County Board - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon, colleagues. We are um this is our wrap-up before our markup on the budget for this year. Um and um grateful for all the work that uh everyone has been doing. It's a long um and we're we're almost there. a couple more about a week and two days. Um, but uh we'll turn it over to the manager and then I think we've got a a u I don't know if there are any framing remarks. We will go to our fiscal affairs advisory committee. And so um Miss Burgess, if you're ready and we will start with you and then we'll turn to the manager if that's okay. Go ahead.

Yeah, that's great. Um thank you so much for the opportunity to be here and I really appreciate all the work that you guys are doing. We on the Physical Affairs Advisory Commission have been watching the videos. Um, and we get to watch it on on higher speed. So, I'm I'm a 2X stand personally. Um, but so we do know all of the hard work that you guys and that staff are putting into this budget season and um really appreciate that and appreciate all of the feedback that we've had from the public. Um, again, we on fact are watching these videos, we're watching the hearings, we're listening, we're reading the articles, um, and hearing all of these various things that are happening. And it's great to see that our democracy is robust and and people are are participating. Um, and I thank you personally for the opportunity to come vote early. Um, which is easy in the, uh, Boseman building. Um so the fiscal affairs advisory commission uh met a few times over this budget season to discuss the budget and we met last Thursday on April 9th to uh make recommend to finalize our recommendations to the board. So um and I've sent that to the board members and there's a very brief there's a slide with a very brief overview of our recommendations which I'll go through very very quickly but please ask questions and and let me know if we can provide any more detail. So next slide. Um this is our quick agenda. I think I did the the first one hopefully well enough. And I also would want to give a huge appreciation to the staff support of our commission. Um, we've heard other commissions claim that they have the best staff support, but I think FACK wins there. Okay. Next. Okay. So, I want to emphasize FACK since I've been on it and it's it's been a

number of years since I've been on FAC and that I've been on FAC and we have never voted before on futureooking recommendations. We generally vote on recommendations that are specific to the proposed budget. But this time we came around to saying actually we really want to have a vote and officially recommend a few things that are more forward-looking than this immediate budget. So first of all, public facilities utilization analysis. Some of the big headline things, multiple of the big headline things that have come up in this budget involve how well we are using and how much people are using the facilities that we have. And when talking to staff, we realize that sometimes we don't have a good handle on how much facilities are being used. For example, community centers, you know, how much are they being used per square foot per the type of offering they have within the community center? How much can we compare apples to apples and based on their location? You know, some community centers are really close to population centers, others are further away. And I think if we could look at that data, we would start to notice some trends and start to find out some information that would help the budget and service delivery. And we think without that data, we're really hamstrung in making some of these hard decisions. And I should add some of the uh proposals in the budget close public facilities and real estate is really our money maker here in Arlington. We've got great real estate values. So if the county is going to own something that's going to sit there empty, the opportunity cost on that is high. So we think public facilities uni utilization analysis is is really important and we recommend that that we tackle that in some some sort of way public way. Um

we're happy to help as as fact. There's also the joint facilities advisory commission JFAC which which exists and and might be able to be used here. Um second overhead and county run programs. Um, this really came out of when we were looking closely at the gymnastics program, we we realized there's a privatelyun similar program, not very far away from the one the county runs. And the overhead that we end up paying in our program looks like it's higher than the gymnastics program. And I think there's an opportunity there to say why. There may be very good reasons why, but um the there may be other programs like this out there. We're talking a lot about gymnastics specifically in this budget cycle, but there may be other programs that suffer from that have the same component that there are more administrators over it than might be justified. And so looking at those and and being explicit and when you look at the budget document you don't always see in fact you rarely see the number of administrative personnel versus the number of frontline personnel. So breaking that out and looking at it that way just will help us find places where there might be savings or might be areas where we can increase service delivery. Thirdly, housing. We housing is obviously very important issue for us all to tackle and we make significant investment in our housing and affordable housing stock. However, it's a regional problem the lack of housing and we felt that we didn't have a very regional context to looking at our investment compared to our regional neighbors. And so this is something and you know this is something you can really put back on fact to come back because this seems very much in our wheelhouse working potentially with housing commission and

and others but we want to look at how our housing investment stacks up to our regional neighbors. What's actually what we're actually spending here and how that compares to what people have committed to do under COG and and and whatnot. And then now I'm going to go faster. Um, we wanted to uh to really emphasize our support for Arlington Public Schools, even though we also support the proposed allocation to APS in this budget, which is slightly less um than it has been in the past. That's because we see that the pressures the county is facing are really county side pressures and not APS pressures. APS is looking at declining enrollment and some other things that are making their budget while it's very difficult somewhat easier and the county is feeling all of these other challenges. Um we do for on a forward-looking basis want want to emphasize that support for APS is important to the commission and that APS could could continue their work to make their budgeting process more transparent and easier to understand. Not the process but the budget itself more transparent and easier to understand. And then finally, we are always very happy to talk about performance measures. That's really because we as a commission are often comparing apples to oranges in saying, "Oh, there's library funding and parks funding and dees funding. How do you compare all of that?" And it is a lot easier to compare when you're looking at how much will this dollar get you closer to any particular goal or where there might be savings where we're not living up to service delivery or overspending for service delivery. In this particular budget season, we saw a number of really big things proposed that were justified by performance measures that we don't see in the budget. So, we talked about, for example, again talking about gymnastics

because that got a lot of time. In gymnastics, we talked about facilities utilization and um and fee recovery, cost recovery. There's no way to find any of that data in the budget. And if that's driving decisions, well, maybe those are the performance measures that we should be seeing in the budget document. If we if we see a performance measure measure as the justification for a decision, that's probably a good indication that that's a good performance measure to put in the budget. and and put in comprehensively. So we say that this one community center is under underutilized. Well, let's look at all the community centers or this one library is underutilized. Let's look at all of them. Okay, next slide shows us the specific recommendations related to this proposed budget. And I have to say as a commission, we were all geared up. We knew this was a very difficult budget cycle and we were all ready to have lots of recommendations about what was proposed and we were really impressed by the work of staff and the and the manager to come in with a proposed budget that that followed the guidance of the board and and took a really difficult situation and mostly came up with stuff that that we supported. Um I will say that we had some recommendations that that we support that would change the budget. So couple would incre a few would increase spending. The biggest one being that we would like to see we recommend that the county figure out a way to maintain the gym gymnastics program with some changes. Whether that be increasing fees, cutting that admin staff, um figuring out a way to to get more revenue out of the gymnastics program by having, you know, programs over time more often. Um whatever it needs to be. We think there's room there to not have it be an a million a million dollarsish

net tax support, but to keep it open because it is wildly popular. Um, we also think it's very important to keep the restrooms open. Uh, we think that those those parks are actually very well used in the winter. We're coming off of a winter where they may have been less used, but there are plenty of times when it's 90 degrees in April or 60° in January and you see more use. Um, and we think this is an issue that particularly hits hard for women, for parents of young children, for people with certain health conditions and disabilities. And this is it's such a small amount of money to hit vulnerable populations hard. Um, and then fin the last increase to spending. We thought the the proposal or the ask of the community oversight board was reasonable to to increase their spending. This is something that the board supported establishing after 2020 and the Black Live Matters protest and all of the the discussion around the need for oversight of a police department. We think it needs not to be just a one-time talking point or a checkbox exercise should be funded appropriately. On the other side, we're very well aware of it has to be um a balanced budget. So, we had a couple recommendations to decrease spending. One is to look at one-time allocations to AHIF. So there was there was carryover one-time allocation to AHIF. And I would like to underscore this is not to say that we think there needs to be less of a commitment to affordable housing. It's more looking at the fact that AH has the funds there in in case projects were to arise in the next year. um we didn't think the one-time funding uh we thought the onetime funding might be a good place to look for to cover

some other costs and we do think that we should keep the ongoing funding there. Um the health care premium, we noticed that for county staff, employees uh with health care plans for one person get more of a subsidy from the county than healthcare plans that cover more than one person, which includes families with children. We thought seems like it would be fair to just cover everyone equally, which also if you cover everyone at the family at the two plus level is pretty significant savings. And then finally, we looked at ACPD's funding request or proposal and saw that there's a 10% increase in non-personnel funding for ACPD. That looked like a great place to find the money you need to adequately fund the community oversight board. And then we had a couple revenue neutral recommendations. One is CPHD planner position. Freeze it instead of eliminate it. Thought this was important because it sends a good signal to the business community and the development community that we are serious about making sure development happens and and gets reviewed appropriately in Arlington. But it also recognizes that in this economic cl climate, we're okay not having them for this year. and then continuing to hold the accelerated Barcraftoft payown. We think that that maybe having the the money on hand in case any of the uncertainties come up um not in our favor is a good idea. Next slide. Then the the board had a uh sorry, the commission had a few future considerations for the board and staff to consider. These are not things we've voted on, but the first one is overengineering, which we've said a

couple times before, which is we have some projects seem to be A+ level work, which is great. We love A+ level work, but maybe we could do A-level work and save some money and get more work out of it in in the end. And we have some examples in in our report. Two, collective bargaining. We noted that the levels of of pay increases for collective bargaining, if you compare it to our neighbors, most of them had big jumps at the beginning of collective bargaining that were kind of catch-ups, but then their raises sort of came down to something more like inflation and it looks like that might not be the trend in Arlington. So looking at it that way that maybe we don't need to do a catchup every year, um that's really impacting the budget. And then the the last two, we think that there could be a more proactive approach in AED to commercial real estate. And we noted some areas for VOTE followup that could get some some things on the ground, improved service delivery for things we've already paid for. And with that, that is the very high level summary of what we as a commission have worked very hard for over this budget season. And I'm happy to take any questions you guys have. Thank you, Miss Burgess, for your leadership and for the commission's input and and thoughtful additional work this year. I'll open the floor to colleagues. I'm willing to to start

sorry um as often, but uh so first I don't know whether it's to you the manager, I'm a little unclear on the recommendation on the Barra prepaid hold. I thought it wasn't in for the next budget year and the subsequent budget years, but I could be wrong. Do you know the answer to that question or should I know? When we proposed the budget, we didn't the we didn't at February 21st, we didn't make a recommendation on that $5 million. Subsequently in the midyear memo, we did recommend that that money be used to try to assist with the contingencies we needed to balance in 26 and leave some money behind in the contingency for 27.

Got it. So that applies to the budget that's 26. Is there a recommendation for a barkoff hold in 27? Yeah, that's essentially it. Five again. 5 million again. No, no, no, no, no. That it's washed away and goes into the contingency.

Got it. Okay. Thank you. I just was trying to sort of understand and then the question for you, Miss Burgess, is helpful to hear on the community overso oversight board balance and your insight on the non-personnel funding. Um it sounds like the commission as a whole had some some appreciation for the Nicole sort of there is advocacy that tries to peg um the IPA and community oversight board budget in some context with the police budget. I am not informed enough to know whether you know I'm not I have looked at Nicole in the past but would you say that the commission had some interest there but really tailored it most to the non-personnel costs can you just say a little bit more about if you recall and your thinking amongst the commissioners as well as yourself on that particular balance that we're seeking to find between funding the oversight board and the IPA and also uh the police budget. Um, so I would say that we didn't get into the details of that. This is something where we're looking at the budget as a whole. We're not the experts really on on the policing. Um, and the reason we were looking at the non-personnel budget is it just seemed to go up a lot, especially compared to other portions of the budget. and it seemed like a an area where you could, you know, with a 10% decrease in that you could fund a 1% matching of the of the police budget or or something along those lines.

Got it. That's helpful to get gain that context. Vice Chair Coffee,

thank you. Yeah, I I appreciate um your contemplation of what would it look like for us to do Alevel work instead of A+ level. And I wonder if you have any thoughts on how to get our community's expectations down from an A+ level to an A level because I think I think often times there is that conversation that occurs and the advocacy and and genuinely the expectations of our community is not just that we do good things but we do the best things and we do them better than everyone else around. And I think as we face budget pressures, this is a conversation we have to be having. Um, but I I genuinely don't know how to even bring that to our community because I don't think they are I don't think anyone wants to lower their expectations. So, I I'll give you two examples. Um, one is one something that I think the county could actually save some money um is in communications. We I very much appreciate that no one wants to hear I didn't know this change was coming. And so it seems like the county's response to that is doing lots of meetings and having popups and doing this and that and the other. And um another option there is to have a very clear process where every change will be posted. And the federal government has this. They have the Federal Register. If there's going to be a proposal, it has to be in there. You can do lots of other stuff, too. Great. But it has to be in the Federal Register. And it's, you know, if you work with the federal government, you know that it's got to, if it's not in the Federal Register, you're, you have every right to say you didn't know about it. But if it was in the Federal Register, yeah, you should have known. So maybe there's

room for Arlington to develop something like that, a space where everything gets posted there. everything from the smallest this curb cut is being replaced or maybe not curb cut but you know this street is being worked on to the big we're working on the master transportation plan but it's there and everybody knows it's there and this is where you can look for it because right now it is spread a lot around the county's website and I'm very involved and there are plenty of projects that I that I come across and I think huh I didn't know that was happening.

Yeah. Um, and so that's a way that you could have a standard process and save some money on the the A+ness of how many meetings we have. Um, another one in the transportation realm. Um, is I do think if you work if you talk to transportation advocates, they rather have uh things put into place than to wait 10 years to get the perfect version of it. And so if you look across the river, uh DC has been throwing up protected bike lanes and they first do it with K rails. They just get cheap temporary things that they can put down on the street to create the protected bike lane and then they come back later and they get a better uh barrier to protect the bike lane. And here it seems like we are less vision zero has been doing some great things in this area but always for smaller projects for bigger things where we're like please protect this bike lane they say we will like Army Navy Drive when I first got involved in

it's done now it is done now but in 2009 I was told that would be Arlington's first protected bike lane and you know the whole street got got redone and redesigned and all of that work needed to be done but you could have put K rails and put down protected bike lanes a long time ago. So that kind of stuff.

Yeah. No, I think I and I think I think those are all reasonable suggestions and from my two years and three and a half months of experience here. I don't know that it's quite so easy to change um the expectations. So uh and then the other important topic I think is around the AHIFF recommendation and the $2 million and I am not aware of I don't I I'm looking at the housing presentation and looking at the money that is going in and the only $2 million that I see kind of broken out here is the expected developer contributions which I don't think we can reappropriate to anything else. So like can you where did you see 2 million and can you explain a little bit and staff can jump in as well cuz I see I I think this was partially our mistake and I I apologize. It was just brought to my attention before this. I should have mentioned it that we we were thinking of the uh carryover amount. Um but I think the point still stands general um support for ongoing NAF but where there is one time that we have discretion over maybe it's not the time to make that.

Okay. So apologies for that. No that that's totally I I just I think we want to make sure that we're also not missing some you know it's it it happens. It's possible. So um great. Okay. I'll pass along. Thank you Vice Chair Coffee Mr. Spain and then Mr. Karen Tonus.

Yeah. First, let me say, excuse my little bit of tardiness of arriving. Who knew that traffic is going to be busy up there on this time of day, but first to the fact um I had opportunity to look over your report uh this weekend and and digest it. And I just want to say that uh kudos to everyone on the team. I see Scott here and a whole host of folks who are part of that. and I actually walked in on one of your meetings just to observe a few weeks back and I can see that you're working very hard. The areas that you lay out are of course many areas that this board have been has been um debating and and really considering over the past several weeks. But I will tell you you, you know, bringing up the piece about the restrooms was something that, you know, as small as it may seem, your point is well taken. And I brought that up at one of our meetings about the disability community, right? And that, you know, you can choose to to close them because you may not get usage or vandalism, but what do you say about our our women and our folks with disabilities even in the winter time, right? Where do they go? So that's a a point well made. Uh and I just want to highlight my takeaway is you know the theme around community services protecting those. Glad that you looked at gymnastics oversight and accountability. Um I think the chair asked about how you arrived at some of those recommendations with community oversight and I would just say again for like the 10th time that you know community oversight when it comes to policing visav police department itself the rate of growth should be almost identical. Nicole is just one entity of that has a longstanding you know um tradition of service and communities they they use a 1% threshold that but generally you would want to see those grow at the same pace one should not outpace the other and I think that's

again just a frame of thinking when you got to uh the piece about um non-personnel um and you talked a little bit about

I'm just curious know how that discussion went because it's not just ACPD. I know you looked at entire budget but why did you choose ACPD because you saw some areas that because there I think there's a lot of departments but were did you give other departments any looks at their non-personnel spending? So, uh, I I confess that non-personnel police spending came up and sort of in relation to COB, like if we're going to fund the COB, there have to be savings somewhere else. Where could that be? It does seem a bit natural to say that um,

you know, one way to look at it is funding of a police department includes all aspects of the police department, including oversight of a police department. and maybe it all should, you know, maybe the money for the COB should come from sort of a police pot. So, um I don't think we did a deep we didn't do a deep dive into non-personnel spending across the board.

Great. And uh could you talk a little bit about and you did that the public utilization of facilities is something I really want to learn. I think we all need to I believe our our facilities are underutilized but and perhaps not appropriately utilized um for many a myriad of reasons. I mean a lot of that has to do programming but I think to your point you made we really need to take a be laser focused on the potential uses of some of these spaces across our community. So I really you know thank y'all for lifting that up. uh to be quite pointed and I brought this up to some of my colleagues. There's one or two community centers, you know, whether it's where our 55 plus go or whether it's Langston or Drew community center where I'm looking to hopefully uh we can have those places open more for youth to be a part of and not just for you know I love pickle ball but not just for pickle ball cuz that's not what everyone in the community wants. So I really appreciate that and again I just want to commend the entire team for the work that y'all have done. um duly noted, wellcrafted um and thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Spain, Mr. Karen Tonis, and you chair.

Um it's always refreshing to hear from our fiscal affairs commission. It's uh uh especially because there is always a uh a measure a a balance between uh pointing out something that you feel or or at least I detect you feel as programmatically and strategically important like you say oh what wait a minute do we benchmark our the performance do we are we transparent or do we measure uh our overhead in delivering programs etc Um I I really appreciate the the approach. The problem is that we have to operationalize that. I mean we I need the commission's advice of how because this is really the the work that h happens between budgets not at budget time. In the particular program that actually showcased the lack maybe the lack of transparency not the lack of analysis uh was the gymnastics program where you know you we were have been struggling to define what exactly cost recovery is and how it's defined and what is comes in the numerator what comes in denominator right um I've uh I mean I appreciate the the the approach there I need more of a philosophical approach of how to do that. So for example, would we open an account for each program etc. Some departments do that this way but there are other programs like take for example vision zero uh that would would have different a different approach. So it's one one comp doesn't comp everything and that's for me a a challenge that we go forward. um uh on on AHF I have to honestly tell you uh if there is one uh issue in this

budget that is one of the looming challenges ahead is that one-time money is not anymore available. Therefore also uh you know even playing with the idea of funding a from one-time money from serious onetime funding is not anymore a viable perspective here. Um the problem is that the current AHA fund uh is going to be running out of funding uh very soon. I mean like frighteningly soon. That's in two fiscal years from now. Um and I believe that the fiscal affairs commission would really benefit from from uh some some extra information on this because this is not maybe doesn't hit this budget but very very soon in a budget near you and near us. Uh so um the I don't really understand how what the the regional benchmarking means. So uh we have an affordable housing master plan. We we have some sort of we have goals there. So what would the original analysis bring on top of that except for context and numbers?

Context and numbers. I mean context and numbers and also pointing out I I think there is some fear that we could be in a situation where Arlington's making a big investment in affordable housing and no one none of our neighbors are. I don't think we're there. But there is the fear that that's happening and that would just kind of be unfair but it would also have lots of other unintended consequences. And um I think if we could do this ju just look at the public. This is this part is actually not the most complicated and it's something that as I said I think fat could could tackle without a lot of staff support in public budgets across the region. Where is everyone investing their housing dollars and affordable housing is one part of that and you know can can we lay it out and make it clear where we are in the range of our neighbors.

Okay. Um just just as first reaction to that if this was true

which it is but if this was true it was actually it would be actually a welcome scenario that we would do more and we would show vigorously attacking a critical issue for our community and our economy which is affordable housing and others do less. So we would we would build strategical uh advantages on this. Uh basically it's not happening right now. Actually we are losing some steam uh because of enormous pressures on inflation of lack of funding or easy easy access to financing very high interest rates etc etc. I mean the the world of obstacles here is is huge and is growing every day. Um, Mr.

Yes, last but not least, I just have a direct com that I think is kind of aligned with you. I just

even if that analysis showed we are spending vastly more perhaps than our neighbors on affordable housing. I kind of just wonder though like so what? Like are we going to stop spending on housing and affordability? It's hard for me to see that being the outcome of that. I mean, I think it I think it leads to more regional advocacy and more, you know, making sure other people are doing their fair share, which I think is a a different and important conversation. But I think in terms of our budget impact, I just whether that is or is not the conclusion of a regional comparison, it's challenging for me to see us using that as any reason to reduce our spending in that area. I think this is you got it. Both of you together have given almost a rhetorical question. Yeah.

So, and I know that you care a lot as does the fact about affordable housing. I wonder I'll give you a chance to answer and then I go back to you Mr. Caronis and then to Miss Cunningham. But I wonder if there might be some additional you could answer but we could also do some additional thinking because some conversations there was a h regional housing convening. It might be helpful to know sort of how we're oriented wise in terms of our investment relative to other places. You know, I sometimes carry with me a perspective that, you know, they're they're catching up, but they're way behind. And I wonder if that's borne out by the numbers. So, we could do followup. I'm trying to get you off the hook for having to answer tough questions at the moment, but if you have them, go ahead. Yeah. And then we'll come back to you.

Right. I I was just going to say I think you could any outcome of this analysis could lead you to different answers is what it means for our budget but I think it's really important information to have for the budget and so it's like let's do the analysis and then we can look at what what the different decision is and NBRC has done a little bit of thinking go ahead

what I was after is to just to to convey the following what is a problem and a challenge for this budget is actually the size of the housing grants program. So not the brick and mortar, so not the AHF side, but the other side which is now at almost twice the size. It used to be pair on pair and actually one time funding was used to keep that parity going. Uh the parody doesn't say too much about what actually happens, but it shows you know the equal push and equal pressure on on on the will to to to achieve outcomes. But the the housing grants program is an expensive program and and this budget has introduced now something that is not easily digestible and that I would you know like the the commission's take on that at some point

and that is the the recommendation is very intentionally not affordable housing. it is housing investment in housing for exactly those reasons and even more. We make different in we make lots of investments in housing in different ways. So let's look at that. Let's let's figure out what's working um how we stack up to our neighbors, what we could do better. Thank you, Miss Miss Cunningham.

Um thank you so much. I've been privileged to be the liaison this year and really enjoying all the work you guys are doing. So thank you. Um I had a question for staff kind of following up on a couple of your points. So the recommendation to freeze instead of eliminate one of the planner positions, how do we as we go through this week, how do we capture that preference if it is the preference of the board and how does that fit into the you just you say you say it. Okay, great.

Oh, love it. I love an easy answer. So we will do that. Um um I believe uh secondly on health care costs I think the the recommendation to consider different shares of health care um premiums. I know there's a delay in how that gets negotiated and then there's the collective bargaining negotiation on top of that. Can you share a little bit about were a board to wish to make a change here to direct? How long does that take to work through the system? Um yeah so for each collective bargaining agreement there are three they have different rules agreements so I can't give you precise but that is you know would be a first of all to come up with options um and then negotiate I can imagine would be six months we also need to remember that open enrollment only happens once a year in May and we are required under some federal code that I cannot give to you that we have to give at least 60 days notice of any change as well. I mean there's and there's pre there's some precision about that like what we do and not do. So I would and the socialization of of that is um quite quite important. Um so it's you know maybe it could be a 28 thing.

Yeah. It's never doable in the same fiscal year essentially. You kind of have to plan one year ahead. That's right. That's right. And and to think about the options then um then how it links up to a budget process. I like that's what I'm it you know we'd have to really work that you guys know what I mean. We have to work that through because we can't change our May open enrollment and then if you guys are adopting and do you guys see what I mean? We're getting into that. So, but I'm happy to think that through more than just giving you the the off the cuff resp.

Yeah. And I so I appreciate the spirit of it because I I do think um healthcare costs and I know everyone around this table has been uh really dug in on that along with all of our peers and all of the people in America um that this is um a heavy lift that keeps getting heavier. So, I think, you know, as part of our guidance, maybe to think about a multi-year look at um getting some of those scenarios and playing them out so that we can um think through that and think about how we can push people to, you know, encourage people to to pick plans that are also the most economical for them and for for us even though it's a complicated decision. So, thank you on that. Um and then the third is just to uplift the facilities utilization study. I think a number of us have had that same feeling at other points, but especially this year in talking about how do we do cost recovery and that it makes sense that we do cost recovery for a certain program to not include facilities costs, but having a facility that's either open or closed is a cost or or a benefit for the community. And so thinking and I think this might be a guidance issue as well of how do we get to where we're able to have that conversation how it's in the budget and how particularly when we have non-residents um private programs and rentals is it different in that case you know that that it's not the same as like going to a yoga class. So just tagging all those and uh and then I usually don't do four but because those were quick and didn't require a lot. The fourth was the um public safety analysis that I know the manager included in uh the manager's message. We didn't talk a lot about that because we were talking about lots of nitty-gritty questions in public safety and we still have more of those conversations to go. But I'm curious about the timing of that and particularly as we've gone through the budget process. Um is there a possibility that that includes public safety and oversight and diversion in some way? Because I think part of what you hear us juggling is we want to do

more preventative and upfront investments that pay off. Um but as we've seen even with with personnel, you know, we we bring a police officer in this year, it will save us twice that salary next year in overtime, but it doesn't save us anything this year. And so again, it's sort of this multi-year look.

Well, the proposal I made in the budget was for $100,000 to look at the question about the difference between brickandmortar investments in some of our facilities. for example, fire stations, whether there was a different way to deliver service in our community as opposed to building fairly large fire stations, moving to a more dispersed delivery model, which is, as I say, everything old is new, which is the way it was done before. That has some profound implications for our community and our collective bargaining partners. Um, the $100,000 will allow you to just touch on that to a certain degree. and also the same question related to the intersection between police uh work and also work in the mental health community. Um so this question about diversion too and I I'm referring back to I think a couple of comments that were ma made by Mr. Caronis at least in most recently in the last work session in the police practices group which was uh born in 2021 is now 5 years old. It had five separate work groups that looked at including uh diversionary uh approaches also staffing community oversight and he had expressed some interest. I'm not saying it's good or bad but there's another way of doing this which is to do a refresh on looking at that. I will just say that $100,000 isn't going to get you a lot of all the things I just talked about.

So the timing on that really depends on where the board wants to go with that larger question. And and if the board were to direct something on facility utilization, does that also need to be funded at a similar level or that may be an offline question, but I I I'll have to get back to you on that. Thank you. Yeah, I think that's offline. We need to work through scope, timing, phasing, and utilization. You will take time to figure out how to collect data requirements. No, I just really in the multi-year bucket and and then you want to look over a year or two if you want. I mean, right? There's different seasonality. Like, we know our facilities aren't used a lot in August. Yes. Quote check. People are on vacation. You know what I mean? So, I Let's get value add, I think. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you, Miss Cowan and Miss Cunningham, for your questions. You asked about two areas of guidance. I feel like helping to volunteer you to help lead some of those areas of guidance. um because I've shared just a rudimentary and I've got we've talked about lots of guidance and we have expanded our gu the guidance that we've done uh in the last two or three years more than prior. I do think it's important for us to try to work in you know topic and funding together and the follow through after this will be key but certainly on the healthc care financing I'm particularly interested in that area also thank you to your work as liaison and to you know your work leading the commission in particular uh you had a a brief I joined you briefly and happy to share and and have Miss Cunningham lead I'm also thrilled to see every time there's additional person added to your ranks. Um, and so thank you for your work in rebuilding the just the the core group has been working very hard. It just I find a few more hands make lighter work. So thank you to you and I you know Mr. Pedawitz are here representing and others are there. So I think we'll pause there. You're welcome to stay. We're going to talk some more big picture budget pieces. But thank you Miss Burgess. Um so what I proposed to do in the remainder of the uh Did you have did you have a question M? It's going to be directed to uh staff, but it's not for Miss. You want me to go ahead?

Uh I can wait. She sure doesn't need to be here. We can do it later. Okay. All right. So, what I proposed to do next is to share it. Mr. Chair, can I just add one thing that I think the chair may have mentioned meant to mention, but Cherido Library was not on your list, but I think when we had our pre-con conversation, you wanted to highlight that the concept of community spaces was important to fen. Do you want to say anything there before we move on?

Yes. um the so Cherrydale library isn't something that that we did a recommendation on. Um but when we are talking about the facilities utilization we are thinking about like so if you do close it we have this this space that uh we own and won't be used. It's also happens to be right beside middle school. Um, and we've, as we've discussed, there's lots of attention and interest in um, what kids are, where they where they are, the fact that they need third spaces to to be in. That was just an example that we discussed is how we can be using this stuff. And while my mic is on, I would be remiss I was all prepared to answer J to Mr. Spain's question about the diversity of our commission because I do I do my homework. I've been listening. Oh, good. Go ahead.

You got ample lead time. I know. And I knew it was coming and and I would say that I um I do appreciate all the members of our commission. We are a fairly diverse commission. I wouldn't say we are perfectly representative of Arlington, but I think we're getting there. And uh we do have parents of of children uh and young children represented and and we do have um a fair amount of engagement, but we're always striving to be better. And we open we're open to any suggestions people have for the commission and I believe we have one open spot so we would love to see more more applications and we love to add they have one of the best staff leaison too I understand and we have the best staff leaison

I would say that's close to obsequious but we'll just leave it there next Mr. Spank you wanted to close

you know Mr. Mr. Chair, I was going to kind of sit idly by and let Miss Burgess exit stage left until So, look, uh, thank you. Uh, I have again, I've had opportunity to to ask to see a lot of our commissions at work and thank you for answering the question that I've asked to many commissions. There's a lot to say about your recommendations and how it correlates to the diversity of thought that's already on your commission. It's a quick tell all and I can't say that about every commission quite honestly. So you know thank you for for what you do. um really appreciate that thought that is given not only as a APS parent but also as an avid cyclist uh and a person who supports human rights. I see your sticker over there. I mean your team that commission uh board members is one of the best that we have here and I really appreciate your work. Um but since I have the opportunity Mr. Sure. I will ask the question that you know in your recommendation you talked about uh the non-personnel and I'm going to go to the manager on this one. I think you're going to perhaps pro provide some information us today relatively to relative to the ACPD's budget and what does either a 1%.25 or a half percent looks like and non-personnel costs ongoing for next fiscal year. Correct.

Yeah. I'll be providing some information to you at the end at the end of the day, which is actually 11:59 p.m., but it's coming to you and and and as you know, Mr. Manager, I'll be up. Thank you very much. Thank you both. And thanks again, Miss Burgess, for anticipating the question and helping answer it. Um, so now what I propose we do is go to the manager for some updates on kind of context on a few brief topics. And you may have less to say than I'm anticipating, but I don't know if there are slides. I don't know. Go ahead. Well, there might be if you ask certain questions, but if you don't, then we're going to know. We won't share the slides. Well, these aren't really backup slides. They're anticipatory slides. They're very different.

Can you tell us how many of them there are so I would like to call them out of order for the level of nerdiness. Bleed on, brother. Mr.

Okay. So, the first thing we're going to do is we we talked about this when I came to you with a summary on midyear. I'm going to ask Danielle Bush to give you an update on what happened with our where we are right now on BOL revenues. Good afternoon members of the county board. So, as Mr. Schwarz mentioned, when we came to the board with midyear, we noted that we would be back with an update on bull revenues just due to the timing of this revenue source. As you know, these revenues primarily come in February and March just due to the filing and payment deadlines. Business license revenues are currently tracking to reach the $96.2 million budget. Again, this is our third largest revenue source. We only have about $2 million to go to reach that budget. And we believe that in the remaining months, we will get that $2.9 million. As I've mentioned, the majority of these revenues come in in February and March. And the revenues that do come in in the few remaining months are typically tied to late payments or the result of audits or just new business filings. And that's all that I have to share on the bull update.

Thank you very much, Miss P. Yes, Mr. Schwarz. Back to you. That's it on that. Um, there are three or four other things I wanted to go through. Mr. Sure. Can I can I ask something? Sure, Mr. Do you have any reason to believe that we have seen any any slowdown? I mean, I understand that you say that they're truck to meet the budget, right? 100%. So between February and March uh because what I have been reading in the economic press is that there is a higher number of bankruptcies personal bankruptcies there which is not unusual I mean but a higher number than average so that doesn't that doesn't affect any dynamics of this data you don't see any slowing

sure of of uh of revenue anything other yeah that is a good question um when we've come you in the past. This is I would say along with consumption tax is one of the revenue sources that we have been a little bit concerned about. From what we've seen currently, I I don't have any concerns um right now with with the activity in the business environment, but as you remember, these these revenues are um from the prior calendar year. Um so I I would say we were pretty conservative with this budget for fiscal year 27. So I'm also hopeful that that's the case for 27.

Right. Thank you. And we'll also continue to work with the commissioner's office on the new filings too to see how they are, how they're coming in to get a like a pregl glimpse. But yeah, we're I mean we're still concerned about the revenue source, but through calendar year 25 and the rate of collection that we received, we expect it'll meet budget. Households expenses are are down in this region and this is concerning. Uh it's not something that we directly track, but it's important for people. So thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Kon. So actually I have a follow-up question which is which came up today in conversation with a colleague I don't know Mr. Schwarz or as a as a full group. The midyear report had us lower a little bit than we expected and we tend to budget quite conservatively. So do you anticipate or do you know yet whether we would need additional revenue to close this fiscal year that is not in your projections? I.e. is hotel getting worse? Is is meals getting worse or is that all covered in your projections? Are you not too early to say?

Right. So, we have it's was 2 and a half weeks ago that we presented uh the information. So, we don't have any more precise information than we did um unless we've received I don't I don't think we have for uh through the end of March. That data probably won't be available for a little bit yet. Okay. All right. It is possible, but it's certainly not you don't know because you sort of you did that memo when you did the memo. Okay, onward to the next item on your big picture that you were going to cover.

So, in an effort to u preserve the integrity of what's left of our mental processes, I wanted to bring up with you in a public conversation this question about the caboose bill which is at the state level. uh again this year the uh I I can't remember I think it's the House version has a 2% one-time bonus for state employees and we spent a lot of time last summer uh talking about how we would handle the provision of those bonus funds to our constitutional employees where the board came down on it last year and I'm asking to reconfirm that or whether you want us to do additional work was that to the extent bonuses were provided to constitutional employees who work for the state that those funds would be accepted by the county and that there would be no expectation that there would be additional funds appropriated to match those people who work for the constitutionals who are not state employees. And so I sent you a memo on that on Friday. Um we're happy to just let it lay there and have additional conversation with you offline. But I did want to let you know that um there is one and I think Richard's going to talk a little bit to the FICA piece of that. Were you able to confirm on that?

I was able to confirm that if we accept uh the monies and it go just as we distributed it last year to those in comport seats that there's no additional county monies needed to cover any other costs. So there had been some question about whether we had pickup FICA cost, but we've explored that. So again, I'm not asking you to do anything right now, but I just did want to point that out because I'm desperately trying to avoid the situation we found ourselves in June and June of last year where we have to make a decision without not having enough time to consider what's going to happen.

Sure. I'm going to want to follow up on that because my recollection needs to be refreshed a little bit. There was there's the FICA and the zero and then there was in your memo there was a a small amount. So I'm definitely going to want to follow up on that. Miss Cunningham and then Miss Just a clarifying question on that. I believe the caboose bill is about this June, not next June. Right. So it's it would hit us in

that is correct. In order for you so it would be uh one time if you the money comes to the constitutionals in this fiscal year in fiscal 26. As a matter of fact, there's the if you look at the language of the bill, it's sort of strangely word. It says June 1st and then June 15th. They they're making sure the money gets out by the end of June. So that would in other words, if you wanted to do something, now is the time to signal that you'd want to set aside onetime funds to meet that additional need where there's no way that I think we would be able to get those funds out the door probably at the same time, but we'll have to see.

Yeah. So, I think I would I would remain where I was last year as one board member that we should not turn down money from the state even when it's really challenging uh the way it was written and even when we tried to help them write it better this year. Um I think we could should continue to help them write it better. Um and I think we should take the money that's offered but not create additional expenses. And for those departments that are affected, I I would ask that they plan that way in the budgets going forward because this is now two years in a row. In the prior years, it was a different problem that was more easily managed. But in you know, and I don't I don't know how you want to do that, but for those affected departments, is their comp a little bit lower and there's a bonus pool or how we do it? I think we should have planned for it this year and we should definitely plan for it next year and we should keep trying to get it fixed, but we should not say no to any money from Richmond because they're really rarely about sending it to us.

Thank you, Miss Cunningham. Miss Vice Coffee. Yeah, I'll just insert snarky comment about whether or not the Commonwealth will have a budget by June here. I mean, the the history of local governments criticizing state governments is as long as the republic. Let's just say that. And in the right world, those with the most incomes pay the most taxes. So before we weep, let's just take that and pause for a moment. Onward to our next issue. Tax rates change, I believe. Yeah, I think I'm going to um Rubar,

who has the slide? Is it okay? I'm going to ask Emily Hughes to pull up the slide. This is meant to summarize questions that you asked just so that the public can see the options that were associated with what you advertised on the uh real estate tax rate. All right. So, this slide will show you push. You could probably just lift your microphone just a touch. Sorry to catch you at the wrong moment, but that might help you. There you go.

Sure. So, this slide right here, as you can see in the orange column, is what the county manager had recommended. He recommended a 1.5 cent increase to the tax rate. Uh the county board had proposed a 2% increase to the tax rate, and that's the column you see on the far right. And then in between that is a 1.75% increase to the tax rate. For each of these options, there is an ongoing and a one-time column of again confirming total revenue um that would be added. So for the 1.75% increase, you would see an additional 2.3 million in ongoing and then below that 1.2 in one time. Um and then same for the additional 0.5 cents. So, uh, it would be up to the county board, um, on sharing that, but again, confirming that is the total revenue.

Thank you, Miss Push. On to the to the next other questions from colleagues. We will certainly have we've had discussions, we'll have additional discussions. Um, as we move towards markup, which will be Thursday, but um, go ahead, Mr. Mr. Schwarz. I wanted to we give you an update on the personal property tax relief act option generator machine which at this point is up to 7 million options but we have we're going to display for you only seven of them um which we have provided back to the board and I'm going to let Danielle go again.

All right. So, as part of follow-up, as you all saw, we had laid out an additional seven scenarios on top of what the manager had already proposed to essentially reduce our net tax support contribution towards the PPT relief that we provide. Um, most recently we had added scenarios six and seven. Um so as you can see under the description for the allocation under the scenario description here you can see um that provides a brief description of each of the scenarios and then off to the far right it will show you any additional revenues that will be generated from accepting any one of seven of these scenarios.

Thank you Miss Bush. And I'll just speak a little bit to that. Um, I believe that both not listed there, but I believe that both scenarios six and seven would be implemented over a two-year period. Is that correct? That is correct.

And that would be sort of splitting in half the the relative burden that would come or is there a specific process or do you want to get back to us? uh both scenarios six and seven would be placing a little bit more of the burden um a bigger jump I would say in fiscal year 27 and then a smaller jump in fiscal year 28. There are some of these scenarios that try to split um the burden in half. Um and then I would say that the other thing to pay close attention to is just for the different scenarios. Some of them are sharing the the clean fuel and the conventional percentages to equalize those and others are splitting that into two years.

Thank you. I do recall that and I just if I now remember those are the numbers of ongoing that's available for the first year and there be maybe some smaller amount in ongoing savings. We are perpetually uh at risk of putting ongoing savings into future budget years. But this is actually a case where there would be at least some savings that would occur in the subsequent budget year. Correct. And the goal for all of these scenarios is to reach fully net tax support neutral, meaning zero additional net tax support by fiscal year 28.

Great. Thank you colleagues for awareness. I don't think I've articulated this getting back to, you know, what I recall of um the different pieces of tax attributes you want from a tax system. There's a I think there's a certain simplicity to scenario six that differs from scenario 7. Um there's also the conventional the clean fuel piece. Um, but I think it's important to note that this is, if I'm not mistaken, this is the tax reduction caps off under state law at $20,000. And so, uh, I am not unduly wedded to scenario six as opposed to scenario 7 and would welcome folks thoughts. I do, uh, hope that we'll also be able to provide just a touch of difference on the simplicity of the tax, uh, if we can. So, other questions on PPT, Miss Cunningham? I mean, do you want people to share where they are? Is that what you were fishing for?

Oh, yeah. No, I mean, I have to. Sure. Go ahead. I I would say for me, um, schedules, I'm I'm really glad to see us doing this. I think we, this number has gotten bigger over time and particularly in such a tight year, this is a great place to rebalance a bit. Um, and so while my mathematical mind went to scenario five, I recognize sometimes it's better to do a two-step. Um, so I'm fine with six or seven. I think I might have done seven in the absence of the fuel price increases that are drastic. I think given that and how they disproportionately affect folks, six seems like a perfectly reasonable. Great. Thank you, Miss Cunningham. Appreciate it. And willing to hear from others, but not you don't have to. I see Mr. Spain.

Just for the record, I'm going to land on Mr. uh scenario six. I think it's well balanced given the moment we're in and uh I think this is also over a two-year approach. So, I'm I'm solid on six. Great. Thanks. And for the record, Mr. Chair. Okay, thank you. Uh, and we'll come back to it. So, you know, I do still think it's very helpful to to to share these thoughts out. We will come back to it on Thursday and colleagues, uh, I think I see no other lights, so we'll go forward next to um, we had a little discussion earlier today about Wamada and we had some questions of Mr. Freeze even. We didn't let him off the hook just cuz he was he's here too virtually. Definitely not going to do that. But go ahead to you Mr. Schwarz.

Yeah. So, Mr. Freeze spent some time on this last week. There were two pieces rel well well actually there's three pieces related to WADA funding. The first is we are not sure what the state is going to do. So we're hoping that they do this patch for two years. If they don't then um hoping for one year. Yeah, we're hoping for one year and if they don't do that we're we're we're hoping

we'll be back. We're just going to keep hoping. Um, we had, and I think he went through the details on this, a readjustment made in the way the calculations were done for each of the jurisdictions. We included that as part of the proposed budget, and we can talk about the details behind that. I know he covered that last week. We're happy to go further on that. And he also there was a one-time uh savings that came from additional uh conversations with Mada that he talked about where we have added I think it's 1 is it 1.4 1.4 4 million of one-time funds to the table. But since we went over that fairly quickly, we're happy to spend some more time on that if you would like. If not, no.

Um I I we Miss Cunningham, you you raised a question. I think I just had one question on the Wato one and which is whether I think it was listed as all one time and what's the logic of it not being ongoing? So the amount that I included in the proposed budget that was an assumed to be an ongoing savings. Okay. So that went to that line. The uh one time I'm going to phone a friend Jason. If you were online here you can go through the details about why we were treating that as a onetime adjustment. Man that's he just pulled him up. Sure. I'm here. Good afternoon. Can you hear me?

Yes. Go ahead. So the reason we're considering mostly one time in nature is because the factors that are that were determining this additional funding of the 1.8 million that we're bringing down the budget by were due in part by actions Maryland requested in the budget

um for fiscal 27. And these are things such as deferring bus service and just deferring some of the service that Metro is going to implement this year. And so all of these things are are budgetary action that will take place most likely in fiscal 28. So they're just one time of pushing actions that Metro will be taking down the road. So as opposed to being an ongoing where the the service is going to be cancelled or will not happen, it's just going to happen at a later date. Does that make sense? It does. Does it works for me? also the sweetest clarification we have in the

and I I think all questions in addition when you have that uh newborn are are clearly out of order. Thank you m Mr. Freeze so much for trying to forgetting I forgot that Maryland piece super helpful. Uh I hope you have a good afternoon is my two cents on that. Mr. Schwarz, it's the evening that's the problem. Yes, that's Amen.

Um okay, so two other items we wanted to update you on. I'm going to go and Let's flip the order a little bit. We received last week, we were wired an amount, and I don't have the precise dollar amount. Someone here at the table will. 1.4 a little bit over $1.4 million that we received for a lean that we had placed on the owner of the Keybridge Marriott property. And I'm I'm just going to say that when we went through that entire process and there were a large number of people involved in that, um it is a very unusual circumstance in Arlington for us to have to do what we did, which is we had to step in in the place of the owner and demolish that property. And we did so with the understanding that there was a certain level of risk that we would never see the money again. But we got it and that's uh thanks to everybody who was involved in that. I had included in the mid-year memo an estimate of around $2 million. It's actually 1.4 million. So that will adjust a little bit some of the calculations that you see about what's available in the contingency. But that is that's a good news story and I think that um we're again very happy about working with the uh equity partner there. I think it's Mac Realy. I'm going to get the name wrong, but they did pay what they they owed us. Um, the last piece I wanted to spend some time on again is something that we will not have a precise answer for you, but we did include was it 1.2 million, I believe, in the proposed budget of one-time funding for potential buyout costs for employees who might be affected by personnel cuts. So, each of those employees and the significant number of those employees were associated with the gymnastics program and also the Cherryale Library closure. There is not a one number fits all employees because it depends on the tenure of their service. So it's very very precise calculations. So I cannot tell you right now because I don't know what the board

is going to decide on some of those programs. But if you decide to restore um some of those positions that number is going to drop um and I can try to give you a better estimate once we have more information on that.

Thank you Mr. Schwarz for that. With that, colleagues, I would like to open the floor to sort of a round of questions. I want to suggest that if we do end before 4:30, you can corner DMF in the next 50 minutes also to ask your questions. And so feel free, let's do the rounds. Let's get as many questions that are out there in the big picture uh going. But that's but um I will just name a few issues that are there. We have a few gymnastics advocates here directionally. Uh want to strike that balance between sharing all things that seem likely and uh being over exuberant. The board's direction that we are likely to pursue is to do fee increases that will not be insignificant. But we are not in a space where closing the Barcraftoft gymnasium is our plan for this coming year. I think hopefully that is a reasonable thing to say now. I did not feel comfortable when we had 150 folks um sharing because I didn't we hadn't had enough we hadn't done enough of the thinking but that is on gymnastics. There is a question with respect to recreational fees that I ask colleagues um if individually or if you you know I do think there's some detail that we have le left to work out on that one. Um, with respect to this Cherrydale Library, we are similly not inclined to close the library. Uh, I don't think it's u crazy breaking news. Um but it is also uh I think reasonable for us to share that a big picture that will impact us in the coming days is uh our partnership with the schools and um we had a work session with the schools and uh we're mindful that this I think that there's a balance that we seek to strike between um partnering as we want to and

the what we you know some of the unique challenges and circumstances of this particular budget year on the county side. I will say for all colleagues awareness uh budget guidance on this seems useful to me and so the details of that guidance we we will have to work out and there is still some work to do to to work out all of the pieces of it. I'm just trying to cover the big picture. Um there's also a question on sheriff's compensation that we continue to work on. Uh, and I'm grateful to DMF uh, for what seems like 24/7 work um, and mindful there's lots of um, work yet left to do. The only other thing I want to name before turning to opening for colleagues thoughts is that I think I've got this right, but I want to be sure. Um, housing and the housing grants. There's some technical pieces to the online system that I think are still coming. sort of maybe DMF, it may also be, you know, something that Miss Cowan, I see you coming to the rescue.

So, um, in terms of the specific issue of implementation of a wait list, um, they will be ready certainly by October 1st, um, and are not concerned about that with the allocation of onetime money that's in the proposed budget and the work they have underway, they are confident about that. Um, and that was triple confirmed by me this morning. So I um anyway, I'm not sure if that's helpful or not, but that if that's the genesis of your question, Matt, or It sure is. Thank you. Thank you so much. Let me see if I understand because we're looking at a delta 1.3 to 1.7 million. And oh yes, you got it back for the Is this your first backup slide, Matt?

It is. And I like to think of myself in some ways as not a total nerd, but now I know that I am. Welcome to the club. Sure. So, um, sounds sort of incredible the phrase. Is this your first backup slide? We'll just keep going. Okay. Um, so in the budget is the 1.3 for October 1st. Is that right? No. No. No. That's all it is is the July 1st 697. Right. So, without being able to let me see if I understand. And you know, this is my first backup slide so you guys get a better night. We got zero

zero in the budget. So the 1.3 would be to get us to October 1st and we ha we we believe we have the time to set up the system and I see vice chair coffee has been interested in this and Miss Cunningham but let me just ask this question other is it a question left other than the system to take care of this are there other transition policy issues that we should be aware of or not on So DHS has been working I think we described this during the work session. You guys have heard this conversation and other conversations we've had um which is the prioritization criteria for people to get off the wait list, right? And the prim the first criteria likely will be those on continuum of care, right? Um at the risk of immediately losing housing, that kind of thing. And so how they get pulled off the wait list so we can be back in touch with you on that. I think Anita, Nicole, and Nicole described that during the work session. Be happy before anything is right finalized that you guys would be made aware.

Thank you for that. Does that make sense? It does

mostly and I recall a number of 140 or something of perhaps a little bit of case draw down but um I I will benefit probably from offline and more detailed. It leaves me in a space I want to serve equity and serve folks most in need in line with the history of the housing grants program. But because of the technicals, I I am currently in a space where the 1.3 million for October 1st is where I would be. I'm happy to be disabused of that position, but I would rather say it out loud because we're getting towards the time period to work further through it. Vice Chair Coffee, I still see your lights and and others. Uh I do think this is worthwhile for all of us. Go ahead, Vice Chair. Yeah, I I think I just sorry this been a very long process and none of us are at our finest and sharpest I don't think at this moment. Um I just want to confirm I think one of the things that the board was interested in was kind of the like absolute earliest we could from a tech perspective have the weight list set up and ready to go. And then I think there's a separate policy question with respect to when we implement it and and how many households that serves and I don't know if there's an answer to kind of the like true earliest technologically possible date for the weight list.

I I don't have an answer to that specifically. I don't believe well I'm not sure it's going to be July 1st. Um, so tell me what I mean. Yeah, I need more. What are you guys thinking versus us just sort of well, Michael, what do you what are you let me know the options that you're trying to are you trying to do July? Are you trying to do May? Are you trying to We're That's what I need your

Got it. Okay. And I can I will say at least for my part and I'm I'm happy for colleagues to chime in. Um I am not interested in July. I think I am somewhere between October and January and I think it would be for me um a critical factor to learn whether if we if we get the tech capability like and we think October one is is maybe like the earliest we're going to feel 100% confident we could have it then maybe for me that's we're looking more like November like give ourselves some flexibility. What I don't want to do is commit to um an implementation date that is either too early or at risk of being too early where we haven't put the the one-time funds in to cover ourselves, but also the tech side of it is not ready to go. So, I I'm I'm somewhere between October and January. And if there were a date within that that we think the tech implementation will be accomplished that would be changing my decision at the end of the day I think.

Thank you Mr. Karen Tonus then Ming.

Mr. Chair just for the record um I I fully appreciate how difficult it is to get it uh to get the the technical infrastructure being available in by October. Anything can happen. I I don't believe that we can implement anything in the months of November and December. So there are two two possible points either we did in October or it is January 1st. Uh for for purposes of budgeting right now I would I would uh say but January 1st. Uh that's for me the the the absolute goal. uh November, December, especially dealing with this kind of of a program and this kind of uh of needs etc. I I don't see how we would uh we would uh you know do this in November and December uh October maybe uh but uh it would be extremely tight and I know how difficult this will be and it's also a major change in how we deliver the program. Uh so I I think that realistically Jenner is our our goal here. So and I would budget for that.

Thank you, Mr. Karen Tonus. Uh I'll just say also that the budget needs that we're looking at as a whole even on one time may be pressing enough that I'm I'm holding holding a little bit. But I appreciate you raising the the spectre of the the time of year in addition and it is this is our most vulnerable. So, Miss Cunningham,

yeah, I would just echo that. I I think you are hearing from the whole board. Nobody wants to turn on the wait list until we have a technological solution for it. So, that takes a whole bunch of scenarios out of the mix. Um, I'm encouraged that that staff are feeling like we're very much on online to get it to October. I would agree we may need to think about at least making sure of contingency funds if it spills for for a month, but I think we could do that with contingency. And the question I would like to ask is, do we have all hands on deck to do that? Because it, if there were consulting dollars that could ensure that we get it done a month or two earlier, that would probably pay back both in staff time and in overall savings.

Um, I think they feel like the 100,000 was sufficient. I asked them again. I mean and with with yard is you know the the contractor I don't when you say all hands on deck we don't have a huge staff in the housing grants program just you all know and we can't use housing choice voucher staff so they're right they're they're and they're still processing applications and we also had the change in the resident residential duration so I just maybe it's a question of like 100,000's enough to get it done by October if we gave 200,000 would it be faster is maybe the question I would ask like can consultants do it or is it really a staff bandwidth thing which it may well be a combination. I I'll follow up for you. Okay. Yeah.

Great. Thank you. Uh so we work through housing grants um and that onetime cost. So those sorry colleagues.

Yeah. Last one. It's it's right. I mean, we received from M. Cohen a a memo on utility costs and increases from uh uh from Dominion. Uh so that's not insignificant money. So that's uh you know roughly altogether between different funds, general fund and utilities fund about $2 million. So maybe a little bit more than that. So how realistically do we have to include that in our budget discussion? I know that schools is also involved in this and and they are they are uh there are a million dollars in

I don't I mean they have to serve a million dollars about a million dollars they have to their work session I mean they're monitoring it. Fortunately we're really blessed to have both Steve Burr sitting on Vepka and then APS also has their person sitting on Vepka. So they're like in the midst of the negotiations which is I think super helpful for both of us. What we won't know is it won't be resolved before budget adoption and I think in our conversations DMF me we're all regular monitoring this um we had originally included 6% it will not be that number we won't wear know where negotiations end up but it is certain to it is just certain to go up in that to the

the order of magnitude is is important here because this is not minor no no no right Yeah, the initial number that was put on the table was a 30% increase. So, it's it's not going to be it's not going to be more than 30%. But that's what the negotiation is taking place somewhere in the range between 6 and 30%. So, and of course, we're in a negotiation and so that their average customer is already paying 30% more than than they paid 15 months ago. So, that's uh not an you know, this is a serious pressure. Serious.

Thank you. And then of course, as you heard in that that what we provided to you, fuel is going up as is as is natural gas. And I think we're just very concerned about that as long as what's happening over in the Middle East. I mean, that's obvious to say that. I know you guys are worried, too, but it's it's just yet another pressure, right, which we are going to handle via contingent or keep you guys posted as as we we learn more for 27. Thank you, Miss Cow. And Miss Cunningham, is this on the on the energy or on the housing or

on housing? Could I could we put the backup slide up and just make sure I'm tracking to save us some questions later in the week? Um, we are not going to change we're not going to move to a wait list in this fiscal year under any circumstances. There's a number on there that says July 1 has a dollar amount. That's really $26, right? Well, so we are short in 26 with the amount that was appropriated by the board based on the run rate for the program. So that's how much we're short. So we needed to take the onetime funds that are available to that's part of the hole we're filling for 26. Okay. So that's close out sort of not really it

you're budgeting on 27. It was in the Go ahead. No, no, it's 20. It's 27. I think that was when we put together the budget. There was some uh remember we're we're also there's also the change in the the residency requirement and the uplift there and um I think we there was some hope that perhaps we'd be able to come to you with a wait list sooner and then understanding we need to give more notice. So this is needed for 27. The 697 is needed for 27. We underfunded in what was in the proposed budget.

So are those are those grants that are paid for people who are already enrolled in July 1 because you haven't closed the wait list earlier. Okay. So it's fiscally okay. Just wanted to make sure. Thank you for humoring me. That would have been hard to figure it out. No, we were not I'm not sure we were clear in how we presented it. So that's on us back in No, no. Very helpful. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you very much. So now it's uh we'll do um are there further questions for clarification that people have? I don't see from Mr. Spain, don't yet see from Vice Chair Coffee, but that doesn't mean and I I want to reiterate if they're technical questions, they can be for sharing and they could be for individual button hauling of DMF members right now. What an opportunity. So, and I'm not saying no questions. I'm saying if you have 10, maybe think about that. So, and and I'm not I honestly think you'd get the the rest done. Uh so, not trying to be too heavy. Miss Cunningham, Miss Mr. Caronus, are there and so this work session sometimes ends early and today is one day that it will and DMF you are not allowed to go almost anywhere for 30 minutes. Um so please colleagues um see if you can find EMF on questions and we are working through this and for those six to 12 people who are currently watching there may be other people on two times who are watching

I didn't realize we're on final final round I'm trying you know be nice and final two that may be helpful to the two entity

um they're both on compensation so one is for public safety compensation so again we're having this conversation about we need a multi-year approach to um our public safety compensation to get on top of overtime. Is there any way in that calculation that some of the compensation costs could be one time um as we're thinking about investing in fire in in police potentially in sheriff um given that we have a fairly robust they will pay back within two years. Um, I know it's kind of a

Yeah, you may remember our slide from prior years where we showed how we were covering public safety overtime and it was from vacancy savings. So, there's not really overtime budget we can take a reduction in as we bring more police officers on board. There will be actual savings, but there won't be budget savings because we've been covering a lot of that overtime overage in salary savings from within the department. So it doesn't really work to say that our compensation can be one time in nature because we're going to be getting that overtime savings because it's not budgeted overtime savings. It's actual savings but not

right. So it's actual savings that we won't go over at the end of the year versus it's very unsul and you and I and Josh Fulb can make the case uh because he does that so often on the school side I think. But go ahead.

Okay. I'll digest that a little bit. Um, and then the other one, I think there's a question working through the ecosystem, but I I think we've heard from employees who are concerned about both the health care cost increases and just cost of living increases that particularly at the lower wage levels that people may not be, you know, be able to even stay steady with this coming year. And I know we've done a peanut butter approach to compensation across all levels um as well as benefits across all levels. But given that we have employees who are disproportionately impacted, are there things we can consider whether it's you know bonuses or it's differential comp and kind of how does that get worked through? because I think we are hearing from folks um that are concerned and that can be offline but I know it is of interest to multiple board members.

You know, I I understand the peanut butter analogy and I think that's right. Sometimes it's chunky peanut butter, but we can talk about that a different time. Um there's a lot of pieces that go into answering that question and I swear I'm not trying to put you off. It's just that we have to take into account for a family what they're dealing with health care expenses. Again, not everybody uses our health care plan. Okay? Not everybody pays the same uh premiums based on their employee status. So, it would I'm not saying it can't be done, but the analysis requires some fine-tuning that I don't think we're going to be able to get done in the time that you probably would want it done. Um, and then there are some policy issues associated with that. We did provide examples um and I think we can always provide you more examples of anonymized employees and the impact with the increase of uh health care premiums which I think was around 10%. But then again some people are on Kaiser with a lower percentage there was different impacts. People were still getting I'm not going to say huge amounts because it was a 3% pay raise based on where they were in the salary scale. Um and that itself this is a flat salary increase because we moved away many years ago. We had uh differing percentages based on years in service. So there's lots of different ways to do that.

Yeah. I guess specifically on the health care costs um the ask was to update that chart to not just be the premium cost but also the prescription co-pays and the co- insurance costs. Um because again we've been hearing from from staff members who are deeply concerned about that. Yeah, I'm trying to think how to um prescription co-pays. How do you I'm not sure we have the data to say a typical employee uses prescription. I mean like I I want to think through how to do it. I just I think that's a you might have to make someense. Well, yeah, we'll have to make assumptions whether they're Yeah, I don't Okay, we can try.

I mean, usually in the broker like when we're choosing a health plan, there's usually some of that information available. We can talk more offline. Sorry, I thought it was a question that I think I think what Michelle's getting at and it's again not to be difficult is there's just so many different variations on that. The one thing that we did do and I you know give the board credit was most most of you not all of you but three or four years ago where we adopted a different flavor of a health plan that had higher deductibles to allow people to pay in at a lower premium. So, um, we that's always something we can look at in talking with Signner doing another plan, but I I'll have to think that through and sort of we'll have to have more of a conversation about how we would do that analysis,

right? And then just so I understand though, you're looking for different compensation approaches for different classes of employees then to I mean I I think this is a question we asked early on in the process which is in a time of inflation and high housing costs. How are we making sure that at all of our compensation levels people are keeping up?

Um or how do we know if they're not maybe even if we're not going to change anything? How do we how do we evaluate them? Part of part of the answer though not the complete answer was that we do and I think when human resources were was here we were talked about we're doing we do studies of various pay pay and great comp we call them studies correct

this year we weren't doing a set of studies focused on a specific area but we actually and I don't know if we ever shared the information we do those studies throughout the year and then so what ends up happening and we have this information I don't know if we've ever shared it with a report is that for example if I submit a classification study to HR and someone in the county manager's office is at a lower pay rate and they get bumped up because of the analysis they're done that is done something that's done and then is built into the base budget for the following year. So there are things like that that are always ongoing that have a certain cost associated with them and I think I'm going to get the number wrong but we can give you that information. So that's not something that you specifically budget for. it shows up in the following fiscal year. I'm I think I'm I'm afraid I'm just confusing the issue, but that's that's what happens in reality.

Thank you. I do think it's fair question and maybe followup is a good thing. And with that, colleagues, uh no, go ahead, Mr. Spain.

I mean, it's probably not a question here, but I think for the record, Mr. county manager and team. I want to associate myself uh with some of the comments of board member Cunningham to the extent we're talking about healthcare. Um and whatever we can do to to learn more uh as we move forward after this budget cycle, I think I really want to be involved. Why? because to what Miss Cunningham said, you know, 15 months of being on the board, I too have heard from a number of employees who have who are feeling the brunt of our current social economic climate. And so when you have the higher echelon of a government entity or any organization who who is not really feeling it as much and when healthc care costs are going up 10%. But you're you've thought you talked about it county manager where the your pay is not keeping up with that. It's offbalance. And so we got to make sure that the folks at the bottom end of our workforce are not the ones who are really having to absorb all this weight. And if that's the case, I want to see some analysis which I think is going to take some time for us to get uh because it's it's really hard for them. And I know you're aware of that. So just want to say that for the record and just you know, Mr. share while we close out this work session. Um, you talked about gymnastics, you talked about the library, you talked about the sheriff. There are a number of areas that we're going to talk about over the coming days that I am laser focused on and hope as a collective we can get across the finish line, not just what we talk about housing and and public facility, you know, utilization perhaps down the road how we study that. But it's going to be some long days for us ahead here and I know we're going to do the best for our our community. So, thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the staff and DMF for the hard work. I know I've I've sent a couple of emails probably the last minute and you know, as a junior member on this board asking some very pointed questions, but they're all for a reason,

right? Because I not only I want to learn more, but I want to understand our processes and how we arrive at some of these recommendations that you make to the county board. And I will tell you I'm still in the learning phase and there's a lot of things quite honestly I think we perhaps can reimagine and do differently in a very innovative and transparent way so not only in the community but also the folks that work in the government can understand what's going on. Thank you very much. Thank you Mr. Spain Mr. Karen Tonus we'll hope to get done by 4:15 at least.

I that's probably Mr. I just wanted to tell you that actually I'm not known for being a uh you know always praising HR here but in that they have been very good and they are recognized across the region. Compensation studies are Arlington is very good at doing them and we we are even should be charging others because they are copying ours and they're using them all the time. So uh so uh uh that's the the the health care cost is one of the major stressors. I understand that has been for this for this uh budget and I'm actually surprised that it was only 10%. We have seen last year that it could you know could be could be a lot of surprise embedded in this and uh uh thinking about the way forward is on our side how robust we are with reserves to face uh the challenges that come that come from that uh uh that's that's what I wanted to say but compensation studies were really good apparently.

Thank you Mr. Keronus and colleagues, I think we have near unonymity on a guidance on healthcare uh costs and there's also other pieces that are still ahead as far as um what we would consider over the coming days. We do have plenty to do. We're grateful for DMF and all all the staff who is doing the hard work to work with us. And with that, I think in this case, I'm accurate in saying we're adjourned for today.