Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, FY 2026 Budget Work Session, Thursday, March 6, 2025

Date: Thursday, March 6, 2025
Place: Board Room, First Floor, Government Center, 1 Harrison Street SE, Leesburg, Virginia
Length: 3h 12m (video)
Official meeting video (county, Granicus): https://loudoun.granicus.com/player/clip/7889
Meeting page: https://loudoun.granicus.com/player/clip/7889

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 2026-10-11. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

[00:08:28] we go well good evening supervisors good evening staff and good evening loudon i'd like to call to order the march 6 2025 loudon county board of supervisors budget work session board members i'd like to stress the importance of this budget work session as the time to offer changes additions and deletions to the budget board members you to try to offer all desired amendments and ask any questions you have during the work sessions please only after often offer motions that you intend to support so that we can be efficient with our time and I've said this before don't vote on something if you're not willing to support the tax rate at the end of when we finish in

[00:09:07] addition if you'd like to offer motions on items that do not appear in the proposed budget please work of staff prior to the work session prior to the work session prior to the work session to ensure the motion is accurate and accomplishes your intended result when we get our final vote on April 1st. Staff will not be able to make large changes to the budget during the meeting and the vote on the budget could be delayed if there are substantive changes that were not discussed and voted on during the work session. I'm going to go one step farther, supervisors.

[00:09:35] If you all need to outvote me, you can, but if I see votes on this day that have not been vetted prior to this work session, I am not going to allow them. They can come at the wrap up at the end because it is just too confusing for me, for staff, and it's not, for all staff, and it's not respectful to the public. And so don't walk up on here on motions that we haven't seen before because you can bring them to the last session or you can take them back home. But that's what's going to happen. All right. Would everyone please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance?

[00:10:11] I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, liberty, and justice for all.

[00:10:28] For all. Okay, we may want to ask Ms. Burke for some budget staff updates. Do we have any budget staff updates, ma'am? I was just going to review the materials in your packet from straw votes taken last Monday.

[00:10:49] last monday's work session the real property tax rate on the tote board stands at 80 cents with 455 thousand dollars available to allocate before changing the tax rate and then i would just share that in the packet that went out yesterday was an additional county packet of questions as well as an information item on the public defender proposal that's next on your agenda as well as an information item of accompanying the extension services request at the

[00:11:26] to be fully responsive to one of the questions that came in from a board office and that concludes my updates well that was fast thank you very much where is the tote board it is under budget staff no no no i'm sorry uh yes if we could share the screen if you could that that's helpful thank you appreciate that um okay we're going to uh first you have a quick question yeah oh yeah sure does anyone have questions for step on this mr eternal is not on the webex is he he's not okay mr mr thank you burke um my

[00:12:02] understanding is we are contributing more than required to the revenue stabilization funds so we are actually over our target for the revenue stabilization fund so my question is we only have 455 000 left until we go over the next threshold if we really want to keep this tax rate can we reduce the revenue stabilization fund enough to keep us under this tax bracket when we're all finished here i don't understand your question so we have we have 455 thousand dollars until we go up to a a a half cent on the tax rate right if we want to avoid going up an extra half cent on the

[00:12:38] tax rate and we want to fund some of these items in these budget discussions that pushes us up into that higher tax bracket, can we reduce the amount that we are putting in the revenue stabilization fund, which is already more than what we had planned on putting in anyway? I see your question. He's asking, so if we say yes to something other than item request levels one and two, if we want to go to three, four, can we do that? And then if we hit that, if we hit the number, can we then take it off the top of the revenue stabilization fund?

[00:13:14] - Yes, that is an option available to the board. I think that is one of the conversations that we would like the board to have at wrap up to choose how you wanna proceed with real property tax rate or revenue stabilization. I will note that the TOE board is displaying either or option right now.

[00:13:32] It's not, it's both of them. So you've reduced the tax rate to 80 cents and or if you wanna keep the tax rate at 80 and a half cents, you've increased the comp, um contribution to revenue stabilization fund it was proposed at 127 million dollars it's now it could be at 136 million dollars depending on how you want to make those adjustments but that would be something that you would that we would request the board discuss at wrap-up thank you i make a request every time and i'm dead serious with this every time you talk to talk

[00:14:09] about what the tax rate is what we've reduced it to it would be helpful if you say what that is below the equalized tax rate it is below the homeowners equalized tax rate it is not below the equalized tax rate the homeowners in the average exactly 80 cents is one and a half pennies below the homeowners equalized tax rate that is what i'm saying thank you all right the first thing we're going to do is take up the public defender's office with miss o'donnell and any other staff that she'd like to have come to the table with her come to the table with her supervisors and

[00:14:43] well more loud and this did not go out in in in a package you didn't see this because this is um this is a decision um that the board can make based on really quite frankly and to be honest years of miss o'donnell talking to um to me and to mr hemstreet and to other board members and just to give some background when i first became chair and miss o'donnell brought to me the discrepancies or the gap between what the public defenders make and people in the Commonwealth

[00:15:21] Attorney's Office, even though they're not always linear positions, it was pretty big. My response to her was that for at least two sessions, I wasn't going to do anything with this because we were going to work really closely with General Assembly members to see if they were willing to do what is actually their employees, to do what they should do by their own employees and make up the difference.

[00:15:48] And we were shot down time after time after time after time. Mr. Sains and I went before and had this discussion early in our first term. We were shot down time after time. And I'm going to be completely nonpartisan here when I say neither party was willing to do this and it was and remains an issue for me.

[00:16:11] And so at this point, we're going to do this on the county side or we're going to do something today on the county side because it is not fair to the public defender staff. Public defender staff does much more than show up in court.

[00:16:29] They are case managers. They do so much more than that. And it is, she will lose good people because she cannot keep people in her office. And so at some point, it just became untenable for us to do nothing anymore.

[00:16:47] But we have been, Ms. O'Donnell started this conversation with me my very first year in office, and my first few years, we spent down at the General Assembly begging them to do something. And so I am putting everyone in the General Assembly on notice. I don't care who you are. I don't care your political party. I don't care. It is shameful that you're not, that the General Assembly is not supporting their own employees' salaries because they know counties will eventually have to do it. So now I'm finished, but that's

[00:17:21] what happened. Ms. O'Donnell, would you like to say anything? Put your mic on. uh i agree and i can't tell you how grateful my staff is to the board um the the supplement that you've given given us to date has made a world of difference i've been able to keep attorneys in my office longer than normal i in talking with my executive director because of the supplement you've given us thus far our average stay of an attorney is above the state average the state

[00:18:00] average for a public defender to stay in an office is between three it's right around three years that's just when an attorney gets good that's just when the experience starts to kick in that's just when they develop the credibility and dependability from the courts so you lose them i'm kind of now at that situation which i've told i think spoken with all of you that um if if the board isn't willing to do something we're going to lose we're going to lose our i'm going to lose my most experienced attorneys because they've got to make more.

[00:18:33] Yeah. Yeah. Supervisors, do you have any questions for Ms. O'Donnell? Mr. Turner. Thank you, Madam Chair. So, Donald, what's the caseload for the Public Defender's Office?

[00:18:48] Our caseload, Ms. Supervisor Turner, is we are averaging -- and I provided that information -- I have all my stacks here and none in a row. We were slightly under 3,000, I want to say 2,800 last year. go up between three and four hundred annually the pandemic off obviously we saw a drop um so that is you divide that 2800 amongst 12 attorneys um so we're averaging over 200 cases per attorney i think it's actually 235 cases per attorney thank you i think the county i thought i gave those

[00:19:22] numbers i think the county attorney's office caseload is 70 ish 775 commonwealth's attorney Commonwealth's attorney is about 75 cases per attorney, just to be clear of the amount. And so that is a number, so I have that number.

[00:19:41] I am also responsible for the budget, for being here, for training, supervising, mentoring, hiring, firing, and carrying a full caseload. Thank you. Anybody else? All right.

[00:19:58] I'm going to go to Ms. Frixman for a motion. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that the Board of Supervisors amend the Office of the Public Defender resource request to remove the four county positions and direct staff to work with the Virginia Indigent Defense Commission to determine the true cost of the four positions with a maximum amount of county funding dedicated to a hundred percent supplement of $400,000 for FY 2026.

[00:20:25] Second. Question on the motion. Thank you. Ms. O'Donnell, thank you so much for the service that you provide to the county. I think that you were last before us in 2020 for a salary supplement. And the idea that there has been no movement since 2020 is absolutely appalling.

[00:20:46] Your caseloads are huge compared to what the Commonwealth's attorney is carrying. Your salaries are drastically lower than what the Commonwealth's attorney's salaries are. your staffing is drastically lower. When we first started talking about this, I guess aside from all the other times we've talked about it, when we first started talking about it in 2024, we thought maybe we could do some attorneys. There was a little bit of uneasiness as to whether the county

[00:21:21] could actually fund actual new positions for you, and so we agreed on these four positions to provide support to your office and I hope that they will provide the support to your office that at least eases some of the workload that attorneys are doing that is actually not practicing law it is it is practicing a number of other things translator investigator evidence gathering and review and all of those

[00:21:53] things so I'm really proud to have worked with you on it this year and I kind of like the idea though of preserving that we did not fund actual attorneys because I think that preserves our argument to the General Assembly and our delegations that you know you the state should be actually providing the attorneys and I know that your office is actually going to hire these positions and we're funding it but i think i think actually not doing attorneys this year helps our argument

[00:22:24] when we go back um and i would also like to see the general assembly um think about how you are paid in this step increases and all of that right that's just does not seem right that you will be in one position and pay that same salary until the next position above you just opens and then you get to move up i mean there should be some way to progress between those positions so hopefully we can get them to look at that this year and i know i've told you this before but my mom's a

[00:23:01] public defender i grew up in a household trying to live on a public defender salary and so i i feel the pain and i can't tell you how much i appreciate the dedication and the passion that you and your team have for your work thank you madam chair thank you so i want to be really clear that that we're not doing kind of this pitting the commonwealth attorney against the public defender's office that's not what's happening here those two offices both have their their their responsibilities and that's how the system works and so um the the commonwealth attorney's office what they make is

[00:23:39] with what they should be making and i had no issue with that at all and so i don't want to i don't I don't want anyone to walk out of here with that idea that we're doing that. We're simply saying that we are aware and we understand that the public defender's office has been underpaid, understaffed, underresourced, and quite frankly, sometimes underappreciated for what they're doing.

[00:24:01] And that to a degree, I don't know that everyone understands what the public defenders do. I mean, we see attorneys, and if you're not... attorneys, both of whom are sitting on these days to my left, attorneys are what's on a television show, right? It's not the same. But a public defender's office does a lot of just community running people down and case management and kind of pseudo-therapy and all these kind of things that happen well outside of the courtroom itself. In fact, sometimes if you're doing all those things really well, you never end up in a courtroom at all, to be quite honest. That's

[00:24:40] just how it works. And so we know that the Commonwealth Attorney's Office is important. The Public Defender's Office is important. We're not pushing them against one another. We're saying we value them both, and we need them both, and we need to not lose seasoned good people. And that's why, again, you came to me in my very, I think my very first year, my very first term. And we have made a one supplement improvement already, and now we're this just because we know we know the importance of keeping you up thank you thank you thank everyone in your office as well would you like a closing thank

[00:25:18] you oh well I was just going to completely agree with you madam chair it's not it's not that the Commonwealth's attorney doesn't deserve the staffing or the pay that they are getting it's it's the idea that we live up to the standards of justice in this country for for me that you know justice is blind and justice can't necessarily be blind if there's such an inequity in the the ability to represent not the desire not the skill not the passion it's just the

[00:25:52] ability to have the bandwidth to give equal representation on either side in our adversarial system um so uh would you like to make a comment you look like you wanted to answer a question i did and it's i don't think there's a question out there but um to comment the the chair and supervisor rissman you're so right we don't i think when people look at the public defender or when people who don't know what we do they think all we do is represent the bad guys

[00:26:27] we represent the needy every now and then we have a bad guy and the constitutional requires us mandates that we represent the mentally ill we represent the addicted we represent the kids who've gotten themselves in trouble we represent the wrongly accused we represent the truly needy and in our community and we don't just go into court and challenge the commonwealth and fight with the commonwealth we find services we find placements to make sure that these individuals aren't coming back to court that they can succeed they can be successful so it doesn't start in the

[00:27:06] courtroom and it doesn't end in the courtroom for us we try to fix the problem that's in front of them the charges against them and do what we can to make sure that they don't repeat that problem that they have the resources to be successful thank you ms o'donnell i could not add to that thank you madam chair um that was 801 with mr um letourneau being off the dais and i i i will I will shoot him a text or something to find out what's going on, make sure he's okay.

[00:27:44] Chair Randall, may I ask a question? I heard the motion for the four positions. Did that also include the increase in the supplement? Yes, all of it at one time. It's the whole motion. The whole motion. All right, thank you. I missed the good part. Yeah, you missed it. I missed the good part.

[00:28:00] Chair Randall, if I could just clarify. the motion here just would transition um from funding for county positions to funding for positions within the public defender's office for 400 000 the supplement for to increase to 40 is still within the base but yes the proposed budget yeah yeah thank you so you didn't need to do that we didn't need to do it because it's a budget already it's in the base budget it's just it's just it's done it's just unless somebody takes it out it's done thank you somebody takes it out we'll take them outside and we'll have that discussion all right but I'll represent you okay

[00:28:42] see right there that's where we are all right thank you very much all right supervisors we're going to go on to our first department tonight our first department tonight is building and development you will find them on the description of resource requests is on pages 58 through 56 for the building development please come forward i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm wrong you want to do a different uh no my bad i have it differently on here i'm sorry we're going to the health and welfare people yet first so let's do extensive extensive extension services my bad i apologize

[00:29:20] and that is on page 81 extension services paul you were funny i saw you get up and sit back down I'm sorry, didn't mean to confuse you. Good evening, Supervisors.

[00:29:44] My name is Stuart Vermack and I'm the Department Director for Virginia Corruptive Extension Loudon, known as Extension Services in the proposed budget. A resource request from my department can be found on page 81 of the budget document. Our department is the local connection to Virginia's land-grant universities, Virginia Tech and Virginia State University.

[00:30:05] Our department helps the people of Loudon County improve their lives through educational programs and trainings based on research and they are developed with input from local stakeholders. These programs focus on the nutrition and health of families, promoting natural resource conservation and stewardship, improving our food system, increasing the sustainability of agricultural operations, and improving youth well-being by teaching life skills.

[00:30:30] I'd like to just take a moment to update you on the resource request for our nutrition educator that was approved in the FY25 budget. In mid-August, our department moved to our new facility on Miller Drive, and we onboarded Emily Jacobs, our nutrition educator, at the beginning of November.

[00:30:50] With assistance from our onboarding plan, Emily has hit the ground running, making connections with county departments primarily and community stakeholders to plan and conduct programming. In December, she participated in the PRCS Winterfest, in January, she participated in a Department of Family Services Fatherhood Initiative Program, and in February, she participated in the PRCS International Festival.

[00:31:13] And some of the planned program for 2025 already include a balanced living with diabetes class with PRCS in July and one at Sterling Library in September, a diabetes support group at Leesburg Senior Center in April, cooking on a budget classes with Loud and Hunger Relief, Healthy Together Youth Obesity Program with PRCS and the Virginia Department of Health, canning and food preservation classes at Sterling Library in June through November, and speak with a dietitian monthly hours at Sterling Library in May.

[00:31:46] The resource request in the proposed FY26 budget is for a financial literacy educator, which aligns with the expectations for the services of my department and the Board's strategic initiatives. The addition of this FTE would provide our residents with an upstream intervention to enhance healthy financial futures for Loudoun families, working with people of all ages, from children to seniors, to promote research-based, sound practices.

[00:32:12] This FTE will directly support the efforts of other related activities within this program by providing referrals and coordination to related programs conducted by the nutrition educator which you funded in FY25. Additionally, this FTE will enhance the activities of other departments such as Family Services, Mental Health, Substance Abuse and Developmental Services, the Health Department, PRCS, Youth Services Center, Housing and Community Development, and plans to reach emerging adults via the new youth services department, in addition to the nonprofit community through collaborative partnerships.

[00:32:47] For example, this FTE and the resulting volunteer force will conduct programming at libraries, community centers, senior centers, food pantries, with WIC participants, SNAP participants, families, students, and more. Neighboring jurisdictions with this FTE position and volunteer support, such as Prince William, Arlington, and Alexandria City, annually provide financial education to well more than 1,000 residents.

[00:33:11] will recruit and train volunteers through the master financial education volunteer program which focuses on training volunteers to coach financial education to residents and build their financial security. Volunteers receive a minimum of 20 hours of classroom instruction and in return commit to contribute at least 40 hours of service in the next 12 months following the training.

[00:33:33] Volunteers are typically community members who have financial experience in banking, financial planning, taxes or budgeting and are passionate about serving their fellow residents. as individuals gain knowledge and skills they can pass these on to family members and future generations this has the potential to change the trajectory of individuals and families in our community for generations to come finally this is only the third fte requested by my department in 26 years i want to thank you for your continual support of my department and for considering this important position and i'm very happy to answer any questions strong closing line that really is

[00:34:13] that's a great line does anyone have any questions mr sayings yeah thank you madam chair thank you for the presentation i just have a question where are you from um miss burke told me how much time i have so it's a very long story uh i'm originally south africa lived in australia for a while i've been here for a while oh okay i thought you were gonna say i thought no because i was gonna say massachusetts i thought you're gonna say boston yeah a lot of people guess that because i parked my car in the yard as well exactly i thought you're gonna say boston because your your sound

[00:34:49] you sound well matt damien sounds just like you from the departed so i was gonna make you know that's what it sounded i wish he looked like me i'm like john f kennedy he does okay and from massachusetts we have mr latourno you know i could turn that accent on i have just suppressed it in my years in virginia we'd like to do that actually yeah uh thank you very much for the presentation so we do have and we've had since um i don't know probably going on 15 20 years the financial literacy requirement in schools i know a couple of my kids have gone through it it's a

[00:35:26] pretty good program how does this i mean i feel like the kids going through our high school systems are getting this i would assume the financial literacy stuff is this intended for a different audience yeah absolutely so this this position you know it the volunteers that this position would train may have interaction with the school system but this is not a position that's going to be primarily focused in the schools otherwise i would assume lcps would be asking for it this position is for our community for all the other members for the home school community private school community might interact with as well but primarily it would be volunteers going in and

[00:36:04] in doing that, not this county FTE. - Okay, and then the reality store program, it's only generally getting to a couple schools, five schools maybe a year. Would we be doing more of that with the FTE?

[00:36:20] - Yeah, absolutely. So that position previously was done through a small group of volunteers, but no, this position would seek to do that and that would be one of the programs. In that information item, we go into more detail about all the programs, and RealityStore is one of those.

[00:36:39] Okay. Thank you. Ms. Brooksman. Thank you. I fully support your request. I just wanted to say thank you for, you know, I think for coming and bringing everything alive for us, because we look at the budget book, we read through the resource requests, and, you know, it's fairly dry until you come and tell us all the great things that you're doing.

[00:37:01] So budget time for me is really a time where I learned so much about all the great work in the county. So thank you for all your great work. Thank you. I appreciate it. My only question is, do you all have any interaction at all with SNAP recipients?

[00:37:17] And if so, how? Tell me how that works. So the nutrition educator that was approved in FY25, part of the work that we do is looking, You know, we wrote that FTE, that resource request with the equity lens in mind.

[00:37:35] And so a lot of that programming and this programming, you know, our programs are open to everyone, but we'll certainly be seeking to partner with SNAP recipients and WIC recipients and people who are already receiving and are in need of assistance in some way.

[00:37:51] And so that's how we would do that. We would intentionally partner with, you know, Department of Family Services or Department of Health, the Health Department with WIC. That's really so important, you know, as I've been on a kind of a clean eating, healthier eating, not buying processed food place, and it is so expensive to eat healthier.

[00:38:13] And so the discussion of food on a budget, how to eat healthy on a budget is so important. It costs a lot less to eat terrible food. You pay for it in other ways later on, but it costs just money out your pocket, it costs less. That program, and then the financial literacy discussion overall, all those things go together, are really, really so important.

[00:38:35] So thank you so much. I really do appreciate the work you do. Supervisors, are there any motions on the table for this department? Seeing none, thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, our next will be family services will be coming toward us.

[00:38:52] And family services are on pages 82 through 85. Hello, Ms. Fernandez, how are you?

[00:39:24] Good evening, Chair Randall and board members. My name is Ina Fernandez, and I am the director of the Department of Family Services. With me this evening, our staff and our leadership team and partners in finance. Our priorities may be found, as the chair said, on page 82 and 85 and 219 and 223 of the budget book. Thank you for allowing me to present the Department of Family Services fiscal year 2026 priorities. As you're aware, we have spent the past few years right-sizing, stabilizing, reorganizing, and professionalizing the department. With your help, we have made great strides. By reducing caseloads, we have reduced turnover, and by reducing turnover, we are more able to provide mandated services to our community. We have hired all but three positions you approved in this year's budget. We are

[00:40:04] actively in the interview process for one of them, and two others were recently classified and will begin recruitment this month or next month. Our top priority focuses on the public benefits program and reflects the department's commitment to appropriately scale the organization to better serve clients and fulfill our mission, adhere to state and federal mandates, and enhance the operational efficiency. By executing our multi-year staffing plan, the department continues to move forward the goal of achieving manageable caseloads for frontline staff, thereby improving the customer experience for recipients of public assistance the positions requested

[00:40:39] enable staff to deliver more timely but most importantly accurate benefits to county residents they will um excuse me also add a critical critical position to verify financial integrity ensure regulatory compliance and promote operational excellence moreover these positions will both bolster the job development function increase the department's capacity to support public benefits unit and more broadly the public assistance and supports division as well as expedite job placements for job-ready clients in the virginia initiative and for education and work or the view program to address our growing demand maintain acceptable service

[00:41:17] standards and continue continue to right-size the organization while enhancing overall efficiency dfs's second priority poses addition of new staff to the customer services unit the current client interaction to staff ratio leads to operational strain and reduce reduced service effectiveness.

[00:41:35] The DFS customer service team operates with six forward-facing positions and one supervisor across two locations, Leesburg and Sterling. Despite the growing population and corresponding increase in service demand, no customer service staff positions have been added to the unit in the past decade.

[00:41:54] In the past four years alone, the resident interaction has increased by 52 percent with customer service staff maintaining almost 45,000 customer contacts in 2024. The surgeon-client interaction has strained capacity as reflected in our declining call capture rates and increased average response times.

[00:42:13] The ability to answer calls within the 85% target is consistently not met, with an average capture rate of just 63% over the past three years and a drop to 49% last year. Additionally, the average speed to answer calls has deteriorated significantly, surpassing the goal of one minute or less to over six minutes.

[00:42:33] Our third request to add a Senior Intake Specialist and Adult Protective Services or APS Ongoing Specialist and a Community Outreach Liaison is critical to our ability to provide timely and effective supports within the Adult and Aging Program. These positions will focus on immediate connections to vital resources, maintain continuity of care for at-risk individuals, and strengthen our community engagement.

[00:42:57] The total number of average of adult and aging intake calls has steadily risen over the past five years, highlighting an increased demand for services. From FY20 to FY24, calls increased by 72%. With only one intake specialist to maintain the increased volume, only 75% of the calls are answered live, and other adult and aging staff need to be taken from their primary duties to assist with managing these calls.

[00:43:23] This has led to an increase in staff overtime. According to the National Adult Protective Services Association, or NAPSA, the recommended caseload for APS workers is 15.7 per month, and in FY24, the department's APS specialist averaged 22 cases per month, exceeding the NAPSA guidelines by 40 percent.

[00:43:42] The addition of an APS ongoing specialist will reduce the caseloads to more manageable levels, aligning the team with national standards. And establishing a community liaison position will ensure that older adults receive the supports and assistance they require to lead healthy fulfilling lives in our community and will lead to the planning coordination of community education and outreach events connecting older adults with necessary reduced or no cost resources and finally a domestic and sexual violence services or dsvs unit is requested to enhance the well-being and safety of the loudon county

[00:44:15] community excuse me addressing the complexities of domestic and sexual violence human trafficking and stocking. This involves establishing a crucial governance and organizational structure as well as technological supports across a multitude of county departments and community partners. By doing so, enhanced services will be offered leading to improved outcomes for impacted families and individuals. The positions requested for FY26 present the first of a multi-year request for staff in the DSVS to staff the DSVS unit fully. This year we began

[00:44:53] with the proposed eight positions to support the implementation of a coordinated community response or CCR, an evidence-based outcome-driven practice to effectively address the needs in our community. A CCR is a proven strategy that involves organizing leaders and key decision makers in areas such as law enforcement, prosecution, health care, advocacy, behavioral health, family or social services, animal services, education, faith communities, and other stakeholders such as those directly impacted to build a more effective systems response, yield healthier and safer communities.

[00:45:30] It fosters a shared vision, mission, values, and philosophy, strategic direction, and an organizational structure that bolsters the work of service providers, as well as an integrated data collection, analysis, and reporting system to enhance collaboration and services.

[00:45:45] The proposed eight positions consist of the following, a program administrator critical to facilitate and manage the activities and work of the coordinated community response, an operations supervisor and a data and reporting coordinator to support the CCR's work and the organizational structure, a family services supervisor to oversee intensive case management of current and proposed staff, a senior family service specialist to provide intensive case management with a focus on those experiencing human trafficking, and another for our prevention and education team, a family service specialist to focus on promoting healthy relationships, and another to provide intensive case management. These positions

[00:46:23] proposed will be housed within our Family Engagement Preservation Services Program, which currently has three positions providing intensive case management services to children and families experiencing domestic violence and human trafficking that do not meet the criteria of Child Protective Services. Again, thank you for your attention and support and responsiveness to our community's need thank you to county administration for taking the time to understand and realize the department's needs and finally most importantly i want to thank dfs employees for their commitment to louden's infrastructure of care compassion in their service to others and always going above and beyond to aid the most vulnerable in our of our residents

[00:47:02] i am because we are ubuntu thank you and we are here to answer any questions that you may have mr antes before i go to my colleagues a question let's just let's just address the elephant in the room that we've been hearing about for at least a month or more right now.

[00:47:19] We have a dedicated nonprofit professionals who work in the domestic violence, sexual violence arena already. They have been doing that for years here in Loudoun County.

[00:47:34] Tell me how you would, how doing, if we approve these positions, it would integrate with any of our, because we have more than one nonprofit that works with sexual violence, sexual assault, or domestic violence and domestic assault.

[00:47:54] We have Women Giving Back does, Laws does, Silence No More. We have others too. will you all integrate this with the our nonprofits that are doing this and why do you think there's a greater need that the county can now needs to step in and fill because i think those questions have been asked and i think those are fair questions and um let's let's let's let's do that let's just get that right off the table right now so i mean our our requests are based on um

[00:48:27] operational need right so the positions that we're asking for are county positions that will work amongst with county agencies as well as community non-profits the coordinated community response which is the crux of what we're asking for this year is really that governing structure most of the positions are for that governing structure to allow for greater understanding of the need to allow for leaders in our community to make decisions to lead the community

[00:49:02] county and non-profit in in a way that we are all working towards the same goal together i think right now there there are a lot of silos there's not a lot of information that is captured across the board and data that is in one location that we can just push a button and say here is the everything that's happening in our county with regards to domestic sexual violence human trafficking stalking etc these positions will augment some positions that

[00:49:34] we already have in child protective services for those families that don't rise to the level of cps we already have three people that are working in our prevention and education our family engagement preservation services with these families we are always connecting our families our individuals with community whether it's domestic violence food whatever it is we can't do this alone nonprofits can't do it alone and so to be able to integrate and provide the services that are needed

[00:50:10] if someone doesn't want to go to shelter they're not going to go to shelter if we are seeing them within our caseloads and are able to provide services in-house then let's do so if someone doesn't want to go to court maybe they're not going to go through community corrections those are the things that we can do to make sure that folks are getting the services they need when they need it where they need it and with whom they want okay thank you questions miss glass suppose a glass thank you madam chair and thank you all for for what you do is it's it's so important and

[00:50:45] critical. I have a question. At what age does a person need to be to receive adult and aging services? Adult and aging services, it's usually 50 and older or 18 and older if they have a disability. So for adult protective services, do you find that the victims make the initial contact to you all or is it some other person or organization that makes the phone call?

[00:51:16] and anyone and everyone can call but i will also let valerie cuffee who is the assistant director with that and that program is under her she may have much more detailed information yes often excuse me we receive calls from family members and from the community mostly sometimes there is the call because of all self-neglect that's few though but most is from the community and from the families okay thank you that's a great question great question uh miss um stop uh thank you madam

[00:51:48] chair i know thank you for all the work you and your folks do uh you do great work uh i'm i just have a question on whether you can give us an illustration of a situation where a child's case would not merit uh child protective service attention but would require attention from the department sure um it could be one of several things so maybe there is the child was and i will

[00:52:25] also let valerie answer but maybe the child there's alleged abuse neglect but the child was not allegedly abused or neglected by a caretaker let's say um or the child is um the the um just going to say um sorry i just went right out of my head uh but those are usually um if it's if it's not a caretaker that that's that's the most important um for um rising to the level of child protective services um there are also very strict criteria that the state provides that allows for

[00:53:02] screening in a a case to child protective services and valerie can can provide more information Yes, as Ina said, has to be a caretaker, and this is by code of Virginia, has to be a resident of Loudoun County, and it has to meet the definition of child abuse and neglect, and it has to be child under 17 years of age.

[00:53:24] And some of the instances where we will have often are because of custody disputes, where there is no finding of abuse and neglect, but often in custody cases, there are allegations of neglect and abuse.

[00:53:40] Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Crony. Thank you, Chair Randall. And thank you, Ina, and I appreciate meeting with me and giving me more information. So I'm going to ask some questions about Priority 4.

[00:53:58] So you mentioned that the 12 existing positions that I think were in the item from the Finance Committee actually are not dedicated to domestic and sexual violence, that there's only really three right that are dedicated correct there are there are three they may interact just with many families with which with where we work they may receive services from multiple programs within the department of family services but there are three family services social worker family services support workers that work with families again those that don't may not rise to the level of

[00:54:35] child protective services but have other issues maybe like domestic domestic violence um issues like that those are the those are three of the 12. okay okay so are there are any of the proposed positions do you believe duplicating law services i do not believe they are duplicating law services just as um other organizations we may do very similar work um sheriff's office may have advocates laws has advocates we have advocates they may focus on different areas and and specialties

[00:55:13] and so the more that we can get out there so it doesn't matter where a person comes in to be able to receive services i think that's the most important piece we are there's so much work to go around more work than department family services can do more work than any one agency or anyone nonprofit can do if we all work together and are able to pull our resources that's the best thing that i believe for our community okay so you you don't think the relationship with laws

[00:55:47] would change due to due to the county adding these eight positions no absolutely not in fact there's an rfp out right now they they have they are a core service provider there's an rfp out now for core services domestic violence services and so that is not that that is still going to happen okay and um you hope to collect data on the prevalence right of domestic and sexual violence across the community because we don't know that right now correct that is one of the um that's one of the positions here is to make sure that we are collecting data and again not just from family

[00:56:25] services but this will help the ccr to collect data from multiple agencies multiple non-profits so that this community has a true understanding of the prevalence of domestic and sexual violences. Right, and we don't really know that now.

[00:56:40] Okay. Okay, so I'm getting the point that it's complementary and that, you know, there's an opportunity to kind of partner and collect data and create the CCR. Thank you. Thank you so much. Ms. Brixman.

[00:56:56] Thank you, Madam Chair. On the positions to reduce the caseload, I guess this is your priority one, average caseload per worker, that you're trying to get it to get from 900 cases per worker down to five-something.

[00:57:22] It's my understanding, or I gather, that you're doing this kind of in tranches because you don't necessarily have the capacity to hire everyone, hire and train all that you would need to get your caseload down in the first year.

[00:57:37] Yes, we have been doing this methodically, just like we did with Child Protective Services, and we finally got to a place where the caseloads are manageable. We're doing the same thing with the public benefits team. So last year we asked for a team, and that actually reduced the caseload by 15% directly by hiring those folks. So what we're trying to do is then, again, this year, ask for another team, and technically we'll have to ask for two more down the road to get the caseloads to where we want. Okay, okay.

[00:58:10] Thank you for that. And I think that I think you, with the caseload data, you're really justifying the positions. On your priority number four, have we seen any shrinkage in requests for services out of community fear what's going on with the threat of mass deportations or anything like that we in department of family services have not that's great okay thank you um do you think and i think mr crony covered this but you don't think that this budget request takes away from competes or duplicates services that are already out there i do not i think it augments okay um and will we continue

[00:58:49] to work with our non-profits in the community have good communication with them as we move forward with your vision of what a CCR is? It's essential. And a CCR won't work unless many people are at the table. Right now, even when we thought we had a CCR, it was maybe 10 county agencies and two nonprofits. That is not a CCR. Okay. Thank you. I just would request that that communication be maintained and nurtured. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm happy to support your request. Thank you.

[00:59:24] Mr. Kirshner. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for all the hard work you do. I know sometimes it's rewarding and heartbreaking work, but it's certainly very important, and we do appreciate that, and thank you for coming and presenting your budget today. I just had to -- obviously, the Chair addressed some of the concerns up front.

[00:59:41] I'm obviously a person that is a big believer in the nonprofit market, and I think they provide a tremendous service. And obviously, you know, there have been some concerns expressed about that, and so some of the questions have been asked. I wanted to follow up on some of those quick -- first of all, in any way is this going to be, how would this not replace or do some things different than the Domestic Abuse Response Team are doing currently, if at all? Because you talked about this forming a committee of sorts. Sure. So the DART right now, this is very different than the DART. The DART is more at the staff or mid-level manager. The CCR are, I'll give you an example, I'll

[01:00:21] give you examples of who sits on CCRs in some of our comparator counties. County executives, judges um uh the ceo i see sorry i see i'm listening yes okay so it's people who can make decisions and move the county very similar to what you do you make policy decisions for the for the county right this group will make policy decisions with regards to domestic violence for the community okay you said this will in large part you feel like this will augment

[01:00:57] the services of laws. Can you kind of give me how you believe that? Because I think that's would be helpful in our understanding on whether or not, you know, to give you to support this resource request one way or the other, because obviously I think there's an ongoing concern for that. It would be helpful to hear that publicly. Of course. And I'll also turn it over to Valerie because she can give you the nuts and bolts of the family engagement preservation program, because in that team what we are trying to do is prevent prevent whether it's child abuse neglect domestic violence and whether it's primary secondary or

[01:01:32] tertiary prevention and so when we receive when we are working with families who don't necessarily receive services from another nonprofit whether it's laws or anybody else being able to provide those services in-house with the so that somebody is not receiving services from DFS then has to go somewhere else to receive these services as well and then somewhere else to receive other services.

[01:01:57] If we can do that in-house also, then let's do it so that it frees up another organization or a nonprofit to be able to accept more families. But maybe if you can also provide those specific positions.

[01:02:14] Yes, as Ina was saying, certainly with our nonprofit laws in particular, provides legal support, advocacy, shelter, which we do not. And those that we serve, I would say less than half actually seek those services. So we provide the intensive case management for the services that they are searching for. And it's up to the client to actually decide what it is that they prefer to do. So we work with them with housing, employment,

[01:02:49] actually working through any other safety issue they may have, particularly around the child, child care to make sure that the family will be safe with the decision that they have made. In terms of, so we need that sheltering, we need the legal support, that's another thing too, and advocacy and support groups that actually our nonprofit provides.

[01:03:12] So it's for those families that do not prefer to have those services that we need other services. I'm out of time. Thank you. Mr. Vice Chair Turner. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ms. Hernandez, this is kind of a hypothetical question, but the Congressional Budget Office announced yesterday that there is no way that the Republican budget supported by Mr. Trump can be balanced unless there's pretty significant cuts to both Medicare and Medicaid.

[01:03:42] You're asking for 15 positions from Medicaid, and I know you can't predict the future. But if those drastic cuts in Medicaid came, they could come presumably in the form of lower benefits. And I would think that that would still justify the 15 positions because even though you're paying out less money, you're still processing the same number of claims.

[01:04:01] But it could also come in the form of changes to eligibility, which would radically reduce the number of claims that you would receive. Is there a possibility of stranding the costs of these 15 new positions if suddenly caseload drops off from Medicare cases, and can they be cross-resourced somehow within the department?

[01:04:22] I don't think that with this team, we will still, our caseloads will still be high, or even if they're reduced, then maybe we don't need the team two and three that we're going to ask for in future years. I think we still need this team to reduce cases to about 900, which is still really high.

[01:04:43] That's great. That's what I want to know. Thank you very much. Did you say that a wait time right now when someone's calling in is six minutes? Can you say that again? I'm sorry. A wait time for a phone to be six minutes? Yes, ma'am. That's way too long. Exactly. It's way too long.

[01:04:59] And that didn't happen in a year. It didn't go from eight minutes to six minutes in one year. It did not. was incremental we haven't asked for any positions and the the people that keep coming in it goes up every year yeah I'm going to say that you got to ask for that position because six minutes is a really long time to wait um I have a first statement and then a question um I don't think people under always understand what your office does and what you all do the just the the emotional

[01:05:35] burnout of you all is can be so high it's even higher when you have needs and and you have nowhere for those needs to be met i am always aware that whenever we say yes to a a health and development we want we need homes in loudon county gosh knows we need attainable homes in loudon county but every time we do that every service you're part of the infrastructure and that's needed When I speak on behalf of this board and I say to you, please go back and tell your staff, your line staff, thank you.

[01:06:09] I am not joking. It has been the last, I don't know, five years have been hard, and it may get a little harder going forward. And so much of this will fall on our behavioral health jobs. And I know that you don't interact with us that much.

[01:06:25] We don't see you that much. We're not supposed to. That's the nature of your, because of all, the nature of your job, you're not building development, you're not planning zoning, we're not going to see you as much. And so people can sometimes forget the really hard and good work you're doing because you're not in front of us every week on a land use application.

[01:06:44] So please go back and tell everyone thank you because all of us realize what a incredibly important, incredibly hard job you all are doing every single day. You all are public servants of the highest order. My only question is this, what we know is that we talk about domestic violence, we talk about sexual violence, often when we talk about domestic violence, it's a bruise we can see.

[01:07:09] We haven't talked a lot and need to talk more about emotional abuse, especially in the age of social media and the internet and all those types of things, both in the house and out of the house. We've seen suicide numbers rise. We have 17 veterans a year that commit suicide, 131 veterans a year that die.

[01:07:31] Our suicidology rates among our young people are going up. That all falls under some emotional things. You may not have this answer now, but try to think about how this department and we can help deal with not just physical abuse, but the emotional abuse that we're seeing and that is rising.

[01:07:48] Yes, ma'am. Okay? 100%. 100%. Supervisors, are there any motions on the dais? Seeing none, thank you very much. All right, okay. Health Department and the doctor with the coolest name in the world is going to be joining us. Good evening. Good evening, Madam Chair. I have

[01:08:25] with me tonight Harry Walsh. I'm sorry Dr. Goodfairn, just one second. You all are on page 49 and then 96 and 97 yes thank you thank you i have with me tonight harry walsh our operations officer allison hubbard who's oversees our patient care services and george khan who oversees our environmental health services on page 49 is an item that came before the board in january which a request for additional forty thousand dollars for the louden health commission which would bring

[01:08:58] it to its budget to eighty thousand dollars a year the board approved that in the january business meeting and we have that as a board priority for the two department priorities the first one is on page 96 as you said and currently we have the same staff addressing tuberculosis and pre-nursing home screens in the county and just a second to talk about what each of those do their their disparate functions but historically it worked well to have the same staff do both so if there was an increased demand in one and less than

[01:09:37] the other they could shift and address them because they're both time-sensitive issues for tuberculosis screening because Lowndon County is an international community and tuberculosis is very common globally we have a lot of people who've been infected with tuberculosis who are living in Lowne County. In general, that's not a problem. They're not infectious, they don't pass it on to anyone, but the goal is to get them identified and treated before they become infectious.

[01:10:06] Once they do become infectious, then those same nursing staff very quickly need to identify that individual, make sure they get their proper medications, get isolated, and then also find all their contacts to prevent outbreaks of TB in our community. And we've been very fortunate over last number of years both because of the work they're doing our local doctors and also since our school system has started requiring tuberculosis screening that we we haven't seen as many outbreaks

[01:10:39] and when we do have cases of tuberculosis that are infectious that it's contained those nurses also are also doing our pre-nursing home screens these are required for folks to get medicaid to cover nursing type services and that has a 30-day expectation between the time when someone requests that service and when it's completed it's a metric that's a statewide metric that that's used historically we had been good at it but as the demand has gone up we just haven't been able to meet that and we

[01:11:17] got to a point last year where we were out of compliance over 70% of the time And that means a very long delay in services to people. So what we've been doing is we brought on contract support temporarily to assist them.

[01:11:35] We've also redirected staff from other parts of our health department because these are critical services. But the demand, as you can see on page 96, will just continue to grow as our population ages and as our population grows.

[01:11:51] The second priority is for our rabies program, which is under George, and that's also time-sensitive and continuing to grow as our population grows. That when people are on the WNOD trail in the parks, being with friends, going out to a winery, they may get bitten by a dog, they may get bitten by a skunk, bats in the house.

[01:12:21] And as soon as that exposure occurs, the clock starts ticking, that if we can make sure that the animal that bit that individual or exposed themselves to that individual did not have rabies within 10 days, that saves that individual from having to go through a series of rabies shots to make sure they're safe.

[01:12:37] So, that becomes difficult as the demand keeps going up and up. Similar to what we're doing with our nursing program, we've had to bring on contract support and we've also had to redirect other environmental health specialists to support this program.

[01:12:56] And again, as our population increases, we would just expect more and more people are coming in to contact with animals, so that demand is going to go up as well. So I thank you, and I appreciate any questions or comments you all have.

[01:13:13] I think I just heard you say that you don't want me to go out hiking and camping. That's what you just said. We do want you to. I think you do not want me to go. I think that's what I just heard you say. But if you see it. You really would prefer I don't go. And I'm going to take your advice. Thank you very much. No. I think the extension service would be very mad at me.

[01:13:32] But if you go out and see a very cute animal, do not approach it. You do not have to worry about that with me, Dr. Goodfriend. Anyone have questions for Dr. Goodfriend? Mr. Letourneau. Thank you. So, you know, it's always hard to come in with these and try to understand this. So how many people were working specifically on the nursing home and the TB grants?

[01:13:52] For nursing staff, Ellison, this is in addition to our admin support. How many nurses do we have in the program? So currently we have, let me just get the number right for you, six.

[01:14:09] Six that are dedicated to that program entirely, and we have a contract worker. Is that TB and nursing? Yes. Okay. So this is almost double. Well, six plus the supervisors, so that would be seven. And part of what we want to do is separate out the nursing home screening from the TB so that if there is a demand in one, it doesn't adversely impact the other.

[01:14:36] Yeah. So if I'm just, you know, I'm kind of a numbers guy. go strictly by the data on the increases it's not dramatic i mean it's like five percent on on nursing home in particular tb is more it doesn't it doesn't really net out to doubling the number of positions but i recognize maybe i'm missing something so help me out well part of the nursing home screening is also the timeliness of it so we so we're doing them but we may not be doing them as quickly as we should right we're doing everyone that comes in but as i said you At one point, we were over 70% out of compliance with getting it done within 30 days.

[01:15:14] And again, these are folks that are in need of services that are waiting on them. And it may be 45 days, it may be even longer. Well, I was going to ask, what should be our timeline on that? So the goal, historically, would be to have less than 5%, more than 30 days.

[01:15:29] Because sometimes you can't avoid it. People go on vacation. go on vacation or they miss appointments and we've gotten better in 30 days we want to have them screened yes okay and right now we're not where no even with the additional support that we're bringing on we have a clinic nurse that's supporting them we have a contract worker that's supporting them but even with that we're significantly above the 5% for 30 days okay and then what about on the TV screenings so there are a couple issues with that one

[01:16:03] One is we want people to be able to come in and have minimum barriers to getting screened. So one of the things that limits the growth is the wait time for an appointment to get a TB screen. It's not a requirement?

[01:16:19] There's a requirement for school entry to be TB screened. But in general, we would like anybody if they've had an extended period of time in a country that has active TB to come in, get screened, and get treated. Where do they physically go for that? Excuse me?

[01:16:35] Do they go to their own private practice? Oh, yeah. Many of them can go to their private practices, particularly now that there's a blood test for TB. But a lot of private practices will refer them to us. And also, if that's the only thing they're interested in, they may not want to go set up an appointment, pay for that appointment just to get a TB test.

[01:16:54] They can come to us to have it as standalone service. So we really want to have minimum barriers for someone getting screened and treated so we can have fewer cases spreading in the community. Thank you. Mr. Crony. Thank you, Chair Randall, and thank you, Dr. Goodfriend.

[01:17:10] So I see that you're hiring two positions for the rabies support program. Does that mean that you won't need the long-term contractor anymore? I saw that. Correct. Okay. So you're bringing everything in-house.

[01:17:25] Yes. And that contractor is not something we were funded for on either side. Those are ones that we just saw that there was an immediate need in order to keep folks safe. So, we've been taking that out of our existing operations budget.

[01:17:42] And so, this would allow us to go back to the way it was intended to with having staff provide that service. Okay. And those are the two staff that you need. Okay. Thank you very much. right now in the country there's a lot of discussion about vaccinations just in general overall there is a measles outbreak in West Texas and I think there's been some cases other places I recently was in a room with the new deputy of Health and Human Services who questioned out loud whether vaccines are

[01:18:18] something that are worthwhile and should happen. One of these positions, of course, is the Clinical Health Service Safety Net Services Communicable Disease Prevention Specialist.

[01:18:33] Just in general, what do we -- how do we tackle this issue? And I know this is maybe not one of your positions, but although one of them is for this position, how do we tackle these issues? What do you do if you believe there is an exposure in Loudoun County?

[01:18:50] How do we communicate to people? I mean, overall, we had not seen a measles death in the U.S. in 10 years, and we've had a measles death in the U.S. We've not seen a measles outbreak like this in many years. And I saw something the other day that said anyone who was born before 1970 may want to go get a booster measles shot if they haven't had one, if they never had a booster measles shot since they were a child, may want to go get a booster measles shot.

[01:19:22] That's actually me. So what do we do right now in this moment where people are questioning, do you have an education program that you can say, these are safe vaccinations, and this is how long they've been working, and this is what they look like. How do we lean in to wanting to educate and encourage people to get the knowledge that they need so that they feel safe getting vaccinations and having their children vaccinated?

[01:19:52] And that's an important question, one thing that we're actively working on now. A good thing about being in Loudoun County is that in Loudoun County, we're always one flight away from any disease that's occurring anywhere in the world. And so historically, we would get a measles case in Loudoun County every couple of years.

[01:20:13] And a lot of times that could be Loudoun County residents who start a family here and go back to their country of origin. then the child is not yet fully vaccinated gets measles there comes back in so we've been working with our medical community for a very long time on on educating parents and when it's safe to travel with their kids the importance of vaccination and also amongst particularly our pediatricians the value of vaccination we tend to have a higher vaccination rate overall than than virginia but it is a challenge and and coming out of covid there were there were more and more folks that

[01:20:53] were choosing to come out of the public schools go to private schools and may and may choose not to vaccinate so that is a risk and and in the past we've had pertussis outbreaks amongst unvaccinated populations in the county so it is a continued challenge one of the things that we're doing We've just started being part of Inova's pediatric meetings to be able to share the most updated information.

[01:21:22] We send out clinician letters to our local providers, and we're working on one right now, specifically about measles, because historically we've asked about international travel, but now we really have to start talking about domestic travel in addition to that. And the other is just being a trusted source for folks.

[01:21:42] On my part, I think on Allison's part, we meet with our Northern Virginia counterparts on a regular basis to try to find common messaging that we can use. And I think we're fortunate in Northern Virginia to be able to do that, being in one media market, and to combat with public affairs and others misinformation that may be occurring.

[01:22:05] Any additional thoughts, Allison? Well, we're working on a campaign going into... Put your microphone a little bit closer. Oh, excuse me. Thank you. We're working on a campaign moving forward with PAC so that we can promote immunizations and preventative health care services in adults. So that's coming out. We're really excited about that. That's our initiative for this year.

[01:22:31] It's very hard to change people's minds. There's a lot of information and misinformation out there. So we're going to continue to use trusted resources and provide the information that we have available. And we're also working on updating our website.

[01:22:50] So hopefully people can access information a little bit easier. And also we're just very fortunate to have Dr. Farrell and the Lowne Health Commission to help with that messaging as well. was great yeah well thank you thank you very very much supervisors is there a motion on the dais for the health department seeing none thank you for everything thank you for everything i guess i'm getting a measles shot soon here 1970 that would be you too sir

[01:23:24] okay um inmate sats you are next margaret graham i don't see you there she is she's coming supervisors inmate status is pages 103 to 105. good evening good evening how are you um i'm here i'm margaret graham from the department of mental health substance abuse and developmental services

[01:24:02] nice to meet you nice to meet you as well i'm here this evening with my deputy director shery watson and the medical director dr rameya gupta my budget analyst bobby not your last name Clancher, forgive me. You did not just forget Bobby Clancher's last name.

[01:24:21] Bobby Clancher's name is like the most well-known name in Loudoun County. Forgive me, I'm so sorry. And in the audience is my senior manager of finance, Bina Chundvalal. Thank you for this opportunity to talk a bit about the Department of Mental Health, Substance Abuse, and Developmental Services.

[01:24:38] Our mission is to promote mental, behavioral, and developmental health and wellness by connecting individuals and their families with person-centered, recovery-oriented services and supports in partnership with the Loudoun community. MHSADS staff engage vulnerable people in treatment and support services for mental illness, substance use disorders, developmental delays, or disabilities.

[01:25:02] To support this mission and organize the department programs and services clearly, I bring to your attention some restructuring that has occurred. during this fiscal year 25 the crisis services program was established the department and the budget is now organized across six programs residential services community-based support services outpatient services outreach and coordination services business operations and crisis services the establishment of crisis services aligns existing operations like emergency and co-responder services and organizes the department for future growth and

[01:25:40] development in this area. The MHSADS FY26 requests focus on continued development of behavioral health crisis services, support coordination, and opioid abatement efforts to mitigate harm to the community. With respect to the FY25 resources, it is my pleasure to report that 14 of the 15 positions approved have been filled, including six in support coordination to increase enrollment in the developmental disabilities waivers, five in early intervention to deliver service coordination to children under the age of three at risk

[01:26:16] of or experiencing developmental delays and four in internal operations to support functions in human resources contract and budget management one position is in recruitment an accounting technician to perform revenue collection for billable services it is also my pleasure to report that the mid-year positions approved by the board for two psychiatrists and one psychologist are in recruitment in addition to these positions you supported the construction of the crisis receiving

[01:26:48] and stabilization center and construction has begun yes and in the proposed fy26 budget starting on page 103 i present the cip priority resource request for operations of this new facility specifically one position for an administrator and a request for 7.25 million dollars to award contract for operations through a competitive rfp by january 2026 on page 104 i present the preserve the priority one resource request for 11 support coordination positions and two

[01:27:25] reimbursement positions these positions are required to address the increased enrollment in developmental disability waivers we anticipate waiver enrollment of an additional 250 individuals support coordination is a service mandated by mandated to be provided by the department and the revenue specialist will process the claims submissions on page 105 i present the second priority resource request for an opioid response program coordinator a temporary position was created and the work to mitigate the effects of opiates and other substances on the county is

[01:28:04] ongoing efforts are underway to conduct a community-wide assessment of strengths gaps and opportunities for services across the opioid use substance use system of care this is ongoing work requiring a program coordinator to propose data-driven needs that may be best met through the opioid abatement settlement funds with that my team and I are happy to answer any questions mr.

[01:28:33] Is Leo, can you come, can I get a quick question for you? By law, does it need to be advertised or called the opioid response program coordinated because it was the opioid abatement money?

[01:28:52] Or by law, can we add the words opioid and other addictive substances, something like that, to the program, to the title when it's advertised? You are able to make that addition to it, it is not required by law. Thank you. Okay all right questions for Ms. Graham and her staff. Mr. Letourneau. Thank you.

[01:29:14] Good to see you. Help me just understand a little better the timing on the crisis receiving and stabilization center because it seems like we're planning on an opening in nine months but we have on 27 nine month lead but we have the positions coming on with like a six month lead time and i may just be missing the timeline there um no uh if we can award the contract and start building up the staffing and the training between january through june with an approximate opening

[01:29:53] july 1 of 27. seven sorry the years get old that is what we're shooting for so you need that full year with six months it's six months so okay because you want your start yeah okay services will start you know approximately july 1 of 27 so from january through june 30th recruitment will happen training will happen uh there's probably and is this going to be one big contract to one big contractor that's my hope okay objective is there any concern about the availability of

[01:30:32] contractors to bid on something like this right now i'm i'm gonna say no okay we can revisit that um and the last question status of the co-responder program i feel like up here we made a big deal about it we had a lot of discussion about it we kind of discussed potentially adding more to it if it was successful that we haven't really heard much about it so i'm just kind of wondering how's it going and do we have all shifts covered that we need to have covered or do we you know is that that's something we need to look at? I'm sorry, I had a blip for a minute there. The co-responder is what you're asking? Yeah, when we're dispatching with law enforcement to certain

[01:31:11] calls and things like that. So we are in the, this is the first operational year. It kicked off July 1. Yeah. 24. Right. Thank you. And we are, all of the positions for our department have been filled and the team is up and running. We're evaluating the shift that it's operating is roughly two to 10 Monday through Friday and we're evaluating the calls and the responses to figure out where the expansion will need to happen. I also would like to introduce you if you would like to meet her

[01:31:50] to our newest assistant director Tamela Watkins who has joined the department and has been deep diving into this with that team. Okay I only have 10 seconds. Oh sorry. I just is there any chance we're going to need that in this coming fiscal year because the way this is going to go now you're not going to if there is a need for an expansion it's not going to happen no before as i was preparing for this um we fully talked it out with the team with the sheriff's office and for now we're good and we're evaluating what we need to come forward in 27. miss watkins

[01:32:26] can feel free to stand up though oh i'm so nice to meet you thank you um and i do plan to bring an information item about the progress of that team sometime soon thank you mr crony uh thank you chair randall so and hello good to see you so um the right help right now the governor's right help right now plan does that include any funding i mean it sounds like he's got this plan and does it include any funding to localities to do this right help right now i thought i'd just

[01:33:02] at this there was some money for some things but not for the development of the support coordination positions to enroll the expansion of the individuals into the waiver okay okay so that so the priority yeah with the with the Medicaid there's no no funding for that from the state right the Medicaid yeah I'm gonna try to explain this in the simplest way possible under his right help right now, he prioritized the elimination of the priority one waiver waiting list across

[01:33:38] the state. I believe there were about 3,500 individuals waiting to access waiver services. In order to eliminate that waiting list, the state match has to be put out so that they can draw down the federal match for the services that are funded by Medicaid. Case management, support coordination, is a required service to enroll somebody in the waiver. Case management is by code required to be delivered by the CSBs to individuals to access the waiver and they did not, it is a Medicaid billable service and the Right Help Right Now program didn't advance any

[01:34:15] money to develop these positions but they've developed the waivers which benefits the people who've been on the waiting list for a very long time. Wow, thank you for that. That was very comprehensive yes thank you thank you oh miss graham how far you have come with these questions that was fantastic mr turner thank you madam chair so let me restate that i think very briefly so it sounds to me like the the virginia government provided funding for the waivers

[01:34:52] but did not provide funding for the support staff that's going to be necessary to process the waivers for the case management staff case management staff so what we're funding here is case management staff the money for the actual waivers is coming from Virginia and the federal government yes partnership between the department of medical medicaid medical assistance services and centers for medicaid and medicare services got it so in a nutshell if i have this right and you don't have to answer this if you don't want Virginia said we're going to get rid of this waiting list and we're going to access and we're going to provide the match money so the federal government can

[01:35:29] provide the money for the waivers. Localities you go out and pay for the support staff to make this program work. Yes and the services of the case managers as they build up their caseloads are eligible to be billed to Medicaid but the startup has to happen now. Which is being cut. Which is being cut.

[01:35:49] Yes. Okay I'm just I'm making a political point and it's probably not appropriate but that I did understand that the money is going to pay for the waivers but we need to pay for the support staff to, case workers to administer that? Yes. Okay.

[01:36:04] Thank you. Okay. Well, I'm not going to, I'm not going to make political points up here. If I need to do that, I'll, I don't know, call Ms. Priestman or Mr. Turner or somebody do that later on.

[01:36:20] I am, I am, after coming back from National Association of Candidates, I am very worried about not Medicare money as much, but Medicaid money as much, and I think that there need to be really smart minds sitting down to figure out how to deal with possible, plausible Medicaid cuts that are coming down the line. I'm also worried about what we're going to start seeing in home health care and a whole lot of different things that I'm worried about right now, but you know, that's -- we'll get there when we have more information. Right now, it's very -- it's

[01:36:58] all -- it's up in the air. We just don't know what's going to happen yet. And so, as my Uncle Charles said, I'm not going to waste a good worry until I need to really get to that place. I have two questions. Mr. Rogers answered one of them. It is so important to me, that we don't just talk about a single substance, and especially in advertising for a new position, that we don't just talk about a single substance, because right now some

[01:37:33] of the harm we're seeing with vaping, with some of the things that have been added, it's It's not just opioids, and we really have got to get away from talking about a single substance versus the disease of substance dependence. I know you know that already.

[01:37:49] I do have one question. I don't remember what -- I'm going to say the word nonprofit, although that may not be the right word. What is the other nonprofit agency that gets money through Inmate Sad, that it travels through Inmate Sad to that organization?

[01:38:05] Is it ECHO? So ECHO is one of the employment and day support providers that we purchase services for individuals who've completed their high school term. Yeah, so it's not, is there any other program that we, that service that money flows through inmate SADS to another, to one of our other nonprofits or another organization?

[01:38:30] Is there any one? Not that I'm aware of, but we have many agreements that, based on the presentation of, an individual we purchase services for them that are within a specialty that maybe we don't have that they need yeah maybe I'm thinking of echo it might be echo claim I remember whatever I'm thinking I remember that was the one that for came to us my very first year for more money from the county and then that's when I found out that that the relationship with that organization in the county but I thought it was echo but maybe not maybe not all right well as I

[01:39:09] said to Ms. Fernandez, please go back and thank your staff for what you all do. It is amazing work. I think it's going to get harder, to be honest, for a lot of reasons. Medicare and other reasons being them, but please go back and thank them. Dr. Gupta, I think you are a rock star. I think you are just fantastic. Thank you for everything you do. Margaret, great job. Thank you very much supervisors are there any emotions on Margaret hold on oh by the way that's Bobby Clancher I'd like you to meet him he's a good guy really he's lived a

[01:39:48] loud in like his whole life or something right but there you go supervisors are there any emotions on the day is for this department seeing none thank you very much I appreciate it so let's do one more let's shoot up one more before get to um before we go to uh a break um and you know what i'm actually gonna i'm gonna skip the one that i'm gonna go to economic development and um i'll come back to building development and go to economic development uh i think it's a little bit easier and and we get to let buddy drive his very long drive home so let's go economic development which is on pages 78 and 79.

[01:40:28] Good evening, Mr. Reiser, and congratulations on all the many, many awards you have been receiving recently. Thank you, Chair Randall, and good evening, everyone. I was on the phone with a colleague from another jurisdiction earlier today, and he was telling me how much he was dreading the budget process that he was going to go through this year, and it reminded me how lucky I am to work in Loudoun County.

[01:40:53] Loudoun is one of America's great economic success stories, and that success has been driven by, in large part at least, by the growth in the commercial tax base, both in square feet and in valuation. As you heard in the county administrator's budget presentation, the increase in assessed value of the commercial property in Loudoun is up 50% this year and is projected to go up another 10% next year. As of today, DED has announced 110 wins, 3,882 jobs, and $7.6 billion in investments so far in this fiscal year. Job growth year over year in Loudoun is 4.3%,

[01:41:31] the fastest growth of any large county in Virginia. But one of the things that we are very excited about is the amount of businesses that we have been able to touch over the last few years. One of our asks tonight, actually both of our asks tonight, is as a result of our success in these outreaches. Our rural programming, our Launch Loudon program, and our minority-owned business initiatives have greatly increased the number of businesses that we're working with. In order to serve them with the same high quality our customers are accustomed to, we are asking for a second

[01:42:07] business assistant specialist or ombudsman to assist these specific businesses. Second, we're asking for another marketing resource to support our outreach and business development efforts. The amount of marketing, earned media, business development support, and digital optimization provided by our small team is extraordinary, but in order to meet the needs of our evolving strategy, we need more capacity in that function.

[01:42:32] And with that, I'm happy to take any questions. And that's why I want what you can do to be just that fast. Supervisor's question for Mr. Reiser. Mr. Letourneau. Yeah, I lied. Sorry. Something you said just popped in my head. Do you have enough space in your – I know at one point we were kind of close.

[01:42:49] Were you able to work that out? Yes, we've actually expanded, and we are going through a renovation to have enough room for each of these and actually a large conference room that will seat 40 people on the eastern part of the county, which is going to be a real benefit not only to our department but to other meetings in that part of the county.

[01:43:09] Yeah, I really love having meetings in your offices because it's just such a great – not that there's anything wrong with this place but it's it's such a great environment people come in it's impressive so a bigger space is fantastic yeah okay thank you good thank you thank you well i actually used to start off by saying why we're successful we're successful mostly because of you we're successful you do an amazing amazing job i was also on a phone call with with chief elected officials and they were limiting their budget and i told him i have i have almost survivor's guilt right now with how well we're doing so thank you for everything mr reiser and let's get you out of here supervisors do you have any emotion on the

[01:43:48] day as for this department seeing none thank you very much mr reiser congratulations again supervisors let's take a 10 minute break yeah there's dinner let's take a fifth break

[01:44:03] like eat slow what are you doing stop i have forgot i have forgotten that

[02:11:44] i was like yeah this is ridiculous don't yet really seriously okay yes we are back more budget more budget and now it's building and development would everyone please come up huh i know you guys just come up say hi and we're going to be like you're good thank you bye-bye exactly pages 56

[02:12:24] through 58 building development so good evening and um board members i will make it quick um so excuse the mask if you can't hear me i can pull it down but i've got a head cold and i don't want want to get anybody else sick. We can hear you fine and appreciate you putting the mask on. You're fine. Building and Development has identified four resources totaling 10 positions, which we believe will benefit the department in its mission to serve the people of Loudoun County and align with

[02:12:59] the Board of Supervisors' goals and initiatives. Several of these positions were identified in the Alvarez and Marcel assessment presented to you and discussed on December 3rd 2024. In addition to this assessment, DBD has embarked on updating or creating a strategic plan for the department, which helped inform the most needed positions this year and hopefully into future years.

[02:13:24] A brief summary of the request is as follows. In the permits division, we're requesting that the four of the seven temporary technician positions be converted to permanent to allow us to sustain the progress we've made in the permit processing timelines.

[02:13:45] We are also requesting a building permits manager in that division to help support the addition of the new technicians permanently and the call center that we have identified as a tool to assist with our customer service in this area.

[02:14:02] The second request is a technical administrative support team, which will include a FOIA/records manager. DBD is a large department with a large number of FOIA requests, and it houses a lot of documents, and therefore there's a need for a designated expert to manage these programs, which are currently being led and supported by our customer service ombudsman, reducing her ability to provide those customer service opportunities.

[02:14:34] The A&M assessment did identify the need for additional customer service and land development, and this position, we feel, is the best way to accomplish that goal. A training coordinator, which we identified the need for this position to address several recommendations in the A&M report, the succession and development plan, and we believe that training could include landmark training for both internal and external customers, including even your board aides, which we've started to do.

[02:15:05] A cross-training program implementation to help support the Succession and Professional Development Plan, a safety program, DEIA awareness and training, and the management of the certifications for the staff of 200 people. And finally, an admin manager was identified as a need to provide dedicated support team within our admin division to the administrative needs of the department, including consistency in recruiting, correspondence, reporting, and other administrative needs department-wide.

[02:15:44] We currently do not have any administrative support in three of our six divisions. And then finally, two project manager technicians on our engineering division to support industry in completing the final steps to obtain their approvals and proceed to construction.

[02:16:01] These positions would also support the FOIA coordinator in gathering information related to engineering applications, and this would allow senior-level engineers to complete their more technical, detailed work on time and efficiently.

[02:16:17] We believe the approval of these resources will support the department in developing our five-year strategic plan, continuing to implement the succession and professional development, including implementation of our cross-training program and the recommendations provided in the A&M report. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

[02:16:35] You said you have lots of FOIAs, and me and Mr. Kirsten both were like, really? It just never crossed our mind that you'd be a department that had lots of FOIAs, but okay. Mr. Letourneau. Yeah. So the chart on our page 56, which is percentage of permits, not meaning on time goal, was a little alarming. It's certainly alarming where it was, but I also am a little concerned because we don't seem to, I mean, 45% is the FY27 goal, I guess, or rejection, even after you get these positions.

[02:17:15] And quite frankly, I wonder, no, because that's what it looks like here. In July or August, when this was first put together and the data was collected, that was pretty much where we were. We did not yet, even in June and July, if you remember, we had our zoning staff problems in the spring of 2024.

[02:17:39] And so when we were putting together this budget request and some of that data for this budget request, it was really based on FY24 numbers. where it was 81 it looks like and so we set our goals based on what we thought was reasonable okay made incredible progress what do you think what do you think the new goal is well let me just tell you that i have some numbers today where we are which i think and before you do that i was going to ask you whether we're giving you enough quite frankly to make sure we get that number down so that's where i was going but we absolutely believe that you are giving us enough and and

[02:18:14] And again, if not, I don't want to over hire, but currently the divisions on time goals are being met currently 76% of the time. Oh, okay, that's way better than this. And certain application types -- I got to be honest, I didn't -- I asked the budget question on this and that was not in the answer, so.

[02:18:35] So I think there was some confusion in that answer because I read that in the packet that came out, and Supervisor Sainz asked a similar question that was in the packet before, and that information was in Supervisor Sainz's response, but somehow it didn't get incorporated, so I don't know where -- so we can certainly provide that in the next update, but we've really done a great job of cross-training people, which was a lot of our on-time where if somebody was out of the office, applications in a certain category fell well behind.

[02:19:11] So I have a lot more numbers. I won't share them with you, but our overall is about 76 percent. And you think it's going to continue to improve? A little bit. I think we can -- Is there a certain amount that you're just never going to get to 100 for various reasons? Absolutely. Okay. Anything you can elaborate on that?

[02:19:27] It could be information not provided by an applicant that we request. So we start the process, but we can't complete it because we need more information and we sort of set it aside on hold. Computer glitches that we just sort of miss.

[02:19:42] um yeah we have one of those yeah okay okay well good but yeah we're going to continue to work to improve that but but we do think we can sustain that with these well these five positions because i think the supervisor is as important as the technicians um i currently have a real leadership gap in that group as well thank you uh mr crony i thank you chair randall and thank you miss smith for your presentation and all the ftes so i have a question the a and m study recommended a front a front desk position did you hire that or is that not it's not i didn't see it in here so

[02:20:22] so the foia and records coordinator position that i requested currently we have a customer service ombudsman okay most of you know her um amy larrick oh yeah is our customer service ombudsman but she is spending greater than 50 of her time assisting with foia records and some of those other administrative functions that sort of got assigned because there was nobody else to do it

[02:20:55] so we felt that hiring the foyer position and really allowing amy to do her job as that front desk front service ombudsman that she was really hired to be a more efficient way to achieve that goal okay um one idea because i see how high it's 780 i guess in fy 2027 foyer requests so i went to uh something at nico and they said that ai could help with some of these records record management i don't know something to think about in the future but um as they increase maybe look at ai um that

[02:21:33] was something that um was discussed at an eco conference you know how we could leverage that where you wouldn't need as many hands-on staff through technology so just an idea we've also considered the website yeah and whether there's um ways now that landmark is is becoming much more efficient are there ways that we can use you know standard reports that that we do get a lot of foyer requests from industry on that they know that's a good idea obtain themselves rather than utilizing staff time stop time okay thank you mr. Kirschner oh you took the light off okay

[02:22:12] mr. Brixman thank you madam chair and thank you for this information and for clarifying the percentages that are on time now I think that's really great because I think you were rivaling our elections department with the FOIA requests my question is as the on time rates improve do you think the FOIA requests will go down and maybe I'm making an assumption that people are filing FOIA requests because they're trying to get information as to

[02:22:48] the delay of their of their you know permits or applications so do you think that the FOIA requests might get reduced as we improve our response time? Unlikely. What we have found is significantly decreased since our on time.

[02:23:05] We launched a status request form on the webpage during the height of the delay, and the number of those requests has significantly reduced over the last couple of months since applications have been on time.

[02:23:25] And so have the Lex requests related to where it is, and so those were more Lex than FOIA. The other thing we've seen is really a decrease in phone calls, because people aren't calling to question where their plans are, and we're really finding that it is the ones that are truly stuck somewhere, or there's truly a problem.

[02:23:47] So that efficiency has helped the four permit technicians with the call lines. So why are the FOIAs, then? The FOIAs are people that want to know what's going on with a data center application, or they want to know what's going on next door to them. Their neighbor has done some work.

[02:24:04] Do they have appropriate permits for it? They want to know how many building permits we've issued this year. People just want to know what their neighbors are doing. Okay. Thank you for that. I'm happy to learn something new every day.

[02:24:21] I'm happy to support your request. Thank you. I love my county. This is the thing. Stop snitching on people. Everybody's much business. What is that? What is that? Or go talk to your neighbor.

[02:24:39] I agree. Also that. So I love you, Loudoun County. But, yeah, snitch culture's got a little out of hand around here a little bit. Just go talk to people. Does anyone else have any questions? You guys have done such good work, and it's a heavy lift in Loudoun County right now.

[02:24:57] and we know that and we appreciate that so thank you very much paulie it's going to be up here for every department with us after you're doing not a problem sir not a problem all right suppose are there any motions on the dais somebody behind you had a motion no you're good okay all right seeing them thank you very much we appreciate it thank you all very very much all right supervisors

[02:25:22] let's go to housing and community development we all right we used to be in here with us poor leo poor mr goldman he has to come up for two departments hello how are you all doing there you go all right so good evening chair randall and board members in attendance to my

[02:25:56] left is the department assistant director mr brian reagan and also the program manager for housing choice voucher vouchers miss timmy myers and then we also have our finance program manager in the back behind us to help us as well.

[02:26:15] And of course, you already know our OMB budget partner, the infamous Bobby Clancher. - Good job, George, you remembered his name, very good. - I practiced to make sure I got that right. Our resources is located on pages 98 through 100 for three positions, housing support specialist, housing inspector, and housing counselor.

[02:26:41] Department of Housing and Community Development has made some significant achievements aligned to you know the department's governance and operations of his programs several programs being customer service finance and development housing choice voucher entitlement block grant policy rental and home ownership and and finance and development but however there are still some improvements needed in service delivery of housing assistance programs and program compliance upkeep that the three positions in a department's resource

[02:27:19] request can help mitigate risk to department to department programs so the housing support specialist position also known in a department as the housing generalist is needed to address the gap in customer service for in-person or phone calls from customers primarily trying to decide you know what type of of housing assistance is needed and what the customer is eligible for currently when a customer visits or calls the department about available assistance there are about 14 different housing assistance programs listed in housing flyers packets and online that customers are provided

[02:27:58] to navigate a customer to an applicable housing assistance program requires a housing support specialist with a general knowledge of department services also the type of service needed requires more experienced licensed counselor to handle housing requests for scenarios related to domestic violence child protective services or severe health and mental issues department staff currently providing service are not qualified in these cases to address the overlying issue for housing assistance whereas a housing support specialist can be recruited with qualifications to do so

[02:28:35] the department is currently covering this requirement by diverting three personnel assigned to other department programs to provide this level of support and you know the impact of that is lost time and deliverables for these other program areas the department track the service provided in a number show that between November 2023 to November 2024 staff provided in person support on average of about 37 visitors and then 32 phone on average 32 phone calls per month. So staff has also responded to requests for information through our organizational

[02:29:12] email box as well. Additionally, the housing inspector position is needed to sustain inspection requirements for initial program certification of housing voucher rental assistance by annual inspections for recertification or when there is an emergency inspection needed for residents.

[02:29:33] Not only would this position service the housing choice voucher program, but additionally housing inspections are needed to to meet the state rental assistance program requirements in support of people with developmental disabilities requiring independent rental housing this position would also be needed for the county's implementation of a tenant-based rental assistance program using home funds currently there is only one staff member performing all inspections should this staff member take leave or be sick the inspections for that time are rescheduled

[02:30:05] since 2024 the average number of inspections has also increased by about 73 percent additionally failure to complete timely inspections in accordance with hud's reporting requirements could result in loss of funding or reduction in available vouchers for future fiscal years and then last an additional housing choice voucher counselor is needed to improve the program's processing of applicant requests currently there are about six counselors managing an average of 203 caseloads per counselor per year adding another counselor will reduce the average caseload to

[02:30:43] 147 cases per counselor to accommodate increased number of 170 households receiving rent subsidies in 2020 fiscal year 2024 and about 76 so far in fiscal year 2025. Providing a manageable caseload size is critical for service to county residents applying for rent subsidies payments to leasing office or landlords and timely completion of annual housing choice voucher reporting requirements this concludes my comments and we look forward to the opportunity to address any questions from

[02:31:19] thank you very much mr govan supervisors questions for this department miss umstead thank you madam chair uh george um thanks for pointing out all the different programs that have to be navigated and do so i'm i'm going to just say what this this apparent uh law is called personal responsibility and work opportunity reconciliation act of 1996 that was mentioned in

[02:31:56] a 2023 congressional report and it allows for undocumented immigrants to get certain kinds of housing assistance but not all types of housing assistance so what i got from this law is the county itself may not be able to give housing assistance to undocumented immigrants but

[02:32:33] non-profits are a curve a carve out under that law and they are allowed to provide undocumented immigrants with housing assistance. How do we, when someone contacts us, and I assume many times they might go through the Department of Family Services as their first stop at the county, but how do we determine how to direct these folks, whether we can help them or whether they need to

[02:33:06] be referred to a non-profit when we do intake do we do we get information about immigration status that can help us direct them to an entity that can actually help them so i'll give you the big picture of the intake process when a customer either comes through our doors or gives us a phone call and then i'll go i'll pass to the team to go you know a little bit deeper into the technical aspects since you identified an act.

[02:33:38] So from an intake standpoint, as I stated earlier, with the housing support specialists, and we have three folks already performing those duties, we sit them down. If we need translation services, we have that ability to perform translation services as well.

[02:33:56] And then we ask particular questions as far as their locality, how long they've been, those type of urging type questions, how long they've been in the location here in the county and so forth in order to glean that level of information in order then to determine technically whether they are eligible for the different types of services that we provide.

[02:34:27] - Also I guess the big determinant also is where the source of funds is coming from. Usually with a lot of our federal programs, They do require documentation of some sort. So, for as an example, the Housing Choice Voucher Program, just one member of the household needs to be, needs to have a legal presence in the United States.

[02:34:44] Now, the assistance will be prorated based on the number of legal residents that are in the household, but they still can participate. Other programs such as the ADU Rental Program, which is a local program, just requires one form of government ID and does not necessarily require legal presence.

[02:35:01] - Thank you. mr crony thank you chair randall thank you mr urban so um how much uh it looks like it was the u.s department of housing and urban development awarded the 2.6 million in 2023 how much is left for that housing voucher program was that amount for the federal from a federal government standpoint yeah we will have to go back and research that okay we probably can tell you i don't know that

[02:35:38] that will be renewed so i'm just wondering how much is left and how many more vouchers are we going to issue or have we issued them all so from our standpoint working with our hud counterparts we're still seeing funding notices come through for several of our programs including our voucher programs i can have the team talk further about that but we're in constant coordination in meetings with them and so we have not seen any indication as of yet of any

[02:36:10] impacts of any executive orders or other actions that's taken yeah how many so we continue to get more funding for about your programs we do continue to receive our monthly disbursement from HUD to assist the households that we currently have but we do not have any additional funding at this time to issue additional vouchers from our waiting list and what's the waiting list we have a little over 900 applicants on our waiting list currently and we're not taking any new applications at this time just because the wait time is so long

[02:36:48] it's an expected three-year wait time and how many are being how many are in the housing voucher program how many do we have total how many are getting we currently have we're assisting 795 households which includes port ins from other jurisdictions um and those are you know different varieties of vouchers we have special purpose vouchers and regular vouchers okay but you said it looks like it's newly assisted households

[02:37:20] of 157 so that that's the ask for the positions right there's going to be more coming is that yes because of the set aside funding that we received in 2023 we were able to bring those additional households onto the program and existing staff covered those new cases it was it was tough but they made it happen and so yeah now we're at a position where we need to maintain those households on our program okay thank you miss bricksman thank you madam chair i'm happy to

[02:37:56] support your your requests uh your resource requests um i i was curious about the housing counselor position you may recall when we started our rental assistance program that there were some issues with folks being able to fill out the forms there were language barriers and those sorts of things and i was sort of advocating for some sort of a liaison that could help with those sorts of forms is that what the um is that what this housing counselor position is going to be no it - It would be the Housing Support Specialists.

[02:38:32] - Okay, great. So with the Housing Support Specialists, are you going to make sure that they have the ability to speak multiple languages? - That's correct. Right now, prior to coming to the board for that position and the folks that are currently performing that, we have a translation capability for at least, what, over 10 to 15 languages that we can have access to to support folks in filling out forms or just generally talking to them to understand the different assistance that they're eligible for.

[02:39:11] - But for this position, will you try to hire someone or make it a requirement that they speak something other than English, one or two? - So I will say we would have to work with HR as far as their competitive recruiting policies order to make sure you know to take advantage of that okay and then um so this position then that will help folks with those services will we then i don't know if loan is the right word but say we have a non-profit that's processing the rental assistance assistance like we do now will this

[02:39:49] specialist be able to help them as well or would they be required to have their own sort of liaison so we coordinate with our non-profits uh and we make every available ability to provide them support within the contracts and within the agreements that we have with them but if there's a need to look at that we would do that as well okay okay thank you so much uh george i this may not be and brian and everyone this may not be you all's department i'm actually not sure this may be a planning and zoning question, so if it's not, they're up next.

[02:40:26] When we get phone calls of homes, apartments that are in not acceptable condition, that they have water that is not running correctly, that they have fire, one house had water coming through the roof that literally dislodged a fire extinguisher so now they have flooding and stuff but also no fire extinguisher if they have railing that is that is shaky if they have um vermin in

[02:41:01] their in their apartment buildings when we get calls of homes of apartments that are just being The standards are just below what is appropriate for human residents to live there.

[02:41:19] Is that a phone call to Fair Housing? Is it a phone call to plan and zoning? Is it a phone call for this new housing inspector we're going to have? Or is that person, I mean, obviously, I know that they're doing inspections of new homes. Who are we calling in county government?

[02:41:35] Because these calls do come. last time we had this happen at a at a apartment building in it was actually sterling address Bruce Cascades I made a phone call and send the letter to the Fair Housing Board which I used to be the chair of and the the landlord ended up selling the apartment building and it got better but we also have I have two of these phone calls coming in right now but we have phone calls coming in right now for two places there in Leesburg where do we where do we put these calls when when when the landlords are the owners of the apartment buildings are not

[02:42:12] meeting their their tenants basic health and safety requirements that they the tenants are paying for who takes that call so I'll talk at a top level we've have seen instances where we have customer inquiries with challenges with their living arrangements, their landlords.

[02:42:36] We first try to, you know, itemize a look at what the situation is before we say go to our fair housing, you know, coordinator. Our fair housing coordinator would then make contact in order to just make sure that the situation is aligned to the fair housing acts or applicable laws and regulations that's, that's, you know, implied.

[02:42:58] I'll pass to you. I guess in general, it wouldn't be a question that would be settled through the Department of Housing and Community Development. We would refer them to either building and development or planning and zoning for further addressing.

[02:43:14] Now, if it is a program participant, like in the Housing Choice Voucher Program. Okay. Okay. I see. We could address through the landlord. Okay. I got you. So planning and zoning is up next, and so I will ask that question. Like I said, last time I made a phone call to Richmond.

[02:43:31] I'm chair. If you're willing to entertain, Mr. Krobath can come up and talk a little bit about this issue. I would say if you have that issue to either refer that to me or refer it to Mr. Krobath. It depends on what the issue is.

[02:43:47] Definitely if there's code-related issues, that could be either the building code or it could be the property maintenance code, which would right now is kind of enforced through our zoning enforcement division.

[02:44:12] However, I think Mr. Krobath can talk to some additional sections of the building maintenance code that the county could adopt that we haven't currently adopted that would also address some of those concerns with respect to some of the things that you listed, which are kind of building maintenance types things that are code related. But if you're willing to entertain it, I think Mr. Krobath can talk a little bit about that. I would absolutely entertain Mr. Krobath's answering this for me. But that would not be DHCD.

[02:44:28] Okay. All right. So thank you, Madam Chair and board members. So Mr. Hempstreet described it very well. There are nuances that determine whether it's a building code issue or a zoning building maintenance code issue.

[02:44:47] Building maintenance code, the building maintenance code official is the zoning enforcement division director within planning and zoning, and there are chapters within the Virginia maintenance code that the board has adopted predominantly those are around the structural stability of the building or the exterior conditions of the building we are we have not adopted those provisions as i interpret the the scenario that you described that you know goes into the building but mr hemstreet

[02:45:25] said it best funnel those to him to myself to director galindo or to keith fairfax that division manager okay all right um i'd like to have further conversations because i think we need to do that yes thank you mr crowbar thank you everyone from um from the housing department we appreciate you very very much and thank you for all of the briefings you've been giving us throughout the week i think you have what two more to go mr mr leterna mr mr kirschner everybody else has been done correct you have those two those two and one more uh supervisor turner and glass as well okay so you have a lot more to go because you've done five you've got four more to go got you

[02:46:04] yes i am though because you will answer my text that's right that's the revenge um supervisors did we have any motions on the days for this department i did not think so thank you all very much appreciate you mr clancher can you go home now all right the person that we spend no time with we barely see we don't talk to very often the next department is building planning and zoning and some guy named dan galindo who none

[02:46:39] of us ever get to talk to is coming to the table and with paul paul back you all are on pages um 110 page 110 we're ready when you are thank you madam chair Good evening. I am Dan Galindo, Director of Planning and Zoning, and I'm happy to be before you tonight with Deputy Director Judy Burkett to represent the Department of Planning and Zoning and its hardworking staff. For many years, DPZ has maintained a heavy workload of board-directed projects that plan for and or regulate land development and economic development within

[02:47:19] Loudoun County. These assignments include zoning ordinance amendments, comprehensive plan amendments, and historic preservation projects resulting from staff recommendations or board member initiatives. Such projects result in time-intensive DPZ assignments that are of significant importance to Loudoun County residents and businesses. In addition to these projects that the Board receives quarterly updates on with our quarterly development work plan items, the majority of DPZ staff handle daily activities related to land development review, enforcement of adopted regulations, and customer service. The Department's resource requests for fiscal year 2026 are focused on improving our ability to conduct this vital work. As the Board is aware, in 2024,

[02:47:58] Alvarez and Marcel conducted assessments of the Loudoun County legislative and administrative development review processes. These assessments recommended improvements to communication and operating practices, workforce resilience, employee development, and optimization of technology usage, as well as the creation of new staff positions. After a thorough review of the assessment's findings, department leadership determined additional key areas where staffing constraints currently result in bottlenecks of reviewer capacity and managerial oversight that slow the review process. We also identified risk areas where the loss of a single staff member would result in significant negative impact to the department's ability to meet its regulatory

[02:48:37] mandates and desired service levels. In total, the Department of Planning and Zoning is requesting 10 positions spread across numerous divisions to add staff capacity and reallocate job responsibilities to improve the efficiency and quality of the development review process. Senior Planner and Planner 3 positions in proper management along with Planner 3 and Planner 2 positions in zoning administration would relieve existing staff of extra assigned activities and enable senior staff to address more complicated applications and respond to higher priority information requests a new division manager in land use review would provide additional senior management oversight capacity for a division that experiences frequent staffing turnover

[02:49:15] and a planning technician would assist with the administrative functions associated with the project management of legislative land use applications an archaeology technical assistant position and community planning, and a GIS planner in the customer service center would build capacity in areas with no current backup positions within the department, and any significant vacancy of either existing position would result in significant negative impact to the department's ability to meet its regulatory mandates and thoroughly review applications.

[02:49:42] The addition of a training manager position would provide dedicated training for the department's staff and customers to improve process efficiency, and a human resources generalist would reduce executive leadership's human resources workload allowing time to be reallocated to oversight of the development process and other important departmental needs in the past year the department has completed phase one of the preservation equity initiative the prime agricultural soil and cluster zoam the rural historic village classification cpam and achieved a national historic landmark designation for the charles hamilton houston courthouse in addition we have

[02:50:18] initiated and are currently managing 10 cpams and zoams along with the runway 30 aviation noise mitigation project meanwhile we continue to process hundreds of active legislative applications and 100 more reviews and enforcement actions every year we anticipate and are cautiously looking forward to another busy year and we appreciate the board's continued support for the department of planning and zoning staff this concludes our presentation and we are happy to respond to any questions i was going to say some good things to you two said cautiously like that and then emphasis intended um supervisors uh mr crony thank you chair randall and thank

[02:50:56] you dan and judy for all that you guys do we know that you're very very busy um overworked frankly so i'm happy to support all these positions but i wanted to ask if the six positions in the special project division got hired from last year from fy 2025. so we have currently hired the division manager and one of the five senior planners. We have just finished conducting second interviews for essentially all four of the open senior planner positions and are preparing offers to people for all four positions right now. Okay. So you think it will be done shortly

[02:51:30] by? I hope so. I would love to be. Wonderful. All right. Thank you. Okay. Well, Dan, you are just fantastic. No kidding. I mean, just listing off that little bit of what you just listed off of how much your department has done and is doing is just amazing it is absolutely amazing um you need every one of these positions um and you know i what is so so phenomenal about your staff is you know i'm not going to it's not up to me to see whether you're overworked but you

[02:52:06] all you work very hard and you're very busy but you're also very responsive and i and i appreciate that and then i actually appreciate that you have taught me so much um you have slowly walked me through things that if I didn't understand something about planning and zoning, because it's a lot, it's a lot to understand.

[02:52:22] You have slowly walked me through things, which you all have done just in, you know, the rural ZOM and all those things. It's incredible. So I can't imagine anyone will have any issue with any of these positions.

[02:52:39] But really, seriously, thank you and thank your staff because you all work very, very hard. Supervisors, are there any motions on this dais? I told you. Next time you can let me cut and set a body. See, see, see, we're always this close, Dan.

[02:52:57] We're always this close. Thank you, Dan. Thank you. Judy, you keep him nice, though. Try him. Paul, can you now go home? All right. Transportation and capital infrastructure, we are in the homestretch now.

[02:53:16] We have two more to go.

[02:53:21] uh hello hello how are you all right um transportation and capital infrastructure

[02:53:59] mr jones we are ready when you are so you guys are on page what 114 114 very good all right thank you chair randall and board members um i'm vincent jones and on behalf of dtci we appreciate the opportunity to provide an overview of our fiscal year 26 resource requests first i'd like to introduce our team this evening. I have Amber Stiles from OMB. We have Lou Moserak, our Assistant Director for Transportation Planning and Traffic Engineering, and also our newest member, Heather Dietz. She's our Assistant Director for Transportation Design and Construction.

[02:54:39] With us in the audience, we have Mr. Don Breedice, our Facilities Assistant Director, followed by Rosario Larraki, our Assistant Director for our Renovations and Design Group. We also have some of our support staff here as well Laura Dove and Harvey Cornwell out in the audience. As a brief update DTCI is actively working to address our fiscal year 25 approved resource requests. Our transportation design and construction division has filled a utility program manager and utility manager positions important to our transportation projects. Our facilities

[02:55:17] division is currently recruiting for a program manager and two new planning development manager positions. These are new positions to the department, and so they will form a planning team in our facilities division. The department's request for fiscal year 26 includes six positions to improve efficiency, project delivery, and improve management of administrative efforts.

[02:55:41] A deputy director, a human resources program manager, and an accountant as part of the administrative division, and a transportation planning program manager, a transportation Planning Assistant Program Manager and a Transportation Planner for the Transportation Planning and Traffic Engineering Division. In 2024, DTCI began working with the management consulting firm Zellos to conduct an organizational analysis and provide recommendations for focusing the department's operations on the successful and timely delivery of projects and optimizing

[02:56:17] the department's operations. The firm's initial analysis recommended increased administrative and management staffing to support strategy, policy, leadership, budget, finance, and technology functions.

[02:56:32] So we have requested a deputy director and a human resources program manager based on their recommendation. The deputy director will allow for a clear organization of DTCI work into two main areas. Right now we have all our assistant directors reporting to the deputy director.

[02:56:50] This new position will allow us to have two main areas, transportation and facilities. The benefits are better quality management of the department, improved tracking and reporting of transportation projects, improved communications between our divisions and our other Loudoun County stakeholders and partners.

[02:57:10] The more focus on our department's administration will also help with our HR functions as well. If approved, DTCI will have 99 staff members that will require ongoing HR support and subject to hiring, onboarding, training, and development, recruitment, employee relations, and these impacts will be ongoing for the organization.

[02:57:37] The accountant will provide additional capital project support by processing external reimbursements and reconciling and closing capital projects. As you know, we receive VDOT funding through SmartScale, NBTA 70% funding, and they require complex reimbursement requests that impact our timely progress with our funding agencies.

[02:58:00] The total dollar amount of capital projects has increased by 32% since fiscal year 2020, creating a parallel increase in our accounting processes. So on-time processing of capital project reimbursement requests is especially important for the county's transportation projects.

[02:58:19] DTCI has identified that our transportation planning and traffic engineering team needs more support to complete projects in an efficient and effective manner. So we have identified three positions, the transportation program manager, the transportation planning assistant program manager, and the transportation planner.

[02:58:40] The transportation program manager will assist the special project teams, and this role will also help the organization retain knowledge and improve our capacity with projects. The transportation planning assistant manager and the transportation planager will improve our timeliness and quality control of land development referrals.

[02:59:00] In this fiscal year alone, DTCI staff could potentially see upwards of 900 plus land development referrals. Staff has consistently been unable to reach our goal of 100% on-time completion of these referrals.

[02:59:17] And we will continue to not meet these if we are not able to have our requested positions approved. These positions will not only handle land development referrals, but they will also serve as planning staff, providing support to DPZ and BND, manage our CTP amendments, assist with regional transportation planning efforts, and reviewing other legislative land development applications.

[02:59:46] So with these additional staff capacity, we expect to be able to meet our on-time goals and improve our on-time performance, all right? I'd like to thank the board for your support during our time of transition with the department, and we are here and ready to answer any questions you may have about our resource requests.

[03:00:04] Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Jones. That was very, very helpful. If you have questions, put your light on. Ms. Bricksman. Thank you. I'm happy to support your requests, but I also just wanted to say that working with your department has been great over the last several years and really appreciate your responsiveness to, you know, what may seem like minor requests from community members, but it's important to them.

[03:00:33] So and you guys take everything seriously from the huge road projects to the smallest crosswalk. So I just wanted to say thank you for that. thank you chambers um mr crony uh thank you chair randall and thank you uh vincent and lou um so i i remember there was an item that came to um the board finance committee in december about the sidewalk and trail program and it was discussed that if we wanted to

[03:01:07] have more than 1.8 to 2.2 miles of sidewalk and trails being introduced per year that we might need additional staff to increase that production. So I'm just wondering if any of these staff members are for the sidewalk and trail program or if we're going to be looking at what our next step is with that.

[03:01:30] Sure. Yeah, thanks. Thank you, Supervisor Tacroni. So during that presentation to finance, what we took away from that was we are going to take a look at some operational efficiencies with our transportation design and construction group.

[03:01:47] So that means they will look at trying to make sure that there are packages of projects that they could bid together so they may be completed in a quicker manner or designed and completed quicker than we normally would expect. So we expect that we'll have a great update for you in the next quarterly report, but we also expect that we are going to bring an item back to you after that quarterly report to report out on how we intend to increase our delivery of stp projects as well as iip and bus stops okay yeah because we might be having the safe passages to school projects as well which

[03:02:24] are crosswalks and sidewalks that aren't in really the sidewalk and trail program yet i mean they're coming right lou we discussed how they were going to come as a separate project okay sure i i assure you miss deets is working very hard on those projects and and we look forward to reporting out to you okay thank you so much and thank you for all your hard work i appreciate what you do mr latour all right so two issues communication and um the project referral so it sounds like the deputy director position and others you described are part of kind of a comprehensive

[03:02:59] approach to trying to address the referral issue and our degree of confidence is pretty good that that we're going to get there? Absolutely. So, yes. Okay, good. I'm going to support the positions. I just want to make sure we're solving that problem because I do think it's a significant problem. Going back a ways, we at one point added a chief of staff position, which morphed into a deputy director position, but the chief of staff was supposed to be essentially a communications

[03:03:35] position coordinating with board offices and so on. I don't feel like we're, I understand what Supervisor Bristman just said. I do think there may be differences in the types of projects we're dealing with, new build kind of stuff versus, you know, maybe smaller requests on existing things.

[03:03:51] But I kind of feel like we're not really getting that function at this point. So do you have any thoughts about how to improve that? Which positions, if any, can be sort of in that realm? Sure, sure. Thank you, Supervisor LeTerno.

[03:04:06] Just a second. Stop Mr. LeTerno's time. Mr. LeTerno, just a curiosity, are you saying, like, that person in the Transformation and Capital Infrastructure Department or overall? Yes, DTCI. The board actually added a DTCI position specifically to communicate with the board about projects.

[03:04:29] Okay, thank you. And I don't think it ever happened, to be honest with you. Sure. So the Zellos organizational analysis that's finishing up right now, they have recommended a position that would help us in that capacity. So it is an assistant director for administration that would help us with those issues. And we don't need an additional position for that. We could reclassify an existing position to take on that role and help us in that area.

[03:04:58] OK, so it's not it doesn't have to be a new FTE. Right. But you could take it's pretty good head count here. You said ninety nine. You could take one of those folks, potentially put them into that role. Yes. OK, I think that'd be helpful. Yeah. And I mean, look, I understand it's difficult because there's nine of us.

[03:05:16] There's a lot of things going on in the county. You've got to communicate with all of us all the time on everything. But we have had some trouble getting timely answers to questions on projects and things like that. timelines and all that sort of things and i'm not throwing anybody specific under the bus it's more of a systematic issue um and you know i think we feel it more probably where we have the more construction kind of stuff happening so i would appreciate that i see mr hemstreet has i see that mr hemstreet i i can wait until mr litorno's time's over if that's i'm done all right so in addition to what supervisor eternal just identified i know based off of feedback from the board there

[03:05:55] There are a few departments where communication with the board is a concern, so DTCI is one of them. So I have spoken with Mr. Jones as well as with Mr. Krovath about those departments and our need to improve how we provide information to the board and how we ensure timely information the board primarily around more minor issues that should we should be able to provide within a you know within a phone call or an immediate inquiry

[03:06:32] and I understand that we are not providing that so that's not necessarily a staffing issue that's that's that is as much a procedural and operational concern and so I have taken that back from the feedback I've gotten from the board, and we will have something for you within the next month or so.

[03:06:52] Okay. Did you say that when you hire these positions up, you have 99 employees? Yes. My gosh. For the work you all do, I looked at Mr. Kirsten, I was like, only 99? Because you will have joined a whole lot of work with 99 employees. So thank you for all the work you're doing. We appreciate it very much. We know it's a very heavy lift, and I don't think, again, there's going to be anyone who's going to you all are one of the departments that we get to see all the time right and so we know how hard you're working and we do have lots of interaction with

[03:07:27] you so supervisors are there any um motions on the dais did not think there would be thank you very much appreciate you all and last but certainly not least is our county attorney mr leo rogers hello sir good evening good evening chair members of the board the county attorney enhancement

[03:08:04] request can be found on page 77. Actually, I have 6566. I might have the number wrong. I think I have 6566. And the budget, the county attorney budget, I have is page 200. That may not be right as well. It is 77. All right. Okay, then I have it wrong here. No, I can read. I'm sorry, what does What's that say?

[03:08:34] That says county attorney. What's that say? That says 6567. Guess what I'm doing, reading and all that, all by myself. But thank you very much, Mr. Kirschner. Just saying, once again, if y'all are going to help me, help me.

[03:08:51] Mr. Kirschner, what's that say? Did you write it in wrong? Did I write that? I don't know. Did your staff write that? You want to go outside? You want to go outside? My lord, I'll make a motion to impeach Caleb Kirshner of the Board of Supervisors.

[03:09:15] Better be careful, you might have the votes. Stop it. Legal Mr. Rogers, be carefully now, it's your budget. Alright. You want that position? There's a lot at stake here.

[03:09:32] We'll say that over the past few years, the staffing level of the attorney's office has remained flat. The additions that we've received have been for collective bargaining. This position is being recommended by Alvarez and Marcel's report.

[03:09:49] In addition, I plan to embed an attorney one-third of the time in building and development, and with planning and zoning, that's with the concurrence of the department directors to improve communication and coordination between the departments. A new attorney will assist all the new positions that you just approved for the community development agencies.

[03:10:12] And in addition, it's the hope that that attorney will be able to expedite the legislative review process. Do you have any questions on this? I'd be happy to address them. Okay. Anyone have any questions for Mr. Rogers' department? Wow. Wow, look at that.

[03:10:34] Supervisors, is there a motion for Mr. Rogers' department whose proposed budget is on page 77? You have a question? You have a motion? You have a motion? No, I just want to make Leo sweat, that's all. Okay. Oh, my God. What is wrong with this one tonight?

[03:10:51] You can't answer my text, but this you can do all night long with me. All right. I don't think there are any motions on the day. Mr. Rogers, you and your staff have had a busy year. And when I compare just the caseloads that you have cleaned up in one year, it has been absolutely phenomenal.

[03:11:10] Not to mention, I will say that your staff is just great. I mean, yes, losing Courtney was a loss, but you hire well. And I don't want to call all your staff's names because I'll miss some. But I will say, Teresa and Belkis, I mean, you just can't do better.

[03:11:31] And you all are doing a great job with a lot of moving parts. You're also really, really available when we call, and I appreciate that a lot, too. So thank you very much for everything, Mr. Rogers. Thank you for those kind words, and I'll make sure they're shared with the office.

[03:11:46] Thank you very much. Supervisors, we are going to cancel the budget work session that we would have otherwise had on um saturday and our next what y'all don't want to do that okay okay our next budget work session would be monday march 10th at 5 30. uh seeing no other business we're going to be adjourned thank you

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Coraggio Consulting · aguyonx.com