Board of Supervisors - workshop

Mic test.

One, two.

Good afternoon, everyone. It's nice to have everyone with us today. I am going to officially call the Board of Supervisors work session to order today, Thursday, July 23rd, at 3.05 p.m. Sorry for the lateness of a few minutes. We have Mr. Carter, who's gonna deliver our invocation, in addition to Mr. Tatum, leading the Pledge of Allegiance. So if everyone, please stand.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It's great to see everybody here today. Lots of smiling faces in the crowd. Let us pray. Let us pause for a moment of reflection. We gather today in this room because we are all care deeply about our home and our future. We may not agree on every issue and sometimes passions run high, but we share the same ground under our feet. Let us practice patience, listen with open minds, and treat one another with basic human dignity. Amen.

Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. Amen.

OK, thank you so much, gentlemen. I appreciate that. The next item, I'm going to seek a motion to approve the agenda unless you all would ask or request changes to the agenda as it's submitted.

Madam Chair, if I may. Of course. I know Tuesday night I'd asked for a closed session. And in speaking with you and the vice chair, the attorney could not be here tonight, which is very important for us to go in closed session with to make sure we follow the rules. So I want to make it known to the public that that will be the reason we're not following up after what we talked about Tuesday night. So I will continue to hold on to my two items. to our next meeting. And also, I just wanted to be transparent on why we're not doing that request that we have from Tuesday night.

Mr. Meredith, your couple of items, was there anything time sensitive that we might have to call a special meeting for?

If it's okay with you, I might talk to our attorney for a second and just see his guidance.

Absolutely.

And if I'll let him determine, then we'll go from there. If it's okay with the board and everybody.

That option is absolutely open.

All right. Thank you very much.

Yes, sir. Any changes to the agenda, gentlemen? If not, Mr. Sandy.

I was just going to make clear that this is the amended agenda that's been distributed earlier today based on some of the items that we discussed on Tuesday. Okay.

and i think the amendment really pertains to the action item on the sale of county property

There were two kind of additional items, that one plus the bringing the sheriff back for the additional discussion on his item as well.

Okay, so you have an amended agenda, and what I would like to ask, is there a motion to approve the amended agenda as submitted?

So moved.

Thank you, Mr. Jamison. And second, Mr. Tatum? Second. Thank you. And we need a voice vote on this, so everyone in favor, please say aye. Aye.

Aye.

All those opposed, like sign. OK, and that carries unanimously. Thank you, gentlemen. The next item on the agenda is the action item that we are going to entertain today, the sale of county property, parcel number 0530007600, Union Hall District, Mr. Sandy.

thank you madam chair uh this was a bit of a time sensitive uh item since this was a property that was at a recent auction was subject of of a recent auction and so we need in order to complete the sale agreement we needed to bring this to you today so we wanted to make sure we we got that in front of you this is a property in the union hall district it's um I guess the best thing for me to say is it's somewhere between a half an acre and an acre. You know, from some of the records show it as an acre, but I think it's actually more like .588 acres. It's a landlocked piece of property that the county has had since 2008. And this was one of a list of 10 to 15 properties that the board has been talking about. trying to dispose of some of these properties that had no county use. And so we did the required public hearing for this a while back to potentially sell the property. We also talked about this again in 2024. We also at that point move forward with real estate services and we entered a contract with Walker commercial services and so they have they were the ones who took this to auction for sale and Kind of work through that. So what we're looking for today is the board's approval for the county attorney and the county administrator and Walker to execute that purchase agreement for this piece of property on I think it's Smithview, Smithview Drive in the Union Hall District. So I'm happy to try to answer any questions that you may have on this. And I think Daniel see Daniel Wickham in the background in the back there from Walker. If there are other questions that I'm not able to answer, I think he could help us with that.

All right. Gentlemen, do you have any questions, concerns? Mr. Quinn.

So Steve, I got involved with this property maybe a month ago or so. I was called by one of the landowners who is contiguous with this property and mentioned to me that the property was landlocked and that the county did not have a right of way across it. I didn't know at that time if that was true or not. So I talked to Brandy about it. And she did some further investigation and determined that there is no right-of-way. The county has no right-of-way. It's truly the landlocked, so you could only actually approach the property by boat. And I'm not sure that that – I don't believe that was common knowledge by the broker or maybe even any of the people who saw the property. So with all that as background, my concern is just have we made full disclosure that there is no right-of-way on this property and that they can only approach it by boat?

And I'll probably have to defer to Daniel, but I think that has been notified to the owners that there is no guaranteed access to that property as part of this sale.

Daniel is shaking his head in the affirmative.

I'm not a lawyer, but I would say in the state of Virginia that on an auction it's cavite emptor, buyer beware, so it would be up to them to discover all that.

Mr. Quinn, would you like for Daniel to come up to answer any questions that you may have?

Sure. Sure, it'd be good just to know. I just am concerned about taking out a liability where we sell something and now it's viable because they thought they had a right-of-way and they don't have a right-of-way.

Good afternoon, Daniel. It's nice to have you.

Thank you for the invitation, Madam Chair, members of the board. Appreciate your time today. I'll speak very briefly, since I know we have a long list of things to get to. The property, we did properly disclose to any and all bidders on the auction that it is landlocked and only accessible by water. And also, I heard the other statement that Virginia is a buyer beware state. The buyer was also made aware of that, and that is a correct statement as well from a legal perspective. Okay, thank you. Happy to answer any other questions.

Any other questions for Daniel, gentlemen? OK. Thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate the clarification. Yes, ma'am. Mr. Quinn, are you satisfied with the completion of that discussion? OK. Any other questions or concerns, gentlemen? Hearing none, you have a motion before you that has some specificity with regard to the parcel number. If someone would be kind enough to offer a motion, whatever your desire is, and make sure that we read it with the parcel number for the record.

I'll make a motion. I make a motion to approve the sale of County property located at parcel number zero five three zero zero zero seven six zero zero in the amount of seventy three hundred and fifty dollars and authorized the Walker Commercial Services Inc County attorney and County administrator and or designees to sign all necessary documents to execute this transaction with ty investments LLC

Okay, thank you, Mr. Quinn. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Tatum. Madam Clerk, if you would be so kind to do a roll call.

Supervisor Mitchell? Yes. Supervisor Carter? Yes. Supervisor Meredith? Yes. Supervisor Quinn? Yes. Supervisor Tatum? Yes. Supervisor Jamison? Yes. And Chair Smith? Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Sandy, for that.

Yes, thank you.

Next on the agenda, we will get into our work session topics for this afternoon. The first we have is subject to housing opportunities through West Piedmont Planning District. Mr. Armbruster and Mr. Campbell's with us. Do you have introductory remarks, Mr. Sandy?

Sure, as Michael's comment, I'll be happy to just make a few comments. We've talked about some of this for several months, but I think maybe Mr. Tatum and maybe Mr. Mitchell had brought this up as a follow-up to a presentation maybe at the Painting District Commission and some of the efforts that West Piedmont is doing relative to housing in the region. you know following this may be discussing or in the future discussing some ways of implementing some similar programs here in the county to help with some of the housing need that we have here in the county so Michael we appreciate you coming and and Shawn and I don't know I think the pleasure would be to go through the presentation and there probably be some questions afterwards welcome Mr. Armbruster we're so happy to have you with us this afternoon

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. We always appreciate the opportunity to update you all on the work of the Planning District Commission, especially housing. It's been a focus for about five or six years now. We started without a housing program, and now we have a really strong one of the stronger housing programs the pdc's across the state which i'm very proud of it started when sean campbell joined our team about five years ago he's been the the lead of our housing development and housing program so i'm going to let him talk about the success that we've had but then if there are any questions i'll jump in and help him answer those thank you mr campbell welcome we're glad to have you with us this afternoon thank you

So to summarize some of the accomplishments to start with, we have developed and are developing I'm sorry, we've developed 129 housing units since January of 2022. We have 67 units that are currently awarded funds from the current grant we're using, and most of them are underway. So our total production by the beginning in the next fiscal year will be 196 units in total pipeline we also recently acquired authorization to use ars funds from the department of housing and community development we have three properties under construction right now

Can you say what ARS is for the benefit of the public?

I'm sorry. ARS is the Acquire, Renovate, Sell program. Thank you. What it does is it allows us to take a $53,000 loan from DHCD, and then it also gives us administration fees and fees for a rehab specialist or construction specialist.

Thank you.

Two of those projects are new builds. One of them is an actual renovation of a house we acquired. To break that down, 168 of the units we have produced were rental units, and 28 of them were home ownership opportunities. The rental units were two sizable light tech projects, one in Blairs and one in the city of Martinsville. Excuse me. What the PDC can offer to our region is we have relationships already with our local governments. We've established relationships with housing nonprofits, with local foundations. We've partnered with some developers. And we have a pretty comprehensive list of contractors, too, at this point. We can help with project development on any projects. We've got a solid, strong relationship with Virginia Housing. We can do the grant administration piece where we can manage the budgets through claims, through reporting, help with procurement and compliance. So basically we can assist with using the grants, what to do with program income. We can support our local governance with our revolving loan fund. Currently our revolving loan fund has about $335,000. Some of that I have out on projects. I would say roughly there's $238,000 in the account. We project by FY28 we'll have that up to $1.2 million. The way we've been able to establish our account is that Virginia Housing has allowed us with the PDC development grant and with the more recent regional housing development grant To issue revolving loans with the funds they provide us and then capture them back And once we capture them back we can put our put them in our own revolving loan account So and that works basically the same as the heiress program we acquire the property we develop the property we sell the property we pull the income back in we put it on the next project and So we're projecting a 230% increase. The way we handle our evolving loan count, because I know there was some interest in this, We use it in-house as basically a line of credit until we can get reimbursed. We have two loans out to the Henry County right now. They are at zero interest. They get return upon sale. If we deal with a for-profit developer or builder, we usually look at like 2% to 3% interest, which they're not going to get anywhere else anyway. So over the course of the program, so going back to 2022, we've leveraged $37.76 million. Some of that is from local foundations, about $1.5 million. $36,000 was developers. Nonprofit organizations, $225,000. So basically the grants that we've taken in or that we've been awarded, they started with the PDC housing development grant, which started the program, that was $2 million. The regional housing development grant was $1.2 million. We have a workforce housing grant for the project here in Franklin County. That was a million dollars. We had 120,000 in a regional housing study. Oh, I skipped over. And we've done $95,000 worth of, planning grants. So basically our combined capital investment between leverage funds and our funds was $42,175,000. Housing development, most of our housing development we've done with the Virginia Housing PDC grant, the DHC-DARS program, the Regional Housing Development Grant and the Workforce Housing Grant. We have done planning grants. We've done the regional housing study. We've done our own planning grants in-house for pre-development and site assessment. And we're starting to build our supportive capacity on housing programs. We're looking to move into a housing counseling program. Basically, we're creating properties that we don't have buyers because With our funding, generally, we're looking at 80% AMI or less that we have to cap it at. Our goal is to create a pipeline of buyers that are waiting for our houses rather than right now having our houses sitting waiting for somebody to buy them. Part of that would be housing education, credit repair, budgeting to get them to the point where they're, you know, ready to buy. I don't know why I have a double on this, sorry. Homeownership units, total we've invested is 28, and three ARS projects. That is where we've used the capital from the revolving loan fund. We can identify building lots for localities or for private developers. We can put together capital stacks to fund these projects. We can leverage grants. We can use our revolving loan account. We can help with procuring construction. We can help with claims. We can help with reporting and program income and future readiness. So why a regional approach matters is that a lot of our localities aren't staffed to do this. There's often a need for procurement help and compliance and project management support. We can provide that for any of our localities. We actually also provide that for a couple of our nonprofits. Regional data, regional partnerships open up availability for other grants like the regional housing grant. And we can sustain a pipeline using the revolving loan funds. So looking ahead, we look to grow the revolving loan capital to 1.2 million, compete for more grants, expand ownership pipeline, and leverage more funding for partners. This is just an example of one of the light tech projects. This was in the city of Martinsville. It was an old mill that had burned down. They cleared the lot. This apartment complex was strictly for low to moderate income seniors, 57 units and leased up in 28 days. this is a project we're currently working on right now we've got funding from virginia housing we've got some funding through the harvest foundation in martinsville and we're using the pdc's revolving loan fund to create 10 new we're using the fleetwood duplex units so this will create 10 housing units there'll be homeowner home ownership opportunities um it allows us to put 10 units on a 1.56 acre lot we are also looking at some funding i guess i can talk about this now virginia housing asked us to partner with them on a grant application to fannie mae that's 998 000 it'll go into this project and make these homes 50 to 60 percent ami We're in the finalists, and we'll actually know by August 5th or 6th whether we actually got it. And that pretty much wraps up my presentation.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Questions? Yes. Supervisors, Mr. Quinn.

So thank you very much for that. I had a couple of questions. Do you sell the units at market price, or do you subsidize them and sell them below market price?

The ARS units, we Because we've been able to acquire the land for free when we do them or an existing structure that needs to be rehabbed for free, those we've been able to get them down to where we market them for 80% to 100% AMI, which puts us high low income or moderate income to workforce housing. We can sell them on Virginia housings target limits so that really what that does is that increases the income that the homebuyer can buy the only number I could give you off the top of my head right now is in Martinsville but in Martinsville that would bring them up from a family of four making sixty thousand would be the cap to a family of four making about ninety eight or ninety nine thousand

So your sales price is more focused on what your buyers can pay as opposed to the market price, right? You're not selling at market price.

Yeah, and the way we do it, because this is the way the state, it's a funny program. It's funded by Virginia Housing, but it's run by the state. The way it's set up with the state is we list at market value. But the advertising and the outreach goes to low to moderate income families first. After a certain time period, which I think is extended now to 90 days, if we don't get a contract in that 90 days, then we can go ahead and sell it at market rate. And the reason is because a lot of not-for-profits use this, and they don't have the ability to hold that property for that long. So the program allows them to sell it at market rate.

So on average, are you making money on the properties that you sell? When you look at your total cost for building, land acquisition plus building, are you making money?

If we make anything on it, it's going to be $5,000 maybe.

So very minimal. So you're not building your capital through money that you made, right?

No, we're not building capital through any of the sales of the home. It's not the goal. We do get $6,500 in administration fees total from the state.

So then the last question, I'm not sure that you're aware, but we have been going through a zoning ordinance rewrite for the last two years. And I was very keen to see if there were ways for us to reduce some of the barriers to developing and housing costs as a way to bring more affordable housing into the area. And I'm not sure that we ever did that The effort's a bit on pause right now, but it just makes me curious where you're kind of where the rubber meets the road. If you would have ideas for us as you look at the zoning of things that make it more expensive for you to carry out your mission, it'd be very interesting for us to hear those as a way for us to maybe reduce or lower the barriers and to lower some of the cost it is for you to develop and for you to complete your mission.

I actually do have research that I've done on this. It's something I could provide. Not right here off the top of my head today, but I can definitely provide Steve with it and he could get out.

That'd be really good. Thank you. No problem.

yes sir of course mr taylor okay uh sean could you uh share with us a little bit about the stultz road project there in henry county how that's going yes um the stultz road project is another one where we have a good capital stack on we invested 350 to 335 000 in grants harvest foundation matched that and then we actually both organizations put 400 000 worth of revolving loan funds in it They are a CLT project, so they're in a community land trust, which is a little different model. The land is owned by the land trust. The home is owned by the home buyer. The advantages to it is we can maintain affordability forever on those units, and they also don't have to pay tax on the land piece. And because the CLT is a not-for-profit, they're not taxed on the land. That has been kind of challenging. I can say that on Monday we sold our first house from that project. The challenges have been in telling the story of how the CLT works. I'm pretty well convinced this is what it is. And our real estate agents have gotten better and better at telling the story of how it works. and um I think with the kick with this first buyer in there it's going to generate some more interest and and there'll be some media coming out on it next week thank you Mr Carter

Thank you, Madam Chair. Sean, thank you for your presentation. A couple questions. Under ARS, those units, the $335,000, do you use that to offer low-interest loans on the purchase of these properties? Is that how it works?

We have been very fortunate. Right now, at this point, we haven't had to purchase any property. The city of Martinsville holds in excess of 40 properties that the city owns. And they have been extremely willing to gift them to the BDC. Very good.

And the Fleetwood homes, do you all access those from the Rocky Mount plan? Yes.

Yes, they'll be coming right out of Rocky Mount.

And my third question, recently I read a comment on social media, I think on our legislative agenda card, we use the term workforce housing. Could you give your definition of that just for the board?

My definition of that, of workforce housing, I generally go with what Virginia Housing considers workforce housing. Workforce housing is a cap of 120% of the area median income. There is some question about whose area median income do you use? HUD's area median income, which is typically what's used for housing, tends to be a little bit higher than some of the other sources. So generally we go by HUD's area median income. Right. Thank you very much.

Questions? Other questions? I have a quick one. Of course, we participated with Governor Spanberger when she initiated and passed legislation on affordable housing. and all of the new laws that came into play. What is the planning district per se? What are you all, and Mr. Ambrose, this may be something under your realm, but what are you all expecting or more favorable circumstances under the state funding models through DHCD perhaps or other grants as it relates to the products you're putting out?

I can, what I can tell you from what I've heard from the housing side is that nobody knows yet. Okay. And I did, and I have a couple of these, I'll make sure that you guys can get a copy because I know, and I can do them pretty quickly if you have the time. I have an update on funding opportunities.

can you just um copy that with our clerk and if you have an extra copy oh yeah i brought i think about i got a bunch of them if you just hand them to our clerk that would be super perfect yeah it basically just gives you the status and a lot of them right now are kind of unknown so of the projects that you all are currently working on in these numbers um are there projects ongoing in franklin county as we speak

I think the project, the Westlake project is still under pre-development.

You're talking about the Boone property?

The Boone property, yep. But we had, we acquired a million dollar grant from Virginia Housing for that property, workforce housing grant.

Right, right. Is your funding, and typically, generally speaking, your ability to pull grants down and to work with the HCD is very good. Are you finding flexibility for infrastructure? I know that is the softball question, but are you finding any flexibility with that?

The only flexibility I have found so far with infrastructure is the project in Martinsville. Because it was an innovative housing project, Virginia Housing allowed us to use the Innovative Housing Development Grant for the infrastructure on that project.

And I will add that's one of the areas that we have really been advocating for. So as we talk to the state agencies, ARC, DHCD, several have come around the region and talked to us about what what our needs really are. And that's really the key that we've been pushing is infrastructure for housing development.

That's great, Michael. I know that Mr. Tatum represents West Piedmont. You're the sole supervisor, correct, on West Piedmont? And Nick, he's not going to let me forgive him, bless his heart. And, of course, we have Roanoke-Allegheny Regional Commission. We have the benefit of having two separate planning districts. But I work on the legislative piece there, as Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Tatum do for West Piedmont. So I can tell you there's a consistent and on our board's legislative agenda. We just adopted Tuesday night This is this is a very consistent Legislative item. I expect that Vaco is going to pick it up in a robust fashion as well So I very much appreciate your efforts and it seems like you're doing such great work for people that are really deserving and need a hand up and I really appreciate that

Well, thank you. We do have we have an application right here right now. Federal grant application to HUD. We've got requests out to our localities. We're looking for property to include in that application. So welcome anything from the county. We also anticipate potentially another round of PC focused housing money from Virginia Housing. So we would ask the county to be thinking about property and projects to share with us as those funding sources become available.

Okay. Mr. Sandy?

Just along those lines, would you prefer folks come through the county with ideas, or do you mind if nonprofits or others approach you guys really just to see about eligibility of certain projects?

They can contact me directly. Okay.

Any other questions, Mr. Carter?

Yeah, thank you. And I don't know if this is applicable, but the town of Rocky Mount has approximately 60 acres. They put out an RFP. Are you familiar with that? Yes. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, we've talked to the town about that as well as some other potential project ideas related to that.

Great. Thank you.

Any other questions, comments from supervisors? Gentlemen, thank you so much for being with us. It's been very informative. And we'd like to have you back to see how things are going and progress and any way that we can be of support with the state agencies. We certainly want to partner with you guys on that.

Thank you all.

Thank you. Thank you. OK, Mr. Sandy. We have Piedmont Community Services update.

Ready to move on as Greg's coming up.

Mr. Preston, I didn't know if you had any introduction.

Just a brief introduction. Just, you know, we're happy to have another regional partner here with us today just to kind of update you on some of the work that they're doing. You've seen Greg recently with some of the opioid projects, been working with Brian and some with Piedmont and other regional partners. And so, you know, I think maybe the emphasis today is just the regionalism and how, you know, we're doing a lot of great work in a regional effort and We're glad to have partners like Mr. Preston and Piedmont here. So thanks for coming in. Thank you.

Greg, thank you so much for being with us.

Yes, ma'am. Madam Chair, Board, Mr. Sandy, but I call him Steve if that's okay. Mr. Carter and Brian. Madam Chair, I just wanted to take a few minutes before I get started just to say thank you to Steve and Brian. Just excellent partnership. Thank you. You know, when I met Steve, he actually already mapped out our meetings for the entire year.

That's of course he did.

Yeah. So we meet quarterly. We have a great conversation. Both Steve and Brian are really supportive of Piedmont and our services and our staff. And I just want to go on record and say thank you.

Thank you for that. Thank you so much.

So again, I'm Greg Preston, the CEO with Piedmont Community Services. So today we have 50 slides, but I assure you we'll be done in no time.

50 as in 5-0?

Yes, ma'am. Oh my goodness. And I'll show you how proud we are of our services by the number of staff that are behind me. But anyway, we'll do a quick overview of our CSB. We'll talk some about our services. We wanted to share with you about the 2025 services impact, what's new that's happening with Piedmont, and what's to come. So again, just for background information, a CSB, there are 40 community services boards in the state of Virginia. Piedmont is one of 40. So if you go to Roanoke, you have Blue Ridge. If you go to Danville, you got Danville CSB. And they're spread out throughout the state of Virginia. So again, Piedmont, we were organized by a joint resolution in 1972. We support Martinsville, Henry, Patrick, and Franklin County. Right now we have about 475 employees. And again, history shows we've served anywhere from 7,400 to 7,200 individuals per year. Right now, our board of directors, Mr. Garrett Dillard is our chair. Mr. Gil Carter is our past chair. Ms. Charlotte Hubbard, who's actually a Franklin County representative, is our second vice. And I wanted to also recognize Eric Mullins, B.W. Wright, and Randy Wood. We do have one vacancy, and I will get with Steve on that to fill that vacancy. We are also proud to recognize Brenda Ephraim. She just completed nine-year term. But Brenda actually sits, continues to sit on the state board, as well as Ms. Jane Carlson, who actually is our first vice chair from Patrick County. our board of directors. As you can see, we have Caroline Pilsen, our CFO, Sharon Buckman, who's from Franklin County, who's our chief human resources officer, Sam Petty, IT. We're really, really, really excited to have Jariah Morris to join us. You'll get to hear from her here shortly. Kelly Coble, our director of behavior health. Regina Clark, who's also from Franklin County, our Director of Prevention, Ms. Shannon Clark, Director of Community Support, and also Lynn Fleming, who's the Administrative Assistant. Currently, we operate, it's actually 36 different facilities in the four localities we support. In Franklin County, we have four facilities here currently. I want to yield now, if I could, to Angel Bilesman. She's the Senior Assistant Behavioral Health Director.

Angel, it's so good to see you. See you too, Madam Chair. Good afternoon. Thank you all for having us. I'm going to talk first about how to access our services. Most folks at this point have heard about our same-day access process. So you come in for the same day, meet with one of our assessors, get your assessment completed, and leave with appointments, which is nice to not be on a waiting list we also do take some outside referrals and sometimes that's just information from a community partner and then there's some services specifically like school-based services that we take referrals and then we'll reach out and contact and initiate those services we also have our crisis intervention if we see someone at our lighthouse program then we may link them to services and sometimes even assess them from that that location depending on what's what's available to us at the time. So our quick overview of our mental health services. We have individual and group therapy. This is your traditional sort of talk-based therapy, and we do that for adults in both individual and group setting. For children, we do that in the office individually. Occasionally, we have some summertime groups, and then we have those school-based individual services as well. Our psychosocial rehab program, that's a comprehensive day program for adults that promotes mental health recovery by working on things like social skills, activities of daily living, improving those, budgeting, things like that to just help people in their recovery to become fully functional. We have assertive community treatment and that program is for our folks with adults with serious mental illness that have had maybe multiple hospitalizations. And so we want to really try to keep them in the community and out of the hospital. So that's a fairly intensive program that helps to support them in the home setting. We have intensive care coordination. So this is one of our can be a CPMT funded, CSA funded service. And we are working with an evidence-based model to support families and children to keep them out of residential, out of the hospital and in their home with their parents. We have crisis stabilization. Again, that's at the Lighthouse in Martinsville. And so we have a 23 hour program. They usually end up staying more like four to six hours. And that's really operating like a mental health urgent care. And so maybe someone's just not able to cope very well at the time. And we really want to keep them from having to go to the hospital. And so we can get them started on some medication, develop a plan with them about what coping skills they're going to use and really link them to services to move on from there. We have psychiatric evaluation and medication. We know that some mental illness is organic in nature, so we really need medication on board to help folks be able to start these other services, because without that, they really can't manage. And we have case management, which we provide for both children and adults. And that really helps to link folks to any of the services that they might need. We can work on vocational things, budgeting, social skills, community integration, all of those things. And then our substance use services, we have Intensive Outpatient, which is a pretty intensive program. It's three hours at a time, three days a week, so for a total of nine hours. We have that in person here in Franklin County. It's a group setting. We also have a virtual option, which we're really excited about. We're only about a month in, but transportation, as we know, is a real barrier for our folks. So that's been something that we're really excited to get back to doing. We don't offer that necessarily typically in an individual setting, but if a person is struggling with something, we can also offer them some individual sessions as part of IOP. We do individual and group therapy. All of our groups right now are for adults. And then we can do some individual focused on substance use as well. And if we have any teens or adolescents coming in, that's what we're offering to them at this time as individual. We have substance use case management, and it's very similar to mental health case management. It's just that our goals and our focus is around substance use. And then we have medication assisted treatment. And we've got opioid here. We also do that some for alcohol. There's some medication that can help manage cravings and those types of things. So we do that for both. Great time also to talk about our mobile unit. That started rolling again June 1st. um right now we have one location in um burnt chimney area but we have plans to have another back in fork mountain where we were before so really excited to be able to finally staff that unit and get us back on the road and just want to plug also our recovery court this is one of the places that we have a great partnership with the county and mr carter department of social services so we're working with families and children where substance use is really that main reason that children are out of the home. So we're working to reunite those folks. And it's been pretty successful for us. Thank you. I thank Ms. Clark. who's our Director of IDDD Services and Recovery. Correct.

Hello, Ms. Clark, good afternoon. Madam Chair and Board of Supervisors, wanted to just, one, just talk about Developmental Disability Services that's specific to Franklin County, because again, we got 50 slides, so I don't want you all to have to sit and wait and talk about each one of these. So I'll talk specifically about group homes, our congregate waiver group homes that are in Franklin County. We do have three that have a capacity to serve up to 18 individuals. So of course we're excited about that. We also do some in-home services within the area for those that have IDDD. So just wanted to make sure that I say that. And of course we also provide adult case management as well as child case management for those with intellectual and developmental disabilities. In thinking about recovery supports, again, we have a plethora of recovery supports within Piedmont Community Services, but to focus on Franklin County, let me say we do have, which you'll be talking about a few moments, about our Pearl Grace program, which is our pregnant and postpartum women with those individuals that suffer from or have or are in recovery. So we'll talk about that in a few moments. We're excited about the expansion of that program. We are so grateful to Brian as well as Steven as far as assisting us with OAA funds to acquire another property to expand that. The need is so great and we have a very low barrier within that recovery residence. So we're excited about. We also have Pace to Recovery within our area. We actually have peers that coordinate with the ED. in regards to assisting those individuals that have SUD diagnosis or what have you, and if they're in crisis. And so we also operate a warm line. We work with the ED, working with those individuals that come in, as well as we have a warm line that individuals can call if they're experiencing a crisis, a SUD crisis or that type of thing, and they can actually speak to a peer with lived experience to help them and talk with them about resources and coach them and you know, get them through that threshold if they want to return to use. So at the end of the day, wonderful program. We also have within Franklin County a connection of employment. We have community recovery program. We are working with the workforce as far as office up here in Franklin County. And so we have peers that come and they assist individuals with SUD. as far as to get them employment placement. So we have various connections within the community that we're trying to establish and we would always welcome more businesses. Again, we offer one-on-one as far as coaching and things of that nature in order to get them back and gainfully employed at the end of the day.

Can I ask you a quick question? Can I ask you a quick question? I'm sorry to interrupt. Did I hear you correctly that you all have currently 18 waiver slots?

We currently have a capacity to serve 18 individuals in the waiver group homes right now. We have more waiver slots within Franklin County that we serve individuals. Oh, yeah.

Well, I know that, but I keep an eye on that state allocation of slots.

Yes. Now, I will say this just as a plug. If you know legislators or what have you, we definitely want to get on the docket for some more slots because there are none in Virginia's budget for 27. There are no slots. We will only have attrition based on death or somebody moves out of the state or things of that nature. That is how we will have slots for the next at least year. So, of course, advocacy to get slots. That's what we need. Because, you know, it was wonderful to get the 3,340 slots. That did not eliminate the priority one wait list whatsoever. What is the current state wait list? The current state wait list, I do believe it's about 10,000. yeah and that's between priority one it did not eliminate it at all yeah that's just what contrary to base you know to hear it's a it is a huge uphill battle right to serve individuals with id correct and only those that are priority one are presented for a slot you still have the priority two and a priority through three and so those individuals don't meet that priority one criteria in order to be assessed for a slot. They have to be able to accept services within 30 days, for those of you that didn't know. And so it is a challenge. Well, thank you.

Thank you for answering my questions. Oh, you're welcome. Any others?

Okay.

Thank you.

good afternoon I'm Regina Clark I'm the director of youth and prevention services for Piedmont so I get to tell you about all the fun things that we are doing out in the community so with our education and awareness initiatives some of those are school-based some of those are throughout the community with different trainings that we offer we like to partner with folks if there's a need we can do different types of trainings and whatnot Our parent education, we do offer a program called Strengthening Families, and we also have a virtual program called STEP. And then we also offer custody parenting for folks that are going through a custody change. So we have quite a few that we are offering, and we're launching a new one this fall called Parent Project. And I will also give kudos to the partnership that we have because recovery court, our family recovery court families come through this program and I can tell you we have served 39 that have come through with the priority giving to our recovery court folks and then open to the public as well So as long as we have capacity we serve anybody that is interested. So we're pleased with that We do try to just be a presence in the community and be the face of Piedmont when we can so we like to be involved with the health fairs and different activities that are going on with our partners and Our school-based programs, we do quite a few in the schools, mostly around Too Good for Drugs and a Catch My Breath program, which are related to substance use, vaping prevention. A small part of that is on the education around the actual substance. So much more of the program is around building resiliency, communication skills, peer pressure refusal skills, and just a plethora of other things. We also do mental health wellness lessons and signs of suicide lesson because, again, we take very seriously the mental health in the community and especially with the youth. And I can tell you, and I'm very proud of our efforts with the school-based programs, last year we served 3,359 youth. that individually in the classrooms, having direct contact with them. With our suicide prevention trainings, that is 1,164 youth that received that. And then mental health first aid, we had 106 people. And this is just Franklin County. With our naloxone training, we also have staff trained in that for Piedmont along with our recovery peers. And we just want to be available and have it readily accessible to folks. And then, of course, our community coalition in Franklin County that is FRESH, which is Focus on Response and Education to Stay Healthy. They are kind of the parent coalition, if you will, the adult coalition for CHILL. We love acronyms. Communities Helping Improve Local Lives. And together, those groups, along with our other community partners, put together the After Prom Party. the high school and I am pleased to say we had 175 attend that this year which is our highest number and I know we've also partnered with some of the OAA request funds so given an update on that and just to highlight the number of individuals served and this is not counting our community efforts with tabling events and presentations but direct service has been seven thousand and ninety eight people in Franklin County just with prevention services And then we go into our early childhood development services. Again, a lot of this can be summed up together. With the programs that we do, we can serve folks prenatally all the way up until they turn 18. And then I hand it over to my colleague, the other Mrs. Clark. And we're really able to serve folks across the lifespan. So when they come to us, if we get a referral with Healthy Families, they're able to get enrolled. We start providing services early on. They continue through that until if there is a concern identified, they are then able to be eligible for early intervention, which then carries them on into if the problem develops more, they can receive the IDDD services. So that's essentially the snapshot. We are serving 152 families in Franklin County We have good relationships with our partners and the referrals continue to come in. So we're thankful Thank you so much

Hi, young lady.

Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Jariah Morris. I am currently new in the role of public information officer, so I'm excited to meet everyone. And my task today is actually very exciting because I get to brag on all of our services and the impact that we made in 2025. So let's get started with Franklin County impact overall. So if you take a look at our slide, you'll see that in total, considering all of our services, we have served 13,280 community members. So that includes those who got direct service, those who were maybe a part of the CHILL programs that she was talking about. This is just a culmination of all the services that we've offered. And this is our impact number strictly in Franklin County. So if we move into the impact that each program has made, if we talk about the overall impact that we made in all of our counties, in our behavioral health services, we served 4,948 individuals just in behavioral health. So there's a couple of accomplishments that we were able to accomplish to reach this goal. And so I'm going to talk about a few of those. One, we were able to expand our 23-hour crisis service, which means that we were able to increase access to give that urgent behavioral health support for adults and children across our region. We were also able to implement a tiered case management system. So this means that we were able to create a system that meets the clients where they are as opposed to doing a one size fits all approach. We also were able to continue to run our mobile unit, which Angel spoke about. And then we were also able to implement Credible IQ, which is a software that helps our staff members keep up with their documentation and things like that. So behavioral health is actually our leading or our largest area of service in 2025. So moving forward to our substance use and recovery services, we were able to serve 94 individuals in all in our recovery residences. So not only were we able to do this across all of our catchment areas, so not just Franklin County, but also Martinsville and et cetera, we were also able to serve 400 individuals in our recovery warm line. So talking a little bit more about Grace House, we were able to support five pregnant or postpartum women and their children through our residential treatment. And then lastly, through our community recovery program, we assisted 77 individuals with job placement, employee training, and things of that nature. So then moving on through our developmental services, again, these are the numbers across the board. We were able to serve 833 individuals. I know we talked a little bit about those waivers just now. So we were able to issue 23 family and individual support waiver slots to individuals on the priority one wait list last year. We were able to provide support coordination to about 602 children and adults, helping them navigate services and resources. We were able to serve 47 individuals through waiver residential and in-home services, supporting their daily living and their community integration. And then lastly, of course, we're able to maintain 100% of our HCBS compliance across all of our PCS waiver residential areas. So we're really proud about that. In our youth and prevention services, we were able to, across the board, provide some prevention programs for 3,511 youth across our catchment area. We were able to train 294 participants, including educators, faith-based partners, veterans, and et cetera, on mental health first aid, safe talk, CIT, and adverse childhood experience. we were able to educate 951 students on the risk of opioids and fentanyl use supporting making sure that they have informed making sure they have enough information to make informed decisions and then lastly we were able to distribute a hundred Excuse me, 1,591 medication storage devices and 2,703 drug deactivation packs throughout all of the PCS areas. So I know it's a lot of numbers, but the point is that we are making a huge impact in not only Franklin County, but in all of our areas. I did want to briefly give an overview of our finances, just to talk a little bit about where the money comes from and how we use the money. So as you can see, the chart shows a breakdown of where our funds come from. There are local and state funding. And then the funding that we get, we pour it back into our personnel and our operating costs. So as you can see, we try to be transparent and store the money that we have been given to pour back into not only our staff, but our community as well. And of course, none of this is possible without our staff. So just recently we were able to celebrate our 50th anniversary and really celebrate our staff members that make all of this possible. As Greg mentioned, we have about 470 some staff. Clearly we need all of us to work together to get this done. So I am done bragging. I do want to bring up Elena Wimmer, who is going to talk to us a little bit more about the new additions to Franklin County. She's going to introduce Marcus Alert to us.

Hello, Elaine. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon. It's nice to be back. Thank you for having me back. So as Sheriff in Overton and I spoke about on Tuesday night, we are bringing Marcus Alert to Franklin County. I will reiterate a little bit about the program. The Marcus Alert is a Virginia law named for Marcus David Peters, a 24 year old teacher who was killed while in a mental health crisis by a Richmond police officer. It was signed into law in late 2020 by Governor Ralph Northam, and it provides a multi-stage phase timeline and a framework for localities to follow and improve response to mental health crisis. The goals for Marcus Alert are to diminish the role of police response to behavioral health crisis, shift primary response to a qualified behavioral health professional, involve police in a supporting role for public safety, prioritize de-escalation and non-lethal force, and decriminalize behavioral health crisis and reduce stigma. We are also aiming to reduce arrests and increase treatment and support for these individuals. Like we spoke about on Tuesday night in Franklin County, we're gonna be doing the co-response model, so that will be the clinician and the law enforcement officer traveling together to these calls to provide services to these individuals. And we are very excited to start that. I have been currently working with Melissa Cundiff from the Communications Center on starting 988. And that went live on July 1. So that is the mental health line that 911 dispatchers can transfer to when somebody is in a mental health crisis to try to divert from law enforcement.

Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you so much.

Hello. Good afternoon. Hello. Good afternoon. My name is Kat Heredia. I'm the peer recovery specialist and recovery coordinator for Piedmont Community Services. And Shannon is my director.

And I was going to introduce her, but she introduced herself.

I'm also a Franklin County resident and someone who's been in recovery for 18 years. So this is very near and dear to my heart. The house that you see on your left hand side is what we currently call the Grace House. That is the house that we've had for quite some time. The past five years we've served pregnant and parenting women. So women can come in at any stage of their pregnancy, perinatal, and be up to two and a half years postpartum. which is great. We've also seen a lot of housing opportunities open up for women that are postpartum this past year, but many of them have limitations about how long they can serve the moms, which is usually four to six months. So us having this program that has an extended timeframe has really helped women with longer term sobriety and recovery. The challenge is that now you have a bottleneck system where we only are able to support so many moms and children. The house that's on your right hand side is the new home that we were able to purchase with the assistance of OAA funding. And so that house is really going to be able to eliminate some of that bottleneck or at least ease up. that part of our program. Lotus House is what we're going to be calling this. And so Lotus is really there to help kind of cut down on this need of only being able to serve five women and five children. We'll be able to hopefully at least double that, which is great. We're going to move this from instead of a higher level, level three for VAR accreditation, it'll be a little bit less structured, so like a level two. hoping that it'll help moms work towards more independence not being so reliant on the system and being ready to transition out on their own and so we're calling that kind of a step down model or of our level two and yeah it just helps moms and babies stay safe and healthy every time we have a mom come in that has her child and is in full custody that alleviates about five hundred dollars from the social system which we like to see happen also Lotus House. This property is really unique. It's great. It's about 2,600 square feet. Currently, it's been used as like renting out for three separate units, but it will be probably pretty easy to modify that. So the 2,600 square feet, three different units, three kitchens, three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and multiple laundry rooms. The goal is to open that up so that we can house about five women also instead of just keeping up the three units. So we'll have renovations for those things. There is an onsite location that will be used for an office space as well and some storage space, which is something that we did not previously have at the other house. So that's going to be helpful. We do have some covered parking and two private covered entrances and then multiple laundry areas, which is going to be great. And you can't really see it, but on the far left of that house, there's covered patio, which we plan to do some outdoor like fun activities with the children.

Let me do a shameless plug for Kat. She has put Franklin County on the map in regards to recovery resident services. She actually spoke at a national in Washington, D.C. in regards to about Pearl and Grace House and how Franklin County has just enveloped us and accepted us. in regards to a PPW program. So she actually spoke on a national level with HRSA as well as Recovery Corps, that subgroup. And so she has put Franklin County on the map in regards to pregnant and postpartum women. Well, we thank you for that.

We're very proud of you for that. Thank you.

I will say that it was very well received in D.C., and there were a lot of places that came to us saying, how do you have this model? And a big credit to the community for being able to welcome us. The partnerships are amazing, and without them, we wouldn't be able to pull this off. No, we thank you. Yeah, no, thank you.

All right, Kippy's going to talk about some of the logistics. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Kippy Castle. I'm the building project coordinator for Piedmont. And over the last year and a half, I guess, I've worked real closely with Brian and with your all's assistance to get the OAA grant to fund the Lotus House. I just kind of wanted to give you a little timeline of how we got here with this project. We originally submitted the grant to expand at the Grace House location. And once we got in there and started looking at it, we decided it really wasn't feasible to try to expand at that location. It's in the town of Rocky Mount. It's an older house. It was just going to cost way more to do the expansion than really what we could afford. So we went back with Brian and asked if we could resubmit, and we did. to purchase another location, which wound up being the location that you just saw. This house is on Ballpark Road in Franklin County. And we started looking back in early part of this year. And this was one of those locations, like when we got on site, it was like, oh, this is the one. And we just kind of stopped looking and made an offer on the property. We made the offer, I believe it was in April. And we had the property closed and had purchased it by June because Brian was pushing us because we had to spend the money by June 30. So it was a very quick turnaround to get this property purchased. But we do think that it is the perfect location for the program that you just heard about. The timeline that you can see here on the screen The house that we purchased was sort of split up into three different apartments, and the people who owned the house was leasing those apartments out. So the house was occupied with residents at the time. So once we took ownership of it, our attorney sent a notice to them that they would have to be out of the property by August 31st. What we did do for those folks was we have not charged them any rent since we took ownership of that to give them an opportunity to use those funds to try to help them do their relocation. So the plan is for July and August, we'll give them time to get moved out. Once they're out in September, then we're gonna start assessing the property, determining what renovations need to be made. Once that's determined in November through February, we'll actually do those renovations. First part of 2027, we'll start hiring staff. The certifications will come hopefully in the spring of 27. And our plan is to have the first resident to move in April 15 of next year. So again, this is a real fast turnaround, real fast process that we've been going through. But I just wanted to thank you all for the opportunity to get the OAA grant. Thank Brian for working with us and helping us with all the logistics of making it happen. And if you have questions, we'll try to answer them.

Thank you very much.

Madam Chair, we're probably out of time. Just quickly moving forward, again, we talked about the crisis services. Rebranding is going to be really important for us this year. Expanding housing, Marcus Lert, definitely employment services. If you know anyone that's looking for an excellent job, this is the QR code to use. Great benefits, great job, great family oriented. Just wanted to also say thank you to all of our staff. Just wonderful staff that we have. just a snapshot of some of our locations and definitely in closing again just want to say thank you for everything that franklin county has done and continues to do for piedmont community services for the last 54 years thank you mr president if you hang on a second make sure that my colleagues don't have any questions yes ma'am i'll do it questions comments

Okay. Thank you, Mr. President. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. And thank you, staff, CSB staff, for being with us. You all are doing the Lord's work, that's for sure. And I have back, I've been on the CSB board where I used to live and did it for a long time. And I value and have personal experience with what you do. And so we greatly appreciate that. Thank you.

I would echo that as well madam chair I've been around the Piedmont places for years and years and I've seen the hard work that their staff puts in they're a huge asset to this county and they truly do the Lord's work and thank y'all for all you do

Okay, we are going to move on. The last item on our agenda is to bring back our sheriff, Sheriff Overton, to pick up some issues, specifically the emergency notification alert system. Sheriff, that we ask to defer until this evening, and we appreciate your indulgence, and we appreciate you being here.

Thank you, Madam Chair and board members. Very happy to be back here today and maybe answer some questions since you all had a chance to maybe look over the material. Ms. Cunningham is back with me today and maybe certainly she can answer a lot of those questions as she prepared this particular PowerPoint presentation. I want to mention We neglected to mention it Tuesday, but we have applied or in preparation applying for grant funding of any type to help assist with the cost that was provided to you all Tuesday. I just want to make sure that you all aware that we are seeking any additional funding that we could get for this purpose. This was not a mandated a law that was signed by the governor, the ELISA law in April the 2nd of 2026. But Virginia is the 12th state to put that law into practice. put that into law in their state and as you all well know once it becomes a law there's certainly more mounted pressure and topic of discussion certainly for more and more school divisions to implement I can't tell you that I tried to research and I don't know how many out of the 140 excuse me, maybe 160 school divisions in the state of Virginia. How many have a current active alert system? About 128 of those had made moves to make sure that schematic drawings of all of their schools and everything are provided to law enforcement in case of an active shooting event. But I don't know how many of them have, but again, as more come on board with doing this, seeking this particular technology that we have put in place and have had in place, that it certainly could move to a mandate instead of just a recommendation to do that. And certainly with mandates, we've talked about those of how much pressure they can put on divisions at that time. And certainly as product vendors are out there, we know it's gonna get more and more difficult to get the product. And as more come on board, certainly the product becomes more expensive. But is there any questions you all have specifically for us today? And we'll certainly try to answer anything you may have.

Sure. I think you said that this is not mandated as of right now, but we all know by experience and history, once it becomes mandated, the price is going to go through the roof. Yes, sir. And we've seen that in the past and different things. And I think certainly by getting in, getting on board Now it would put us ahead of the curve. I mean, it's just basic economics. Once it becomes a mandate, the demand goes through the roof and the suppliers pretty well can charge whatever. I fully understand and I have my support on this. We have a system. Similar to this at the college, we use it for different emergency situations. Just about three weeks ago, we had an alert go out, black bear seen on campus, just to notify everybody to travel with caution. But I can certainly see the importance of having this to help protect our schools.

Thank you, Mr. Tatum. And there was a question, I think, that may arose the other day. How do we get to this law? And if you were reading, I think it is in the presentation, this was a young girl that was killed in that mass shooting and her parents, like many of the parents, continued to delve into how do we keep this from happening again to another family, our families. And one of the breakdown was that no alert system was in place because somebody said, well, why simply can't they call 911? Well, that's what they did, and the system failed. There was so much inundation of the system. Calls got routed wrongly, and information was not disseminated in the fashion that certainly the report, a federal report from the Department of Justice that was done showed that the information was not disseminated. The response was inadequate. People lost jobs. People were convicted in court for negligence of duty that they relied on to be able to perform in such an instance. So that's where the law came from.

Thank you, Sheriff.

This particular law.

Mr. Mitchell.

Sheriff, what was the name of the other program that you all have in place now?

It's a company called Entrato.

Entrato. And so if I remember correctly from our talks on Tuesday, that company is going, they will not be able to service you all's, what you have going now. They're going out. However, you all still have that system in place. Correct. And it is operational.

That system is in place. They requested for us to be off of that system by August 31st. Of course, no entity can meet that deadline, but their service is going away completely December 31st, 2026.

And you all will no longer have access to that?

Correct, yes, sir.

After December 31st, 2026? Yes, sir.

So part of Alyssa's law in Toronto Safety Shield is a app on the phone. Alyssa's law indicates that you have to have a press button for people, for the teachers to carry as a panic alert and no longer an app.

do the classrooms not have panic alert buttons they do not okay and that's another good thing too I thank you very much for that and the fact I've mentioned the other day we were pressing about ninety percent with a panic button on the lanyard that can be directed it certainly we would look at a hundred percent of staff at all schools would have that panic button versus what we're hoping that the teachers elected to put the app on their phone

So, Sheriff, just a silly question. I want to get a good understanding. Through your office, you do not have anything comparable in place for the schools other than the SROs. I mean, are there any other emergency alert systems in our schools?

There are not. The only security protections would be the SRD in place. Certainly training that we give through the school division as far as lockdowns and all of those procedural things. Cameras that are in place that can be visually seen from our 911 operators that are monitored each day. that certainly would detect or could detect someone in the school moving around that is suspicious or their their clothing or character whatever it may be and in this particular alert system that we have so those cameras are they monitored by one individual that's

It's not an occasional observation, or is it a dedicated person?

School divisions certainly have them in the schools, access the SRDs as well and school members, and then we do. Again, with all the monitors in the 911 Center, it's just one monitor that we're looking at as we monitor others as well.

And so this contract, again, just to reconfirm, it's an annual contract, first year grant paying for the position, the deputy that will be with the, I'm looking at the wrong thing? Yeah, I got Raptor right here.

This has nothing to do with her.

That was the other program, the Marcus Alert. I'm sorry. You put two things in front of a sheriff? It's confusing to this girl sometimes. Okay, very good, so ignore me. All right.

I just lost my place. I caused that.

Sorry, go ahead. Any other comments, questions?

I have a question. Please. You mentioned strobe lights the other day. Can you talk about that a little bit? Thank you.

Yes, sir. There was two options that you see on your packet, option A, option B. The strobe lights would only be at the high school, which includes all of the buildings on campus there, and the west campus, and the middle school, all buildings on campus there, and the Giroux Center. So what the strobes does is it creates different colored lights to signal to the students, teachers, anybody on campus, what they need to do when those strobes go off. So if the teacher hits the button seven times, activates the strobe lights it can they can change it to green saying hey just get inside a building you change to red it's gonna be locked down you change the blue get inside your closest classroom lock the doors and that's for students who are moving in and out of classrooms that the PA system doesn't pick up outside is the school system agreeable to this is there anyone here from the schools to speak to this Tim Morrison and Dr. Nestor were both part of the committee in doing this, and both of those are out of town this week.

Thankfully, and I'll give them credit, they actually brought it to our attention because when this law went into place, they wanted to make sure that they had the ability to maybe put a panic button inside a classroom if requested or whatever if a teacher was to specifically ask for that. And knowing that we did not have 100% of the teachers on the apps, They contacted Entrato and that's when Entrato said we're looking at closing down this particular division. The indication was you'll get plenty of notification in time. Tim Morris and Dr. Nestor reached out to us and then as we made some phone calls after that we found out they were shutting it down completely and our window of opportunity was shrinking quickly. but they are fully on board uh with the with the alert system and what we're trying to do there again i mentioned it the other day in future budgets a lot of information that i have read this funding does come from the school divisions uh out of their budget and that and chair that's partially where my yeah my confusion is coming from this seems like a

It'll be for school employees and things will be installed inside school buildings. It sounds like a school budget item to me.

I think that's a great point and I guess I'm asking where aren't the schools making this presentation with you well I think some of the contention I don't know if you all remember it but prior superintendent at the school was not quite on board with the school resource officers and maybe the alert system they wanted funding to be able to direct it in other ways that they felt that was their prerogative I continue to push for the restore school resource deputies and the alert system and once we came to the board of the board said that they denied it. And we were able to find a private donor of the superintendent agreed at that time if you've got the funding will put it in of course thank you it is so that's been a couple superintendents back.

I'm trying to get a clue. Mr. Meredith, please. The strobe lights, you said just at the high school, middle school? Yes, sir. Have we considered doing something at the elementary schools like where the playground area is? I mean, is that something that was considered? You wouldn't need as many buildings, but if you have a group of kids outside where the playground is, the last thing we want them doing is walking back into it. So has that been considered like having one in those areas?

We did consider that on the elementary schools. The only reason why we chose the high school and middle school is just for cost savings.

I don't like hearing that myself.

And the elementary schools, their PA systems pick up more outside, according to the school board, than the middle school and high school do. The high school apparently does not have any PA system outdoors at all.

I just, that concerns me as a parent and grandkids that we just put a price tag on a kid's life. And I hate, I don't mean that in a bad way. I would almost like to know if we did it just one per school where the playground or buses are, what would that additional cost be? I know we're on time crunch, but.

I can probably have that to you by the end of the day tomorrow if you'd like it.

If it's up to the board, I think it would be nice to know.

I think it would be very good information for us to have. Mr. Tatum, do you have any feedback from this, of course, is in your lane?

I agree with Mr. Meredith. I would like to include the elementary schools if possible. I know it's kind of putting you on a time crunch here. Probably what you're looking for from us is permission, authority to move forward. And then if we approve this today and move forward with it, can we start working toward adding the elementary schools? We also need to look into, and this would be a question for Mr. Quinn, not just our public schools, but all our schools in the county, and at least have something that we could offer them, even if they pay for it their self, at least they could you know be a part of the system uh because you know we we have you know a couple pretty large private schools in the county and and uh and you know we uh we want to protect as many of our children as possible because they are our greatest asset you know i i appreciate this greatly i really do um but let me preface by saying you know there's a lot of discussion i could tell a huge deal about do we do this or not do this

The reason that for this little piece, and I hope it doesn't stop the process, is like everything, we try to bring as best information and best cost savings as we can. We could have bought the Cadillac. The school division was saying that the PA system will reach these elementary schools, so as a cost savings to us, we don't see the need for that versus we could see it in the high school and the middle school. I hope you're not going to hold us up by just saying because we didn't include that or indicate that the care of our students while we're here to begin with is not paramount to us.

I don't think we need to hold it up one bit. We need to move forward. By moving forward, if we can include them, we certainly would like to.

It certainly can be an add-on. We certainly can bring that information back again.

And I would like to check with Mr. Gwynn to see if we could have something that we could offer to our private schools in the county so that they could, I know we can't use public funds on private schools, but if they wanted to buy into it themselves, could they be a part of it? And of course, you know, Christian Heritage Academy is exploding

uh with with enrollment and i know i guess what smith mountain lake academy is growing too so you know and we don't leave them out if we can thank you for looking into it when dr nestor and it was bringing this to you that they give any indication of what they might be able to contribute to this as budget wise or they just said we need this and yeah they just kind of we need it and then i i just yeah

That's the lead-in question, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for that. To Mr. Carter. Mr. Carter, in terms of how this would function from a financial perspective, I know I have grants across the dais up here. What this would look like, I'm assuming, would be an additional county allocation to local funding each year during budget. And this would just be, would we increase the allocation or would we ask the school system to absorb it in their local dollar allocation?

So there are a lot of logistical questions in there. I think, as the sheriff mentioned, so this program initially was paid for out of the school system.

Mm-hmm.

and a prior superintendent made a decision to prioritize different needs. And so I think the sheriff's office decided, well, this is a priority, we'll take it on. At that time, it was 100% brought over to be paid for by the county. So if we move forward with this, and we recently have had some logistical issues even paying the invoices because of where they're going to it's still back and forth between accounting the school so if we're going to move forward with it with board approval it's probably easier to just let the county pay for it but work out an MOU with the school system for a cost share and then we would invoice them or work that in some fashion rather than try and split the funding and work that in two different budgets I think that what we found is that became more confusing than it needed to be so if we wanted to fund it that way or logistically I think that may be the best option depending on where the board is comfortable moving forward from a from a cost perspective

okay that's very helpful thank you because i know we're in this process with the schools where there's a lot of reconciliation and process reconciliation going on so you know with all of those things in mind in terms of what's being put into place that might be new in some regards you know how would something like this fall in um and i think you've just explained that is would you clarify that it would work with the current processes that you all are looking at

I think it could. I think the process we've implemented with the SRO cost share and with really the consulting assistance cost share, I think that the mechanisms have been put into place at this point. So logistically, it's probably easier for the county to own the contract in a sense and then just cost share with the school system, we could invoice them from the county's finance department and build that into the budget that way.

But that would require Mr. Sandy clarification from the school board and Dr. Sears as to whether they will participate financially, correct?

Yeah, well, I think that's going to be the question. Is this going to lie in the sheriff's budget or is this going to lie in the school?

That's my question. This will have, if the board of supervisors, and this is Nick speaking, this will have to be on the county side of the ledger. We cannot approve it and then say the schools have to pay for it.

No, we can't.

That is not fair.

Oh, we can't do it.

And, you know, and to Mr. Meredith's comment, putting a price on, children's lives this board has went above and beyond funding sros in every single school in the county and i i send two pieces of my heart and soul to them every day every day they're in school they've been with me all summer but we we we have made many efforts to secure our schools and funded sros and everyone and i'm not against this program um but if if we approve this this is a county function not a school function

at all if it was a school function they would be in here talking about it put it on their side of the budget that is what it is okay given this conversation Mr Sandy did you have something I mean I just would say to Brian's point it doesn't need to be an MOU because obviously this is gonna you know require the school's cooperation to make this happen so but from a financial perspective I think I think it's something that we need to, if that's the decision of the board, is that we need to own and anticipate that it's coming out of the county's budget and it's gonna be something that at the top of the budget each year, you're gonna have to allocate this additional $63,000 to go towards that commitment. And if I understand, there's a 5%

increase each year for that number so you know we just have to realize going into budget time that coming off the top is you know an expense that we've committed to so approving this tonight basically what we're literally saying is that this is a county approved expenditure if and until we work out a conciliatory MOU with the school division at which that will just start to buy down the county's part if we're able to achieve that. Would that be correct?

Well, my point of the MOU is just their cooperation. Right, right. Using the system and utilizing the system.

Okay.

I think unless you put the $123,000 on their side of the budget.

I do not like us sitting here having these conversations. I do not like us getting hit with these things and just trying to decide whose side of a budget something is on. This is not how we should be doing this. And the introductory price is $100,000 and some thousand dollars. We have no executive summary, no suggested motions, no idea. And Brian, where is the money coming from?

So the initial cost of $123,000, a large portion of that is going to be one time. And so really what we would need to pull from is from a reserve at this point. And likely we're looking for a year-end surplus. So we had talked to the board about restoring several capital reserves anyway. So likely that would be a September or October budget item to true it up. But if we're comfortable moving forward, we would just pull it out of probably the easiest thing would be budget stabilization reserve right now until we can restore that in September, October. And then at the Mr. Sandy's point, then that gets incorporated in the next fiscal year budget process when we start in November, December. And that will be between the sheriff's office and school budget where the conversations have to occur on the recurring funding.

Well, and if we have a program in place, it's working through December. And we've talked several times about a mid-year look. That is where I would lean. We need input from the schools and that is where I would lean on this.

Are we good till December, Sheriff?

I'm going on the information I'm given that this system would be not supported.

$28,000 more if we put it off, right?

And it is a yearly contract. We have to renew these contracts each year. I don't know if that's an opportunity to negotiate during budget time with the schools about that renewal.

You said August 31st in your earlier comments, right?

That's when they request us to be off the block.

Without the additional money being required? Would that be correct?

Yes, ma'am.

OK. But then they would be completely gone by December 31st.

And you're looking at a three to six month implementation period for the new vendor.

And they're giving us a discount rate till the end of this month. Was that what y'all said Tuesday night? There's a discount to July 31st. Yes, sir.

Of course, that's vendors.

This grant, Sheriff, you was talking about, is how much potentially, I know nothing's guaranteed, How much is that? And is that a yearly grant you could apply for to help offset this? What's what do you can you tell us?

I believe it was seventy five thousand. That is one time.

I'm sorry, Sheriff. How much? Seventy five thousand. I'm sorry.

When would you hear back on that grant? Do you know when the deadline and notification is?

Mid-October.

Mid-October.

They announced the grants towards.

Is that for implementation costs? You said one time.

Yeah, it's a COPS grant. It's a federal grant for school safety.

Okay, gentlemen. Mr. Tatum.

One more thing. I guess one thing is kind of putting you in a time crunch. You need to be on board with this new company before the end of August to start the contract to save $28,000 on the initial chart. Money plus you need to get the process moving because there is a time of getting All the everything put in place training everyone you said from three to six months If if you I mean you're pushing it now to have everything operational by the time your other Contract goes out. So if you don't have some lag time, we're about at the end of your window and which your window's closing, to be able to not have time where you don't have some type of an alert system in the school. So that's kind of what I'm thinking on it.

And are you looking for any feedback, Mr. Tatum? Pardon? Are you looking for any feedback from the sheriff on your comment?

I'm more or less making a comment. That's kind of an observation that I see. Okay. And I see the sheriff's nodding, so... I think that it's a position we didn't want to be put in and certainly don't have like time to where we miss coverage but Mr. Jamison did you have something? Back to the strobes you were talking about.

The way I understood you the school doesn't think they're necessary in the elementary schools is that correct?

I don't think they didn't think it was necessary and of course I wasn't in that committee meeting I just think they were at the end of it looking at the cost and what it was going to be to implement and that they did have the PA system that would reach the playground area to disseminate from you know voice activation to instructions whereas on these larger campuses it's just not adequate

As far as the number of strobes I mean how every location school is going to be different I would think you know what we have and also how I mean would they recommend where they would be on each site is how many we know we need is what I'm getting at

For the middle school and high school, that is all included in part of our price because we did ask that. If you come in and you realize, oh, we need a strobe here or we need another beacon here, is that going to drive up our cost? And they ensured us that that was not the case, that they would put them wherever they needed. If we got there and we're like, oh, we need one, say, at the high school, out on the football field more, they would implement that.

Later on, they could add it up to the system.

Yes, sir.

And they will give us an individual price per strobe?

No, it's included in that price. So the badges and the beacons at all the schools and the strobes will be all included in the price, regardless of how many it is. They do it by campus.

Do you all have a copy of that contract with you?

I do not have a copy of the contract. I can send it to you.

I agree with Mr. Mitchell. These 11th hour requests that come to the board without the benefit of an executive summary, we talked about this Tuesday, without looking at the contract, usually the county attorney would look at any contractual agreement that we enter into. And we run a very conservative budget, so that's why all this discussion is taking place. I think the board, I don't think anybody questions the merit of what this accomplishes. I think we're trying to do our fiduciary duty and making sure that we are you know treating this equitably amongst other you know contractual commitments that we make so please don't not share miss i think you know that about this board so gentlemen i'm open to any suggestions or recommendations that you would like to make in terms of next steps if jim if i understand right jim needs to review this contract we need to get it to him He typically, Mr. Sandy, would you agree with that assertion?

Yeah, he reviews all our contracts. I don't know if this one has been sent to his office yet.

I do not believe so.

So what I would like to ask of my colleagues, is there... Is there a motion in how we move forward for next steps and be as detailed as you feel you wish to be?

Well, me personally, I don't want to add on an additional $28,000. So if we can get this worked out before that kicks in, I'm for pulling the trigger on it. Okay. But I don't want it drug out so that we end up incurring this additional $28,000 on top of the $123,230.

Are you concerned about the attorney reviewing the contract?

Not particularly.

OK.

I'm going to second Mr. Carter on this. It does put us in tough situations, but my conscience can't live with something what happened at school. And I think it is, clarification again, this discount, July 31 or August 31? July. This month. So we have next week, pretty much. So I mean, I would make a motion to approve this with the consideration that our attorney gets to look at this contract first to make sure

That's where I would be. So you're saying vote on it now with the premise that Jim Gwynn reviews the contract before it's approved.

If we don't have this approved by the 31st of this month, which next week, then that $28,000 or what you just mentioned will kick in. I think that August 31st is when the other company that currently is installed will no longer service it, but they have accessibility. But if we run into problems with that, let's say something happens in September, if that's the current, you got nobody to call to fix it. You're just hoping it survives till December.

Mr. Meredith, a friendly amendment, if you would consider. I really think we need to bring the schools into this in terms of a potential MOU. Or I don't feel comfortable us acting on behalf of the school board or the administration for something that's under the purview of the school board.

And I have no problem adding that amendment to it as long as the schools know this needs to be decided. Of course. But I have no problem with what you're asking there. You know, and if this is a year contract, does that year start after it's completely installed or as soon as we sign it?

Sign date. Signature date.

I'm sorry, what did you say?

Signature date.

Okay. And it's going to take them how long to get this up and running?

Three to six months.

So we could pay for something for half a year and it's not running? So we only get six months of live? On the contract?

Yes, sir.

That on?

Three vendors that we talked with, all three of them, all had the same date of three to six months for installation.

So it's the sign date, not the activation date. Correct. And we could potentially leave six months of this.

I can go back to the vendor and request an activation date.

I think that would be fair, because I don't see us paying six months, lose six months of $120,000 and we're only getting six months out of it. I mean, that don't make sense to me.

I would agree with that.

Yes, I think it should be an activation date when that one year contract comes.

The vendor, to me, seems like he ought to be open to that.

So Mr. Meredith, would you like to clarify in totality what your motion is?

Yes, Madam Chair. My motion would be to approve the funding and I'll get the dollar amount for this system to be installed schools with the stipulations of our county attorney to review the contract first and second to speak with the school system of MOU being in place as we move forward. And should I add the six month on there?

That's under, that's your consideration.

I'm aware that and also analyze that the vendor will start the one-year contract at the activation date of the system.

Okay, thank you.

I have a question, a follow-on. Is the agreement as written making a commitment for five years or is it only making a commitment for one year and then at the end of the one-year period you make a decision about whether you'll continue?

One year.

One year, okay.

So let's follow. Thank you for that, Mr. Quinn. Let's get a second on the floor and then any further discussion.

Could I just add a little piece to Mike's? I think there was some discussion from Nick about this is funded by the county, right? So we're making a commitment tonight that would be funded by the county, 100% funded by the county. Correct.

So did you have a second Mr. Tatum? Okay so I'll open the floor for discussion on the second Mr. Sandy.

Just one clarification that would be option A is proposed from the.

Yes sir I think the option A included strobe lights at the high school middle school did that include Kathy Center?

Yes sir.

Okay.

And I have a clarification on that are we going to add in the strobe lights at each elementary school for a total?

I would like that to be a separate matter. If they're going to do installation, say, hey, what would that extra cost be if the PA system will work? But if it's a very, very small amount, I just would like to see that.

I think what we want to do is you've got your motion and you want to move forward with the caveat that if we move to the elementary school discussion, we would need to take that up separately with appropriate information provided to the board. Yes, ma'am, Chair. Okay. Yes, sir.

One other clarification, but as Mr. Carter said, that money would come from capital reserve to be replenished, or not, budget stabilization to be replenished with carryover funds. Could I add that or just at least clarify that?

Yes, whatever we need to add on, I want it all clear.

Well, in under discussion, as I think we're in, budget was stabilization to get us moving. I think as we deliberate our next budget term, 27-28, I think that we need to consider this needs to go in as an operating expense, depending upon what potential MOU we have with the schools. I don't want to keep hitting budget stabilization.

No that was just for the one time.

That's what I thought. I want to make that clear that we would take this into under operating.

Correct it'll be for year two would be under operating.

Mr. Jamison.

One question I guess Mr. Sandy and I guess the sheriff too. We list all of us and what's got to happen. Ours seems like we're going to happen now. Do you all think we can get this done in six days? We've got six business days to the 31st.

I mean, I think so. I think we can get the county attorney to review it and we can let the company know they're interested in moving forward. I guess the MOU with the schools, that's probably going to take a little bit longer just to make sure that they understand that the intention is that this is going to be implemented and that basically I think we just want to know, for me, just want to know that they're going to, cooperate not that they wouldn't cooperate but that they're they're going to be an active participant in this um you know as as it their their teachers are going to utilize that the school's going to allow the strobe lights to be attached to their buildings you know those sorts of things would be part of the mou sheriff did you want to comment on that the potential and possibility uh i'm in agreeance with everything mr sandy said i know that i will be meeting with

Dr. Sears and Mr. Overstreet, I think they're meeting with all the principals Monday at nine o'clock, I'll be speaking with them, so maybe that's an opportunity to just make sure verification that.

Sure, and I can talk to Dr. Sears tomorrow as well.

Yeah, we may need to have Mr. Sandy sit in or set something up, whatever you feel is appropriate. All right, so we.

And one more, just so with this grant, is any wording needs to be in that?

Do receive the grant that will go back to the county to replenish That we need anything that in the motion or we find is the great being issued to the Sheriff's Department or to the school system All right, so your constitutional office as you well know So I think Brian give it give us some advice on how that inner transfer needs to work in terms of it being included in the motion or not and

So typically the grants, while it may be applied for by the sheriff's office, they are under the purview of the county as the applicant. So the funding still comes to the county. The board would appropriate that funding just like any other grant the sheriff's office would receive.

Okay. So we don't need to include that necessarily. It's just operational protocol that's already there. I would think so. Okay. Okay. Very good. Thank you for asking that question. All right. We have a motion on the floor in a second. Mr. Carter.

Yes. And I'm sorry, Samantha, but could you read the motion back?

Samantha so the motion is to approve the alert system with county and attorney approval speak with the schools about the MOU make sure the vendor will start with the one-year contract at the activation date and then that the funding will come from capital reserves budget stabilization fund for the one time I would say not capital well I wouldn't say capital reserves I'd say I would say budget stabilization reserve okay

And that's for option A as presented?

Yeah, option A. You did good, Samantha. Thank you. Mr. Carter, are you good with that? Yes, ma'am. Okay, so I'm going to call for the vote if you are ready. And Madam Clerk, I'd ask for a roll call vote, please. Supervisor Carter?

Yes. Supervisor Tatum? Yes. Supervisor Quinn? Yes. Supervisor Jamison? Yes. Supervisor Mitchell? Yes. Supervisor Meredith? Yes. And Chair Smith?

Yes. Sheriff, thank you. Thank you guys so much for being with us, and we appreciate your indulgence to come back.

Thank you again for your patience and, again, understanding that it's outside the budget scope. We don't like to do that, but I hope you understand what you do.

We do. It's all about our children.

And we will keep you all informed.

Thank you very much. Okay. Mr. Sandy, did you have anything else further to come up before the board?

I do not.

Supervisors, do you have anything that you would like to raise before we adjourn? You good? Okay. We're adjourned. Thank you, gentlemen.