Coraggio Consulting
Albemarle County Board of Supervisors Joint Work Session with the School Board, Wednesday, December 4, 2024

Date: Wednesday, December 4, 2024
Place: Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 3h 35m (video)
Official meeting video (Granicus): https://albemarle.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=1238
Official agenda: https://albemarle.granicus.com/AgendaViewer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=1238

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-15. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:01] Good afternoon. I'm going to call the call to order the meeting first of the formal time-holder supervisors. We have here Supervisor Nat Galloway of the Iowa District, Supervisor B. L. DeWitt of the Atlanta District, Supervisor Nathan Keogh of the Jack Keogh District, Supervisor Mark Krug of the Scottsdale District, Supervisor Ann Mallock of the Whitehall District. The

[00:00:31] For Mr. President, we have Jeff Richardson, our county executive, Mr. Andy Bowman, budget assistant. We've got that new title. Assistant Chief Financial Officer.

[00:00:47] Assistant Chief Financial Officer. Thank you for calling us out for that, and I will eventually allow the other introductions to come. Although I do think we have one of the attorney, Mr. Andy here, I want to make sure I mention And our clerk, Ms. Plannette Orgerson, welcome.

[00:01:07] I also want to welcome Almal County Police Officers who are standing by, Angela Jamerson and Tyvon Richardson. Thank you for your service. And Ms. Datt, I will call this meeting to order.

[00:01:26] I'll turn it over to Ms. Chair Inkup to call an email. - Thank you, Chair Andrews. Unfortunately, our Chair, Judy Lee, unable to be here and also Allison Spillman is not here but we do have a quorum and I will just ask my colleagues to introduce themselves I'm Kate Acuff I represent the Jack Jewett district I am vice chair and serving today as the backup backup chair for this

[00:02:01] Rebecca Berlin, the Whitehall Representative. Graham Page, Willow District Representative. Chuck Hayes, Rowe District. Thank you. With that, the school board meeting, if you want to. I think I failed to mention that I'm Jim Ambrose, Representative Samuel Miller, so I appreciate your patience with me. And we will launch right into this by turning the meeting over to Mr. Andy Bowman, our Assistant Chief.

[00:02:30] Mr. Chair, adopt the work session agenda. Oh, sorry, sorry. I want to adopt, thank you, our board has a work session agenda, and I want to make sure we officially adopt the work session agenda, so I'm looking for a motion to adopt the work session agenda. Second. So we have a motion from Supervisor Lefezio-Curtley, a second from Supervisor McKeel, without objection to the board.

[00:02:48] Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Ms. Lefezio-Curtley? Aye. Thank you.

[00:03:01] failed to identify our superintendent Dr. Matt Oz, who will be our chief financial officer and many other senior staff of the school division. Thank you. Thank you chair Andrews for the introduction. Good afternoon to the board, school board, vice chair and the rest of the school board. My name is Andy Bowman, assistant chief financial officer. I will be leaving the staff portion of this presentation today with my counterpart,

[00:03:39] Maya Kubizawa. One of the advantages of going first is I always get to start and thank Maya for all the partnership we have in budgeting. I really appreciate all of her strategic insights for good questions, especially in the last few years through the pandemic. I need to be very nimble and respond to a lot. So again, thank you, Maya, for that partnership. I like to frame as i start work sessions with the board of supervisors certainly today around the county strategic plan and uh goal five is educational learning that is the indices of today's topic but it's one i want to take a moment to acknowledge that you know goal five is not just education in

[00:04:18] the same way that the other goals are not education just as i've benefited from a strong partnership with my and her team there are many else in the organization where those partnerships extend So it would be a slide that would be too long and too small to read if I were to list every partnership that went out there.

[00:04:35] But as a few examples, I've listed out here many of the partnerships that take place on a day-to-day basis with Albemarle County government and public schools. This slide has two takeaways. First, I could not list everything out there. So if anyone's in the back or listening online and you do a great partnership, I'm sorry I couldn't list you.

[00:04:53] Didn't need to make this readable. The second thing that I want to emphasize is there are some partnerships here that are really about the day-to-day. If you look in the bottom right around financial processing, IT support, a lot of these partnerships here are very strategic in nature and about moving forward and improving services in the community.

[00:05:10] The Board of Supervisors' goal of safety and well-being is reflected very well in these partnerships in the upper left of this list with the human services programs of Bright Stars and Family Support, The public safety with the joint training exercises, the recent school zone speed camera enforcement program, workforce stabilization and customer service is a goal of the board supervisors, also a priority with the school board.

[00:05:35] We see that reflected in the joint planning that's underway right now for the employee health clinic, the two locations opening in 2025 and the joint management we do in the health fund and the program in that. Also, the new financial system replacement project. That is a project that will be going live in April following the systems that we've had for human resources and community development that have gone live for county government in recent years, or community development will go live in next month.

[00:05:59] In the upper right, we can see a lot of overlap with the quality of life in terms of the public schools participation and Project Enable, which is the economic development strategic plan update that will be underway. I know many county government staff who enjoy participating in the ACPS's Career Pathways Program every year As well as the long-standing partnership going back decades and the usual use of space and programming of fields and facilities With parks and recreation. So while today we're really going to focus on the CIP I just felt important to start with this to acknowledge the depth and breadth of all of these partnerships that take place on a day-to-day basis

[00:06:36] For today, there are a few desired outcome staff has prepared for the board first is an understanding of the school board's capital request For the last few months the school board and school staff even longer have been very hard at work developing five-year requests Their board has had two engagements to discuss that and provide direction to their staff This is the third year in a row. We've had both full board to full board and get a chance to engage with the school board's request that level of discussion the second outcome we have is just getting to understand of where we are in the adopted CIP where do the revenues come

[00:07:13] from how are those funded and what will be on staff's mind as we look forward to the fiscal year 26 budget process and the fiscal year 26 to 30 CIP finally some discussion of strategies and next steps from today we'll walk through an agenda where I will briefly kick off a recap of the board supervisor's discussion in November and an introduction to the CIP and after my brief comments Ms. Kumazawa will present the school board's CIP request at that time it would be a good time for questions for the board supervisors and of course any other comments to engage with understand that request and after that it may be a good time to take a break in the meeting when we do we can

[00:07:52] then come back and I will discuss the overview and CIP and next steps from today followed by getting a lot of board discussion not only agenda is specifically board discussion but that is the most important part of today we not have three hours of staff presentation this can be as much time as we can generate for that board discussion. So with that I just want to look a little bit back where we were and before we look at where we're going next. On November 20th staff presented to the Board of Supervisors a five-year financial plan. This is something we do regularly in our budget process. This was really focused on the general fund anticipating that the formula amounts to public school operations and capital

[00:08:32] would be provided. So a lot of the purposes of the five-year plan is to project our revenues, project our expenditures, align them with the strategic plan, and see what we may need to do differently in the long term. A few major takeaways there on the revenue side. This is a quote from our economic outlook report that was issued in October. Revenue outlook is partly sunny and partly cloudy. There is not an imminent threat of a recession, as based on what we know today that has maybe been a little more in doubt in past years. However, at the same time, we're not expecting to see the rate of the very historically strong revenue growth that's taken place over the recent years. It may have more of a

[00:09:11] slow and steady feel. Right now, in fiscal year 25, we monitor our revenues and they are tracking very closely with our budget. Two of the last three years, we've done revenue updates in the middle of the year to provide those updates as the economy has changed. Right now, we're not anticipating that because things are running as expected. The second update is we worked with the board's strategic plan to walk through the six goals and 23 objectives and how are we making progress across all of those to continue to move things forward and really making sure that where those new resources were where those resources have been recently put in place how are we driving forward the results of the strategic plan certain

[00:09:49] major takeaway in a five-year plan is it's common we have a five-year plan in our operating budgets the intent is not to balance that it is to look outwards maybe how do we do something differently to balance that in the out years five years ago we had a five-year plan and fiscal year 25 was not balanced you now have a balanced budget so part of this is starts in those strategic discussions knowing the time and planning can be on our side to work towards that the final takeaway staff had from that plan about what's out there is there are always prior commitments and obligations that are coming we open or we build a capital facility and now we need to open and operate it we may have grants that expire

[00:10:26] we may have other things are committed those are always out there but in the next two years fiscal years one and two those are going to be much greater than they have been in recent years that's true for county government and I know that is for public schools as well because as the two schools that will soon be under construction open there will be operating impacts of those that will be much more significant and the operating impacts will be done expansions those will be anticipated to open in fiscal year 27. So the final slide we shared this five year plan we share this in the budget a lot it's again really this multi-year look that we talk about we talk about multi-year planning and the capital at the same time because those projects by nature take many years this is a

[00:11:06] on the operating side as well and this is a concept both boards understand well some boards may remember in fiscal year 24 when that budget was adopted both boards agree with the strategic approach this is that box in the bottom left take 4.9 million of revenue put that in the capital project one time to advance some strategic projects knowing that when fiscal year 25 rolled around that funding would be there to support some ongoing obligations that were starting in 25 a fiscal year 26 that we can look ahead and we can see a number of obligations that are on the horizon the examples of which are on the slide I won't go into much detail but my final slide for introduction is really just now looking to the capital improvements

[00:11:45] program this is one because terminology matters and timing matters so I just wanted to set the stage to help us all speak the same language so we're talking about the CIP we're often talking about either the the plan over five years or the budget which is present so the capital budget is the budget that is appropriated it is the first year that the Board of Supervisors adopted in What's also included in the capital budget is any prior projects that were appropriated and are continuing to move forward because projects take often more than one year to implement the capital budget.

[00:12:18] And so you will see some of those when we talk about the capital budget later. It's not just the money that's approved this year. It's continuing the staff effort to implement those projects to see them through to operation. Next, when we talk about the CIP, we'll be focused on years two through five. And that is really important because that comes as a starting point for the next update that we're going to prepare for fiscal year 2016.

[00:12:40] The last few years it's been very common if a project is included in the CIP staff will work whether they be Project updates at timing or scope or schedule or certain budget to really try and keep that budget as close to intact as possible to give credence to the Prior CIP that was adopted by the board so the projects don't have to be it cast in so much doubt discussion every year Of course, there's flexibility. Of course the board always has the ability to change that. This is staff starting point how we know that CIP. Finally, again, to echo the multi-year impacts of the general fund and the school fund. As facilities come online, we'll need to operate them, but the other

[00:13:18] major thing we have to plan for is the debt service that it takes to fund the projects in the CIP. I'm going to talk about that in much more detail later, but this is just to kick us off with some common terminology. So for just a moment, I'm going to do some musical chairs. Ms. Kumazawa will be here, and she will talk about the CIP request for Commonwealth

[00:13:39] Public Schools. Good afternoon. Thank you. I'm Maya Kumazella, Director of Budget and Planning for Albemarle County Public Schools. I'm going to first start with our CIP request overview and justification for the projects that you have in front of you. As always, we begin our presentations with how this topic aligns with our strategic plan. We have three overarching goals in the strategic plan, and this afternoon we'll focus on equitable and transformative resources.

[00:14:19] I'll first begin with an enrollment update for the current school year. The blue line that you see is the actual enrollment of our K-12 students. The dotted green line is the projection that is made each year in the fall before.

[00:14:37] As you can see, there was a big gap during the pandemic, and over time we've become closer. We've been able to more closely predict what our incoming students would look like as we get further away from the pandemic. For this year in particular, you can see that we under-projected our students.

[00:14:55] We projected that we would have 13,624 students, and the actual students we saw this fall were 133 more than we thought. When you look at the actual number of students enrolled last fall to the actual number of students enrolled this fall, we saw an increase of 298 annual students.

[00:15:15] For the long term, as you're aware, we do a 10-year enrollment projection. This is based on historical regression trends. This incorporates many factors such as students moving into the county, moving out of the county, students moving between schools or moving to private school or home school alternatives.

[00:15:37] The orange line with the dots on it, that is our ACPS P12 10-year enrollment projection. We do look at other sources to make sure we're in line and we're making the right assumptions. Some of the other projections you see here, three scenarios built by Walden Cooper.

[00:15:55] We align very closely with one of those scenarios. And then a new resource that we have this year is called Predictive Enrollment Analytics. That is a product out of PowerSchool in which they incorporate development pipeline projects into our student projections.

[00:16:12] So you can see that one differs a little bit differently. a different methodology, but it is there as a reference point for us to use. Our peak enrollment was in 2019, right before the pandemic, of 14,032 students. And we do project to grow by about 3.5%.

[00:16:31] That's 482 students in the next five years. That's a fairly moderate growth. And then over 10 years, that's where the growth picks up a little bit more. We anticipate to grow by 7.8% or over 1,000 students. This is just a snapshot of our elementary school boundaries. It was too much to try to overlay the middle in high school, but you can see the red boundaries. Those are where the developments are in the county's development pipeline. You can see a lot of it is concentrated

[00:17:07] along the 29 North Corridor in Baker-Butler and Holley-Meade boundaries, as well as some in the Agner Hurt, the Agner boundary, and then some in the western feeder pattern around Crozet and Brownsville, and then the southern feeder pattern at Mount. Some of the largest developments where we anticipated the highest student fields are listed on the right. Those are North Fork and North Point in the Baker-Butler boundary, and Hollymead and Brookhill in the Hollymead Elementary School boundary. What does that mean for our schools? This is just a table

[00:17:46] that shows the number of dwelling units by boundaries including elementary middle and high there is a lot of variation within what are these swelling unit types they could be multifamily they could be single family and the assumptions of how many students who might yield very greatly based on the types of units so there's a range over to the right of potential student yields depending on the housing unit types I've highlighted the ones where we anticipate the highest impacts in yellow as I mentioned on the previous

[00:18:22] slide that includes Baker Butler and Hollymead that feed into Lakeside and then Albemarle as well as Agner southern feeder pattern Mountain View and in the western feeder pattern Brownsville we anticipate about 11,000 new units coming online based on information from the Community Development Department which could yield several thousand new students over a long horizon So how does this translate to the CIP projects that are requested?

[00:18:58] A lot of the schools that I mentioned are listed here, as well as the 10-year maximum capacity conflict. So this is over the next 10 years, what is the peak enrollment number? And when you divide that peak enrollment number by the current capacity at that school, you get this percentage that is around 100% or higher for these schools.

[00:19:20] The next column shows the same information on the number of welling units in the development pipeline, and then towards the right where it says CIP projects, those are the projects that are either currently underway or are being requested to address these capacity concerns that we currently have or are anticipating over the next 10 years.

[00:19:44] Another way to look at our capacity projects is this timeline. We currently have three projects underway. One is the Albemarle High School Second Floor Connector Wing, High School Center 2, and Mountain View Upper Elementary School.

[00:20:06] All these three projects are anticipated to open for the 26-27 school year. The ones that are in blue are part of the CIP request for FY26-29. They include land acquisition, in addition to community lab school, an elementary school in the northern feeder pattern, a high school capacity project, and a preschool center.

[00:20:34] In addition to capacity, a lot of the projects that you see in the FY26-30 CIP requests are related to renovations and improvements. This is an overview of all of our school buildings and when they were originally built.

[00:20:51] That's the top half of the slide. The ones that are bolded are ones that we shifted consciously from the last presentation. So you can see those were newly added in those decades. One other thing I'll point out is that we had to newly add a 91 to 100 years category since Stony Point will be 91 years old.

[00:21:15] But we have made improvements and renovations to our school buildings. And that's what the second graphic on the bottom attempts to show. We have made improvements at some of the schools, and when you weight the areas of the school that have been renovated or modernized, and you weight that against the original parts of the building, we come up with a weighted age, and that's what this is showing.

[00:21:38] Even with the weighted ages, you can see that a lot of our school buildings are aging. This facilities conditions assessment closely correlates to the age and the weighted age of the school buildings.

[00:21:55] This is a current assessment of different areas of the school and ranked by a score that our building services team has come up with. There are five schools at the bottom of the ranking with the lowest numbers.

[00:22:12] These are the ones that you will see are requested as projects in the five-year CIP. They're also our oldest schools. We've done something similar. This is new in the past year. We've done the same conditions assessment for our middle schools, and you will see CIP projects requests for these three middle schools, Walton, Early, and Community Lab.

[00:22:34] The CIP projects, when you refer to the project request list, are called elementary school renovations or elementary school improvements and the middle school master plan studies. So those are the projects that are requested as a result of these assessments.

[00:22:50] At the high school level, you will see a project also called High School Improvements or High School Renovations. We have conducted similar facilities conditions assessments. This is an excerpt from the Albemarle and Western Albemarle High School Master Plan Study, where they looked into detail at all three of our high schools and came up with ranking systems to determine a quantitative score for each of the schools.

[00:23:20] You can see at the bottom, the ratings for Albemarle High School and Western Albemarle are the lowest, and those are the two schools that we're focusing on with the request for high school renovations. In addition, a lot of these project requests are supported by master plan studies.

[00:23:41] So this table summarizes recent master plan studies that we've conducted in support of the CIP request. It really begins with the high school planning study in 2017, in which it was recommended that we build multiple high school centers phased over time to address capacity and equity of access to specialized programs. The study also recommends renovating all the high schools to support the learning and vision through high school 2022. And the two projects that you see that are related to this master plan are high school center two and high school renovations. The next master plan

[00:24:19] study listed here is the what I mentioned, the Albemarle High School and Western Albemarle High school master plan. This is a more detailed look at what those renovations at those two schools should look like. And you will see that the request for high school renovations, the details of that are reflected in that master plan. The next one is the Lambs Lane master plan conducted in 2022.

[00:24:43] Purpose of that study is to transform the Lambs Lane property from a collection of buildings into a main ACPS campus. And that CIP request, the CIP project request is called Lambs Lane master plan and then our most recent master plan is the middle school master plan and this plan provides for short and long-term improvements at all of the ACPS middle schools to address both capacity and equity needs and that project is labeled middle school master since there are a lot of projects that I am referencing this is a way another way to look at what the timing of all these

[00:25:23] renovations projects will look like they're in the most closest to the furthest out so year one through year five we are currently working on renovations at the current mountain view elementary school so you won't see that as part of the request but you will see renovations at albemarle high school the special education facility at ivy creek and then the first few schools in our improvements program stony point community lab lamb's lane blue road an elevator addition at

[00:25:58] Mountain View as part of the first-year projects and you can see there's projects have been staggered so that we can implement these in a feasible way and that the funding request is spread out over several years so I'll talk a little bit more about the actual materials that you have in terms of what those projects are you have in front of you a kind of a thicker packet that's called

[00:26:30] the 2023 planning advisory committee report recommendations um you have will recognize that the um the school board request for this year closely aligns with that report that report has all the details around each of the projects which we've talked about before but there are some key changes from that report that i would like to point out costs have been updated as far as the latest data that we have any unfunded projects have an inflationary factor added to them and then we also had some placeholders which we typically do when we're still working through

[00:27:09] some things and when we have the cost for that we will replace placeholders with actual budget amounts we've updated the timing for unfunded projects those are pushed forward obviously and then we've also clarified the high school renovations project to simplify the timing for those projects so that it's addressing one high school per year, Albemarle, Western, and then Monticello.

[00:27:33] The Northern Feeder Pattern Elementary School, that scope has been increased to accommodate not 500 students but 600 students with the anticipated growth along the 29 North Corridor and the recent activity along there.

[00:27:49] We would like to make sure that there's ample capacity for the long term. And then finally, the middle school master plan. In the report, at this point last year, there was a placeholder, as this master plan had not been completed yet.

[00:28:06] Just a few weeks ago, the master plan is complete, and the details around the recommendations are now included as part of the CIP project request. Those include improvements to Community Lab, Walton, and Burley. You might remember that those are the three schools that I highlighted in the Facilities Conditions Assessment.

[00:28:27] So all these different tools and reference materials do align with each other. There's just different ways to show the projects. And then finally, you will see there is a new project beginning in year five called Preschool Center. And we will have a more detailed scope of that as part of next year's work.

[00:28:50] This is a summary table of the full school board CIP request. This includes ongoing programs and some of the projects that I have mentioned for a total five-year CIP amount of 560 million well I'll change gears a little bit to talk about our ongoing programs these are programs appear as requests every year they're typically funded first and the purpose of it is to maintain the current infrastructure that we have before we continue adding more the categories that

[00:29:28] we have in the CIP our project management facilities maintenance and replacement network technology school board school bus replacement and electric school bus purchase these remain unchanged with the exception of school bus replacement program which is requested at twenty three point eight million dollars over the next five years the reasoning for this is that we have an aging fleet as you can see in the graph a large portion of our fleet was purchased between 2006 and 2011 and based on a 12-year replacement cycle we

[00:30:06] currently have 89 buses that need to be replaced this is not a projection of the next five years but currently there are 89 buses in need of replacement our current funding level which is fairly flat from year to year does not address this need so we backlog continues to increase each year this was a request last year as well so it's not new and then the second reason is that we are putting more miles on our buses each year based on our routing and our activities resulting in about 10,000 miles per year on average. We anticipate that after a five-year

[00:30:42] catch-up period of purchasing around 30 buses per year, we may be able to reduce the number of buses purchased after that five-year catch-up to go back to more historically average levels of school bus purchases. Something else I would like to go over is the historical five-year CIP funding. When you compare what has been requested by the LRPAC and the school board. Over the last three CIP cycles,

[00:31:17] we've had between 44% and 61% of projects funded. That's what the red bars show. What the blue sort of shaded area shows is that as there are projects that are unfunded, that unfunded list continues growing. As I mentioned, if a project is unfunded, it gets pushed forward. It doesn't go away. So that blue shade will continue to grow as projects continue to be unfunded and as we update project costs for inflationary factors each year. The table on the bottom

[00:31:52] shows some example projects that are included as part of this visual. This is also a chart that I believe both school, both boards are familiar with. This is the amount of historical capital budget, so adopted capital budgets each year. So that's a one-year time frame, not the five-year CIP. The light orange being the total capital budget, and the dark orange being the ACPS portion. This has been adjusted for inflation, so you can also see the levels of

[00:32:25] increase and decrease in recessionary times. And then the table on the right is just another way look at the percentage of ACPS projects as part of the entire capital budget each year so at this point I'll keep this slide up which is a summary CIP project request list the handout that you have that's the one pager grayscale she that is a little bit more of a detailed version of this but largely the same that you can reference and I'll pause here if you have any clarifying

[00:33:04] questions about anything I've talked about, I'm happy to answer them, but for the larger discussion, there will be time after we finish the presentation. Thank you.

[00:33:20] As we start, I'll go into a little bit of discussion, and then we'll get some free-for-all coming to the discussion. I hope it's not a free-for-all. Thank you. Let me go back to my screen just to see which were clarifying and which were open.

[00:33:46] So, can you give an example of, you talked about the equity as being focused on slide 20. So, how does that get carried out, emphasizing the topic on that slide?

[00:34:11] And I just wanted to understand better what that meant, because I hear the word a lot, but I'm trying to run into details. The equity of access to specialized programs. I'm just trying to ask you to give more information about what that means.

[00:34:30] So specialized programs. The high school... When you say specialized, focusing on... So a lot of these studies try to focus on providing equitable resources no matter what feeder pattern or school you're attending.

[00:34:48] And that's why we tend, for the middle school master plan, for example, that is taking a comprehensive look at all of the middle schoolers in the county. Some are at capacity, some have capacity, and by looking at all the schools, you're making sure that everyone is receiving the same level of consideration for improved facilities.

[00:35:09] And so we could build one middle school and say, okay, we've solved our problem. But that leaves our aging middle schools and their facility needs out of sort of that scope. So we feel that it's important to make sure that the full division is considered when we are considering pockets of issues around the county.

[00:35:31] Okay. It does go along with making sure, in my mind, I jumped to one school having makerspaces and nobody else came into it. And the whole argument was, well, this is where it started, so that's where we're going to do it. So I appreciate the approach here.

[00:35:49] Your slide 19 I if I understand the scores correctly Was seems to be the one with the lowest rating among these high schools, but it's not the first one to get done For many years already, so I just wanted to know what else was involved in that orienting If the rating is the basis for how we decided to go forward, but they're part of the same project requests in terms of Priority and you're asked many times later the highest or the lowest school we're requesting Albemarle high school

[00:36:27] renovations in year one and Western in year two is that right I would also add that particular assessment on that slide was from the 2017 FENNY study and since that period we have done some for example was part of the 2017 bond referendum there was a project at Western that added four classrooms as well as did significant renovation inside the science portions of that building as well as some of the ct spaces

[00:36:59] so it's a slightly more outdated assessment compared to the elementary school so many things that are called for in slide 19 may have happened some okay thank you um i i was completely shocked by the school bus prices because i remember when many years ago i have to remember the school bus Expense was brought from the school board budget to the local government CIP

[00:37:35] But with the thought that there was outside money that was going to come to help with that And so and that seems to disappear. So if anybody has some extra information about that, I'd like to know as well Later is better. That's okay, too Yeah, I was interested in

[00:38:18] If they recorded it would be helpful to lift your voice. Yes, thank you. I'm looking down at my notes instead of up. In slide 28, I think it's very compelling, but it does show how in many, many years the schools may not be having everything that the CIP has, but it certainly has a majority of many of the dollars.

[00:38:44] So I took some comfort in that. Definitely doing the best we could in any of those years. And I'll stop. Thank you. Thank you. But if there are any responses, we can take those as they're ready.

[00:39:07] But the next would be Supervisor McKeon. Yes, thank you, Jim. And this was really a great report. Thank you very much. Lots of data and information. As we often say, I feel like I'm drinking from a water hose here a little bit.

[00:39:24] But just a couple of clarifying questions to get started. and then I know Jim's going to let us come back and have other comments and questions. You said that you built in an inflation factor, but just curious what that was. No, what is your satisfaction factor?

[00:39:40] What is the number? For the future? Yeah. Five percent. That's what I want. Thank you. It's five percent. And I guess just to kind of piggyback on the school bus issue, we were looking at 30 diesel school buses hope for each year we i think we all recognize that we are looking at doing other things that um rather than diesel buses for the future so i'm hoping that that will very much change

[00:40:20] having said that how it will change we don't really know but i recognize that the cip is very fluid and it can change from year to year so um environmentally speaking diesel is not where we want to be going and you all are aware of that and certainly our trip to Champaign-Urbana that you all went on showed at least one option of a different model so just a comment that purchase of 30 diesel buses each year is a little breathtaking when we're thinking about what we're doing to change our

[00:40:56] transportation model just also to make a comment that so you won't know the board of supervisors this month December will be has the opportunity to support original transit authority establishment so if you want to come and listen to that discussion at all might be informative for you be next week but so looking at establishing an authority and transportation transit authority you will give us hopefully long-term not immediately but more money for transit

[00:41:34] which we certainly hope that the school system's transportation will be at the table for those discussions. So that's just more a comment. I was curious about land acquisition. You have a note about land acquisition.

[00:41:50] Where are you all? Just a little clarification on that. This is, there is no specific site in mind. This is in anticipation of a new middle school, a new high school, new elementary school, really could be at any level.

[00:42:09] We just feel that if the funding is appropriated and an opportunity becomes available, there would be a budget to acquire land as we know we will need it at any level really at this point. And depending on the site, it could accommodate a different school type.

[00:42:29] so it just depends on the availability. - Yeah, okay, thank you. All right, and just a question. I hate to get into comments or larger issues right now, so I think those are the only questions I have right now, but I would like a chance to come back.

[00:42:50] - Sure. - Yeah. - Simple as a problem. - Sure, I don't wanna take too much time with questions, but I remember there was kind of an illuminating discussion when we met with, I believe this was with me recently appears in the city and we talked about the nuts and bolts of how buses are actually financed um can you this might be maybe less interesting for y'all's buses but can you give me just a quick overview of what are the dollars and cents per bus and how does that money actually flow is it not front cost is it something that you receive some kind of state or federal financing

[00:43:29] assessment. We pay about, the current cost is about $137,000 per bus. In terms of financing that. There is a small portion of state funding that goes to supporting those buses and the rest of the cost of the bus would be funded by a combination of cash and borrow proceeds. Later in the presentation I'll talk about the strategy about how projects are funded each, but it is a

[00:44:00] project that is funded by multiple funded sources the state funding I believe is around 270 approximately I think that's exactly right All right, I didn't catch that.

[00:44:16] State funding is? $270 million total. Total. For the program. $1,000. $1,000. Oh, sorry. $1,000. $1,000 for the program. $1,000 for the county years ago, they've changed it. Sorry? The $1,000,000 for the county alone is gone from the state's perspective.

[00:44:33] Yeah, I'm not sure about the history of it. So not quite too plus. So not quite too much about the end of the budget. Thank you. That's all I have.

[00:44:49] Supervisor Galloway. Thank you. Thank you for the report. I'm realizing this happens again. It's coming. So the projects I don't see in here that I see on the five-year request, I just have a few questions about that because the rationale is not there.

[00:45:12] So the community lab school, that wasn't in last year's. It's part of the middle school master plan study, so it was a placeholder, and the master plan study was just recently.

[00:45:31] completed and that's part of that master plan study there is a recommendation to renovate community lab and build an addition onto that building is the addition of programmatic change because it's at least by the numbers it's not massive it would add it would increase from 200 currently 240 students to 400 but are you doing some sort of like is there a 150 person wait list to get in the community I'm trying to understand this seems to be usually on your editions it's all driven by accommodating the current students that go there so

[00:46:09] you have 150 student wait list it's not there's a there's a let's just say there's a difference between what the current principal in practice is able to house there in terms of their current environment based on some of the issues that were presented in terms of the age of the building and the adequacy of the facilities that he doesn't staff he doesn't enroll it to the complete capacity but there is more than 100 student waitlist so I think the

[00:46:48] rationale like you provide for your projects for this cycle because we're not going to have this until next year if you can send that you've got it obviously we need to understand it right and the other I'll mention the other middle schools are approaching capacity so this would alleviate other middle schools and it's not just focusing on community class we have more seats open it would pull students out of our so the lakeside your big problem early and Walton has capacity even in the future out yeah they always have as Walton's

[00:47:24] all I don't know how you get more students at all there's no yes in the it's in that master plan with your new elementary school side the hundred million dollars that's out there in the future for a high school project you got the $10 million in $29 million and then $100 million in fiscal year 30? What is that about?

[00:47:49] That is a placeholder project. The first amount is for design. The second amount is a placeholder construction amount, knowing that that is a need that is upcoming. We are currently discussing with LRPAC and staff to determine exactly what the scope of that project is. And more details of that will be provided in the upcoming recommendation but is it you've got high school improvements and additions you've got the centers that there so is that 110 theorizing continued

[00:48:27] center model stuff multiple projects so the placeholder number in there is for um additions one at western albemarle and one at monticello but it hasn't been again it's a placeholder amount that is in on top of the other high school projects you see. So the Western Elmer High School improvements is not an addition? There is a small addition as part of that project but if that project is mainly focused on the renovations of that schools as it is our oldest. So the hundred million could be centers it could be additions at the current high schools? And the recommendation might be a new

[00:49:07] high school as well it just hasn't been a we're working on what the official recommendation is based on feedback and discussions that we're currently having so I would have the same request as the community lab school it would be helpful to have kind of the rationale that when it's in there and talk through it as the school board had conversations about back when you when the school board decided to do the centers there wasn't an educational philosophy reason

[00:49:43] for going to the centers it wasn't just to avoid building a comprehensive high school that was a happy outcome because we didn't have 150 million dollars comprehensive high school but that wasn't the driving factor the driving rationale was that this was the approach we're going to take to educating high school students the center model so now I'm seeing the conversation of a new high school coming in which seems to be in conflict with that pedagogical decision so I'm just wondering has the school board decided on a different philosophy that comprehensive high schools needed no we have not had that

[00:50:21] conversation I mean the original plan was to build a series of centers and if we had gone with a 2019 approval of that project we would be looking at another project now but it was always to build a series of centers put in money into our existing high schools to upgrade them and then plan for some you know subsequent centers we have not had a conversation about a new high school as

[00:50:55] a board at all and 150 million dollar price tag you were you just mentioned is probably more like 200 million I for one don't think that that's the way we need to go as a community I would like to see us looking at a second center site more toward Western we did look at properties in that direction you know several years ago and we did not find one that we thought we have some ideas going forward but I I'm still committed to that we haven't done a recent poll of the whole

[00:51:31] board but we're not looking at a comprehensive I think that that would require massive redistricting it would take suck all the capital out of every project that we had forevermore and it would not we would still have old high school so it wouldn't be equitable for our students and the purpose for this model was a overall price tag would be less at least for the five to ten years it wouldn't require disruption it would provide equity across and look at all of our high school students together and that's the direction I think we're going

[00:52:08] to continue to go but in the meantime as just come as on noted we had 300 students at it this year which is double what we predicted and a hundred of them were at Leicester and that's three to five classrooms you know and we can't we have to do something which tends to placeholder but we know we're gonna have to do something I mean I understand the thank you but it sounds like the school board has to have that conversation right you mentioned your opinion on but

[00:52:51] isn't supportive of it. And I don't want the community, because I'm already hearing little rumblings about a new high school again. That's an absolutely fair comment. And I don't think it should be, and I know Maya just didn't come up with that. I mean, if you did, don't mind.

[00:53:10] But I don't think the rationale, I know she's going by the rationale she was given. So somewhere in here, there sounds like a disconnect between approach, and if that $100 million or $110 is for additions and figuring it out the centers that's great I appreciate that rationale but I don't want to start having these meetings looking out five years conversation about a new high school when a new high school is not feasible or possible or even wanted so and that's not my call that's y'all's

[00:53:42] call so but but I would you know you know we were going the board always gets advocacy for different things and when advocates start advocating for something that's not even a possibility or even getting worked up to be against it as a possibility that's an unfair thing to put citizens through so that's my concern so thank you for clearing that up and if there's work the board has to do and if

[00:54:13] the answer changes then then let us know thank you thank you very much for the

[00:54:38] presentation on slide 27 but then I look at also on page 28 but my capital budget funding where you see the whole budget and then you can receive over half of

[00:55:12] what we received. You received 54% of the total budget that comes in for the entire county. That's just stating a couple things. Regarding the elementary school of the northern feeder pattern, clarifying, you're going from 500 to 600 projection. Is that going to be a, do you have enough land or is that going to be a two-story building, which I believe is less expensive, but i'm not a builder so that's good answer that so yeah so uh we do anticipate obviously the

[00:55:51] square footage that building would increase we anticipate that being about 80 000 gross square i believe our fit test studies did assume a two-story building um with the larger capacity we might need to look at three stories in some portions um we do have precedent for that crozet was a three-story addition and the southern feeder pattern which will also be in a three-story um as far as land uh the proposed site is uh the proper that we have available to us which i'd rather see a higher oh i'm sorry i'd rather see a higher building and then more land for

[00:56:29] kids to play in um electric uh the school buses what is the longevity of a diesel bus because i think it's a lot more than projected for electric but i'm not honest well 12 years yes we recently updated it to become more in line with what a lot of our other surrounding counties are using previously it was 16 16 and now it's 12 okay we're going

[00:57:01] backwards okay and the electric the electric buses 15 years based on the life of that okay so there might be economies there thank you the preschool center do you have a location for that this is also a new project that the The scope hasn't been fully fleshed out, but knowing it's a need and a recommendation, we wanted to include it as soon as...

[00:57:37] Okay, so you're just putting it out there, but it hasn't been really... Yep. ...bended or anything. The next steps for that is for the Long Range Planning Advisory Committee to come up with a scope recommendation as part of the next cycle. Got it. And when you're talking about equity, you're saying, talking about the renovations for the school so that they're all equitable.

[00:57:59] Are you talking about spending the same amount of money on each school? Is that your definition of equity? No, the definition of equity is making sure that every student has the same access to the same quality facility and things inside the facility.

[00:58:16] So there are some schools that are more in need of others based on the assessments. So the requested budgets for each school align with the specific needs of each school. So that's why you'll see different budget amounts for each school in the request.

[00:58:33] That's what I was hoping when you were talking about equity, because I know a school that's very, very old is only going to have one or two plug-ins because, you know, they didn't have them, didn't need them back then, whereas now you need a lot more. So, okay, so it would be to upgrade each school to a standard.

[00:58:55] So in 2019, 2020, we had over 14,000 students, correct? And then in 24, 25, we have over 13,000 students, 20 years wide.

[00:59:14] So our numbers are not as high as they were in 2019, although I think you're projecting it to go higher in the coming years as our population grows, correct? And lastly, class size.

[00:59:33] Will we be discussing that later? Class size increases, decreases, because that determines the number of students in a classroom determines the amount of classrooms you need. So with regards to long-term facilities planning, we assume that current class sizes will be unchanged for the purposes of long-term planning.

[00:59:58] In terms of what we're going to do say next year, that's an operating budget discussion that we'll have to have during this upcoming. Vice Chair Acuff mentioned about 100 students and that would be, okay, I did, no, I was taking a little bit.

[01:00:16] Divide it by 22. I think high school class size right now is 22, 24, so it's for, you can use. Yes, okay, fine, that's interesting. Okay, thank you. Those are all more questions.

[01:00:32] Thank you. My question, my main question that I think I'll just focus on is more the homework that I needed to do and probably fail to do very well. Slide 27, it talks about the historical five-year CIP funding, and I'm still trying to, in my own mind, reconcile what was asked for, like say last year, that didn't appear versus what's new.

[01:00:59] And, of course, we have our budget from last year where we had projections for five years that include school needs. But what I'm taking from slide 27 is that that's the red bar, and it didn't match what was asked for, and now this is being added on to what was asked for before.

[01:01:23] And so I'm still trying to wrap my head around what's new in this compared to last year's request, let alone what was considered part of the five-year plan last year. So that's the big picture item that I'm trying to eventually get by. Thank you.

[01:01:41] And then we'll turn it to you to determine whether the questions or additional comments. Well, I guess we can go around. Dr. Berlin, do you want to start? There's two clarifications that might be helpful to make based on some things we talked about on the school board regarding some of my supervisor colleagues' questions.

[01:02:05] Can you just talk a little bit about where we've seen the enrollment increases? That would be by 11, kind of grades. Because I think what we are seeing, right, is as people were leaving, we are now seeing them coming back in the middle of placement.

[01:02:22] But if you want to talk a little bit about some of the-- Yeah, well, since someone mentioned Western Albemarle, That was an area where historically we have a progression rate. That's a trend that captures students, say, coming back from private school into public school, Western.

[01:02:40] That is typically somewhat predictable. This year, it was an outlier in which we did not predict that typical trend. It was a higher incoming group of students. That was one area that we did not predict. Another area is kindergarten enrollment.

[01:02:57] We have seen very small kindergarten classes both last year and this year. And so the way our methodology works is we're usually moving the kids up based on historical patterns. And so we anticipated a small first grade class this year because we had a small kindergarten class last year.

[01:03:16] But the first graders showed up, new first graders showed up that weren't kindergartners. So that was another area that we missed. And so whenever there's these kind of outliers, it's hard to know, you have to have a few years to really determine how to use that data moving forward.

[01:03:33] So those are some areas that we saw unexpected changes in and why we were off in the projection. - And then the other thing that I think might be helpful for my colleagues is on slide 18, do you wanna just comment a little bit about when you do the facilities condition assessments, what are the types of things we are looking for?

[01:03:53] accessibility for children with disabilities is it regarding light within classroom space within classrooms I think helping understand the difference between a croze and a stony blade will help bring light to some of those equity that's a great question we do include some of the details of the assessments and the an appendix H of the report there is an interior assessment component exterior assessment component structure systems those are the three

[01:04:30] main components and then within that we have assessed in you can see line by line very detailed metrics and then for each school to make sure that we're looking at each school in the same light and so you can see the detailed scores behind that. It's very thorough. Do they have access to that or can we make sure that they have access to that? It begins on. I don't think it's in this. Oh, it's in. It's in the report. It's in the. Just for the elementary schools. Just for the elementary. We can share the middle school too.

[01:05:05] We've only completed, so this is an internal assessment done by our staff. We have completed that for the elementary and middle school. The high school assessment that we have is from the 2017 HBA study that was done.

[01:05:23] So the middle school would be helpful because that is a helpful break-down assessment. I think that's everything. Yeah, I would just say every year we present a needs-based budget based on what professional educators around us believe that we need to meet the educational outcomes that we want as a community.

[01:05:54] If we're going to talk about class size, let's not talk about class size without also talking about the education, how that affects educational outcomes, because it's not just bodies in a building and how many fit, it needs to be what's going to get us the best educational outcomes if we want and so I think if we're looking at slide 27 that's pretty

[01:06:30] distressing as that blue bar gets even larger and so if if as a community we're going to consistently not get what we think we need as a school board I want us to be honest and say that we're okay with being a generation behind in school building because essentially if you look at the age of our schools and the gap that we have now it'll be I don't know how we're gonna day ourselves out I mean

[01:07:07] it's generations I mean it's you know a hundred year old schools I appreciate the fact that several several of you think that you know it slide 28 which is the next one on this page is compelling because the orange bar is more than half of the yellow bar I appreciate the fact that the schools are getting a significant portion of your capital funding but this obviously I'm biased but the schools are just so incredibly important especially in the roles that

[01:07:42] we take on now in terms of it's more than just educating. We're doing a lot. So my thoughts. Mr. Page. Okay. Thanks, Dr. Jacob. I guess my feelings, too, are mostly comments. When we look at slide 27, that really has given me heartburn, I guess, ever since 2019. And I think it was roughly the time that we first proposed the model. And when we first proposed that model, it was with the understanding that all of our existing high schools would also be renovated

[01:08:20] so that they'd be able to sort of do the job that we would expect to be done. And so that difference between what was asked for and what was received really goes back to at least 2019 with the Center Project. Then going to the class sizes, with our science classes, at a certain number, those classes can't really function too well because experimental work couldn't be done with a huge number of students in a science class so class size really does matter and even going to something that might be really sort of superficial but it has

[01:08:55] been sort of disturbing to me our school system is really pretty affluent really when you think about it our county really and when you look at the buses that some of our schools some of our students are being taken to school in it looked like they were from the 1930s and 1940s it looked like something so I think we really need to also look not only at the age of the buses and what what they look like their age and how practical they really are in our school system so those are three things that have really given me given me heartburn quite a bit

[01:09:32] quite a few years not just what this slide is showing but at least back to

[01:09:37] 2019. Thank you, Mr. Page. Mr. Pace? Yes, ma'am. I have a specific question, Maya, in terms of, so I'm thinking about AHS, but it could theoretically involve our other two high schools, comprehensive high schools, but I mean, how willing are we, how big are we willing to let those AHS get in terms of student population by continually adding on to it? Is that something we've thought of?

[01:10:15] Yes. We often talk about school size and what the idea of school size is. That is one of the topics that the long-range planning advisory is focused on. We've gotten some research from the Education Advisory Board, the AD, on that.

[01:10:31] It's been an ongoing consideration. Okay. I don't have a specific answer for EHS. That's great. Thank you. And then a couple of comments. In terms of our high school philosophy, I wanted to say how I was looking at it.

[01:10:47] The center model allows us to be more flexible, I think, because we have three comprehensive high schools, and I do see that there will be plenty of students in the future who can benefit from that model educationally. But there's going to be a number of students who need something else to be happy in secondary education.

[01:11:10] That's where I think the centers, if we develop those properly, can definitely help us meet that need. And then as far as student population, we were talking about that earlier. Now it grew to a high of over 14,000, and now we're back from that a little bit.

[01:11:33] And certainly the pandemic has a lot to say about why it's like that. But, you know, we're not just making, we're making a lot of programming changes. programmatic changes and we're doing educationally in the division and I really could see a whole lot of students not just because they're coming into new units but because they're coming back to us and I think that's what happened at Western this year. A lot of private school students decided

[01:12:06] to return and so that's something we need to keep in. Thank you. With respect to what Mr. Pace just said we did see a bump in ninth grade enrollment this year which is you know people who have had their children in private schools or home schools and brought them back just a couple of comments with respect to the buses I agree with Diantha miss McKeel that it would be nice to go gung-ho on electric buses but a there they cost over $300,000 and we don't have a charging

[01:12:46] plan for the county. We don't have the infrastructure to be able to maintain that at this point. So the buses that we have acquired, we've acquired with grants, but we're sort of, until we have an infrastructure plan for the county, we really can't go forward very robustly on that. But within that acquisition period, I would hope we would shift and there would continue to be some subsidies.

[01:13:11] with respect to the pre-k the pre-k center is very early in in concept but it would we now house how many pre-k classrooms we have across the county we have at least nine so so the idea would be that would free up space in the elementary schools and consolidate our prepay efforts we tried very hard with the two schools the high school center and the elementary school to use land to

[01:13:48] do projects where we didn't have the land costs and similarly there is a a proper parcel on right on that site there is there's a seven acre site so that could work and that's a lot where the growth pattern is so my my bias would be to go where we have land acquisition costs 11 classrooms 11 classrooms so and - They're predominantly in the urban range.

[01:14:27] - Agner, Greer, Woodbrook. - Yeah, so that would free up 11 classrooms. And all of those schools are nearing or at capacity. So that would be a rationale for doing it. With respect to class size, and I know there's been some tension between the supervisors and the school board about that.

[01:14:49] And some of the research on class size says some kids do well if you shoehorn 30 gigs in a classroom. That's really not our focus. We have 13% of our kids are English language learners.

[01:15:05] We have 12% of our kids are special ed or disabled students. We have 13% that are Hispanic, 11% that are black, and we have 30%-- 30.3% of our students are low income.

[01:15:22] these students they benefit enormously in smaller class sizes so and these students although they're concentrated in the urban race they're all over the county we have four kids in every single school and additionally we have 350 last year homeless kids so large classrooms 354 last year and we're on trend to read that again. Class size is important for the learning of these kids and for our teachers,

[01:16:01] and it's the number one priority of our community. So obviously we did some class size jiggling during the pandemic after the Great Recession, but, you know, we were looking at increasing class size by half a student here and this whole student there. I would be very unhappy, but if we if that was a major route to dealing with our capacity we'll want to

[01:16:37] continue with the discussion a little more open-ended but I do want to ask since everyone at the table has a little name tag that identifies you if you are not at the table please feel free to speak up but do identify yourself for the recording and for everyone in the audience so that they know who's speaking thank you I'm sorry she said that earlier yeah thank you for these comments i'm going to look around to see additional comments i was horrified when you said 354 homeless students and i would like to learn separate apart from this process more

[01:17:12] about how you identify them what does that mean and what can be done for that but that may be a separate conversation i don't think we have these in the room right now but um we just recently had presentation on it different week with the foundation right that's what it was right right ahead some of us attended the almaro county public schools foundation education foundation meeting on monday morning and that information was included so that could be shared we could share that thank you and of course those as kate said and i'm sorry i didn't mean to just jump in

[01:17:52] those children are as kate said those homeless children are scattered throughout the county but they're concentrated in the urban area so you know i hate to say it but in a way since they're concentrated it does make it easier to look at how to help them because they're not spread over 700 you know you see what i'm saying so that gets us being able perhaps to make sure that class sizes in the appropriate areas are correct um having said all that can i just add a couple of so we have a proffer at Brookhill for an elementary school we have a proffer at

[01:18:32] North Point for an elementary school which is where your next elementary school will be that's the plan right and then you're and then of course we are working on right now the neck an elementary school to relieve the overcrowding at Melnerview so that one will be opening pretty quick well 27 but then in our world that's sort of fast it's sad to say but it is you know we We talked about VDOT projects as being 8, 9, 10 years long, so unfortunately it is what it is.

[01:19:04] And when we get back to the high school piece, we know that land costs are where the real expense comes. We have proffered land that we've all talked about up on 29 North that we received when we approved the Brook Hill development.

[01:19:26] It was proffered land on Brook Hill, but proffered land across the road. And I would just urge all of us to look seriously at that master plan that we've done for the Lambs Lane campus that will free up space.

[01:19:46] If we can move that bus station, car wash, gas station, all of that extraneous stuff out up onto that proffered land where we both own, which we both own. Then we have more space on the lands land campus to create more educational space Doesn't necessarily mean that you take out more high school and just put an addition on it You actually have acres to do something with it could be a very different Scenario, you know if you look at it through a different blend doesn't have to mean the pickets are just in one building or the same but and I think that and I was really happy to see that

[01:20:26] Lambs Lane campus that master plan in your documents so that getting done could accelerate to some degree what you all I do appreciate the center model I think that educationally is a really great model because it does afford a lot of students that don't want necessarily that comprehensive high school education every day of the week it gives them an option and boy when i go over to center one and look at what

[01:21:04] is happening over there it is extraordinary so the center two on at the landslide campus that will be opening will be a great option as well um i just would like to add to remind folks that we need somehow or another in this we are not members of we don't have any members of the general Assembly here. But getting that one cent tax increase referendum bill that we all fought for

[01:21:39] so hard last year, which would have provided, I believe, $24 million for our CIP would be a game changer. And of course, the governor vetoed it last year and couldn't get, I think, three or members of the General Assembly would not support it at the after the veto so we never managed to get that bill through but going back and looking at that bill is really going to be critical because I'm sure that bill is going to

[01:22:16] come back up again and certainly as we have a new governor in the next couple of years I am very hopeful that we can get support in the General Assembly that would be you know by referendum in this community but we've had good luck in this community passing referendums for school construction and school costs I guess that's more comment but I don't want to lose track of that bill and I know you all have a legislative aid that I probably is working on it we have always supported it as well and again probably more comment the diesel bus

[01:22:53] piece I've mentioned because I think when the public looks at it we all just need to remember that transit is changing and that was the only point I was making and I'm not sure enough at the law in the long run we're going to be needing to buy as many buses or the school division because transit is changing we're trying to move as Charlottesville has done in many other communities we're moving kids to more of the high school and the middle school

[01:23:28] option more ridership on the transit bus system but we've got to get our transit bus system improved and that's where the transit authority will really help us and I'm talking long term but certainly we have lots to do to get a robust transit system in this this community um and i guess oh um i've really appreciated the comment about the school buses in the 12 years just a question i remember when i was on the school board

[01:24:05] we managed to get 14 and 16 years out of our school buses because we rotated them from the rural area to the urban area and they were driving in different areas and you all are still doing We do all that, and there's also a component about mileage, and our buses are reaching mileage before aging out.

[01:24:23] We have 17 buses that have over 215,000 miles. Hi, I'm sorry. I'm Jamie Gellner, Director of Transportation, and in my old job, I would update the policies, and the policy was updated because our mechanics were so good at keeping our buses ready at 16 years but prior to that it was 12 and we're moving back to that and so I think um I also wanted to ask Maya was this proposal put forth last year as well so I think we have been requesting

[01:25:02] you know for a few years um but you know we're asking again and I'm not saying that we shouldn't be buying any diesel buses at all I'm just saying that we have to put it into the perspective of What we're looking at environmentally in the future and the changes may be coming But not to say that you don't need some replacement diesel buses right now. I get that And I guess those are my only comments and questions right. Thank you Backing on the bus bus issue I noticed in the rural areas a lot of times you have the larger buses and they have a hard time

[01:25:42] going up some gravel roads, making a U-turn, going back again, are you increasing, and I think you started using some smaller buses to pick up, you know, the small, you know, the outliers in the rural areas. Is that continuing? We do have four type A buses. I don't know that we're going to continue to buy additional smaller buses. We have really good news this year with our transportation in terms of being able to get all of our children to school, but I think we have to keep asking, you know, how many kids are packed on those buses to get them there

[01:26:18] and what kind of length of the ride times they have and the quality of that bus ride. We still need more drivers, and we still need buses to do that. So we have looked at third-party vendors. We're still looking at different kinds of buses. Thank you.

[01:26:38] A couple of follow-up questions. I understand about the movement of graduating fifth graders out of the system and then coming back from high school. Was that just for Henley or was it for all of the middle schools? Do we have any information about that?

[01:26:54] Because there seemed to be that Henley's been sort of maxed out for 15 years as far as, I mean, it may not be in some size capacity, but there's no room in the building. And the gym was great, but that's about the only thing that's been made bigger over there for all the kids.

[01:27:11] So I guess I'm just curious if that is an age level in the system event or if it's just the Henley event. That they're having great numbers of kids leaving and then coming back, which would add for confusion.

[01:27:28] We can send you the exact data around that. Okay, well, please share with everybody. Because I think that this may spur other people to ask other questions about other questions that they have. And several people did email me and say, please find out about reading success in future years that's happened in the last couple of years.

[01:27:50] And so that's not necessarily on the agenda today, but it's certainly what's of great interest in the public. And so we would like to be able to share that information as well. And I know that everybody has different views about slide 58, but I will ask you to remember that there are decades of undone local government projects where for decades, the only things that got done were public safety and schools.

[01:28:14] And so four years ago was when things began to turn around and more local government projects began to be put in for the county as a whole. Every time there was a recession or drop in revenue or whatever, there were a whole lot of things that just didn't happen because the priorities were where they needed to be.

[01:28:41] But that is why this has a different perspective. And I will say what I have heard about the 1% sale tax is that Prince Edward's delegation is already carrying it forward, so we all need to get organized to pile on to that. Prince Edward County.

[01:28:57] Good. Thank you. Another comment on capacity since that's come up several times. In slide 15, there's a 10-year conflict and 10-year development pipeline information. And I just feel like this slide, I know the next slide talks about project timelines, but this slide showing 151% in the Mountain View upper elementary school is already underway.

[01:29:25] And at this point, pretty much in the bag. So I feel like we need to make sure that our projections match what we've approved so that we're looking at what's not in the pipeline. and where we're failing, and I just feel like this doesn't tell me that, because I already know some of these numbers hopefully will be fixed with what's in the pipeline, but not all of them, and that's where I'm missing some information.

[01:29:53] I just wanted to clarify regarding class sizes, because you mentioned increasing half a student for a full student, and I'm a former principal, I did that a lot, and 22 is around the sweet spot.

[01:30:10] I know some classes may need to be a little bit lower, but certainly you have classes in some areas, other schools, not in ours, that have gone up to 30, which is way too many, especially when you have English language learners.

[01:30:27] But there can be a nice balance there, and that does help. If you get too few students, you don't have the diversity, you don't have the mix of students. They're always the same group over and over going together, and it's good to have a good mix in your classroom.

[01:30:46] So I'm not advocating large class size whatsoever, but I do feel that even with English language learners, students of other cultures, you can go too low. That is a way also of looking at things, and it could vary from school to school and within that school.

[01:31:06] If there are no other questions, comments? The school, Mr. Pace's comments about what size the school should be.

[01:31:23] I remember that, and Kate, I remember that discussion. Was it a policy that we set or was it just a discussion? It was just a discussion. Like a guiding principles. This would have been 2012, 13, 14 kind of time frame.

[01:31:44] When we discussed, well, what size an elementary school should, what size should a middle school be and what size should a high school be and the seven of us gave our comments on it all, but I just couldn't remember if that was a guiding policy or not. I remember some real work we had about small schools.

[01:32:02] Well, it definitely was born out of that. Exactly, because what we found was that some of our schools were so small that they were actually serving as a, they were not good for the students because everybody thinks the smaller the school, the better.

[01:32:19] But what the study showed was that some of the smallest schools where we had like 150, 175, 180 children that there was more bullying because the children, as we said, didn't have a way to get into another group of kids. So there is some data and there were some discussions and studies to show that a school could be too small.

[01:32:43] That was a whole school size. And it was basically, we were looking at elementary schools. And it was generated because we had a school that we couldn't keep teachers in, we couldn't keep principals. And there was a lot of unfortunate, some bullying incidents that's going on in the, and so we were trying to study the size of our elementary schools.

[01:33:03] Yeah. Has that happened? Has the school board had that conversation since 16 to, I mean, we have had a more recent conversation about whether we, especially when Brownsville was almost 900 students, whether, whether we should have a ceiling on the size of our elementary schools.

[01:33:21] We didn't have at the same time we were talking about the center model and trying to have a series of centers that would reduce the size I don't think any we did not have an appetite for a lot bigger out Albemarle high school But we did it I mean I think our target is around 600 for an elementary school has been What was it back then 300 350?

[01:33:53] people it was half that when we had that conversation so I mean we now Baker Butler which noted we do have a plan for the northern theater pattern school but my concern is is with respect to capital and school sizes is not to build too small because I know Diantha was on the school board before I was and I know know that because of finances cut back the size of career elementary and within four years we were talking redistricting and likewise even with the Woodbrook

[01:34:33] elementary school which added 16 classrooms and we that was the subject matter primary subject matter of the referendum you know we're already talking overcrowding there I mean that this is explosive growth in some of our schools and that we thought we were building robustly for a 10-year window and it's only been you know half that so that's why we you know increase the size of the northern feeder pattern which north point school is 600 I mean don't

[01:35:06] the costs are so enormous that building it too small is irresponsible I would agree with that and I think many of us nodded our head yeah when we took that to 600 matter of fact we had discussions and I know the Planning Commission has had discussions about looking at the center model and suggesting that you know when you're looking at building a new center like the one at Alamara High School or that Lamsland campus that you just go on and put another level on it that is empty like they do over at the university right when they're building

[01:35:45] so that you can build it because it's so much cheaper to buy the recommendation was for for that extra 100 students or 200 students. And we cut it back. But I mean, the growth, I mean, I think someone pointed out we're not back up to pre-pandemic numbers, but we're pretty darn close.

[01:36:07] We're like 13,887 or something like that. And I see no reason that we're not going to continue to grow. I mean, every time I go down the road, I see another development. And I cringe because of, not because I'm not pleased that our community is growing, but just I know the impact on our schools.

[01:36:28] What is our, Mr. Richardson, what is our projection for, is it $150,000 at 2050? I may have my numbers wrong. Are you asking about the population? Total population in the county. Yeah, not the school district.

[01:36:47] I'm looking, go ahead. We're around 115, and the report had said 31,000 people, so that's how much of that. Yeah. That's about 150. The reality is that we're an aging community as well. We're getting children, and we're getting students.

[01:37:02] That's true. But the majority, a lot of the people that are moving in are over 15. I mean, that's why we have so many health care systems. We have a ponderance of older people, yes.

[01:37:23] but also facilities to accommodate all the people. If there's nothing further on this part of the presentation, I'll turn it back to Mr. Bowman. I would recommend to the chairs that there's no trouble taking a short break at this time, and then we'll revisit and talk about the overall financial side of the CIP.

[01:37:42] Fifteen minutes. I'm going to stand up.

[01:37:51] I'm recording in progress.

[01:53:53] All right. Welcome back. And I'll turn things back on to Mr. Bob, to the next step. Thank you, Chair Andrews. For the rest of staff presentation, I would like to provide an overview of where we are in the current adopted budget in CIP, both on the revenue and expenditure side, and look at how those are put together and how the financial side of that works.

[01:54:21] This is not the start or the end of the discussion. There are some next steps today that will continue on the staff side and future things reports consider the much process so I'll walk through some options there and then of course leave as much time as we can support the schedule so as we start with the CIP I'm going to talk about the CIP that was adopted this May which is that five-year plan and becomes the basis of we will begin to review and update as part of the county executive's recommended CIP released in February these are the revenues that make up the adopted CIP and I want to walk through in a little more detail the cash equity in green which makes up 28% of the CIP

[01:55:00] revenues then the plan borrow seats are proceeds in red that make up the majority of the CIP revenue what I'm not going to talk about today is all those revenues in black text on the right because those revenues are specifically tied to projects so for example the state funding we get for school buses can't be repurposed to another project if there is a joint part project with the city of Charlottesville around parks that funding can be shifted to each other project is. Most of those revenues are directly tied and not discretionary in the way that cash and borrow proceeds would be. So to take a closer look at these two revenues,

[01:55:36] first on cash equity, and what I have on these slides are the sources of where that money comes from on the left and how it gets applied on the right. The cash equity that comes into the CIP is primarily from what we call a shared revenue formula that we use to share funding among school operations, county government operations, and the CIP in debt. I'm not going to go through that in detail because we published the full formula in the budget book but in essence we do a few step calculation and of the change in revenues 54% goes to school operations 36% goes to county government operations and 10% goes to jointly to

[01:56:12] support the capital program and related debt service so that is where the majority of that cash equity comes from but if it's available this has been the case both boards have directed one-time funding in cash whether it be from You're in fund balances other one-time savings and when that revenue is funneled into the CIP that helps move projects forward as well but the by-and-large and the most Largest portion and the most significant because it's ongoing revenue is that first bullet point how that cash is used Is on the right side the very first thing that happens before any capital projects can be considered is the payment of the debt service You can think of this as the county's mortgage

[01:56:50] It is our principal or interest related to all prior bond issuances a bond issuances are primarily done for 20 years there are some exceptions but 20 years is a very good rule of thumb and there will be times where when conditions are favorable staff would recommend refinancing that debt but by and large that happens not as periodically as the regular issues is that take place over time so after debt service is paid with that cash equity the remaining amount goes to any projects that are eligible for borrowing that is 5% of the cost so for example if you had a project that was about 60 million we would look to pay for that assuming no other revenue

[01:57:27] resources about 3 million or 5% of that would be paid with cash 57 million that of 97 or 95% we'd be paid for with borrowed proceeds there are some projects that are not eligible for borrowing based on the type of expense they are based on the life cycle being relatively short we're just doesn't make financial sense to and so in that case we need to make sure we have the cash every year after we pay our debt service to fund those things next is again the majority of CIP revenues come from planned borrowed proceeds and these are from bond issuances that the county does on a regular basis most recently there were

[01:58:06] issuances that were completed in 2021 and 2023 there was a refinancing done in between in 2022 because the length of the bonds and the rates compared to what they were then to what they were originally issued those were favorable conditions and that creates more capacity as well but we currently plan in the future every year just as a normal course of our financial management to issue those every other year as we execute implement on the capital projects and as i mentioned before those are funding 95 of the costs that are eligible for borrowing which are most projects in the capital program so borrow proceeds are very important because that's the

[01:58:42] money that comes into the county and it directly relates that debt service kind of that mortgage payment that goes out so we're going to take a little time to talk a little bit more about what debt service and debt capacity looks like the county has a triple triple a bond rate this This was the first two of those ratings by the three major credit rating agencies were issued in 2003.

[01:59:06] The third came along in 2013. This is a relatively rare thing in the United States where there's only 55 counties across the entire country of 3,000-plus counties as of last month had this. In the state of Virginia, we're in fairly good company because of the 90 or so counties in Virginia, 13 of them actually have triple AAA bond ratings.

[01:59:30] This is a rating that once it's attained, it's more than just a certificate. It has to be maintained with the fiscal discipline and the planning that takes place every year. And every time the county goes out for bond issuance, we go through a process with the rating agencies to have this rating reaffirmed. We'll look at all our financials and look at all sorts of key metrics.

[01:59:49] Now, a question that we often get, what are the benefits of that county bond rating? And this is one where I know sometimes when I talk about municipal bonds to people, I can lose them quickly. So I'll put this in the terms of how this means to an individual. So if you think about that, a triple AAA bond rating is essentially like having a perfect credit rating.

[02:00:09] So when you have a perfect credit rating, there's a lot of dentists in that. One, that means you have a lot of future flexibility. So in your personal budget, your mortgage is a low portion of your expenses. That gives you a lot of flexibility to do everything else. If your housing costs are a much higher portion of your budget, and you've got to pay your mortgage or rent first every month, that does not give you the flexibility that you need to address another budget.

[02:00:30] so communities who have higher debt service as a percentage of their budget don't have as much flexibility even in the upcoming years to address whatever that may be in their strategic plan so that future flexibility for the board is the primary advantage the second is it does save money in the long term you with the county as a triple triple a bond rating we can always get the best rates relative to the market again to use a personal example imagine you had a home project and you had nine contractors show up to your door to work on that chances are you'll get get a really good deal from nine people bidding on that. That's exactly what happened in 2023 when the county issued its tax-exempt bonds. There were nine people right at the start, or nine

[02:01:10] companies, to purchase those bonds, allowing for the best rate possible. The other advantage, too, is that, you know, while some localities struggle, there may be a question about can they access to the market? Will there be an appetite for those bonds? That is not the case for AAA bond-rated communities where they are able to access the market, whether they be as planned or for some catastrophic, unforeseen reasons, if they had to do something in an emergency, they would be able to borrow there, too, if they needed to.

[02:01:38] Just as someone, again, with a perfect credit rating, you have that flexibility, you have the competition for your services, all of that leads to lower cost for the debt service and future flexibility for the board as they consider how to plan their budget annually. So, a debt capacity is primarily measured in two ways, and these are set by the board's financial management policies, these are charts that are very common as we look in the budget process. The chart on the left is looking at the annual debt service payment. How does that compare to the ongoing operating revenues for county government and schools? We can see there on the

[02:02:13] left there is a line in red that is the policy maximum that is informed by best practices and our financial advisors of what would sort of be a ceiling to maintain our AAA rating. And as we can see in that chart there is headroom. We are not in the red line. It is actually what's also notable, it's not as obvious here, but right now in fiscal year 25, that headroom is roughly five and a half percent, but that moves up to just over 7% in fiscal year 29. That increase is right now, we're at a time where the five largest capital projects in any history are taking place between the course project, the purchase of the Rivanna Futures land, and

[02:02:51] then the three schools that we've discussed. As those bonds are issued, that is going to drive the county's debt service cost up and take more of the transfer to capital to go to those debt expenses. So within headroom, that is why that is changing. On the right, we have what is the total outstanding debt, not just one year, that total outstanding debt, and how does that compare to the county's tax base? This is one where we have a little bit more headroom, and historically we do, but we can see that inches up a little bit over time as well. But both of these metrics are very important. So there is capacity that is not used. So from a just a pure debt

[02:03:26] capacity perspective could more be done the answer is yes what the catch to that though is there's the affordability and the cash related to that debt I'm going to walk through an example later how that plays out but the reason that more projects when I added to the CIP was not about that debt capacity it speaks to the related cash and affordability again discuss more detail in just a moment so before I walk through kind of next steps of what could be possible I'm going to turn my attention next to the expenditure side of the CIP this is again what was adopted in May by the board, $330 million.

[02:03:58] We can see that the majority of that, as historically has been the case, goes to public schools. And then we see the functional areas that are on the right for county government. The largest project or functional area is community development. That is the county's transportation leveraging program, where the county will put dollars in and draw down up to $10 million per project for certain projects from the state, help leverage that for transportation needs.

[02:04:23] Something else that is really guided by the board's financial management policies is the emphasis as miss kumazawa noted on ongoing programs the board's financial policies speak to the importance of take care of current assets for the before anything else to avoid more long-term costly repairs unexpected things that would happen so what we have on this chart first on the left is a list of what are all the projects and programs that make up that on that ongoing programs and then on the right we can see an adopted CIP 43% of that funding goes to really a lot of we call maintenance replacement other

[02:04:58] obligation projects that are out there. It was you know indicated on the Skumazawa slide the school facilities maintenance replacement is by far the largest portion of those which again makes sense because we have more school facilities than we do county facilities and that. Something to keep in our mind though is that as we have expanded and build new facilities whether they be for schools or county government that continues to put that pressure on the ongoing programs and not just facilities such things as fire rescue apparatus. A lot of our small vehicles are not in the CIP, but the bigger engines, bigger ambulances, those are things as our system has changed you get included here as well. Also school buses being part of the ongoing programs

[02:05:37] as well. So as Ms. Kumazawa, we had a lot of discussion about school buses, walked through the challenge of the bubble we're in in a few years. That's reflected in the school's priorities and that would be reflected in the county's philosophy addressing that first before adding in new standalone projects. So to take a look next about the non-ongoing programs, what are the standalone programs that make up that 57%. What I'm first going to do is focus on what is approved right now. The board has appropriated funding and these are all moving forward. First on public schools and I want to clarify this is what is adopted in 25 and also what was approved in a

[02:06:14] prior year and it's still moving forward. These projects take more than one year to implement typically in the capital budget. So there's 93 million currently appropriated in these standalone projects beyond the going programs that are currently underway. I'm not going to spend much time on these projects because they were discussed in detail but I do want to acknowledge those as one of the goals in the strategic plan. Next is county government and this is going to be more projects but they are on average smaller because of the nature of them. What we have on the left side is the six goals in the board strategic plan and these are color-coded to correspond to those. For example, quality of life has objective statements around parks and recreation.

[02:06:52] We can see currently appropriated we have improvements at Biscuit Run, Darden athletic fields an urban pocket park and a trailhead for some ADA improvements there moving up to the top line we have the infrastructure projects with transportation leveraging a design of a northern convenience center last year there was a southern convenience center that opened on the southern end of the county this contemplates one on the northern end of the county also included here the revana futures because that property purchase has been made because five fifty million dollars does have substantial debt service payment I did want to call that out as a specific thing that does have a higher debt

[02:07:27] service that are other smaller projects that are out there we have some community nonprofit projects that the board has approved and then on the very bottom line the four systems modernization i spoke about our financial management replacement system that is part of the cip as well in county government we have some funding for workforce facility renovations as part of that strategic plan then in the bottom right relative to safety well-being the largest project ongoing right now and the majority of that 95 million is the courts construction project which is as you all can see if you drive downtown very much underway as well as some smaller improvements that were taking place

[02:08:03] at uh station 11 which is monticello south of town so these are already appropriated moving forward the board doesn't need to provide any other direction or action on these in the budget they are just continuing forward but what is next on the slide are those projects both for county government and schools that are as part of the fiscal year 26 to 29 cip so typically what happens in recent years in our cip um barring great recessions barring pandemics barring those things projects tend to start in one year and move up as those projects are updated and so what we can see one of these next slides that are approved but not appropriate to be spent because they're in the future year we see there's a lot

[02:08:41] of the projects that are going to continue on the previous year because funding will be added for things like the garden down athletic fields or transportation leveraging but what I've done on this slide is highlight in yellow those things that would be brand new in those out years from 26 to 29 that were not referenced on the previous slide so for example working across the top row the northern convenience center was being designed the construction of that would be contemplated in fiscal year 27 central library renovations is a project that appeared in the CIP last time this is the downtown central library that is jointly owned 50/50 with the city of Charlottesville and

[02:09:17] actually has majority of use of county residents that is an aging facility that would both you know do some renovations and upgrades that it would be designed in fiscal year 27 with construction to begin in fiscal year 29. We have continuing parks programming in green. We've discussed the northern feeder pattern with design and construction in fiscal year 27 and 28. And then we have continuing work in core systems modernization and facilities for county government and also acknowledging school renovations are included not at the requested level but there's an announcement that is included in fiscal year 26 to 29. So next we always have

[02:09:55] to keep our mind of what are some of those things that are beyond the CIP that we're beginning to work through the staff right now we heard from the public schools about their request and some of those projects I want to share some of the things are on the mind of county government right now as we begin to develop the CIP and these are items that we'll have you know more recommendations about but these are some of the things we are waiting as we gain new information every day now to the recommended budget being released in late February starting from the top the course construction project that is not fully under contract yet so that is one We are watching just as material costs and everything changing to see if we have any variability we need to plan for.

[02:10:33] Next up is our fire rescue apparatus replacement as our fire rescue system has grown and evolved, particularly in the last 20 years. When really the first station in Monticello was constructed, we are seeing some of those apparatus coming due for replacement that have the longer life cycle.

[02:10:51] The third item is one that has been and developed for a couple of years. And we have an updated request we've received from the emergency communication center. This is the 911 call center located off of Ivy Road It is a regional facility operated by the city of the county and UVA who partner in that program And this is not a new facility but work that would take place at the current site to address both an aging facility and also the amount of capacity the volume of public safety calls particularly during the daytime as we have many people come to our community has really Increased quite a bit and they have added staff to respond to that also as we've added public safety staff in the field

[02:11:29] And so this is really the response to some of the central library of an aging facility Time has grown the county has a larger share. That's about a 20 million dollar project But that is a for the county share, but that remains very much under review But that is what I'm going to spend a little more time talking through because it will come back in the budget process And though it was requested last year, the ECC was not included in the CIP.

[02:11:53] The ECC has continued their work to refine that project to sharpen their pencils and also to clarify scope. The board has a community nonprofit project. Traditionally, we would receive requests for affordable housing projects. We'll receive different parks groups for more capital investments that may be out there.

[02:12:12] And that will be before us again to consider in the budget. Transportation, transportation really refers to the revenue. sharing program. There are multi-year cycles with the state. We have to plan very far out and we're working with our community development staff to make sure we're positioning the county to draw down funding when it's needed on that timeline. The Rivanda Futures debt service appears again because of the strategy in Rivanda Futures where that property was purchased to look at how that would be developed and be kind of a hub for economic development and defense industry and academics and all of our key community partners. So how that evolves over time is something we'll

[02:12:50] need to consider in the out years now that the county has ownership and control of that property. Finally, in technology systems related to the workforce of customer service, this really refers to end-of-life systems that we have our eye on once we complete our major technology system replacements from HR, our community development, and the financial management system. There will be some other ones out there, and we've done a lot of work with our IT department to make sure that we are planning for those. Again, assuming they are appropriate with the capital budget that's a review that we do with public school to make sure we're budgeting in the right place but planning for those replacements as well so this is not a

[02:13:25] recommendation but these are some of the things the staff is evaluating right now as we begin to update and prepare a recommended cip from fiscal year 26 to 30. so this slide is one that was shared with the board supervisor of river 20th the county executive spoke to this is again taking a a look at our strategic plan and a few key takeaways that we talked about one three observations one I'm just now realizing the colors on this chart don't correspond to the other so please don't try and match up colors on that but the first is one of the board's strategic plans and I know this is an important

[02:14:05] priority to the school board as well is that workforce and customer service by having staff who were well trained who are recruited and retained we are able to advance all of the strategic priorities in a way that we can't can't do if we are not successful in that goal. We've also put the second observation is those red circles we put around the goals of safety and well-being education learning and workforce customer service those are the majority of where the county's funding goes and those are the ones where it really takes funding to move those forward cannot quite simply re-engineer some of our processes in a way that we can around there. Of all three of those we know that we are been

[02:14:43] for years planning to replace our systems and those are coming live. The last two systems going live in fiscal year 25 excuse me calendar year 25 the education and learning we know the work the school boards have talked about about getting those center two and southern elementary and now those will soon be under construction we know the safety and well-being we've had the courts project that's gone on for quite some time that is now coming to fruition we know we have grant funding for to respond to the changing dynamic in our community of volunteer fire rescue service and you know continuing to keep up those service dimensions

[02:15:18] So that's one, as we talked with our board, of all of those examples, all of the goals are important. But thinking of why are we our cost drivers in the next budget, those three circles are the ones that really caught our attention. So that's an overview of the CIP.

[02:15:34] My last few slides are going to be really about where do we go from here. So right now, staff is working through kind of a five-step plan to update the adopted CIP. First, taking that starting point where we want to make sure that we are honoring the board's past endorsement of projects included in the CIP.

[02:15:50] Then continuing to update our staffing financial assumptions. so we'll do a revenue update of what the next five years look like we'll look at our interest assumptions we'll look at all of the just kind of day-to-day things that we do to make sure we're working with the latest and best information which will continue beyond this meeting but number three we're here uh the joint board meeting on december 4th this conversation will continue with the board on february 26th when the county executive recommends a cip and then the board will have a series of work sessions public meetings and other activities as we work through the recommended budget process. But a fair question that may be on the board's mind would be, well, to the extent

[02:16:26] possible, how will additional projects be included in the CIP? What are those factors that staff would weigh? So the first thing, assuming available revenue is there, is that we would look to the strategic plan and how do we guide that. The board has six strategic goals, making up 23 objectives, and we need to make sure as staff are aligned to make sure we're making meaningful progress on all of those to the extent we can. So this brings us back to this chart on our debt capacity. I'm going walk through a little bit math and kind of the art of what could be possible right now.

[02:16:57] So this is the chart that where we have the tightest headroom of our debt service and our annual payment as a percentage of our annual operating revenues. So I will say this is an exercise where I would encourage the boards not to feel a need to memorize any numbers because they will change in February. But this is really where we are right now based on the adopted CIP and what some of the thought process that goes into that. So I mentioned before fiscal year 29 that yellow line shows where the headroom is the tightest. You know the county's debt capacity is about or the

[02:17:31] debt ratio is about 7.1 percent. So the county does have capacity to borrow more based on its financial policies. If the county were to go to eight percent of its headroom in that year the county would have the ability to initial 60 million dollars in bonds for projects. Another what if if the county wanted to go to 9% that could issue another $122 million of bond projects.

[02:17:55] That $122 million includes the $60 million. It's not in addition to. I did not put a line up to 10% because the board of supervisors have been very clear we should not plan to go to our maximum and I see the heads nodding around the table as well. If anyone at home wants to do the quick math you can figure it's about another $60 million but I have not modeled that because the board isn't very clear. The reason for that why that is is you wouldn't want to be in a position where you're you're planned at your maximum, there would be a dramatic slowdown or change in the economy, and you could inadvertently find yourselves upside down and above your policies.

[02:18:28] You also wouldn't want to be above your maximum because you then have eliminated your flexibility to do something different in the future, as the world has changed a lot in the last five years, it will probably change a lot in the next five years. There will be opportunities that may come up, and having that flexibility is what can position the board to take advantage of those opportunities.

[02:18:46] So if that capacity exists, but in projects, what else needs to be considered? But it really comes down to the cash that is needed to execute on those. So just a series of questions. Some of these have answers. Some of these will depend on the projects. So hypothetically, we pretend that $6 million, if we're moving to the 8% level in fiscal year 29, does that county have the capacity?

[02:19:07] Yes, we do. Most importantly, does the county have the related cash funding that would be needed to? And there's two types of cash that we need. First, we need the 5% of the project to be funded by cash, and we did 95% of that will be borrowed for.

[02:19:23] That would be about $3 million up front. That $3 million is a much easier ask than what is actually the much more costly impact. After the bonds are issued, we pay in that debt service the following year for the next 20 years. So for every year, for the next 20 years, if that $6 million was utilized, if the county used lease revenue bonds, which is our traditional approach, there would be a $5 million annual expense the county would have as part of its budget.

[02:19:50] If instead, if the award they've done before, if they were to choose a general obligation route, The advantage of that is it's backed by the voters and we're able to get a better interest rate of about 0.25%. That annual debt service payment is slightly less. So there is no funding source that would allow for that in the 25 budget.

[02:20:08] But in fiscal year 26, that would be something that would need to be considered. $5 million is a significant sum of funding. Currently, the value of one pending on the real estate tax rate is about $3 million. So if the board were to take action, this is, again, hypothetical, They would need to have that 1.7 cents if it were to be just that action fully dedicated to capital, not split among the normal funding formula.

[02:20:31] That's just a hypothetical for perspective, not a recommendation, but just kind of get a sense of what options could be and kind of the art of what is possible. So that's the financial aspect, but there's other impacts that need to be considered outside of the CIP. Again, what does that impact to future flexibility? Once that headroom goes up, it doesn't come down until debt is being retired, which is happening on a regular basis.

[02:20:52] perhaps that can be refinanced we'll look at those options but that really does eliminate future flexibility until that does take place the second consideration depending on what is being approved for in the capital budget is the ongoing operating cost whether that be in the general fund or the school fund and then finally the ability to execute that will just depend on the project and that sometimes can be more of a question of timing is it a land acquisition because land acquisition is a design some of that may influence what year that goes in so these are um you know just kind of a hypothetical example of what could be possible should that cash be present and

[02:21:29] everything else and i'll mention that at this point we're really talking about the capital budget i know both wards they will have pressures in the operating budget whether that be stable size in workforce other investments that may move forward you know public safety responding to evolving populations whether that be the school population as the school board members alluded to or our county government what does that look like so uh what i do want to end with this will be my last slide of just examples of possible strategies. These are not items we need more discussion on today. This is again just to talk about what are some of those big levers out there that can change the trajectory of the CIP. Of course when the

[02:22:06] board considers the budget process they won't be looking at just the CIP they'll be looking at the operating budget and all of the needs they will need to weigh as their work to balance the budget. So these options starting at the top first is just understanding the impact of our calendar year rear assessments. Rear property is reassessed on January 1st every year, so we need to always work in our fiscal year of what is the assessment we know and what do we think will happen in the next reassessment.

[02:22:33] So should we have a strong reassessment, and we'll know that in mid-January when our county assessors are before the board of supervisors. If there were to be a strong reassessment and the county board did not change the tax rate, that would generate additional revenue, something the board of supervisors understands very well as part of their deliberations every here in terms of where does that impact. In addition, the board can consider as they can every year tax rate changes. The board in recent years has sought to diversify revenues with increases to food and beverage taxes, transit occupancy taxes, cigarette tax, personal property tax was adjusted last year. Of course, the real estate tax would be an option as well. But those

[02:23:12] are always tools that are available to the board of supervisors. Third is a tool that's available to both boards if there's the option to invest any one-time funding that's available. So at the of the fiscal year under financial management policies, there's a certain amount of funding we want to ensure we have to maintain our reserves. Beyond that, that one-time funding is really discretionary as long as it's used for a one-time expense. So one of the ways coming out of the pandemic is both the board of supervisors and the school board have taken funding from year end or one-time savings, put that into the CIP and that has helped advance projects along. Fourth,

[02:23:49] and this one is a little less straightforward than the others, and this would be a very hard decision, just a hypothetical, if either board desired to reprioritize revenue that funded the operating budgets, whether that be ongoing or one time. So I'll walk through an example of what this could look like. So now you start with the school board as an example, but the Board of Supervisors should have the same approach. Hypothetically, next year, if the school board's formula for operations, if that were increased $10 million, normally that would go to $10 million to support all of the operating needs that are available to public schools if the public schools had a priority to say actually some of the needs and capital are even more compelling than operating they could say

[02:24:28] some of that ten million let's have nine from nine million for operations and that one million could be applied to the CIP to make that request to the board supervisors that one million and one coin of cash every year it can go a lot farther because now it could be borrowed for and there could be 12 million of renovations whatever projects would be the county could do the same operation to take the some of that you know some of these operations and apply that instead to capital it's all coming from the same source tax revenues primarily fund our public schools county government operations or debt service all of that so this would be very different it would be very hard because though I'm

[02:25:05] not an expert on the school budget I know you all have a lot of pressing needs and operations just as the board supervisors do but when it comes into more constrained budgets and revenue growth prioritization is necessary and And that is one tool in the toolbox, if the board were desired, the school board that could be explored.

[02:25:23] Final option, and this is what the Supervisor McKeel alluded to earlier, was this longer-term strategy, will be available by February 26th when the recommend budget is released, of the state authority to enact a referendum for a 1% option local sales tax that would be dedicated to school construction.

[02:25:42] Supervisor McKeel mentioned that was passed both houses of the General Assembly, It was vetoed by the governor, and by two votes fell short of an override in the veto. But one thing I want to emphasize is when that bill was originally introduced, it was written to cash fund projects.

[02:25:59] As that bill worked through the General Assembly, that funding also became eligible for debt service. So about the $24 to $25 million we have in sales tax, if a portion of that is funded debt, that can go even farther than just the $24 million. I say that $24 million would be such a game changer in our county financials.

[02:26:15] I've been doing budget for more than a few years, and that would be the largest change has taken place and in our budget is the time we've been doing that so these are not to say the only things that could be considered but these will be the largest tools in the toolbox that would be available and so really this kind of wraps up the staff portion of the presentation really to follow what the schools had and really understanding where are we now at a high level what has been approved what is planned what are some of those county government issues on the horizon and then how does what is funded fit into the context of our triple AAA bond rating and related to financial policies, and where did we go from here.

[02:26:50] So I'm available for questions, but this is really the remainder of the work session, time for the board to continue any questions or discussion and thoughts they may have as we continue to move forward. Thank you.

[02:27:09] We'll start with Supervisor Malek. Thank you. No questions. Thank you, Andy. But there's two things to think about when I'm rolling around in my brain without any ability to solve it is we don't know what's going to happen in the new year the national level so that that whenever there's uncertainty it just makes me be super super curious about everything and i hope that the county will as well we don't know whether our federal partnerships that we've enjoyed for the last many years are going to continue i think that you were referring to this other item called ability to execute what i had written down in all caps was the other

[02:27:45] capacity issue is the limitation of the amount of project number of projects that our staff can successfully bring to completion because the last thing we want to do is to get overextended and then have errors and corrections and other disasters that end up costing a whole lot more in the long run. But that's all I have right now. Thank you. Supervisor McKeel? I just have a couple of questions, but I do want to say that I'm really interested in hearing what the school board

[02:28:14] questions might be so I really would like to just Jeff I'm looking at you and I don't want to really put you on the spot but I'm going to anyway I think it would really be great if we could take just a couple of minutes for you to Review the school board what Rob yet bad of futures is all about because I'm not sure

[02:28:53] When I was on the school board, I wasn't following issues like that at the Board of Supervisors level And I just think for them to have maybe and maybe you all are perfectly clear on what right that futures is all about But I think give me Jeff an opportunity to just go over it might be helpful Supervisor McKeel, thank you and This is not something that we rehearsed.

[02:29:21] Oh, I'll put him on the spot. No, no, but that's okay. There's been a flurry of activity this week with Mr. Henry and Ms. Kilroy, our economic development director, with our property and our work that we're doing.

[02:29:38] It is a 460-acre acquisition. It occurred about a year ago. It is property that totally surrounds the 75-acre footprint, which is known today as Ravana Station. Ravana Station houses 3,000 employees that have been there since 2002, three defense agencies.

[02:30:02] These are civilian intelligence agencies that report up through Washington through the Department of Defense, along with 300 military personnel with the U.S. Army that operate currently at this location.

[02:30:19] Ms. Malik, who's in her 17th year with the board, has been working earnestly, I would say, since the mid-2000, 2004, 5, 6 timeframe, including entertaining a visit from then-Governor Warner, who came over to Charlottesville with concerns that through BRAC, that's base realignment and closure, that we could lose some or all of that footprint going forward with that economic engine.

[02:30:47] I would back up and I would say to the school board that there has been a study done through Weldon Cooper Center that suggests that the defense industry in this region is about $1.2 billion per year.

[02:31:04] $600 million of that originates out of Ravana Station. It's second only to the University of Virginia, and as you might guess, that far out distances our DOD economic footprint. However, the defense industry is super important to this region and even more important to our state.

[02:31:25] Our military and Department of Defense presence in Virginia is first out of 50 states. So the acquisition was a defensive move, defensive in the sense that we needed to position ourselves to make sure that Washington, D.C. knew that this community supported Ravana Station's work.

[02:31:45] And there's no better way to do that than to be in control of the property that is just around that footprint to ensure in the future that the federal government knows that this community is going to support growth. But it's a defensive move first and then a long-term offensive move being able to align with the federal government, the state government, private industries that are Department of Defense, support-level private sector, and academic institutions.

[02:32:19] And so it is an amazing project. We've now closed on the property about a year ago. There's a significant amount of staff work. And then I close by saying that last night we were at the Boar's Head and we were participating in a conference with 350 individuals from the Department of Defense Industry.

[02:32:43] Ravana Station was highlighted. The work out there was highlighted. And both Senators Warner and Kane spoke to the importance of this investment as we go forward. So I think it's only a matter of time until we see additional investment out there that will be good investment for our local economy.

[02:33:06] And I would tell the school board also that is really off the back of a napkin. And if you would like more information on that, our staff can provide that to you because this is just important to not just Albemarle County, but it's important to our region.

[02:33:22] important to the Commonwealth because it's really one of the only sites in Virginia that is poised to grow so these are good jobs for our community and those folks out there they are really good good citizens in our community well-paying jobs and it's important for our community and I just think it's good for the school board while we're talking about revenues and economic this is an economic development driver for our community to try and make sure that we have revenues going forward in the out years that support the work that we're

[02:33:59] trying to do and to protect those jobs in our community and the only and the other one of the other questions I made a note of we talk about our mention in here the 9-1-1 Center and I know at one point I think Andy mentioned that we talking about buying a separate piece of property now we're talking about just enlarging the center because of the need Jeff again I'm throwing it all to you today but talk a little bit for us about the 9-1-1 center and how folks coming

[02:34:36] into our community not just the residents impact the 9-1-1 center because I think that's a really good discussion it's it's it's as good of a it's as good of been an example of a local government and agency partnership, really, as I know, where we house the city of Charlottesville 911 system, Albemarle County 911 system, and the University of Virginia, which I know you folks know they have a separate public safety police department.

[02:35:08] All of that is under one roof, as opposed to paying for the infrastructure, really expensive infrastructure associated with the critical need of being able to produce that every day our 9-1-1 director was before our board earlier this year and he projected that he sees daytime growth daytime call volume growth as much as 40 to 50 percent during the day and that's the that's the regional nature of our community where intuitively all of you have stories but we know that we grow by population during the day. Nighttime population is your permanent population that

[02:35:47] pays the majority of your taxes, but your daytime population growth does put a stress on critical infrastructure in the community, and people drive into this county for a variety of reasons, and our 9-1-1 system is one of very many barometers that we can get a feel for what is that growth in daytime population, but it does put some stress on our infrastructure, and I believe that's what you were looking for yes because I think that's an interesting just an interesting note when we're talking about what we're having to provide that really we don't have as much control over all the folks

[02:36:25] that are coming into our community and that includes tourists well we're destination community and there's so many good things that about that where you you have more people coming in than leaving on a day-to-day basis and it's if the university has an amazing effect on that being a A town really of 30,000 with 18,000 at the university and 12,000 at the hospital.

[02:36:49] So it's a 30,000 employment center. But it's more than that. I know the hospital pulls in a lot during the day, but we have travel and tourism. We are a destination community in many ways. I just thought it was something to add to this discussion when we're talking about revenues and expenditures and what we're doing with our CIP.

[02:37:11] And the only other question that I would have is maybe, Andy, could you review one more time for me, but maybe for the folks that are at the table, but also anybody that's listening. So the tax rate, when we increase the property, the real estate tax rate, could you talk about the breakdown and how that plays out in simple terms for everybody one more time?

[02:37:36] Because we split that with the schools. And for penny, so you could help us with that a little bit. Yeah, so the value of a penny on the real estate tax rate, and if the board would permit me to use approximate math to just keep it simple, it's about $3 million.

[02:37:54] That number will change in February after the assessment, but it's about $3 million. 10% of that growth would go to pay for the capital and debt program. It would be about $300,000. Of that remaining $2.7 million, a little under $2 million would go to public school operations.

[02:38:12] A little under $1 million would go to county government operations. And the board can also raise the personal property tax rate. It's a much smaller revenue. It's about $100,000 per penny. So over there, it's about $3,000, $54,000, and $36,000.

[02:38:30] As we come back to the budget, we'll have that a very clear part of the board's decision-making process. But just for some approximate numbers, that's where we are. thank you very much it's always good to have that reminder I appreciate it and that's all I have thank you oh I'm picking up from that same element I correct me if I'm wrong I don't think I overlooked it but we recently got a kind of five-year budget outlook generally at the Board of Supervisors that predicts a budget gap that is between three and

[02:39:05] four million in the coming fiscal year and is going to be increasing steadily for the next five years, could you just give, again, I know this is in advance of any of the dollars actually being tabulated, but could you give us the quick napkin math just for both the boards as a reminder as we discuss this?

[02:39:24] We did, I'm going to, with my shoulder, ask to double check. I think the gap was around 3% in the first year. 3%, yes. Yeah, so of a general fund gap, up 3%, the risk of doing math in my head, we have a general fund of a little over $400 million.

[02:39:41] Every percent is a little over $4 million, so 3% would be around $12 million, which, again, very early, very preliminary. We're studying things, but that would be the magnitude, and certainly that would grow over time based on our projected expenditure and revenue gross absent any other different decisions by the board or changes in the economy or whatever else that may be.

[02:40:01] And that is current expenditures, current obligations, that's not incorporating the housing projects that we're, for example. that did include growth in our expenditures to date you know if there was the board were to contemplate a more significant investment and affordable housing that is currently done that would add to that deficit beyond beyond that I think the the funding for housing contemplating that plan was some board members may describe as modest if there is something to be done more

[02:40:36] substantial that would be pushing that further sure I appreciate that background This is another kind of almost embarrassingly straightforward question, but when we are talking about bumping up our borrowing, you know, bumping up to 8 percent total borrowed debt and getting that $60 million in juicy, juicy funding, and that has an ongoing debt service cost of – you approximated it as about $3 million for $460 million.

[02:41:14] Is that, regardless of how that debt is, or regardless of what those projects are being spent on, is that entirely borne out of county operating funds? To clarify, I have a slide up here. The first $3 million would just be for the initial upfront cost to complete the project.

[02:41:33] Got it. Because we typically don't borrow 100% for projects. The ongoing cost would be $5 million or slightly less if you go the general obligation route. It would be needed for that. If you could please repeat the second part of your question. So is that, we would do these projects for things for both capital and, or for both, I'm sorry, for both school and county capital projects.

[02:41:53] Yeah, that example does not specify which it is. When we look at the CIT, it's really looking at county government and public school projects together and trying to find that right blend of priorities. And so the last element of the question is, if I take out $60 million in debt, leaving aside the technicalities of the fact that I'm not straight funding $60 million in projects, $40 million of it goes to schools, $20 million of it goes to a housing moonshot fund.

[02:42:25] Am I still paying, as the county, out of operating funds rather than the school, all of the debt service, even though I'm only taking $20 million of that $60 million? I think I am. I'm just asking for clarification. Or maybe I'm making a fundamental misunderstanding about what this money is, in which case, please correct me.

[02:42:50] Yeah, so I apologize if I didn't follow. say one thing that when money goes into capital there is not a 60/40 split because of the nature of capital projects and Ms. Kumazala's data demonstrated that very well because otherwise we would never be able to build a school if county government some years had to be 40% of the funding or we would never be able to do a courts project now that weighs out and so if that's 60 million were to go to bondable projects whether that be county government or schools and whatever the percentage is that debt service would be five million that way if instead some of that funding were to be just for cash

[02:43:23] projects only then that would be a little bit different yes whose budget is paying for debt service regardless of how that is yes a debt service is a general fund operating expense yes it's ours yes the answer is it's ours yeah That is, you know, under Virginia Code, the ability for county government versus school boards to hold that debt.

[02:43:56] There's a legal reason why that is the way it is. That is what I thought. I just wasn't sure. And as I was thinking, I'm like, that doesn't feel fair. All right. I think that is all the questions I have.

[02:44:12] It's my first one of these. I'm still trying to stay quiet and learn more. Mr. Gollum. Andy, at one point you said something about 1.7 tax, dedicate. And can you just read? I must have been chasing an electronic letter.

[02:44:27] It's fine. I threw out a lot of hypothetical scenarios here. So hypothetically, if the county were to issue $60 million bonds, the ongoing debt service and operating expense of the general fund, the county would need to have $5 million to fund that. If the board were to choose to raise the real estate tax rate and dedicate that entirely for that debt service payment, that would take 1.7 pittings on the real estate tax rate.

[02:44:51] To do the $60 million. Yes, if the board were to go through the normal split of the 54, 36, and 10, that would need to be a lot more pennies to go to that. That's the simple version of the 1.7. 20 years, right?

[02:45:09] Yes, that money would need to continue over the course of the time. Your slide on the ongoing versus non-ongoing.

[02:45:30] You had a, this is, I don't recall this one. That was a 30-year-old chart that said ongoing and non-ongoing. Got a list on the left-hand side.

[02:45:50] Sorry. Number 38. Here we go. All right. Sorry, I missed the slide number. Yeah, I just don't recall it being presented this way before.

[02:46:08] So is there, based on working with our financial advising team, from a strategic standpoint, is there any sort of best practice or guideline that suggests a percentage split here would be a target or a best practice target?

[02:46:26] or does it just change so much that it's not really matter? It doesn't really matter. I have not seen one. I think some of that is going to be the approaching communities. I know there are communities in the state of Virginia who do not prioritize maintenance replacement. They have a different set of problems in how that plays out.

[02:46:42] I know that's one that I've not seen that metric, but I don't know if our CFO. Jacob Sumner, Chief Financial Officer. The split between ongoing and non-ongoing programs is not a typical split you see in the financial community but it is a different perspective on how we how we categorize projects within our current cip so it's good to see i mean the ongoing programs just the maintenance and all of that the increases year over year so every time you put the new one on it's going to put a strain

[02:47:17] on the ongoing i don't know how you get it that strategically to plan i guess you just have to keep looking at it every year we do every year that's certainly not a rubber stamp approach we go through a review. I know that our building services team goes through an exhaustive review of what is the plan to maintain their assets. And I think this is a new slide we shared.

[02:47:36] I think Corinna goes to my own that one for this year, back at this end. Really to tell the story of where does the money actually go in the CIP, where most of our discussion with the board level is for those standalone projects, because the board has prioritized the maintenance and replacement. Thank you. The 40, you don't have to go there, but the slides, 40 through 42, where you color code them to the strategic plan, Those are excellent slides.

[02:48:00] That's an excellent way to present. I've seen CIP presented many years, and I think this could be one of the most easiest to communicate out to folks looking at it, to show how it goes, especially how it connects back to our strategic plan, which I always love the thread, because then that'll get connected in the budget.

[02:48:21] So nice job on that. Thank you. So I'm just going to ask the big-- forget the policy requirements and the AAA bond rating and all of that stuff. If I were, Ms. Osborne mentioned it, and she's right to do so as a school board member, I'd probably be saying the same thing if I were still sitting there.

[02:48:41] But what would it take to do their ask? What percentage would we have to go over 10%? And what tax rate would we need? We need to prepare that scenario, but we would be above the 10% threshold. I think it's important for our community to understand, as we do in our budget for all our requests, and we show what was offered or asked for, and we get to see what the super or the county executive says was it didn't make it into the budget one but i think it would be important to know all right well if the full ask were done here's what it would take i think

[02:49:21] we're going to be having that conversation a lot with our community not just for the school divisions funding but for all of the competing things for resources this year so our community is going to need to see that well what does it take to get a 10 million dollar trust fund it filled housing trust fund. Well, 10 million we heard would take what? About three point some cents dedicated. Correct. Not split with the school division. So if the local government did their split to get 10 million dollars for housing, that would take 10 cents. So we can't, we can't,

[02:50:00] we, the school board and the supervisors, both can't talk to constituents in a way without understanding the reality, you know, okay, we're going to raise the tax rate 30 cents. We're going to, we're going to blow past our AAA bond rating by 10% and take it up to 20.

[02:50:22] So it's the same kind of point about the high school. If it's not, if it's not, it's not going to exist, we should know what it would take. We should know what it looks like. Like you corrected me on what would be about 200 million for a high school these days. So we need to know that information, but we also have to have a very specific and direct conversation with folks to go, all right, here's what it would take.

[02:50:46] Is there anybody in the room ready to do that? And if there are, great. And if, you know, constituents want to support it, then they can come out and they can do so. But as I'm learning, talking, and we haven't even got to the school board's advocacy groups, but just already with the support of supervisors, we're getting advocacy on issues within the local government side.

[02:51:11] And it's important, and I'm having conversations with those folks to say, well, okay, here's what it would take to do your ask. here's what else couldn't be done in the meantime and we can't just act like none of that's going to exist so I just I think this budget cycle coming with the information that's been provided after us really living I hate to use the say it but living large on big revenue coming from real estate values that have jumped up and now that coming down that these next two budget cycles are probably going to be pretty interesting so we need to be direct and clear with

[02:51:49] our constituents and how we discuss it. For what it's worth, that was commentary not a question so I apologize. I agree with Supervisor Galloway's commentary because that's what I was thinking also that if we at the schools give us the amount everything they want, housing trust fund, fully fund that, what's that going to look like, what we can have a direct tax rate implication. How much are we people willing to pay? I think they're

[02:52:22] willing to pay more I don't know how much more question can we do a bond can we do a referendum I mean that's something and that I would like to discuss if we have that ability then the people would decide yes they want to spend tax sales tax whatever the rate to go up in order to fund these things I think that needs to be laid out on the table because looks like we're going that way and we need and agree people need to understand what we're proposing

[02:52:59] and how much it's going to cost them so that's one thing point of clarification I think it's slide 46 we're talking about the 1.7 would pay for 60 million We said an increase in tax break with $60 million, that would be for the CIP, right?

[02:53:25] Yes, if it were dedicated directly there, yes. Okay, but that's not split with the schools, or it is? Under that scenario, that would need to be dedicated. If the funding were to be split, it would take a lot more pennies than $1.7 million, because only $300,000 for capital can generate that.

[02:53:41] So really that $60 million could be all for the county or could be all for schools? Yeah, the projects would really depend upon what would be prioritized next in the strategic plan and also the timing of those projects and all the other considerations we would work through. Okay, thank you.

[02:53:58] I'm anxious to hear from the school board. Yeah, as am I, which is why I'm going to be part of the school board, which I was hoping we would be briefed, but we would never briefed. But we have five minutes left. Dr. Berlant, do you want to start?

[02:54:16] supervisor gallery i appreciate you saying that um about what would this cost because i do think we collaboratively and collectively um need to make sure our constituents understand two things one right how these things are funded i think they're you know this is this is something that is not well understood by our community um and we need to help them better understand what the cost of a high quality education is and our education and all of the services that the Board of Supervisors in coordination with the schools provide

[02:54:56] what that really costs as we've said we have many people moving here and but to continue to have this be a great place to live and work we need to continue to invest I agree both in our parks both in our land but as well as in our schools to make sure we have both an educated workforce and a happy workforce going forward.

[02:55:20] So I support kind of our collective kind of CFOs working on that to show what those total costs would be and how we potentially could bear. And then I think the other thing I say is we heard a little bit about what you need, what the Board of Supervisors needs from us to understand those priorities and how we got there, but that would be my other question back to you them like we what specifically do you need about both the justification around enrollments or about wait lists but also how those will meet the needs of our

[02:55:59] students and our families and our community members so any further clarification we can give as you're going into that prioritization and anything we can do to work together on a prioritization I know we would love to up to the table and do that. Okay, I agree with what Dr. Berlinda said. I would really like to know maybe what the effects would be for paying for all of the things that we really need in the school system. What effect it would have on our tax rate, on the bond rate, on the rate that the

[02:56:39] county has. And this is probably really way off in the middle of left field. But I'm thinking about Counties like Loudoun and Fairfax and Prince William that have really explosive growth and how many new schools they are building and maybe what lessons we might be able to learn from them, what we might find out about what they are doing to sort of address some of those needs.

[02:57:09] I really don't have any additional questions beyond what my colleagues have asked, but I will say that this is a really great presentation, very educational. It certainly helped this board member who's still in his rookie year understand it much, the process much better.

[02:57:30] Thank you. I also want to thank Mr. Bowman and Gloria Kudensawa for the presentations. One of the things that I wanted to, it sounds like from my perspective as a school board member, In addition to looking at what the prospects are for the next year, I know it's a five-year plan, but it's really a one-year pay-as-you-go sort of plan in terms of commitments.

[02:58:05] Is there a pot? I mean it the only way to get to a more ambitious Catch-up plan for financing is to raise the revenues either through a tax increase borrowing against the ceiling praying and advocating for the 20 you know sales tax And those are the only realistic ways to go and so how much I mean I know that Ravana Station as an economic driver, but I think another variable for economic growth is how good the school systems are

[02:58:42] And I think some of our schools could be a whole lot better physically the physical space where students learn Is important in their learning and I really think it's important for the county To think about how can we catch up just like we're trying to catch up with our school bus purchases How can we catch up? Because one of the slides that Maya showed, we were falling behind.

[02:59:13] And someone called it a wish list. I mean, our statutory obligation is to present a needs-based funding request. And we under-present, I mean, we hone that request pretty tightly because we know we're not going to get anything close to the amount of funding.

[02:59:36] But is there proactive way we can think about this that will catch us up a bit? I mean we can't catch us up all the way, but if every year where the financing is the same when we draw a line at 40 percent We're just going to fall further and further behind. I do appreciate the work that everybody does and I do understand that the supervisors have a lot more diversity of projects on their agenda than we do, but I think that I

[03:00:10] One of the most important things that a community does is support its students and its public education. And I thank you for what you do, but nonetheless, I'm asking for more. Well, there's no doubt that good public schools benefit the entire college.

[03:00:29] I mean, we all agree on that. We all agree. Everybody can nod their head yes to that. I just have a quick question, though, and I guess this is to Matt and Jeff. Would it be beneficial to see if we could come up with a one-pager or something simple that gets to what I'm hearing around the table for our community actually clarifies for the public how the funding, how this all works, especially around the CIP, because I think that's where the angst is right now.

[03:01:04] If we could come up with something between the two staffs that we could use in the community to talk about. I'd be happy to take that on as an action item coming out of here. That would be great because don't you all think that would help? I think that would help a lot. And I do agree it would be nice. I agree with Ned and I think some of the others as well.

[03:01:26] It would be nice for the community as we're going through the budget cycle in our discussions to understand the implications of the ask from the school system on the tax rate because I think that's the bottom line right and I'd like to know from the implications for you the the whole five year you know you have the one year but then you have a total of five years it would be nice to see if we could get that broken down and look at that and the implications if we just did it on what the tax rate would

[03:01:56] be is that again if I could add to mr. Richardson's to do this right I mean I Think there's for a lot of our community the difference between the operating budget and the capital budget is Veiled in mystery, and so if we could at least start with a preamble Yeah, I think that as we go through the next few months I think something like that would be helpful for both of our boards and our community

[03:02:35] Two things I was thinking about when Andy was wrapping up and people were asking about the maintenance for these new projects. Think about bringing back the list, the line, where above the line and below the line from 2008 and on, because that was the basis of the CIP discussion, was these are the things we're obligated to take care of.

[03:02:55] These are our existing buildings. And when you used up whatever your available cash is, if there's something left over, then you work on the priority list above or below and it made it very clear about uh and things that were not to the right level of the line crept their way up as other things that got out of the way and got paid off that was you know quite uh easy for folks to follow so i will put that back on your list of things to think about um regarding the 60 40 split there's been a lot of discussion around here and i will just offer a slightly different perspective and that is 30 years ago

[03:03:35] when the split was designed and adopted local government effort was considerably different than it is today a very small local government effort very rural county tiny population in comparison to where we are now the level of services provided i mean one or two one sheriff's deputy and everything was done by volunteer fire and now that's tens of millions for those two Public Safety Department is incredibly important just as schools are but has been a growing service demand that we have all worked on so I think we all need

[03:04:11] to think about whether the 60/40 is correct because I don't know what the answer is but I know we've all for the last five years made comments about trying to consider this and so I will just lob the grenade and say let's think about how we think about it at some other meeting I do just want to also while we're talking about the 60/40 split and just generally how we split our budget I think it's always helpful to remember that since it is by percentage everything moves in lockstep right so we talked about existing budget

[03:04:50] obligations that we're going to have to do something about the the shortfall that's already predicted in the budget and also plans that the board that members of the board have telegraphed that they are interested I'm thinking around housing these all come with a likely property tax toll right like increasing to ten million above what we've programmed is probably guessing we if we were to assume we program the same amount that's about seven cents on the tax rate to get there filling the three percent gap would be about how many cents on the tax rate that would be another ten fish do I have that right

[03:05:28] I throw this out here, though, because I think it's helpful to remember that the baseline that we are talking about with CIP today is not the actual baseline, because these all move in lockstep.

[03:05:56] Whatever changes happen to the budget, they're all going to follow in lockstep based on the percent that goes to CIP which means incidentally the whole rest of the budget gets pulled upwards so I just mentioned that to share with my colleagues on the school board that there is going to be a natural upward pull on all of these items that are in your budget because of just things we already know we have to even ignoring I threw housing out there but even just looking at the known revenue expenses gap that we have identified they're going

[03:06:31] being a quantifiable pretty calculable I would think upward pull on what that's going to do to capital like to invite the school board if there are any additional questions or comments or are we ready to move on which is if you have anything else this has been really helpful discussion we designed this to

[03:07:02] have discussion. I do not have anything else. Thank you. Nothing else, sir. We have the dates that I have up online so they might be there for the superintendent's budget request. Is that all in the budget calendar? All of those dates like the county Texas presentation and when the schools will present to us in the budget cycle and all. Yeah, we do have that online but we can share that as a follow up just so that everyone is where it would be. And the superintendent of the county Both their things are scheduled on that calendar.

[03:07:36] If they're not, we can make sure they are. Yeah, I just, I'm like, we have Jeff's. You know what I'm saying, I can go, we can go up this time. I just, I didn't think the work of that before. Thank you. Thank you. And then I would invite the school board to leave. To adjourn. Your meeting.

[03:07:53] Because we have a, continue our meeting. I want to thank all the supervisors and all my colleagues on the school board and all the staff that helped put this together. And with that, we're adjourned. We remain in session for the County Board Certificers, please don't get up.

[03:08:22] As a matter of fact, I think we will proceed to go into closed session. As soon as it's audible. Yeah, it's pretty small, yeah, it's pretty small, yeah, it's pretty small.

[03:08:39] Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. I think this is the first thing. She's glad she's right to the world. She's riding there, she looks different, right? Yeah. She's a totally different.

[03:08:55] She's very hard. I would like to move forward to supervisors to begin a closed meeting pursuant to section 2.2 TAC 3711A of the Code of Virginia, under subsection 1, to discuss and consider appointments

[03:09:33] to various boards and commissions, including, without limitation, the Albemarle Conservation Eastman Authority, the Blue Ridge Committee for Shenandoah Park Relations, the Charlottesville Albemarle Airport Authority, the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Committee, the Crowe Bay Advisory Committee, Fire Protection Code Appeals Board, the local board building code appeals the historic preservation committee the job board the places 29 hydraulic community advisory committee the monticello area community action agency the The Rivanna Solid Waste Authority and the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority.

[03:10:09] Second, second. We're going to motion for Supervisor Pruitt, seconded for Supervisor Lupista Curtley. Oh, Supervisor Malik, she's closer, travel faster. Supervisor Malik, seconded, without objection of the call call. Mr. Pruitt, aye.

[03:10:25] Mr. Andrews, yes. Mr. Galloway, yes. Ms. Malik, yes. Ms. McKeel, yes. Ms. Lupista, currently, aye. Thanks. All right. Recording stopped.

[03:10:36] So, Fred.

[03:32:00] I would like to. Recording in progress. Wait, no, that's good. Good, good, good. Okay, so we're back, and Supervisor Fred, you have a motion. Thank you. I'd like to move to the Board of Supervisors certified by a recorded vote that, for the best of each supervisor's knowledge, only recorded, excuse me, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting.

[03:32:29] Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Pruitt, seconded from Supervisor Malik about rejection. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Malik? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Ms. Lapista-Kirtley? Aye. Okay. And now we have a motion coming out of the process.

[03:32:45] We do. I have two motions. The first motion is I move that we appoint the following people to boards and commissions. So for the Alomar Conservation Easement Authority, Hamilton Moses, Sharon Merrick, David Emmett, and Peter Taylor.

[03:33:05] To the Blue Ridge Committee for Shenandoah Park Relations, Elizabeth Palmer. To the Charlottesville-Alomar Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Committee, Alina Eastman and Olivia Branch.

[03:33:22] To the Crozet Community Advisory Committee, Sarah Spears. to the Historic Preservation Committee, Christopher Keene and David Harlow, and to the Monticello Area Community Action Agency, or MACA, Barbara Hutchinson, to the Place of 29 Hydraulic Community Advisory Committee, Jane Ford, and to the Rivianna Water and Sewer Authority, Gwendolyn Lunsford.

[03:33:52] Second. We have a motion from Supervisor McKeel, with a second from Supervisor Malick. Without objection, the clerk will call the roll. Mr. Prowick, Mr. Andrews. We'll come back to the others. Were there a mistake? Nay, there's a typo. Oh, there's a typo? The front page of our sheet mistranscribes Athena's last name.

[03:34:12] It's Eastwood. Eastwood, yeah. We had a typo. Oh, thank you for catching that. So that is-- I thought I'd heard it wrong. That's why I didn't think it was. And then I checked them both, and yes. Athena Eastwood. Eastwood.

[03:34:27] So we have a-- Correction. --an amendment to the motion. Second. Now with the amended motion, without objection of the first roll roll. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Malik? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Ms. Lapista? Currently high.

[03:34:45] I believe we have a second motion. Second motion is that I move that the board recommend to the city that we appoint the following. These are joint city-county rep positions. to the Charlottesville-Almara Airport Authority, Susan Pace Lochte, and to the Ravana Solid Waste Authority, Mike Gaffney, and to the Ravana Water and Sewer Authority, Mike Gaffney.

[03:35:13] Thank you. Mr. Supervisor McKeel, seconded from Supervisor Malick. Without objection to the clerk for all. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Malick? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Ms. Lippincu-Kirkley? Aye. With that, the Board will adjourn until 6 p.m. at 10:00 p.m. at 10:00 p.m. at 9:00 p.m.

[03:35:35] All right, we are adjourned.

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