to survive that keeps them alive, but also constitutional law training, de escalation training. And so there's a balance to that and driver's training as well. Driving is probably the most dangerous thing our officers can do out here on a daily basis. So sticking with those fundamentals and make sure there's balance, this County Executive's Office and Finance Office has been more than supportive in that.
Great. Thank you. Very helpful. Two guys, I'm going to circle if I may and then Chief Reeves, just to provide a little more context. I think around the question, which is optimizing existing resources too. Chief, you talked about it on Slide 41 in the calls for service. But could you just drill a little bit into that calls for service total includes both community initiated and officer initiated? And what I've seen in my couple of years of working and supporting PD is
really an intensive focus around data, hotspot, kind of predictive analysis. And I think even with some of the shortfalls in the current staffing, there has been improvements in the focus on where officers are proactively spending their time, the officer initiated calls. Can you could you just drill a little bit into that, because I think it's helpful on this discussion? Yes, absolutely. So when when I pointed to that almost 93,000 calls for service that came in, 38% of those approximately were public generated.
I mean, somebody's picking up the phone and calling 911. The rest of the calls for service are officer initiated calls for service. That's our officers out here being proactive, doing extra patrols, making community contacts, doing traffic stops. So that's what it is that the officers are doing in between calls for service throughout here doing whether it is a request for speeders that community called in and complained that they're having speeding issues or suspicious circumstances that our officers are out here on midnight shift driving around they see a suspicious person. That's officer initiated, making sure that that's going on,
checking our businesses after hours, going to community events, all those type of things are baked in to that proactive those proactive calls for service. Can you give us numbers one more time? Yes, sir. Officer initiated versus Officer initiated is 62% calls for service and 38% are public generated. And the officer initiated, I'm proud to say, is up 32% from the previous year year as well. So our officers are being more proactive and they're taking this data and taking this information that's being put out by our analysts and actually putting the work in and
doing really good work with it. That's really interesting. So when you talk about increasing calls for service, you're talking about both of those combined? Both those combined, yes, sir. That's really helpful. Yes. Thank you. Supervisor Gunke? I have some sort of data questions. I read through the staffing report and I didn't take notes. So if all these answers are in there, you can just tell me to go look at the staffing report again. So you have the numbers for the priority one calls. Are there lower priorities as well? There are lower priority calls that fall out the scope outside the scope of Priority
one calls. That could be like a disabled vehicle or a random miscellaneous pass call or a noise complaint. So when you think of priority one calls, think about those calls that police officers activate their lights and sirens on it. I just this feels like, you know, roughly, it's an average of, like, three a day, just priority one, plus you have all the other priorities. And then just looking at the total active positions, how many people are on duty per shift? Like, average, I guess. It varies day to day, and it depends on overlap days. There's a wide variety of factors if there's trading going on.
So sometimes if you look at this map, like on daylight shift and I'll look to the officers behind me to either nod their head or shake their head, if their chief is getting it wrong. But there can be a midnight shift sometimes, you know, seven, eight officers plus the supervisors working the street. Sometimes on an overlap day, there's more, there's 12 working the street and it varies shift by shift. Daylight is anomaly shift because you have traffic unit, you have detectives that are primary out, that they can backfill. That's when your school resource officers are out as well. And then the average response time is the time to get to the incident?
From the time that that, ECC dispatches one officer, that's the the time one off the first officer arrives on scene. Do you have, like, an average time that's spent on the call? I mean, I know, obviously, it's gonna vary if it's a car accident versus a disabled vehicle. But is there I'm just trying like, you know, if you have, you know, 10 people on duty and you're taking up, you know, four hours with a incident or something. It's going to vary. If there's a specific call, I can follow-up with you offline. For example,
if it's a mental health call for service that could take anywhere from one hour and depending if they have to transport the person to Williamsburg, it could be entire shift. If it's a DUI call, depending on how backed up the Matriates Office and Jail is, it could take a couple of hours to include the paperwork. If it's a shoplifter call, the officer and they can release them on summons, they can be in and out. It all depends on what the call is. I think that's all. I just it's helpful to like kind of visualize why there's not enough people. It just what like a day actually looks like and this is just helpful.
No, it's a good question because you look at, let's say, Sector 3 up on the when you have a shopping center up at Hollymeade, let's say one of our officers, that Sector 3 officer, you have one officer that is patrolling that entire S3 Yellow area up top, gets tied up on a shoplifting case. He's going to be tied up he or she is going to be tied up for at least an hour. They have to have to take him in custody maybe two hours and drive into the complex. So that way that means you don't have an entire an officer up in Sector 3. Rush hour, there's a motor vehicle crash, now you're pulling the closest sector from their sector to go handle the crash in somebody else's sector.
So it has this cascading effect. And then you get domestic out on out in Old Trail that needs two officers and you're pulling resources out that way. So that's the way you have to look at how we're deploying resources. That's all I have. Supervisor Mallard? Thank you very much. Every time I hear one of these presentations, it brings back memories of how important it is that you have don't have the need for domestic in the middle of the night to stand a single officer. Because I just put it up on accident many years ago. I just you can't get things like that out of your head.
Are you having well, I remember Steve Sellers talking about an applicant pool of a 103 wouldn't be able to go to stage two. When you have advertising, are we in double digit? Are we getting or are these changes every day, I guess? Yes. I would launch fireworks if we had an applicant pool of 100 at this day and age. So Steve Sellers, for those of you unaware, he was a former chief of police back in 2011 to about 2015. Different era, different applicant pool. We get about 10 applicants and maybe one or two out of those 10,
will pass the entire background. This past testing day, we had one, just because of they couldn't pass either the PT test or, they couldn't we ran their criminal history and, yeah, you can't be a police officer. Extra diligence you're doing because all those qualities that we are fostering are really important from the public's point of view. Yes. Are you allowed to use drones for investigation yet? Or is it strictly search and rescue yet? Right now, it's for search and rescue and tactical purposes only. Okay. And I'm also especially glad to hear about the fundamental training that you're doing with
this. That's really what we're proud of. Thank you very much. Well, thank you, Brett. I remember when we had the Officer Plus up a year ago, I had said something to the effect of I want to see I want to see your homework on this and was really pleased with the response I got. I'm similarly pleased with the self justifying work that's going on. I do want to just clarify with the previous one, it was very clear what the officers we were hiring were were for and who they were. Should I assume moving forward that anytime we're talking about new officer hires,
we're talking about straight out of academy to patrol hires? Not necessarily straight out of the Academy, sir. It is it's a combination of both. All of those FTEs are dedicated for purely for Patrol. That doesn't factor in and Ms. Schifel can correct me if I'm wrong, that doesn't factor in any detectives, any other specialty units. That is strictly for response to patrol calls for service. So the 39 bodies, the three this year and the 39 were identified are all going to the street and on all three shifts to provide service to our community.
And that would include certified officers, the benefit of certified officers is there's a six week turnaround time as opposed to a ten month turnaround time for somebody that's brand new. The The language straight out of the cabinet is improperly chosen. But I am thinking because you have a step based system, right? Are they all coming in at the same base salary level or is there going to be fluctuation there based on prior year service? There's fluctuation and that's what's attractive about the public safety pay scale And that's a benefit of it is we can attract certified officers and we have attracted many,
many certified officers that have passed our background to become to backfill. And that is ideal in this current state we are, but we want balance. We want to be able to develop our own young officers, but we also want certified officers to come in to bring that experience because nothing replaces experience and experience. I'm realizing that probably makes your department have a slightly well, both of your departments have a slightly more fluid budget than other departments because you advertise a position and you actually don't know until you hire the guy what you're paying them in a pretty significant way potentially?
It depends on the time of year because they can look at the website, HR's website. And let's say I'm a certified officer from Texas. I can look at Albemarle County, factor in my years of service and get an estimate of where I'd come into public safety pay scale. If you're brand new officer with no experience, you could factor in where you come in immediately. So all that's accessible and upfront and we use that as part of our recruitment to certified officers. They know where they're coming in at. You mentioned force multipliers and you mentioned briefly photo speed. And of course, that's something this board has been pushing for a while and part of my rationale
for it is that I see it as a potential cost saver further down the line, just on force demands. Are there and we also mentioned drones very briefly. Are there other kinds of opportunities for force multiplying that you see could have a bottom line impact on your budget and your annual costs that you are statutorily disabled from that we could make a ruckus about? Not at this time. There's nothing that's jumping out. There are other technology components we're working with are IT and doing internal research on that we're going to
be moving forward to present at the appropriate time. But right now, those are the two that jumped to the headwind and nothing is legislatively prohibitive for us to do. I didn't think to ask this until you were answering Supervisor Duncan's question. But we're now I think we've spent more than a year after your department absorbed PDO transports. It hadn't occurred to me until I think this moment that it would be the officer on patrol in that sector who would then be helpful. I guess I'm driving to wherever the staff tells me I have to take them
to the nearest hospital vacancy. How has the staffing absorbing that Yes. So our staff has absorbed that. We also have a callback list for officers who want to volunteer to work overtime assignment that could help that. There's still cost with it, but sometimes if there's nobody available, the officer has to take on that responsibility. Sure. Got it. That's all I have. All right. And just in the interest of time, if this can come back as a follow-up, I always like to know what the base entry level police position costs for the
FTE and then the one time cost associated and the same for fire. Just as a reminder, because I'm sure the one time costs price sneaks up every year. So curious about that. And outside of that, I'm going to hold off another question. Thank you, Keith, for being here to take us through that. And we can move to the next items, so we can try to get our content in here tonight. Okay. Thank you. I'm going to give a brief overview of the resources for fire rescue that are recommended in the budget. Then Chief Puckett is going to walk you through operational things on the side of
fire rescue. Then I'll come back in and talk about the Office of Emergency Management and the public safety external agencies. So as you know, in recent years, the county has invested significantly in fire rescue, primarily by pursuing a number of FEMA SAFER grants to hire firefighters. And last year was the first budget where we started seeing those grants expire and we started picking up the cost of funding those firefighters locally. Since 2021, we've had four grants totaling $12,700,000 and that's been awarded for 57 firefighter positions. In this budget,
we're picking up local funding for 30 positions for one half of the year and that amounts to the $1,700,000 that you see on the slide here. We also have an intention in this budget to pursue a fifth FEMA grant, which will fund an additional six firefighters to address some of the staffing issues that Ms. Shiflett spoke to earlier. Also included in the budget as Ms. Rice covered earlier, we have $1,300,000 to maintain competitive salaries for recruitment and retention. Then we have a few operational costs increasing in the fire rescue budget this year.
First is replacement of some durable Toughbook laptop computers that need to be updated due to a software change. Similar to what you saw in the police department, we have some increases related to providing a mental health clinician and fire rescue and an increase in cost for annual physicals for staff. The budget also includes $25,000 increase in funding to support the volunteer reimbursement program for fire rescue as well as contributions to the fire rescue volunteer groups for their operational support.
And we have the details of all of that listed in the recommended budget document if there's a specific fire rescue volunteer agency that you're curious about. And then finally, their budget includes reallocating two FTEs to the Office of Emergency Management. That's in line with the ESCI study recommendation and I'll cover that in a future slide. So now I'll turn it over to Chief Puckett and he'll walk you through the operations of the department. Thank you, Ms. Malcolm. Good afternoon, Board. David Puckett, Chief of Fire Rescue. Before I comment on the fiscal year twenty seven proposed budget, I'd like to take a minute to remind the board of fiscal year twenty five
budget process. During one of those work sessions, I shared with the board two ongoing service challenges, the need to add an additional ambulance to the Seminole area and request from North Garden Volunteer Fire Company for 20 fourseven career staffing. Thanks to the board, we were able to address both those needs that year, with a combination of local funds and a federal grant. We shared with the board previously how long it takes to hire, train and deploy firefighters. The firefighters the board funded as part of that 25 process went into service this January. The new services have only been in operation for six months and we should be careful about drawing conclusions until additional data is available.
But I'm excited to share some promising indications, so those units are having a positive impact on our service delivery. This slide shows the impact of the second ambulance added to the Seminole over the Route 29 Rio area. You might recall that the Seminole area is our busiest demand zone receiving over 4,500 requests a year for an ambulance. The sole ambulance that was assigned there responded over 3,000 of those calls, but they were unavailable for the remaining 1,500. The remaining calls were answered by ambulances from other areas, of other parts of the county,
resulting in increased response times and decreased ambulance availability for adjacent communities like Hollymeade, Ivy, and Pan Tops. Since having the second ambulance, the reliability in that area has increased to 80%. Because ambulances aren't responding, from other areas of the county as frequently, we've also seen a decrease in response times by almost a minute. And finally, I shared with the board the negative impact the excessive call volume is having on our personnel. And I'm happy to report that the workload of that original ambulance has dropped to a more sustainable level and that several firefighters have reported a noticeable difference in how
they feel after working a shift at that station. The North Garden Volunteer Fire Company requested expand their existing daytime career staffing to twenty four seven during that budget process. The additional career staffing would provide an additional ambulance to an area on nights and weekends and provide a relief to an aging volunteer workforce. Since previously there was no ambulance available nights and weekends, the area has experienced a dramatic increase in ambulance availability, up 84. Simultaneously, the area has seen a decrease of approximately two minutes in ambulance and fire engine response times during nights and weekends. Finally, North Garden volunteer,
chief shared that the career staff has relieved the pressure to respond to every low acuity call. Focusing their efforts on higher acuity and second calls has allowed members spend more time with their families. I should also emphasize that this is the first volunteer station with 20 fourseven career staff. Both volunteer and career responders have reported positive experience. Career personnel expressed a welcoming and supportive environment, while volunteers continue to be engaged and serve their community in a meaningful way. I want to thank the Board for its ongoing support and allow me a minute to share the impact your investments are having in the community.
Despite the substantial investments the Board has made over the last several years, we continue to experience challenges in meeting our daily staffing obligations. 85% or 182 FT feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet Es including our eight over hires are assigned to operations, providing frontline service to the community. However, many of those positions are not available for staffing on a daily basis. As you can see from the chart, 140 or 77% of operational FTEs are actively working in the field. We have 24 FTEs assigned to training as students. This includes 18 in our recruit school, six in paramedic school.
An additional four FTEs are assigned to training as instructors. Our training division has limited capacity so instructors from operations are necessary to achieve the student to instructor ratio required for our recruiting school. The ESEI study acknowledged this practice and recommended adequately staffing the training division in the future to avoid drawing down operational resources. Six FTEs are currently on modified duty or long term leave such as military leave, family medical leave, or parental leave. And finally, despite starting a recruit school in January, we currently have eight vacancies. Since we only hire once a year,
these vacancies won't be filled, trained and providing service until September 2027. Although this picture is constantly changing, our current status is not unusual especially during the first half of the year while recruit school is in session. In 2025, Fire Rescue experienced an unusually high attrition rate of 11.5%. This was driven largely by, a larger than normal recruit school and retirements. When recruits and retirees are excluded, the department's attrition drops to 3.7%. While it's important to understand why employees leave the department,
all attrition regardless of the reason has the same impact on daily staffing. One way these staffing challenges show up in the community is through service reductions. When sufficient personnel are not available, some roll stations are reduced from three firefighters to two. During the impacted time frames, the fire engine is removed from service and the remaining two firefighters respond in an ambulance or a tanker truck depending on the nature of the emergency. In 2018, ACFR implemented the use of service reductions or dynamic staffing, after we began to experience an increase in forced overtime. Forced overtime is typically twelve hours of mandatory overtime at the end of a firefighter's
twenty four hour shift. The increase in forced overtime was having a significant impact, on our employees, personal lives, and job satisfaction and was an unsustainable staffing solution. So we made a difficult decision to implement targeted service reductions when adequate personnel were not available. In 2025, we, reduced service a total of 218 times. That's not to say that it was two eighteen days with a single sir, reduction. Staffing shortages are often inconsistent. So in many cases, multiple stations were reduced on the same day. On a positive note,
service reductions peaked in 2023 and have been decreasing since that time frame. That decrease is result of firefight five firefighters who were funded as part of a FEMA SAFER grant. That grant was specifically designed to bolster our existing staffing as opposed to adding or expanding service. The ESEI study evaluated our existing staffing capacity and recommended adding six additional firefighters. Based on the impact of the first five firefighters, we released six additional firefighters will enable us to completely phase out service reductions. The FEMA SAFER grant included in mister Richardson's recommended budget provides the six firefighters recommended
in the ESEI study and allows us to continue decreasing the number of service reductions. We also continue to work with our volunteer agencies to look for efficiencies in our volunteer onboarding process, improve our volunteer membership data, and the proposed budget includes an increase in the volunteer reimbursement program. Although not an area of funding in the proposed budget, Fire Rescue is currently evaluating its organizational structure to ensure alignment with the ESI study and the recent workload analysis. And then finally, during fiscal year twenty seven, we plan to fully evaluate and prioritize the recommendations in the ESI study to inform
the county's five year, planning process. And I'll turn it back over to Ms. Malcolm for the emergency management slides. Thank you. So quickly, I'm going to cover the Office of Emergency Management. You've heard about this before. But in the EFCI study, it was recommended that we establish separate Office of Emergency Management and that's what we're being responsive to here. This is a budget neutral reorganization. So we're pulling two FTEs out of Fire Rescue into the Office of Emergency Management and they have an operating budget, again, coming out of Fire Rescue for $118,000 to support their needs. That office is going to be a standalone office that will be reporting to the
County Executive's office as part of the proposed budget. And then lastly, I want to cover the regional public safety agencies. Supervisor Galloway kind of alluded to this earlier, but we have several partner agencies that we have agreements with and in many cases there are formulas that drive their budgets from year to year. So on this slide, you see a selection of the ones in the public safety chapter and the increases that they're going to be projecting for next year. One thing I do want to highlight that we haven't covered yet is there are always staff adjustments that happen between the time that we finalize the county executive's recommended
budget and the time that we adopt the budget. So for example, one of these is the Elmore Charlottesville Regional Jail. They had a proposed budget from their board when we went to print. With our budget, we have since learned of a downward adjustment where they need less funding from the county to sustain their operations. So that will come back as part of many staff adjustments that we'll suggest later in the process. That's kind of typical when these timelines of the individual boards are out of sync with this board's budget process.
I think that's everything that I wanted to cover on this slide. So I'll pause there as we wrap up the public safety chapter for questions for Chief Puckett or me, and then we'll move on to judicial time allows. All right. And just be mindful of time. Questions versus commentary. Supervisor Loquiza, Kirk? Yes. The only question I have is regarding the volunteers that you've seen, that increase, decrease or stable? That's a great question. I think we're trying to get our arms around that. When I discuss trying to get better volunteer membership data, I think that's where we're trying to figure out exactly how that's trending and which
way it's going. Based off the growth we've had in the last several years where volunteer stations have requested career staff, I think they are seeing some decline, but there's it's not equal. Some stations are doing really, really well and have a lot of members and others are struggling to recruit and retain members. Thank you. Supervisor Nessel? Real quick, just thank you on behalf of the NorthGuard Metropolis. Several people say happy they already have that. I'm just curious, you mentioned nutrition rate is unusually high. What's an average?
Where would you like to see it? Yes. I would love to say it pretty low. Ideally, maybe around 5% or so, I think HR would probably have the official answer where as an organization we're striving for. I think what we will see over the next five years or so is retirements increase. We started hiring operational staff twenty eight years ago, so they are all sort of aging out and start approaching retirement. And so that's certainly a focus of mine is succession planning and preparing folks to take on those leadership roles as we start to see retirements.
That's great. Thank you. That's it. Supervisor Malekin? No questions. Supervisor Malekin? No questions right now. Thank you. Supervisor Pruett? Slightly unfair question because I'm going to be asking if you know what someone other than your organization does in response to your organization. But, something that I bring up frequently is the relationship between insurers and fire. Basically, it's like a budget justification. When we have service reductions like you're talking about, is that kind of deprecated service, is that captured by insurers? Not typically. ISO, is the organization that typically rates fire departments for insurance purposes and they do that
every couple of years. So there's sort of a snapshot in time. If we are doing that regularly, then yes, they could pull back and not count some of that as part of our suppression force, if you will. But to this point, it is not. And very quick, I feel like I've gotten the answer to this before, but I'm forgetting. Do we, is there a non resident fee that's collected on emergency services? For EMS transports, the county bills insurance only billing, as long as they are an Alamo County resident. Anybody outside of Alamo County, then they will also follow-up with a bill for the co pay,
but it is soft billing, if you will. After three bills, they don't send you to collections or anything like that. I'll say it too loud. Thank you. Great. On '44 and I think it was the following slide, you showed the impacts of the stations, your data. And you alluded I just want to be clear, that's specific to the ambulance where it's serving, the localized area? Correct. So I would be curious to see you alluded to how it impacts the other places? Yes. We'll love to see that at the appropriate time. Yes. And I didn't say this before,
I should just point it out, this performance is January 10 to February 28 compared to last year the same timeframe. So it is a relatively small data set. So I just want to point that out. I believe in Seminole's case, in that time frame there was 120 less responses from ambulances outside of the area. So to your point, those other areas and communities are also seeing an improvement in service. And and I mentioned it because during this year's budget, we have to remember to be able to share what happened from last year or previous budgets and the impacts that they have.
This was one that came up that we had to that we specifically had to focus on to get done. Right. And then, I think that was it. Yep. That's all I had. Thank you both so much for for being oh, the OEM. It's just the two FTEs pulled out of fire or there are other FTEs? It's just the two FTEs. And are they the fire marshal and somebody else? Like, who are the positions? That would be the, emergency manager and the assistant emergency manager. So those two are just gonna be pulled out together? Okay. So those positions exist currently Yeah. Sell into fire rescue. We're just pulling them out within public safety.
Awesome. Thank you, buddy. Alright. I'm trying to rock and roll here. Okay. So the last chapter that we're going to cover tonight is the judicial section. So as I spoke to you previously, two percent of the overall general fund budget is the judicial chapter. Within that, you see the highest amount for the Albemarle County Sheriff. That's 53% of the $10,200,000 that's represented in the judicial chapter. This budget includes a recommendation for three new sheriff's deputy positions within the judicial chapter. That's really being driven by the opening of the new courts facilities that we've recently
renovated and are continuing to come online. The positions are being added to assist with day to day operations of the office, including courthouse and courtroom security as well as inmate transportation and civil processing. The sheriff's budget also includes some modest increases for the replacement of durable laptop computers similar to what you saw in fire rescue and the replacement of some existing vehicles that are at the end of their lifecycle. Within the other offices in the judicial chapter of the Commonwealth's Attorney, the Clerk of the Circuit Court and the public defender, all of those requests are funded at their request level with very modest increases primarily
for cost of living adjustments for existing staff that they have within those offices. And that is the last slide for judicial, if you have any questions on that. All right. We'll get through order. Supervisor Levesque Kirk? No questions. Supervisor Missle? Yes, sir. Supervisor Duncan? When the sort of plan for the court renovations and expansion stuff was done, did was it planned then that these that they would need new positions? Yes. Yes. Okay. That's all. Alright. Supervisor Mallett? No question. Thank you. Supervisor Crowett? I don't think I have one. Thank you.
Supervisor Pruitt? I don't think I have. Thank you. We made mister Sugg and mister Kingsley a way for this. We were grateful for it not being grilled. Alright. Well, thank you, and thank you. We expect, by the way, next year for the court's request to remain kind of steady, that we're not gonna ask for an increase. I owe a debt to mister Davidson for dealing with me because I was difficult this year even though I wasn't asking for an increase. I just wanna also announce to the board, I've told staff this, I I will be retiring next year around the first state of the business. I am working with vetting a candidate.
I believe this position has been served by having a lawyer in it. I am asking them to try to get I'm recruiting another lawyer who I believe would work well. I'm actually looking to steal from Jim, to to fill that position. Of course, it is an elected position. Anyway, Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you. Mister Angely, any comments? In the interest of Todd, I'll I just appreciate the partnership that the Commonwealth's attorney's office of the constitutional officer has with the board supervisors and the county executive and the just to follow-up with John's retirement announcement, I also am retiring,
and will be retiring at the end of my term, so it won't be soon. But it will be 12/31/2027. Alright. So future reference, the clerk and the Commonwealth attorney are allowed to sit next to each other. Thank you both for the update. Thank you. All right. Back to where we are at next steps. I'm going to recap this with next steps. So Andy started out this morning or a few hours just a few short minutes ago. It feels that way, yes. Daylight savings time, first work session. There's a lot going on.
We have our next work session on Wednesday afternoon at 05:00 again in this room. These are the chapters that we're going to cover in that work session. These were sent to the Board previously. And as Andy noted earlier, the one change is that we moved non departmental that Chapter two work session number two. So we'll be starting there when we regroup on Wednesday. Otherwise, your agenda remains the same as it was previously. We're happy to take any additional questions or follow ups that you have for us. Regarding the general fund expenditures, placement of monies and everything, where will when will we have an opportunity to have an input
as to specialize or health and welfare, the programs. The outside agencies, is that what you're thinking of? Yes. Yes. That's on Wednesday. That's how it all is. Perfect. Thank you. That's it. Yes. I have one just because it comes up kind of in like every department of just what it So every two years, the state will do a study. We're as part of the state pool for the Virginia retirement system. Based on our workforce, the VRS will be investing those funds, getting returns. We'll do their actuarial study and build just those rates up or down. So the Board of Supervisors will contribute a percentage of employee salaries and employees contribute
a portion of their salaries into the VRS pool that gets revised every two years. And this year, the rate happened to go down about for $1,000,000 savings for County government. Is that because like the interest returns were higher to like make up that difference or are we just like giving less people's retirement It's not a decrease in people's retirement. I would have to go to the details of the actuarial study to figure out what the factors were. Can I add one? Our benefit though did not change at all in terms of the coverage that our employees have when they retire. Right.
Yeah. That's I figured that. I was just kinda wondering. The the money going into it is coming from somewhere. It's not coming from us. Was it coming from, like, higher Mhmm. Returns or something? But but it's but it's the system, the retirement system. Most cities and counties in the entire Commonwealth go into that one system. And so when they start doing actuarial every two years on who owes what, you can theoretically go up or down. And that's across the Commonwealth. And so it's so it's not just a single retirement system like the city of Charlottesville has. I also want to say one more thing about it because that 1,100,000.
Right? One point About a million dollars savings. A million dollars of savings, which is an expense decrease for us. For county schools, that was $3,000,000 And so while that is not new revenue, that is that is the that is a $3,000,000 decrease that is just like a new revenue, just like for us. It was just like getting an additional $1,000,000 And that factored in, we're going to talk about schools next week, but that factored in and I wanted to mention it now because we've really not honed in on it. That factored into what I looked at when I looked at how much more state
money that was going to be coming to schools when you combine LCI with, the reduction in ERS because it's enough money to talk about when you start talking about $3,000,000 To clarify, does that answer your question or would you like me to read the actual I'm going to go look it up again, but it does help. Thank you for having me not read the actual Alright. Then if there are no other things on the budget, then we will go to from the board, matters not listed on the agenda. Any items here this evening? No. Alright. And then, from the county executive, any No, sir. Not unless the budget team, finance team has anything or to my right.
No, sir. Alright. Well, great. Good work. We got through everything tonight. With that, without objection, we will adjourn to 03/11/2026, 5PM here at Room 241. Thank you, everyone.