Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Mic check.

You just stand right there. Is that OK? Yeah, come closer.

That would be great, if you don't mind.

OK. Raise your right hand. Do you, Bonnie C. Law, solemnly swear or affirm that you will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution and laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and that you will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform the duties incumbent upon you as a member of the Franklin County Board of Supervisors, representing the Boone District, to serve as the interim to fill the unexpired term of J. Mike Meredith, said appointment will expire November the 2nd, 2027, when a special election is held. According to the best of your abilities to help you, God?

Yes, I will.

Congratulations. Thank you. So then I'll just have you to sign this. your sign right there on the top line yes change my mind right okay

I would like to welcome everyone to the Board of Supervisors monthly meeting, Tuesday, September 15th, 2026, at 3 p.m. At 2.30 this afternoon, we were privileged to have the swearing in of our newest supervisor from the Boone District, Ms. Bonnie Law. And so, Bonnie, we welcome you. We welcome you to the team. Do you have anything you'd like to say?

Yes, please. I would just like to thank everyone for their overwhelming well wishes and congratulations and their prayers. So I'm going to need all the above. So this is my first day on the job. So I would just appreciate maybe a little patience and a little grace until I get oriented and kind of get things settled down here a little bit. So thank you all for being here. And I appreciate everyone congratulating me and thanking me. So that's all. Thank you. We welcome you.

Thank you.

Okay, we will move on. We will have our invocation delivered by Mr. Mitchell and Pledge of Allegiance by Mr. Tatum. If you would please stand.

Let us pray. Dear Lord, we thank you for the opportunity to come together today to share ideas, solve problems, and work toward a common goal. Give us clarity in our thinking, wisdom in our decisions, and patience in listening to each other. Amen.

Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay, thank you all very much. We have a request for remote participation from Supervisor Jamison. Mr. Jamison, are you on the line with us, sir?

Yes, ma'am. Can you hear me?

Yes, I can. And thank you. Mr. Jamieson has requested virtual participation under Board Policy Section 10.1B-II. And his general location is North Carolina. So I would entertain a motion for the allowance of Mr. Jamieson to participate virtually.

So moved.

Can you hear that, Mr. Jamieson?

No, ma'am.

Mr. Gwynn was indicating that we need to understand the nature of being out of town. Jim, say those options again.

Marshall, just to let us know whether it's personal or medical, because they count those different in the statute as to how many you can miss. Personal. Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. So who had the motion, please? I did. Mr. Tatum. Second, please.

Second.

Thank you, Mr. Mitchell. And Madam Clark, would you please do a roll call?

Supervisor Mitchell?

Yes.

Supervisor Jamison?

Yes.

Supervisor Carter? Yes. Supervisor Quinn? Yes. Supervisor Tatum? Yes. Supervisor Law? Yes. And Chair Smith?

Yes. OK. Very good. So we have Mr. Jamison on the line. We have a full complement of the board. So we're good to go. All right. The next thing on the agenda is the approval of the agenda. Are there any items?

sorry i just wanted to catch and make sure we're talking about the amended agenda that that went out today that you you all should have a copy of the that's what i assumed that we were talking about thank you for the clarification does everybody have the amended agenda marked amended And I'm happy to speak to that. Really what we did was we moved Kevin Tosh's report for the Ag Fair from today to Thursday's agenda. And we did that because we had a cancellation on the Thursday agenda for the Smith mitigation bank. So that's really the essence of the change was just moving Kevin from today to Thursday.

Thank you, Mr Sandy. Very appreciated. So do any of the supervisors have any request for changes, additions, deletions to the agenda? Anything you wish pulled.

OK, Madam Chair, I have a I'd like to pull number one OK and maybe number five OK and number 12 OK.

I'd like to pull number 8. I thought we were still unapproved in the agenda.

Oh, that's what we're doing. Yeah. Yes. I'm sorry I'm kind of jumping ahead the way my agenda is laid out here So approval of the agenda will keep to that for the moment and then I'll re-enter this appropriately So if there are no requested changes to the agenda, I will entertain a motion to approve the agenda as submitted.

So moved.

Thank you, Mr. Tatum. Second. Thank you, Mr. Quinn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Mayor Smith, we'll need a roll call for all the votes tonight since Marshall is on. Oh, since he's on. You all are throwing me all kinds of different rolls.

But if you would, Madam Clerk, thank you. Supervisor Tatum?

Yes.

Supervisor Carter? Yes. Supervisor Quinn? Yes. Supervisor Mitchell? Yes. Supervisor Law? Yes. Supervisor Jamison? Yes.

Yes.

And Chair Smith.

Yes. Thank you. I don't know what we would do with it. All of our staff keeping keeping us in line. Thank you very much. Okay. So the next item then is the consent agenda. Supervisor Law, you have requested to pull one, five and twelve. Correct. Mr. Jamison, did you have something on consent for polling for discussion? Yes, ma'am.

Number eight.

Number eight, please. Okay. Yes, sir. Anyone else? OK, I will entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda with the What?

I was just saying I was going to pull 8, but Marshall did it. So I don't need to do it then.

OK. I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda with the exception of 1, 5, 8, and 12.

So moved.

Thank you, Mr. Tatum. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Mr. Mitchell. All those in favor, do we need a roll call? Yes, we do. OK.

Supervisor Carter?

Yes.

Supervisor Tatum? Yes. Supervisor Quinn? Yes. Supervisor Law? Yes. Supervisor Jamison?

Yes.

Supervisor Mitchell? Yes. And Chair Smith?

Yes. Thank you. All right. We will begin. We'll take each of these items as a standalone on their own merit. We will begin with number one, Supervisor Law, the meeting minutes. Would you like to speak to that?

Yes, since I was just sworn in this afternoon and today is actually my first day of being on the board, I don't find it appropriate that I would vote to approve minutes on prior meetings. So I would like to abstain from voting on that particular item in the consent agenda.

Okay. Any other questions, comments on the minutes? OK, I will entertain a motion to approve the meeting minutes. So moved. Second. Second, Mr. Tatum. Roll call vote, please, Madam Clerk.

Supervisor Quinn?

Yes.

Supervisor Tatum?

Yes.

Supervisor Carter?

Yes.

Supervisor Jamison?

Yes.

Supervisor Mitchell?

Yes.

Chair Smith? Yes. Then I have Supervisor Law abstaining.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Bonnie, for that. Okay. The next item is authorization of issue of letter of intent number five. Ms. Law, you pulled that one as well, correct? Yes, I did. Please.

This involves a preferred contractor from the Commonwealth of Virginia regarding emergency debris removal services. It was not clear to me in the presentation if this is the only preferred contractor that the Commonwealth has, and we have option to sign up with other contractors as well. I did a quick search. And I found some companies that do the same type of work. They're in Manassas. They're in Charlottesville. They're in Danville. They're in Roanoke. This particular contractor happens to be in South Carolina. So that was concerning to me a little bit. So I want to know if it's possible we can get on multiple lists with multiple companies. So that way we're not just making one phone call to somebody. one company if we have a natural disaster or some type of catastrophic event. I want to have options of, you know, other than one person answering the phone on the other end of the line. So I just want maybe for us or whomever appropriate person to look into maybe getting on the list of maybe multiple preferred providers and maybe somebody within the state of Virginia instead of South Carolina.

Ms. Law, if it's okay with you, I'll defer some comment from Mr. Sandy. Okay.

Yeah, I'll defer to Jim a little bit, but I don't think there's any reason we couldn't have multiple letters of intent for this particular one. These were kind of pre-procured, if you will, services. So we can certainly look to see if there's any folks that are more local and bring that back if we find those.

Yeah, I'd like to have some Virginia companies involved in that if we could. Thank you, Ms. Law.

That's a very good point. Number eight.

So we move forward to approve this one and then bring back any additional ones or?

Yes, that would be fine with me if it's OK with the rest of the board. Of course. Of course. Thank you for that.

We'll just move in numeric order number eight, the Board of Supervisors Rules and Procedures that has been pulled by Mr. Jamison. Mr. Jamison, would you like to make some remarks about pulling this item, sir?

Yes, ma'am. On page five, item six, public comment period.

Yes, sir.

go down to be the second sentence in it. You must provide your name address when signing up to speak live. I would like to add some were along there with the name and address that also the voting district there in the speaker. um somewhere maybe you read something to this uh effect you must provide your name address and voting district when signing up to speak prior to the call from their own if that's agreeable to the board sure and would you um combine this with the public hearing language as well yes ma'am

Okay, very good. So, Mr. Jamison, what I'm hearing is the change that you would like to put before the board would be a change to include a column for voting district on a sign-up sheet?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay. All right, so I will put that up for questions to the board. Comments? Mr. Tatum.

I think we need to make sure that the public knows the reason behind this is because our citizen comment is a time reserved for Franklin County citizens or people that own property in Franklin County. And the reason that this is in there is because we just need verification that when someone comes forward that they are indeed a Franklin County citizen or that they own property in Franklin County. Yes. We're not trying to just collect their names and addresses so that we can post them in the public. But we just need to confirm that they live in Franklin County, or at least on property.

Thank you, Mr. Tatum. Any other comments or questions on this matter?

I don't have a problem with Supervisor Jamison's addition.

OK. Thank you, Mr. Mitchell. Mr. Quinn, did you have something, sir?

I wanted to comment both about the revisions that are in there, but also some revisions that aren't in there that I think are worth considering. My sense is that we're making it harder for people to speak. I don't mind people having to provide their name and address and the district but it doesn't seem like they should have to provide that before the meeting. We've had meetings where it was opened up for anybody to speak at the end of the meeting and I don't think that that's been abused so I don't feel like there should be a deadline for people submitting their information to us. That it could just be at the end of the meeting they bring it up they provide it to Samantha And the same thing with the five minute. I don't think that people should have to do that the day before. I think we're just making it unnecessarily hard on people to speak to us at a time when we should be open to them speaking. And then, so those are the two items that are in there that I don't agree with. And then what's not in there, which I've mentioned a few times, is I feel like we're not responsive to the public. They come in, they make comments, they send us letters, but there's no response. And it's not just recently, it really dates back my whole two and three quarter years, where just to pick a simple example, somebody comes in and they complain about a book in the school and they want the book pulled from the school. And, well, there's no response. We don't give them a response here. We don't give them a response later. And I feel like the people, they just keep talking and talking and talking, and they get no response. And I feel that we owe that to our constituents. Each email I receive from somebody in my district, I answer. And I'm not sure what the process would be for us to answer to the public. We would have to have a methodical process. But when I think about the 43 people that came in and spoke, whether it was a June or July meeting, and then we got to the next meeting, and we didn't even acknowledge that these 43 people came out and spoke with passion and wanted us to do different things. And it doesn't mean that we're going to do everything that they want us to do. In many cases, I think we'll tell people, well, we're not going to do that. Like with the school book, we don't have jurisdiction over the school book. We might write a letter to Dr. Sears but that's not within our jurisdiction. So I would really like to see somehow for us to include responding to the constituents when they come up and either send us a letter or they are speaking at the public comment period.

Thank you, Mr. Quinn. Mr. Quinn, do you have any remarks around, you've got lots of experience with localities throughout the Commonwealth. Do you have any basis of comments with regard to, we've always had a policy that we don't use it as a Q&A session, public comment. what would be your guidance to the board with respect with respect to responding either during or after public comments been had and what should that look like you know what I have seen is if somebody comes in and says hey you've got to fix a pothole on Main Street

And I have seen that the chair or whoever would look at staff and say, would you look into this and then let us know, and then we report back then. But if you're getting into issues of whether or not, of opinion or things like that, then you're gonna end up, the board, I don't know how you do that from an entire board perspective. So I think we have to be mindful of the board speaking as a whole and things that the board can address as opposed to the staff can address. And I think it not only would be perfectly appropriate, I think it's necessary that when folks make that sort of complaint that the staff can fix, that we do that. I think Mr. Quinn, when he talks about us not having jurisdiction, he's right, and I think maybe that's the response you have to make, is we don't have jurisdiction over this. That's the school board, or that's VDOT, or that's Department of Health, or it's DSS, or any number of things that the board itself doesn't control. But I would be very careful about Putting yourselves in a situation where everybody who stands up and complains about something ends up with us somehow responding to it. Because I don't know how, the practicality of that is gonna be difficult. But I think if you just keep in mind that if it's something the staff can handle and just make that gesture in the middle, they finish and turn and say, Mr. Sanders, would you have the Parks and Rec look at that or whatever. and report back, I think that'd be a great way to do it. But I would be very careful with regard to much else.

And that has happened in the past.

It has.

I would use the example to where that church on 220 North out there came to us in public comment. about their internet issues and Steve jumped right on that and handled it for them in public comment. I've seen legitimate concerns brought to the board during public comment and staff attentively handling those issues. So to say that everyone's ignored, that's just not true.

And of course it's up to each supervisor's discretion as to whether you would like to make a personal response to any of the citizens. Certainly, Ms. Law, did you have something?

As a new board member, I find the idea of someone putting their current election district on the sign-up sheet extremely beneficial to me. Because as a new board person, representative for our district, I would obviously like to know if someone lives in my district and they come forward with something that I think I can help with, then I certainly want to try to be available to help. And they could feel free to leave their contact information with the clerk of the board, and I would be happy to try to reach back out maybe at an appropriate time. So for me, I think that would be a really good idea for the sign-up sheet. So that's just me personally.

Thank you, Ms. Law. Any other comments on the policies? Mr. Quinn, I would ask, what I have so far from Ms. Law and Mr. Jamison is to include a voting district column on the sign-up sheet. And Mr. Quinn, did you want to specifically request something be added or deleted from the proposed policies? Or are the explanations that you've had given, do they suffice?

I didn't think it was appropriate to force people to sign up ahead of time, either the five-minute rule where they have to sign up the day before or for an individual speaking for three minutes to have to sign up before the meeting starts. I felt that those people could sign up right before they want to speak because I feel that forcing them to sign up ahead of time is just making it harder on them. And then I do understand the challenge with trying to respond. I gave the school book example, but just to give you another example in the way this plays into something you came up with. So that night we had 43 people talk. 33 of them were about a data center. And you called me up a couple weeks later and suggested this idea of, well, why don't we have a board of experts come in and educate us? Well, that's a response, right? We heard all this, and now they might not like your idea, but I thought it was a very interesting idea to provide that. And so when I think about the 33 people that complained about the data center, it's not individual well here's person one and person two is collectively it was 33 people and you had a response to that right there's there's some stuff we can't talk about but here's some stuff we can talk about and i think there are many things like that where there could be a solution and the solution doesn't make everybody happy but it's still an interesting solution to me thank you thank you

okay if there are no other comments or questions I would entertain a motion and in your motion if you would be so kind to articulate the change that you would like to see if any entertain that motion Madam Chair yes sir I would like to make a motion to under public comment period

Paragraph B, second sentence to change that to you must provide your name, address, and voting district when signing up to speak prior to the call to order of the evening session in order to have your name called to speak.

Yes, sir. And do you want to include that on the public hearing side of it as well?

Yes, ma'am. Thank you.

Oh, yes, you're welcome. Okay, so that is your motion in its entirety, Mr. Jamison, is to adopt the policies and procedures amended with the change of adding a column for district on the sign-up sheets. Is that correct? Yes, ma'am. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Mr. Mitchell. I will take a roll call, please, Madam Clerk.

Supervisor Jamison?

Yes, ma'am.

Supervisor Carter? Yes. Supervisor Mitchell? Yes. Supervisor Quinn? No. Supervisor Tatum? Yes. Supervisor Law? Yes. Chair Smith?

Yes. OK, thank you all. The last item that we have for consideration would be Ms. Law pulling number 12, Constitution Week Proclamation, ma'am.

Yes, I just wanted to say thank you very much to Mr. Kevin Tosh for working on that and getting that in front of the board this week. I really appreciate that. So let all the citizens be aware that this is Constitution Week from September the 17th to September the 23rd. So there you go.

Thank you. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you, Ms. Law. We appreciate that. So I would need a motion to approve item number 12 on the consent agenda.

Is it moved?

Thank you, Mr. Mitchell. Was there a second? Second. Thank you, Ms. Law.

Madam Clark. Supervisor Tatum.

Yes.

Supervisor Carter. Yes. Supervisor Quinn. Yes. Supervisor Mitchell. Yes. Supervisor Law. Yes. Supervisor Jamison.

Yes.

And Chair Smith. Yes.

Madam Chair. Yes, sir. Did we take a vote on number five? No. But Bonnie was good to get with it.

I think the recommendation, and correct me if I'm wrong, was to go ahead and improve it as is, but also look for other firms that we could also have a similar relationship with, preferably in Virginia.

So do we want those requested considerations in the form of a motion to approve? Ms. Law, would you like to consider that?

I think I got the message, so we'll bring it back if we find it.

OK. But we do need a motion to approve that item on the consent agenda, the authorization of issue letter of intent.

I'll make a motion. Second.

Thank you, Mr. Tatum. Madam Clerk.

Supervisor Law? Yes. Supervisor Quinn? Yes. Supervisor Tatum? Yes. Supervisor Jameson?

Yes.

Supervisor Mitchell? Yes. Supervisor Carter? Yes. And Chair Smith?

Yes. Thank you all for that. That's good discussion on those items. Okay, next on our agenda is to hear from our colleagues from VDOT, Brian Casella, and we also have Lisa Lewis in the audience. Good evening, or good afternoon, Lisa. Brian, welcome back.

Thank you very much. Glad to be here with you all. We have our BDOT road report for the month of September here. Previous activities for the 30 days, we have a couple of pipe and low water structures that have been completed. It's Route 736 Madcap Road, Route 876 Bird's Mill Road. We have a pipe project that's been completed. And then on Route 40 Franklin Street, we had some paving that we did. That was in the area of Route 757, Skillet Road, to Route 748, Ferrum School Road. So looking ahead in activities that are ongoing now, of course we're completing our ordinary maintenance. We have our secondary mowing operations. Our second round is in progress. We're about 90% complete on that, and we'll be making rounds for the third and final mowing as we go through probably the end of September, end of October. We have some patching that we're doing for our fiscal year 27 paving schedules, so we're getting those done in advance. And then we have three pipe replacement projects that are scheduled with our hired equipment. That's Route 748, Turner's Creek. They'll be flagging operations, and that's scheduled for this month. All three actually are. Route 793, Run It Bag Road. Again, flag and operations and then Route 1094 Concord Circle. Those are all in the Callaway area. Moving on to page two. Let's see, we've got a number of active permits. We do have a couple of site plan reviews. I'd like to mention the Boone development in the West Lake area. Pretty substantial size residential development. We're working with county and staff on that. The Smith Mountain Lake Car Wash and then a special use permit for an automotive business. dropping down to the traffic studies we have a completed traffic study there was a crash on route 834 in the vicinity around about at 670. we did a review of that and determined there were no recommendations to be made no changes Under project status, we've got the 122-636 Lost Mountain project that's still looking to be advertised next year, summertime, mid-year. And then Route 40, the bridge replacement project, we've talked about that a number of times. And that's going to be advertised late summer of next year. And then on to our third and final page. Let's see, we've got the 22697 project that's still delayed, but the contractor's anticipating having the materials that they need to proceed back in either fall this year or maybe spring. So we're waiting on an update on that. The next one, we've got Bombrook Mill, and that one's progressing fairly nicely, and it looks like we'll be able to have that one opened up by the end of the year. So we would say by late December. And dropping down to Route 220 and NAF Road, the smart scale project. We're anticipating construction to begin this month, so they should be, you'll start to see more activity out there. I know Grassy Hill, we have that one currently under construction. Just a note on Grassy Hill that it is actually occurring at night. So if folks are seeing the signs up and not seeing work actively engaged, it's because it's nighttime work. And then lastly, we've got this, let's see, a couple things. Some of you business park, you'll notice that the mast arms are up and contractors still out there doing some work. We haven't noted on our reporters completed, but there's still some final touches going on. The signal heads are still bagged. but we've got the single yellow flashers up on the mast arm. So as they wrap that up, it may be tied in with the 697 project, but I got a feeling that will probably go live sooner. And then the last two are our rural rustics that we have. Route 635 Novella is complete. So we're done there. And then Route 657 Red Valley, that one is done with all of our pipe work. We've done with all of our stone work. We're going to go out and do the hard surface on one end of it there's a login operation that's currently out there ongoing so we don't want to go put a new surface on that and risk damaging it so we'll return once that operation is complete so uh with that we're also uh as of today we're starting our dry runs for summer for the snow and i just don't i kind of dread that but This is the time where we do dry runs and our district shops come out and inspect our equipment. We make sure everything's in operation. That gives us an opportunity to get things parts over and fixed and so forth. And then we'll be doing our snow conference with all of our folks. So we're already gearing up for snow. Okay.

and winter weather well according to not having any rain snow is not looking good at this point but uh we can hope for some at least yeah maybe it'll rain yeah brian if i may um on red valley um um is the work that's being done there is that beginning to mitigate some of those um shoulders

Yes, ma'am. It should improve drainage. That's one of the big things of it is to improve the drainage, give it a hard surface, and actually have the pipes and the ditch network to function to get the water off the road and hopefully preserve our shoulders.

Well, thank you so much, and I really appreciate that work.

Yeah, our crews really enjoy doing those projects, so thank you.

Any supervisors have any questions for Mr. Cassell? Mr. Carter?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Brian, on that grassy hill 220, is that that's an acceleration lane? Is that what's going in there? Yes.

Yes, sir. As you come off a grassy hill to go northbound, there will be an acceleration lane there for the vehicles to get up to speed to then be able to merge over. So what that means is the southbound left that is there today will be removed in order to make room for that.

Okay. I had a couple calls on that. I just want to make sure I was telling people correctly. Yes, sir.

Thank you. Mr. Mitchell. Ron, I said something to you right here in the audience a while back about Route 827, Windy Ridge Road. Y'all ever taken a look at that one?

Can you remind me of what the issue was?

Potholes.

Potholes? Yes. All right. I'm sure we addressed it with our maintenance forces, but if they're still there, I will follow back up with that.

And also, I know I brought it up to you all several times, that paving job down there on 619 going to Snow Creek, it's still just deteriorating. It's terrible. Right there around Doyle's Greenhouse and Airport Road.

Yeah.

It's in bad shape.

All right. We'll certainly put that in our observations to look at, too.

Anyone else?

Ms. Law. Good afternoon. Can you give me an update? Are you changing the speed limits on Scalp Road?

Cross Gap. No, ma'am. We are not changing the speed limits on the Cross Gap.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay, Brian, thank you so much. Thank you. As always, we are very appreciative to have you and Ms. Lewis here with us every month.

Thank you all very much.

Thank you. Okay. Next on our agenda, we will have Ms. Schauber, our public finance consultant, deliver her monthly finance report. Hi, Ann. Good afternoon. Hi.

Good afternoon. It's good to see everyone this afternoon. It looks like the report is up on the screen. So I think this is going to represent our final report regarding fiscal 26 until you get audited results. I'll just kind of review and remind everyone that what we've been doing is presenting results for Franklin County Schools operations with the major categories of revenues and expenditures. We're sharing with you the year to date results, the current budget, the percent of that that's been recognized, and then the positive or negative revenue variance in terms of both dollars and percentages. And of course the year ended in June, June 30th, and I made a presentation to you in July with the results that we had at that time, you know, through the calendar end and then we had made various projections for various accounting entries that would be made. We did not present a report in August. The team internally reviewed the results and they were fairly unchanged from the July report, so we really didn't think it would be of tremendous value to bring a report to you board members in August. And now I'm here today with what we believe are our final results. I will comment on one estimate, but the rest of it's pretty much finalized. Your external audit will take place the first week of October in terms of timing. And so it will be some time after that. That takes some time to get through, and so it'll be a bit after that that the final, final results for the year are in. I will remind everyone that we started all of this, I think the very first report that I did was in February, and at that time it was just a report of results. We didn't try to start doing the crystal ball thing of projecting for the year. And then from March on through the present, we've been making projections about how that year would end. And it's been pretty interesting to see how our ability to make those projections has refined and has gotten stronger and better as we've moved through the year. So kind of what's the punch line? It's this number right here that I'm circling with my pen, $717,000 deficit result for the year, meaning expenditures greater than revenues. Early in the projections that number was more than 2 million, then it became around 1.4 million, then it settled in at about 1.1 million, and today it's around 700,000. Kind of high level of comment I'd like to make is that I think it's a nice reflection on the ability of our group to all work together that it actually, it's been very stable over the last several months. It did shift from a negative 1.1 million to this negative roughly 700,000 due to a state grant that was received of around 400,000 that was not projected. We didn't know that that was coming. So, really, there was great stability over about the last three months that we were doing these forecasts, and I think that's just a testimony to the hard work that was put in by the staff in the school finance area, Mr. Carter and his team, Mr. White. I mean, we're all working well together, and I think doing the best that we could to make these projections. just stay on top of the data and that's really what it's all about is knowing the data and staying on top of it and if you look at it every single month I think you've heard me say this before that really is what gives you the ability to make solid projections so I'm just gonna make comments you know kind of high level and then we'll open it up for any questions that board members may have And so, again, the $717,000 deficit, much better than what we were concerned it would be at one point in time. However, a deficit nonetheless, that's not what we want. What contributes to that? It's all on the expenditure side of the house. You can see roughly 1,150,000 round numbers. in terms of over-expending the appropriation. You can see there are some ups and downs in these categories, but if we're really gonna go after one thing, it's instruction. And so I think we've had conversations throughout this period that we are inclined to think that a position control methodology would be helpful in order to try and make sure that the budget is adhered to in that area. And I think that Mrs. Owens, the individual that's assisting the schools more directly, another consultant that's assisting the schools more directly, is working to help build a tool that will do just that. So hopefully that will be helpful. You know, there are a couple of expenditure categories in terms of percentages. So that one's small in terms of percentages, only 2% over budget, just large dollars because it's 70% of the expenditure budget. There are some others that smaller dollars, but the expenditure variance might be double digit. I think in terms of pupil transportation, that budget was probably set higher than it needed to be, and that contributes to that positive variance, 15%, 1.4 million. School food service had an overspend of $750,000, 21% of the budget. You can see we left about not quite $100,000 of contingency on the table. It's a best budget practice to have contingency built in, so that's a positive thing. And then finally, as an overall percent, yes, there was overspending, but it was 1% of the budget, so not a huge percent overall there. On the revenue side of the house came in positive at $438,000. That's actually no percent of the budget in terms of overall dollars with a $99 million budget. That's still pretty small. Most of that on the state sales tax side, you might recall we were seeing pretty positive performance for that as we rolled to the end of the year. And then actually on the federal funding side as well. The one area where we do have an estimate still built in is in instruction. There's about a $150,000 estimate in place there, but that's very small. We would consider that immaterial in terms of the size of this budget. I will also report to board members that in terms of how does this year compare to last year, last year the division ended with 1.4 million of expenditures over budget, so about double what we're seeing this year. This year, in both terms of revenues and expenditures, the division received 3% less and spent 3% less than last year. So revenue is smaller, expenditure is smaller. And that's logical because the budget was contracted a bit because of last year's over-expenditure. And then I think the last thing I would like to touch on is just to sort of remind all of us that the discussion has been that the division, the school division, will need to enter into a loan arrangement with the county in order to rectify the fact that this over expenditure of the appropriation occurred and I think the idea would be that that's that's established it's it's handled in writing and that the mechanism would probably be that the school division would refund that to the county over some period of time in fiscal 27 and I'll certainly leave that up to others beside me, but that's, I think, been the discussion that we've had. I think some discussion has already begun with the external auditor about sort of about the nature of that and what that may look like. So I will conclude my remarks and just see if anyone has any questions.

Okay. Thank you, Anne. Any questions from supervisors, comments? Mr. Mitchell.

Ms. Shelver, I'm just going to ask you a question for your professional opinion. Would you say that the work you've done over the last several months with the school system and with our staff will put the schools at a better position to accurately project things for upcoming budgets in the future?

Yes, sir. I do think so. And I think just to elaborate, why do you say that? Well, I think it's the discipline and the diligence. I can be a bit of a taskmaster, which doesn't always make everybody happy. But in terms of this accounting, financial reporting, analysis type work, again, it's the repetitiveness of it. It's the monthly routine of it. It's the digging into the numbers, looking at them. And that's how you learn them. And so the more you learn them, that's what teaches you If something's funny looking, it'll enable you to quickly realize it's funny looking and then dig into it and understand what's going on with trends. Or have we not submitted a request for something? Or is something in the wrong account? Or whatever it may be.

Well, that's been my hope for you all's work all along, to put them in a better position going forward to try and make accurate projections, as close as you can, accurate projections. I think so, too.

And I can't comment enough as well. I mean, the team has worked hard together. The county is blessed with outstanding finance professionals, and Mr. Carter, Mr. White, the finance professional that the county school division has engaged until they're new Director of Finance gets on board, Ms. Owens, also outstanding. I mean, unfortunately, there's not quite enough of us that really do this work and know this trade, but I think you all have been fortunate to have pretty good people working on this, and so I think hopefully it will really provide dividends in terms of the results moving forward.

Thank you. Any other? Mr. Tatum?

I think you've already answered my question. I was going to ask in regard to the $717,000 where we were going to find that money to make up that difference, but I think you explained it that it would be in the line of a loan from the county to the school division and then through their upcoming year of streamlining and being more efficient with their spending, they hopefully will be able to make that up to pay the county back. How confident are you that that's a possibility?

I think personally, I think it seems like it should be very reasonable. I think the school division, unfortunately, Dr. Sears is not here today. I understand he's just not able to be here. So I don't want to put words in his mouth too much, but I have spent a lot of time with him. And I know the school division cut a number of positions. I think they expect to see savings from that that should be adequate to enable them to curtail expenditures. And I think when you look at the size of this as a percent of their overall budget, it's Fairly small. And so, you know, no, no one wants to cut anything in terms of educational programs or positions or any of that. But I personally, I think that it should be manageable for the division to make the appropriate adjustments to go without the seven hundred seventeen thousand in fiscal twenty seven and, you know, sort of. balance the scale, if you will, as far as the overspending in fiscal 26 needs to be addressed by underspending next year. It's not a significant amount of underspending that's being called for.

Thank you.

Mr. Carter.

Thank you. I guess my question is probably more for Brian. This loan arrangement I found a little bit alarming. Have we ever done that in the past, Brian, with the school system?

Mr. Carter, we have not, uh, generated a loan with the school system in the past from talking with the auditors that Short of the the other alternative is to do a transfer like we did last year Which was unplanned and unbudgeted on the county side and so we feel like that's probably a more measured arrangement But it would function similar to a loan you would anticipate from any financial institution It would have terms It would have a set date for payback. It would have likely an interest rate that can be set to whatever it needs to be, be set to zero, but it would have to have those in the terms that we would ask the board to approve. So that's likely going to be an October agenda item.

And I guess as a follow-up to that, it's more a comment than a question. The deficit's 717,000, but if you put that 400,000 back into it, which they lucked out and got a grant, it's still $1,117,146. I mean, coming from the private sector, Their budgeting is terrible, and now I'm concerned we're gonna still be on the hook for making up this money to the school system. It's just my comment. That's all I had.

Thank you, Mr. Carter. To piggyback on that, Ann, if I may, Mr. Carter, you may want to assist with this. The auditors last year required the county to make that deficit to bring it full, and the county basically paid it. in January to make it a clean audit. Is that what the discussion, are you anticipating that we would be required by the auditors to pay that and then work out on the flip side the repayment of that amount with the schools?

I mean, I think so. I think in theory there would be a final transfer on the books from county to school division recorded as, you know, an inflow to the schools, outflow to the county. But instead of actually, you know, a cash transfer, it shows up as a loan. The school division owes the county that back. The county has a receivable from the school division.

Yeah, because I think, Mr. Carter, we've talked about this before. Some of the methodology could be in just a retraction on local share at budget time. I think there are some options on the table. But I guess what I'm trying to get at is we'll probably be looking at the same type of methodology options, perhaps, as we move into the end of this year.

Yes, Madam Chair. You know, I think to Ms. Shalvers' point, the county and the school share the same bank account. So essentially the bills have already been paid. The county has covered it. And so the arrangement that Ms. Shalvers is mentioning, that would be the financial side of the entry. which would really just do record what the county's already done, which is give the school system a loan to pay their bills. What we would look like from the payback, I think that's something we as the team will go back between now and your October meeting, as to what does that payback look like is that a six month a nine month payback where will it come from uh i think as ms shalva alluded and i think dr sears has has indicated that the reduction in positions roughly 50 that were budgeted for but have been removed from their uh their personnel will likely some of those savings will likely be used to assist with the payback to the county

OK, and Anne, this is just kind of a softball question. After doing a lot of budgeting in my career, when I look at the nature of creating recurring operating expenditures for 2027 as we move through this fiscal year, are you all making any formal recommendations to the school board and school administration regarding the creation of recurring expenditures, and specifically what we're dealing with, of course, is in the personnel arena with changing and allocating, letting the teachers get caught up and so forth. In my mind, we certainly want to take care of our teachers. As we're running a deficit, I'm just trying to make financial sense, and it's over my pay grade, obviously, about adding to recurring expenses when you're running a deficit.

Sure, sure. I think for me, most of my work has been directed at this financial reporting, you know, taking the data that is and reporting it to you all and analyzing, making projections. So I think something I can pretty safely say is that I feel like more attention, more care, more discipline should be made at monitoring that expenditure budget and making sure to adhere to it. Because, I mean, I think I've just always learned, been taught, whatever, that you set an expenditure budget and those are sort of your marching orders. You have to adhere to that. You can't within state law not adhere to that. So how exactly that happens, I haven't gotten involved with particularly. More just the idea that you've got to develop the discipline to do that. Now, the consultant, Mrs. Owens, who's been assisting the school division, I do think from speaking with her that she's probably working on some recommendations from a more practical perspective. She's more inside the operation. She's helped them with their um annual school report for example you know a little more boots on the ground i think she's probably developing some recommendations to assist them from a more practical perspective and i do think and you know you can disagree if you feel that way but i mean i think we all probably are of the intuition that a um the the position control type of tool where you've got a lot of positions right and people are coming and going and they're there's a principal and then they're you know now they're over here doing something else i mean there's movement And so it's not easy to track, but it's important to track and know exactly how many vacant positions you have and exactly when you end up compensating someone more than you budgeted, et cetera. So I think building that kind of tool, having something there in place to keep up with those moving parts would really be helpful and of great aid. And so hopefully some things like that are in the works that will assist the division moving forward. Absolutely. You know, and I would just say, as a consultant, I mean, you usually are not invited in when everything's grand and glorious, right? You come in and you get involved when things need extra attention and some work. And it doesn't happen overnight. I mean, it's probably going to be a multi-year process in order to result in stronger budget management and all of that. But I think absolutely moving in the right direction. Okay, thank you, Ann. Yes, ma'am.

Are there any other questions, comments? Anybody else? Okay, Anne, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure. Thank you. To have you report to us.

It's been a pleasure being with you all, and I wish everyone the best. Thanks.

Well, thank you so much. Okay, next on our agenda, we will have Franklin County Public Schools. As Anne stated, Dr. Sears is not available today, so we have Ms. Dawn Wright Lawson, who is joining us. Good afternoon. and you're going to deliver the school finance report and then talk about the funding request as well.

I ought to bear with me. Your fatherly time of year. Madam Chair and members of the board and Mr. Sandy, thank you for letting me come and speak to you today. We've been working closely with the county to complete the unaudited FY26 financial report, which Ann just presented. While the estimated deficit is improved each month, we still anticipate closing the fiscal year with a deficit. As we move forward, we're applying these lessons learned from this process to evaluate and strengthen our financial management practices. Historically, our budgets have been developed using trend analysis, and we have recognized the need to revise our budgeting and forecast process to more accurately represent our financial picture. These improvements will enhance our ability to monitor revenues and expenditures against the budget throughout the year, improve financial forecasting, and provide greater visibility into projected revenues and expenditures. These efforts will help ensure that spending remains aligned with available resources while supporting the division's commitment to provide the best educational possible for our students.

OK. Are there any questions, comments from the supervisors? From Ms. Wright Lawson. Ms. Law.

Ms. Lawson, good afternoon. As a new supervisor, please bear with me here. I have just a couple quick questions. Do you have the total number of the employees in the school division at the current time? I do not have that with me. Okay. All right. Okay, that's okay. All right. Do you have the current student enrollment figure for the school division?

We budgeted. For FY27, based on the state estimate of 5,567 students. I'm sorry, could you repeat that, please? 5,567 students. Sorry, my voice is about to crash.

I'm so sorry. How does that compare with your current enrollment as of this month?

We, and I will address that in just a moment, we issued a report yesterday that we received it for enrollment in August. It is down slightly, but we think there may be an issue with how some of the students were actually reported. So we're asking staff to revisit that to ensure we have the correct number before we move forward on some things. Because that does affect our average daily membership, our ADM, as you all affects our funding from the state.

Okay, final question. I'm certainly not going to hold you to this, and I realize it's just the middle of September, but in your best estimate, in your best estimate as of today, do you have a projected year-end deficit figure?

We do not expect one. It's still early in the year to start forecasting because our salaries are a little different. We've come up with a model.

OK, I'm sorry. I apologize. Are you expecting to clear this $717,000 deficit by the end of December? Yes, ma'am.

We have made staffing cuts, and we expect that we will be able to use the savings from the staffing cuts to cover the deficit. OK. All right.

Thank you. Ms. Law, did you want to get any update requests, any updated reports on enrollment? Yes. I think that would be good to know. OK. Yeah. If you all could provide that to the board, that would be very helpful. Anyone else have any questions or comments? OK, well, we'll move on to the next section for the funding request regarding the 4% COLA increase.

We respectfully request that the Franklin County Board of Supervisors consider approving additional funding support of $582,795 to assist Franklin County Public Schools in providing an average 4% salary increase for employees during the fiscal year 2026-2027. As Dr. Sears presented in the August Board of Supervisors meeting, that we determined a 4% raise can occur by providing one additional step increase to the 134 employees who are one step behind and two additional step increases to the 336 employees that are two or more steps behind. The total cost of this partial implementation of phase three is $1,371,768. We feel that given the fact that the deficit projection seems to be trending down from prior months, we will be able to use the expected savings from the position cuts for this year to fund an additional step for employees who are behind at a cost of $797,875. Our board was set to vote on this last night, but we have decided to hold off on the vote until the October board meeting. As I just alluded to, we received a report on August enrollment that shows our enrollment has potentially decreased by 60 students below the budgeted enrollment of 5,567 students. We delayed the vote on the step increase until we can verify the enrollment data. It will be next week before we're able to do so due to staff vacation time. We want to feel comfortable with the enrollment numbers, which also have an effect on our state funding, and we'll take it back to our board in October once we have revisited and verified the enrollment. If we're able to proceed with the one additional step for employees that are at least one step behind, we're still short 573 Yes, 570. 3,007 at 93 are being able to offer additional step increase to the 336 employees who are two or more steps behind. And I just misquoted that amount. It should be 582,795. or two more steps behind, which will get us to the 4% average raise to be able to receive the additional state funding. Should we be able to implement an average 4% salary increase, we must notify the Virginia Department of Education prior to the governor's budget work session on October 31st, 2026. We required each year to certify our required local effort match by July 31st. So at that time, we did certify that we were doing the step increase or an average of 2.5%. We get a prorated portion of our state funding for a compensation supplement, but it will be prorated and we will not receive the full amount. Our employees are the foundation of the educational services we provide each day. Teachers, instructional assistants, bus drivers, custodians, cafeteria workers, administrators, and support personnel demonstrate an unwavering commitment to the academic success, safety, and well-being of our students. As school divisions across the Commonwealth continue to compete for qualified staff, providing competitive compensation remains one of the most effective tools for recruiting, retaining a talented workforce our students deserve. We recognize the many fiscal responsibilities facing the Board of Supervisors and deeply appreciate your continued partnership and investment in Franklin County Public Schools. However, we believe that supporting our employees through meaningful compensation increases is essential to maintaining a high quality workforce and ensuring continued educational successes for our students. We respectfully request that the board of supervisors consider allocating the additional funding necessary to support implementation of the 4% out.

salary increase thank you for your consideration and your continued support of franklin county public schools thank you so much i do have a quick question before i open the floor up um the discrepancy in adm that you guys are going through which you know obviously the school board didn't vote on last night. Is it a known fact, because I don't know the answer to this, can the state come back and request paybacks on the state allocation of SOQ funding based upon a change in the ADM this early in the year?

They don't necessarily come back and ask for funding. So they look at our September, we have to report our September 30th ADM, and they look at that time and Make can make some adjustments at that time, but our final March 31st 8 a.m. They reissue What we call the count tool That tells us what our state funding is expected and they start reducing our state funding at that time So that's something that we look at and we keep track of so that we know what we think our funding may end up being based on our enrollment and

I didn't realize there was a September 30th date in play with ADM. I guess that's always been the case. Yes, ma'am. Okay, because I'm always geared to the March 31st.

March 31st is your final. Is the final one, right. Is your final one, and then it's – Used to be around the end of April, beginning of May. Sometimes it's been a little later to know what your final allocation is. But that is something, as finance directors, we watch. If we know our enrollment's down, we go and make the calculation to see how much we potentially could lose in funding and start making adjustments.

Thank you. I'd like to open the floor up to supervisors for questions, comments. Mr. Tatum.

My question is for Mr. Carter. Where are we going to find this money? If we decide, if we do that, where can we find this money? It's got to be recurring money, so one-time money won't work. Where is it going to come from?

So similar to the reason that... Ms. Wright-Lawson mentioned as to why we don't have projections yet. We have the same issue on the county side. So I don't know that we are able to identify $600,000 in recurring money at this time to fund that on a recurring basis. I think the timing is unfortunate. We typically like to wait until we get to November, December, look at tax collections and determine if we want to move forward with it. it's going to be probably using a one-time pot of money until we have identified a recurring revenue source i just don't know that we have the data to reliably provide that to the board at this time okay yes sir mr mitchell ryan so you said the 600 000 and when i look at these options on here

know a while back we discussed the county but what the local match had to be and i understand that the schools is higher because it's four percent compared to what the county's three and a half percent and then just the the amount of employees that the school system has so when you when you're coming up with that 600 000 figure you just talked about where are you pulling that off of this paper that's in our book so it is five i'm rounding up but it's 582 795 dollars is their request so these requests that they're outlining up here they already did and so when we get to the bottom additional funding necessary to fund option four yes sir this is the amount of money they're asking for from the county for the for the required local effort to get them and if so if we supply that 582 795 dollars that gives us option four

Correct. That's my understanding.

4% average raise for all employees. That includes bus drivers, janitors, teachers, the whole shoe match. Average. Average raise.

So that doesn't mean every employee gets 4%. And so I want to make sure we're clear about that. And this is the way the state language is written, is that they can do a 4% average raise across their employee population. So I don't know what bus drivers may get or what teachers may get, but the average across their entire employee population would equal 4%, and that meets that state requirement for the state funding. So in order to get there, they're asking the county for $582,000.

Explain to me what average is.

Well, I don't know the reporting to the state, Ms. Wright Lawson may have done, but to me, when we look at it on the county side, and what I would anticipate the state is asking for verification for is, You have your total salaries. You're going to, for each employee, some employees may get 6%, some may get 3%, but when you average that across your aggregate, the increased total in your payroll is 4%. And so I would assume some variation of that reporting is what the school system is mentioning when they say that. Okay. Yes, sir.

you know when we discussed this on the county county side of it earlier what that was two months ago I think so um we said that we wanted to be that we want to do it both sides or nothing at all if I remember correctly that's what this board said and Tim to answer your question I have a I have a solution to to the funding and that's if i remember my memory is is rough what was the uh two percent increase on the meals tax brian what did that come to in dollar figures uh we were roughly estimating uh six hundred thousand dollars like it's meant to be um so my suggestion would be that however i can't bring it up because i lost that i so i it's not up to me to bring that up um I believe we need recurring funding to do that. To implement this, it needs to be recurring money. It doesn't just need to be rollover money from the county side or whatever. It needs to be recurring money. And I know it's more money than what it costs on the county side, but the school employees, I believe in, you know, I don't give cheaper feed to a group of cattle just because they're bigger than the other group, just to try and save money. We need to invest in these employees as well. And I can't bring it up, but I... I would support two percent in the meals that Rocky Mount is already six percent the county's four percent which means you can eat at Jose's and Union Hall two percent cheaper than you can eat at the one in Rocky Mount and if we can do that to supply this to the school employees I believe I would support it 100%. And it doesn't have to be budget time to introduce that meals tax. We can do it next month.

That's what I was going to ask you, Mr. Glenn, about the timing of having an independent public hearing in the imposition of an additional tax. Does that stand for, will it cover that? OK. Okay.

Sure, sure. It can't be added.

It can't be added today. But like I said, if there's not an appetite amongst the board, I can't bring it up because I lost on it. Right, Jim?

Generally, Roberts addresses that as it's technically the same meeting, especially if you're being active. People make the same motions over and over and over a lot of times. I'm not encouraging that.

Excuse me, Jim, could you speak into the mic?

Sorry, Marshall.

Thank you.

Yes, generally you can't bring it up if you're on the losing side.

And I'm not going to go against that, Jim.

Yeah. Now, whether that lasts for years, I don't know. I mean, I know it lasts for at least that meeting, and usually it's considered the meeting after. But, you know, whether you could bring it up again next month. I mean, I don't think you're foreclosed for the rest of your life for being able to ask to reconsider that. I understand.

But I want to give it a few months anyway. Yeah, exactly.

I think that's where you probably ought to be.

You know, and it's just I feel pretty strong about, you know, here we are talking about this CTE project. It's going to be expensive. It's going to cost a lot of money to do it. And I'm ready and willing and prepared. If we can't fund this right here, we shouldn't even be talking about that. If we can't invest in what we already have, we shouldn't even have another discussion around CTE, in my humble opinion. That's all I got to say. I'm done.

Okay.

So I hope somebody will entertain bringing it up next month, because I can't.

And that's a recurring revenue stream.

It'll be there every year.

Yeah, I think one of the outstanding questions, and I think that you kind of addressed some of the vacancy savings, that's going to help. I think you indicated that would help offset the deficit. And so once that is satisfied, those vacancy savings, are you all intending that they will continue to be in place, that we'll be accruing vacancy savings moving throughout the year?

Throughout the 26-27 school year? Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am.

Brian, is that your assumption as well?

Yes, ma'am. I think that is the – so for us as staff, from a comfort level of a recommendation, that's where we want to make sure that we have a very good comfort level of what – the number of positions that was actually adopted in the budget and who were on staff today so that we can verify those savings and then we can work with the school system on allocating those to the best appropriate use whether that's paying back the county or possibly some use of recurring here and pulling from another pot of money i think between now and the october meeting between adm analysis they're doing and and reviewing position control and personnel will feel a lot better And we still have time, if I understand correctly, we have until October 31st. So the board meeting in October is October 20th. So we feel like we would have time as staff to get that ready. And then the school system would have time pending board action to make the appropriate notification to the state.

Would it be prudent that this board wait until the school board has acted on this?

I think so. The intent was that they would have acted yesterday.

Correct.

And so I think from that standpoint, with the update from the schools from their meeting yesterday, which was odd this month, usually they're the week before, but the way the dates aligned, it was yesterday. So it didn't give a lot of time for us as staff to really go through that. I think it probably would be prudent just to allow that verification to take place.

okay and we would have to verify before the 31st so that they could have it on their agenda mr carter it's a lot of speculation going on here which i don't like and bottom line is i want the board to realize we're getting ready to create another 600 000 reoccurring budget item in our budget for the schools and and I don't much like it. We're facing our own budget issues on our side of the thing versus the school system. So I just want all of y'all to think about this before you move forward on this. You're generating almost more than a half a penny tax increase for us during our budget season.

Well, and I think one of the bullets that's listed in the memo talks about really what this is accomplishing as a partial implementation of phase three of the compensation study. So a lot's happening within this 4%, I think fair enough to say. And we've been very cautious with the school board as we talk about phase three of the pay plan about those fundamental questions about identification of funding. And it's been difficult to have those discussions when we've been dealing with two years of deficit budgeting. So, Mr. Carter, am I getting your anxious disposition on this correct? That you're concerned?

I'm not saying I'm opposing it.

I just want us to think about this before we decide here to plunk out another $600,000.

Well, Madam Chair. Yes, sir. Please, Mr. Jamison.

I agree. I got my reservations along with Mike. I mean, here we are. They came to us today, you know, asking for $600,000. And then we're told we're going to have to pony up 700 and some thousand dollars for the deficit. I mean, Nick, I don't remember, I may be wrong, but I don't remember when we discussed the county, it was a one or in both. Each one of us has their own independent budget. And I thank goodness for our staff. They've done a great job in budgeting operations. And I can't say the same thing for the school. These employees are theirs. They are the school's employees. We don't sign their paycheck and all. And two years of deficit, Lori, like I said, I got my reservations with this. I don't like it.

Thank you, Mr. Jamison. I appreciate your feedback. Ms. Law?

Ms. Larson, I just have one question, if you don't mind, and you all may already know this, and I'm sorry if I apologize if this is old news. In order for you to request the additional state funding of the $345,000, is there a minimum amount that the county would have to provide in order for you to get that amount of money, or is it a tiered system based on what we may or may not offer you? Good question.

The state budget that came out said we were supposed to give, in order to receive the full amount of the compensation that they were including in the budget for SOQ-funded positions, that we would have to give an average of a 4% raise effective July 1, 2026.

So it's either you get the 4% to get the $345 or you get nothing.

To get the full amount or else it's prorated on the amount they included for the compensation based on the percentage of raise that you're able to give. OK, so that was my question. It's not all or nothing then? No, but it would be a reduced amount that we would receive if we can only stay at the two and a half percent.

Okay, do you have a scale that you can provide of what that tier would look like based on a percentage? Of how much we would get or how much we would lose? Yes, based on what if any amount we may offer what you would get up to that 345. Is that something you might have? If you don't have it readily available, it's fine. I'm just curious about that. I don't think I brought that piece with me.

I think that's a great question. And just to kind of restate to make sure I'm understanding you correctly, you're interested in seeing a modeling of 4% and down on a prorated level for the level of contribution that the county would do at certain levels regarding allowing the pull down of the $345,000. Is that correct? Yes. OK. So can you provide that to us? Mr. Carter, do you have anything to? Are we confusing the issues at all?

No, I think I understand the request. And I understand what Ms. Wright Lawson is saying. So the $345,000 is the maximum amount of state money that we could receive for reimbursement if we obtain an average of 4% increase across the employee population. so what we could do is provide the board with information on what that would look like if it was less so if it was three and a half percent three percent whatever that looks like and what that state funding impact would be uh we can certainly work with ms lawson and the school staff to put that together

Ms. Lal, does that satisfy your inquiry? Yes, thank you very much. That's very helpful. Yeah, if we could formally request that of the schools, Mr. Carter, if you could oversee that for us, that would be helpful. Absolutely. Mr. Quinn?

Brian, is it more complicated than to say if we gave them half of the 582, they would get half of the 345? Is it more complicated than that? I mean, you can do the work, but I'm just wondering, is it more complicated than that?

That's not the full amount that we would lose, the 345, by not doing the full 4%. I think if we did the, and I'm going off the top of my head, if we did the additional step, which got us up to a little over 3%, I think we'd still lose around $500,000. So it would be the 340 plus we'd have to make an additional cut out of our budget. But you had budgeted 2.5%, correct?

Yes, ma'am.

So I think Mr. Quinn, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. Please go ahead.

I think that will be helpful for the exercise. For my basic math exercise, you would assume that is that, well, if it's half of this, then we would receive half the state money. I feel like the formula, and this is very rudimentary in my basic understanding. I'm certainly not proclaiming to understand how state compensation works. um but i think it's more complicated than that to ms wright lawson and so i want to make sure we we give the board a very accurate answer so you have understanding of the full ramifications of any action

And I think if the board in your discretion is okay to perhaps table any decision on this until our October meeting, that's one thing for your consideration. And it would also allow us to get some information that you all have requested in place as we move through the coming month. Mr. Mitchell.

I just wanted to ask one more question.

Please.

Brian, when it came up for the county, I feel like we are nailing Brian with questions, and his part on the agenda hadn't even come yet. But when it came up for the county to get the same deal, and the counties was at 3.5%, how much had you budgeted for county raises?

So, well, the county budgeted 3% in the adopted budget. So we were looking at that extra half of a percent.

So the half percent is what we had to come up with. And so the schools projected 2.5%, but the state came down to 4%.

Well, so the state, and this really happened for both localities, the county, and public school systems. There were two competing versions of the budget. There was a 2% and a 3% between the House and the Senate and the General Assembly. And so the county went with 3%. I think the school system ultimately kind of split the difference because they weren't sure which one was going to get adopted and went with 2.5%. And so when the final state budget, much to, I don't know if it's surprise or chagrin of localities who had already adopted budgets and started their fiscal years, really, they came out with a three and a half percent for state supported local employees. and 4% for the school system, school systems, public school systems. And so it immediately put localities, and this is the conversation several localities are having behind because they had adopted budgets because you couldn't wait any longer on the state to adopt a budget to move forward with their operations. And so several localities are having this discussion.

Well, and that's what I was looking for, to put us into the right context here. That's the reason we're having this conversation.

Oh, yeah.

Because it was put out. And as far as I'm concerned, the schools followed the same

procedures the county did and we had to come up with this money just the same on the county side just wasn't that wasn't as large well and you know that's why this always appears legislatively as a priority for localities in the Commonwealth I mean this is a huge unfunded mandate on the localities when we are being required to match monies these are new dollars in order for in the schools instance for them to be able to pull down their state allocated dollars and then when we get money for our constitutional officers what are we going to do for the balance of our employees that that doesn't include of course we're going to make it up But again, it is an unfunded mandate that continues to come down through the General Assembly and Department of Education. And somehow, someway, we're working hard on getting that shifted, but it's an uphill battle. But that's why we continue to have these discussions every single year. and it is a struggle every year and the schools you know you guys running you know deficit budgets it's really difficult I am sure for you all to talk about trying to negotiate the terms of what's going on specially with a decreasing ADM that's just icing on the cake for you guys I say that very flippantly but you just didn't need that at this point in time So what I, are there any other questions before I, Ms., you have, okay. Ms. Law?

Ms. Lawson, just one final question. Let me just clarify maybe something you said just a moment ago. Are you already projecting in your budget figures that you will be receiving this $345,000 or no? No.

We did not, that was additional funding that was in the final state budget when it came out. We did not go back and include that in our budget because we knew if we could not do the 4% raise or average of a 4% raise that we would not have that money plus we would have to look for additional cuts for the amount that we would lose. Okay, thank you.

Don't you need the local share though to pull down that money?

There is a required local match for it, yes. Mr. Quinn.

I have another data request that I think would be helpful for the board. So back ahead of the joint meeting, you'll recall that we thought maybe the admin costs were too high at the school and that that might be ripe for cutting. And I worked with Dr. Sears to get some benchmark data. there's benchmark data readily available and by that i mean for region six schools you can look up online and you can see how many administrators you have per thousand kids and how many teachers you have per thousand kids so it readily allows you to compare apples to apples and there are a couple of the schools that were they were not in line with us i think roanoke and then there's a really tiny one and then it didn't include bedford and so it would be good to get the bedford data But I just suggested that would be an interesting data point for us to state this benchmarking because now you've talked about So and what we found which is so interesting is when you look at the average number of administrators per thousand kids We were slightly below average and when you look at the budget well four million is spent on administration so that's not where you're gonna get your big savings and And when we looked at teachers, we were quite a bit over. In fact, we were 120 teachers over average for our school size. So many per thousand, but when you translated that into the county, we were 120 teachers over. And so it makes me wonder, now that we've done these reductions that you're talking about, I really don't know where they are. They're scattered across these various labor categories, but it would be interesting to see whether the reductions that you've made have now brought us more in line with the average for Region 6. Plus, it seemed to make sense to put Bedford in just to see where we were. And this is not a lot of work. You just look it up online, and the data is right there for you. So I think it'd be really interesting for the board to get that data on benchmarking for, particularly for the teachers and the administration. I mean, you look at the budget here and you can see, you know, 76 million of your 99 is in those two categories, right? The administration and teachers, and there are multiple labor categories within those, but when you start looking at your benchmark data, you're not looking at benchmark data for about three quarters of your school. okay did you want to request mr clinton any specific data from the school yes so i i'd like to see a benchmark data for region six schools plus a bedford in particular for for administrative staff per thousand school students and teacher staff and i know the teacher data In multiple categories, it's I think it's teachers aid and teach real full teachers I can't remember what it is. But but just to see the administrative staff per thousand Kids and the teacher Staff per thousand kids and then what does that mean for us? Are we over or under in those two categories relative to other regions six schools to include Bedford and

Okay, thank you, Mr. Quinn. Anyone else have questions, comments?

I would just offer a motion to table this till next month.

Mr. Jamison, sir, did you have something?

Yes, there's one report I think that goes in somewhere around the end of September. I think it's called the Annual Superintendent's Report Back to the State Education.

Yes, sir.

And I would like a copy of that too. I think that's very revealing too. It tells a great deal about the schools, the ADM, salaries, all that stuff. I'd like a copy of that. You know, when it's prepared to go in, I think it'd do the board a great bit of knowledge there that we can glean from that.

OK, Mr. Jamison, we will certainly add that to our to-do list. So I appreciate that. Was there something else down here? You wanted to make a motion, Mr. Mitchell?

To table this till next month when we have the vote from the school board, and maybe I can rally some support to my cause.

OK, is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Mr. Tatum. And if we could have a roll call, please, Madam Clerk.

Supervisor Carter?

Yes.

Supervisor Tatum? Yes. Supervisor Quinn? Yes. Supervisor Law? Yes. Supervisor Jamison?

Yes.

Supervisor Mitchell. Yes. And Chair Smith.

Yes. Thank you so much for being with us. We really do appreciate it.

You're welcome. I would like to make one comment that I believe Mr. Supervisor Jameson is asking for the annual school report. That is actually the due date is today. But you can request an extension until the end of the month. So that report may be a bit before we have the one that we are submitting for FY25-26. Okay. Fiscal year 24-25 is out there.

You're talking about how our current local information rolls up into the superintendent's September report?

Our annual school report. We have to submit to the Virginia Department of Education. Okay. And that's reflective in the superintendent's report I'm gathering.

Okay. Thank you for sharing that with us. Okay. Thank you for being with us. We very much appreciate it. And I hope you feel better. Thank you. Okay. Mr. Carter, you're on, sir. You're on for our monthly finance report and an action item that we need to deal with regarding our quarterly school allocation, sir.

All right. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. So you should also have a printed copy at your desk. So what we're looking at for our monthly financial report, this is through the end of August, two months of the fiscal year. So we'd be looking at roughly 16.7% of the budget. And so similar to what we did last month, we're going to try and streamline this. So you're not looking at repetitive data on certain taxes where probably there's not a lot of movement from month to month. So we're going to do an overall picture. Realistically, at this point, you know, similar situation. We have two months worth of data. There's not a lot, but the revenues that are monthly, they are coming in and trending at or above where we would want to see them at this point in time. So you can look at the percent of budget column down the right. Other than property taxes, which we know are cyclical, they're twice a year, you can see that most of those revenues are meeting that 16%, 16.7% benchmark. Same on the expenditures. You can see that we would want to be at or below 16.7%. The only one that is above to any statistical variance is the general and financial administration. We typically see that. Category code has all of the upfront payments for the year So our insurance our maintenance service contracts through IT So all of those that are typically front-loaded pay out of that code for the most part And so as we've seen over the years that will as the year goes on that trend will will get closer to that monthly average So no real concerns in the overall numbers with what we have so far With what it's trending Graphically, you can see the revenues are trending. They're a little below overall, but when we look at major categories, we're not necessarily concerned. So if you wanna look at major categories, it's really roughly the same. You only have two months of data, so sometimes a gap in between prior year and current year could look significant, so we put the numbers below. So if you look at general property taxes, it's roughly the same number between prior year and this year. We're less than 100,000 difference. Other local taxes is within $42,000 of the same number, but compared year over year. Revenue from the state is a couple hundred thousand, actually more than it was last year. So no major concerns. That would be understandable for timing and reimbursement purposes. So no major fluctuations that are concerning in our revenues at So expenditure-wise, to show you that you can see it was down in July. It's up in August. The trend is roughly the same average. No concerns on expenditure levels. Categorically, you can see general financial administration is up. Some of that is going to be the contract. We get a 5% contract increase every year. Some of that's going to be the timing of the payments. No overall concerns. We don't see anything that we're not typically used to seeing in payments this time of year. Public safety actually is usually a larger category. It's roughly equivalent. Your health and welfare is up. And so we'll break that down for you. You can see your social services, your operating is up. That's mainly going to be personnel related. They don't have a lot of operating budget outside of some supplies, things of that nature. That would not be atypical. You would have increased the 3.5%. That would start to be taking effect in here. So it's not atypical that we would see that increase year over year in any category.

Brian, can I interrupt you for just a quick second? Yes, ma'am. On this slide, CSA.

Yes.

That's a rather large increase. It is. Is my takeaway for that is that the number of complicated cases is increasing or is this in lieu of higher vendor charges?

Probably a combination. Okay. So we have seen, and a lot of this is a directive from Governor Youngkin and his administration, but there was a concerted effort to not have children spend the night in the local social services offices. And so when they're having to be removed from the home or there's a particular issue in the home, they cannot sleep with parents in the home. if there's no placement for them, they end up in the social services offices. And so the directive from the governor, Governor Youngkin at the time and continuing is they're trying to eliminate that time in the office. Well, Because of that, that puts pressure on local offices to find a placement very quickly. There's not a lot of beds available in the state. Everybody's fighting over the same number of beds. So what we're finding in this process is we're either having to send kids, leave them in the DSS office, send them out of state, or put them in what's called a sponsored residential, which is extremely expensive. uh those typically are kids that have a one-on-one kind of a relationship with a whether it's a mentor or a staff person you don't have 10 kids to one staff person the ratio is much closer to one to one and they cost a lot of money the average cost on those sponsored residentials is about 68 000 a month yeah And so what we've seen is because of that directive, we have several kids that are in sponsored residentials that wouldn't necessarily have been in there at this point in time last year.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Yes, ma'am. so so that is the the overall general look at what what revenue and expenditures are looking like right now uh from our uh no concerns over collection what we're seeing with taxes we will start to see and get a better picture of where the overall summer season looks like from our meals and occupancy so probably next month maybe give you that quarterly look uh for the fiscal year uh property taxes have not really started they will not have by next month which will be through the end of september so we'll continue to monitor so this slide shows you your your rolling updated fund balance and so keep in mind that we we collect most of our revenue collection is property taxes so you would anticipate around december June that you would have an influx of cash and then it would be spent down as the year Continues and so this is less than last month Because we have we collected in June we spent July and August now and so you can see when you back out our 20% policy minimum and restore our Remaining on a side fund balance is just under 18 million dollars, which is really what we consider that flexible pot of money that we would need and so what what I would say to that is That would be where we would go if we needed an emergency. The federal government, we had to do that for the school system. They were about 60 to 90 days behind reimbursing us. So we needed that pot of money in order to pay the bills. And so by sharing that combined and joint bank account, this is the type of transaction that occurs. And so part of that is the reason for having policies that keep a contingency reserve, a fund balance. There are really no changes from last month for budget stabilization and capital reserve. I just wanted to note the obligations on there. So currently the balances are $250,000 and $235,000, but there are other obligations to draw those down. And when those bills are paid and they're finalized, we'll reduce that from previous board action. So economic update, the CPI inflation for August was 3.4% compared to the prior 12 months. That is roughly driven by energy. So I always put that sub-bullet because core inflation, which is less food and energy, was 2.4%. So it really is, it's gas and diesel prices. I mean, if you break it down, Right now, inflation in the economy is driven by gas and diesel prices. When you look at the core inflation that removes those, we're much closer to the 2% Federal Reserve benchmark. So when we can get gas and diesel prices down, the overall inflation factor should much more align between the two. Unemployment rate of 4.1%, roughly unchanged from July to August. That's what you would consider full employment. Somewhere around 3.5% to 4% is what is generally considered full employment. There's always turnover in the market, restructurings, layoffs, different things. And so you're never at zero. So not an overall concern with unemployment. I think there's certainly much more vacancies than there are people to fill them at this point. Federal Reserve had their typical meeting, actually meeting today, tomorrow. They left their rates unchanged at their July meeting. We're not sure what will happen. There have been rumblings that they may actually raise the rate at their September meeting because of the increase in inflation. We will see. We'll probably have something either tomorrow or by Thursday when they post their action from the meeting. I think for us from a budgetary standpoint, we actually budgeted that that rate was going to reduce during the fiscal year as far as our interest earnings are concerned. And so right now with it maintaining, at least through what is roughly going to be two and a half months of the fiscal year, whether it goes up or down, we're reaping the benefit of that so far by them not reducing the rate. So school update, I don't want to rehash. I think we've talked a lot about this. Fiscal year-end adjustments have been completed. Ms. Shalva gave that report, mentioned the audit the week of October 5th. So right now what she presented is the preliminary numbers prior to the audit. And so one of the things that we talked about was the year-end deficit, so it's roughly $717,000. It was mentioned already that, I think Mr. Carter mentioned that. So, you know, since really May, we've been projecting $1.1, $1.2 million loss. Had we not discovered the additional $414,000 in the state grant, we would have been right on the mark since April and May timeframe. So I appreciate the team's efforts. I appreciate Ms. Chauver's efforts. drilling into the numbers, looking at the trends, looking at the variances. And so I feel very confident in what our number is. I will say, had we known this grant was out there, we would have included that in our projections previously.

Why didn't we know that? That was going to be my question.

I think it was a reporting just mishap. I think it was submitted, but it wasn't communicated. It needed to be accepted. And so nobody knew that that was pending to be received. Well, we do now, but we didn't for a few months. And so... I think that's one of those where, as Ms. Shauver said, you know, we're working with particularly Ms. Owens and Dr. Sears, Ms. Wright-Lawson and the staff. There needs to be processes put in place to monitor numbers more regularly, to kind of be a little bit more up to speed on what these look like. And then we would have caught something like that. A lot of good progress being made, but this is one of them that's coming out of this analysis that we're undergoing. And so certainly appreciate additional money. It helps our situation.

Great work.

And then financial analysis for 2027. We'll continue. I mentioned this in the next agenda item, but the first quarterly report is due October 30th for the appropriation resolution. Madam Chair, that's what I have for financial report. Happy to answer any questions.

Okay. Do any of the supervisors have any questions on the financials?

Mrs. Wall? Mr. Carter, this $414,000 straight grant that was in the school board budget, is that just a one-time thing, or would that be occurring every year?

The grant itself is one time, but it is, from my understanding, a technology grant. So it is recurring every year. Just you have to apply for it again. You have to ask for reimbursement again. It's not automatic. So they're anticipating receiving another $400,000 plus this year. If they budgeted for it, I do not know the answer to that question. We could get back to you on that.

But you feel pretty comfortable that that would be a multi-year inflow of money?

At the very least, we're comfortable that it will be for this fiscal year. Always subject to state funding, I would say probably the state does a two-year budget. So probably this year and next year, I would say yes. It could always be pulled at the next biennium state budget.

One final question, if you don't mind.

Please.

Do you, by any chance, have balance sheets for each separate school? Just curious. Is that something that the school division does? Or do we request that from them?

We do not request that. And so I think that's something that they're working on in the school division. I know each school has a bookkeeper, and so there are certain transactions that are tracked at those school levels.

don't know it may exist but we have never asked for a report financial report per school we look at it more in the aggregate so we don't really know at this point if there's one school that's really having cash outflow issues overall in the system at this stage versus maybe some others that are maybe doing a little better in the black

We would not know that from our aggregate reporting, no. So that I think is something that as we're working through these processes we're wanting to put in place. So when we run a report, if I were to see a fluctuation in a category, before I presented to the board, I was like, hmm, why is my general financial administration way too high? Then I would dig in and figure that out. And so we have reports in place to go back to departments and get the answer to those questions. So I think what we're looking to build is for the school system, if they're not able to, to be able to answer those questions in the future. I think that's a valid request. I think it's reasonable when you're analyzing your finances.

And I would add, Ms. Law, I think just we all know by nature, I would just add that grants, I view grants as a slippery slope if you're trying to budget revenue because you don't know if you're going to have the fortunate outcome of getting the award or not. So I don't know, Brian, how the county and the schools, you know, how you all would interpret those funds being anticipated, but with the reality that, you know, maybe they don't come in, you know, creating, you know, a revenue that's not, you know, realized.

Yeah, typically a lot of these grants are reimbursement based. So what I would say is on the county side, and I am certain the school would be the same, is if they did have it in their adopted budget and they would make sure that the grant was awarded and those funds were available before they spent the money. So then if they found out it was not, then they would be able to reduce the appropriation. They just would not either spend that money or they would have to pull that from another another pot of money and utilize it that way but that would be part of that financial analysis that should be occurring so miss law did you have a specific request that you would like to make regarding um the per school balance sheet um sure why not the first the two schools in my district how about that okay wendy gap elementary and boones mill elementary okay We will. Thank you. We will be happy to help.

That'd be great. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Small. Any other questions on the financials? Mr. Carter presented. Okay. Brian, you've got a subsequent agenda item that requires some action from the board.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Madam Chair. And so it is nothing on the screen. It is in your agenda packet as attachment 15. Mm-hmm. And so for recollection, it's been a little bit, but the board did direct staff in the appropriation to restrict school funding until we could come to some better financial reporting and feel a little more comfortable with oversight of their finances. And so the board did adopt that. So staff presented a resolution. that restricted school funding by category and also did not appropriate anything but the first quarter worth of funding. And the first quarter, it was not any special formula. We just divided by four, took 25%. I do think we need to be flexible in that as we figure and see how this works. We'll probably need to not do just an even 25% every quarter. There's gonna be some things that are gonna need to be adjusted. They're going to have a similar thing like the county. They have insurance. They have software they use. All that's probably paid in the first quarter. But for right now, what we have reviewed, we only really have through August. And really, I know it's two months of the fiscal year, but they were really only open in August. And so we don't have sufficient data to necessarily say, hey, here's where we think projections can go or where we see concerns. I do think from us, we did look at preliminary numbers of staff in the finance team that we've mentioned. So there's no overall concerns at this point. They seem to be within where we would want to be an accurate percentage of their budget. And the other thing is the appropriation resolution required that quarterly report within 30 days after the end of the quarter. So they're really not required to give the county or the board a report until October 30th, which is 30 days after the end of the first quarter. So since there are no glaring concerns from a preliminary review of August data, what we're recommending is the board appropriate the next quarter at roughly $25 million. It would be... $25,894,448. It's on the second page of the executive summary. And you would see it in the categories that are listed there, so it would still be restricted to that category. A couple of things that we think will be helpful in doing that. One, it just keeps the school operations solvent and going. I think it's reasonable. But the other thing is it allows us to let that September 30th ADM number happen. Then we can review with the school staff, what's the state revenue look like now? Is that number higher or lower than what was budgeted? Do we need to make adjustments before we get to the next quarter appropriation? And I think all that is relevant data. And if the board remembered, I mean, typically on the county side, we really don't like to make a lot of significant changes until we do about a mid-year look. Realistically, about six months into the year, you really have enough data to see how revenues are trending, especially on the county side, look at your property taxes. on the school side they have typically two benchmarks and we've already mentioned them it's the september 30th adm and it's the march 31st adm those are really the two benchmarks that impact their funding and so those would be items that we think would be very informative for staff and of course to the board as you're looking to fund so we don't have a lot of financial data to report to you we didn't do that intentionally because we just don't think it's going to be helpful to you i think for us as staff we're just requesting the board appropriate the next quarter knowing what the time frame is based on the appropriation resolution and looking at items in that october november time frame

OK, so Brian, you and I recently had a conversation. There seemed to be continued questions coming from school board members basically needing clarification on what the quarterly allocation process is and is not. Have you had an opportunity to have that discussion at the staff level with the schools? Or is there anything that Nick and I can do as liaisons to help

progress that conversation along so we've had a discussion at the staff level of what that means for what the county is looking for I think there was some confusion of how granular that intent was to be yeah you know example was okay if we need to buy copy paper do we have to ask the county's permission That was not the intent, and that's why it's by category. And so it's really grouped up into that. Those categories are functional by the reporting that, one, we report and Ms. Shalver has been providing to the board and the school staff have received. So I think from a staff level, we have that understanding. And from a functional level, the county staff has no interest in monitoring the school budget to that level. It's really administratively impractical.

But my observation was it seemed to me that school administration and finance were in the same meetings with our staff. But it evidently looks like it's not getting communicated to the school board for two school board members to be questioning and have concerns over how we're doing this. So I just still leave that with you and Mr. White. And I just want to make sure that the school board has an understanding of what's being done.

So the school board, I will say after, I'm not sure the timing, if we had our meeting before or after you and I talked.

Yeah.

From a staff perspective.

Yes.

But I do think with Ms. Shawver, Ms. Owen, so I think as we're developing this reporting tool, that all of this has been discussed very good and so I think I think a lot of these questions will be answered it's just new and nobody really knows and so once we can develop that report and we get that first report by October 30th and the school board can see it and this board can see it we're going to have a better idea of realistically just what practically that reporting looks like but it definitely is more of an aggregate level between those major categories what was one in the appropriation resolution language that the board adopted and so that really from a staff level was the intent for example and you know with Ms. Shalva's report instruction was over 1.7 million dollars transportation was under 1.4 million act budget to actual well we don't want the school system transferring 1.4 million from one category to another without the county board approving that

Understood.

And really the intent of that is we catch it before it gets to that and make the appropriate adjustments because that's way too big of a fluctuation. Now, I do want to clarify, I think some of that fluctuation is due to intentional actions on the school system because they knew instruction was going to be over in categories, and so they were trying to cut back on maintenance. They've withheld a lot. So hopefully that doesn't snowball for us this year. So I do want to give them credit there because I think some of that underspend for transportation and maintenance was very intentional.

I think we want to be optimistic as a board a lot of hard work is going on between our staff and school staff and we remain optimistic with all the work and all the mechanisms being put into place that we'll be able to have much easier conversations come budget time next spring I think so I really am encouraged with the progress we're making yeah it's been slow as Ms. Schaufer mentioned

It's just slower than most people think when you're talking an organization with the budgets of the size that we have and the processes that are in place. You don't turn that ship quickly. Right. And some of this is you just have to implement processes. And sometimes by the time they take effect, you're so far into the fiscal year. So there's been a lot of improvement. We've certainly been encouraged with the team that we've that we've put together that we're working And so I do think next year's budget process will be a lot easier.

Thank you So I would like to open the floor up Mr. Carter is is going to be, unless I can just say you're already asking for a motion for the board to approve the initial quarterly allocation. Before we ask for a motion, are there any other questions or comments from supervisors while we've got Brian at the podium? Hearing none, I will entertain a motion to appropriate the funding. Your motion's in your packet with correct dollar amount allocated.

I'll make a motion.

Thank you.

I'll make a motion to adopt the FY 2027 appropriation resolution and appropriate the 2627 budget in the total amount of 169. I'm on the wrong one.

You're on the wrong one. Sorry.

That was the June one provided for an example. Sorry, Mr. Mitchell.

Under 15.

I make a motion to appropriate funding the amount of $25,894,448 for the next quarterly allocation of the Franklin County Public Schools FY2027 budget in the categories as outlined in this summary.

Thank you. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Mr. Tatum. And a roll call, please, Madam Clark.

Supervisor Quinn?

Yes.

Supervisor Tatum? Yes. Supervisor Law? Yes. Supervisor Carter? Yes. Supervisor Jamison?

yes supervisor mitchell yes and chair smith yes brian thank you so much we appreciate all of your help and support did you have something madam chair just before we move on it's been probably over an hour we've been talking about the finances and talking about the school finances so i just wanted to again thank the team that we put together for all the hard work that they've been Putting into this, Ms. Owens, Ms. Shaver, Brian, Corey, Jackie, Sarah, I'm going to miss somebody, but, you know, all the finance team and the school staff as well. It's been a lot of work on those folks, especially. And, you know, I think we're seeing those positive results. But as Brian said, it's it takes time and those processes will be working to improve and change those processes over time. So again, just thanks to all them for all their diligent work.

Thank you for that, Steve.

okay um mr um mr mitchell the time has come for us to move into closed session if you would so kindly offer the motion franklin county board of supervisors moves to enter into a closed meeting in accordance with 2.2-3711 a1 personnel discussion of appointments to county boards commissions etc for the library board cpmt and social services board of the code of virginia as amended is there a second Second.

Thank you, Mr. Tatum. Roll call, please, ma'am.

Supervisor Law? Yes. Supervisor Quinn? Yes. Supervisor Tatum? Yes. Supervisor Jamison?

Yes.

Supervisor Mitchell? Yes. Supervisor Carter? Yes. And Chair Smith?

Yes. So we will adjourn for closed meeting, and we will return back to the boardroom approximately 6 p.m. to conduct our public hearings and public comment and any other reports. Thank you all. I welcome you to our evening portion of our monthly Board of Supervisors meeting. I will ask Mr. Mitchell if you would be kind enough to certify the closed session, sir.

Certify that only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed session to which this certification applies, and only such business matters as were identified in the motion by which this closed session was convened were heard, discussed, or considered in the meeting to which this certification applies.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Mr. Tatum.

Roll call, please, Madam Clerk. Supervisor Jamison?

Yes.

Supervisor Mitchell? Yes. Supervisor Carter? Yes. Supervisor Quinn? Yes. Supervisor Tatum? Yes. Supervisor Law?

Yes. And Chair Smith? Yes. thank you all very much the first item on our agenda we have our we have two public hearings I believe this evening we've got miss Cooper good evening Lisa if you'd like to come up I think the first item that we will be dealing with are the fee schedule changes per state code on land use development

Yes, it is. Thank you, Chairman Chairwoman Smith and members of the board. Yes, I'm here to talk to you about something different for a public hearing. I think it's been a long time since we've been in front of you about Chapter 27, especially Chapter 27.1, which is our fee schedule. Just to give you a little bit of background, we got some notification at the very last hour of June that fees were going to be changing July 1st. And this is the first opportunity we've had to get them in front of you. So what I want to do is try to describe what you're looking at in our fee schedule. One of them is the registration and coverage. It's the coverage under the general permit for the discharge of stormwater for construction activities. This includes the state portion and the county portion of the fees that have been increased. Another fee is the modification and transfer, and this is when the permit is modified. Result changes in the stormwater management plans that require additional review by staff or is transferred of the applicant. I don't think we have had any of those since We started taking over to stormwater but we have to have something in place. Then there's an annual permit for maintenance. This is an annual fee for maintenance during construction and any potential future development and that is also an annual fee. so i know this is kind of small for the audience but in your package you got the information about what we were changing if one thing i do want to point out is the first one the first one is for your single family home construction that's what we do a lot of permits for if you notice that one is not going to change and there's no state portion for that so it stays the regular 200 and There's no state portion. We've never had any modification or transfer. If we ever do, it's a $20 fee now and there's still no state portion. Where there is a lot of changes is in the small construction, different sizes of acreage, and all this is dictated by DEQ. So I really I can go through them or y'all have read them Staff recommends for you to approve them because they're gonna go up anyway Whether you approve them or not, and this is what we're gonna have to collect So I would open it up to questions. I mean some of it is going up a little bit from what it was in the past but This is what DEQ has sent us to change our fees so We do have to hold the public hearing. That's why I'm here this evening to show you. And I'm sorry, Mr. Jamison probably has his packet. He can't see the PowerPoint, but I'm sure he has his packet.

Mr. Jamison, do you have your packet? Yes, ma'am. Okay, very good. Thank you. So do members of the board have any questions for Ms. Cooper before we open the public hearing? Ms. Law.

Ms. Cooper, hi. Good evening. How are you? Congratulations. If anybody in this county has known me for a long, long time, you know that my affinity for DEQ has waned in recent years. I'm not absolutely enthralled with the folks that run the DEQ at the Richmond headquarters. So my biggest question about these dramatic increases in fees are does this go into the general Commonwealth? of Virginia's general treasury or does this money go directly to DEQ?

Well, I can answer the portion that stays here in the county goes to us. No, I'm just talking about the the state like the state portion of 135. I have Bill Rainey here. He does. He's my development review coordinator, but I don't even know if he knows the answer to that. I mean, we DEQ builds us, we send their portion, and what they do with it, I'll be honest with you, I do not know.

Yeah, my question was, does it just go into the general state treasury, or does it go specifically to directly into DEQ's budget?

I am not sure. If that's important to you, then I would suggest it be tabled until I can find the answer out. It's okay, just general information.

Thank you.

But I can still find it out for you, too, even if you don't want to table it. That would be helpful if you would, Ms. Cooper. And I can report it back in a Friday packet. Oh, that would be great. Yeah.

Okay, any other questions for Ms. Cooper? Okay, hearing none, I will open the public hearing on this matter. Madam Clerk, do we have anyone signed up?

Shannon Doa Chisholm, and the next speaker will be Bobby Chisholm. Do you want to have a seat in the reserved seat up here if you're the next speaker? For either of you? Okay, all right. We'll save that for public comment. You'd like to speak under public comment? Okay.

You have no one else signed up? There's no one else signed up. Okay, very good. Well, I will close the public hearing, and I will entertain any further discussion or a motion on this topic. Don't be shy. Nobody likes to vote to increase fees. However, we've got this whether we like it or not. Compliments of the Commonwealth. Is there a motion? I'll make a motion, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Carter. I'll make a motion to approve the request to increase stormwater management fees in Chapter 27.1 of the Franklin County Code as mandated by DEQ.

Thank you, Mr. Carter. Second. Pardon? Is there a second? Second. Oh, thank you, Mr. Quinn. Okay, Madam Clerk, if you'd be second.

Supervisor Tatum?

Yes.

Supervisor Carter?

Yes.

Supervisor Quinn? Yes. Supervisor Mitchell?

Yes.

Supervisor Law? Yes. Supervisor Jamison?

yes and chair smith yes okay thank you all very much for that okay miss cooper thank you very much next we have miss rosser um one of our deputy county administrators to walk us through uh the next public hearing um disposition good evening brandy good evening chair smith and members of the board i'm here this evening to do a public hearing on the disposition of three county-owned properties

So in accordance with the provisions of 15.2-1800 of the Code of Virginia, we did provide notice to all interested parties that the board would be conducting a public hearing tonight on the potential lease or sale of three county-owned properties. Details for those properties have been included in your agenda packet, but I will be covering them very quickly just in case there are any questions. The properties include a 0.021 acre parcel that's located on Route 122 in Hardy, a 0.813 acre parcel that's adjacent to 80 Burnt Chimney Road, which is Burnt Chimney Elementary School, and then finally a 1.42 acre parcel that's located at 50 Burnt Chimney Road. Looking at that first parcel, as I mentioned, this is a very small parcel that's located right off of 122. If you are headed toward Westlake, you go through the roundabout, it's just a little ways past that on the right. The county did receive concerns regarding the existing conditions of the structure that's located on that property, and you can see in the photograph the roof has fallen in. Our research has shown that it was a voting precinct back in the 1950s, but at this time we do not have a functional use for the property or the building, so we are making the recommendation that we list the property for sale with the county's commercial broker. Looking at that second property, it's .813 acres adjacent to Burnt Chimney Elementary School. This parcel does contain a smaller parking area for the elementary school that was not originally conveyed to the county. So when Burnt Chimney was conveyed from the school board to the board of supervisors, it only included the 10 acre parcel that includes the building. and the athletic fields. That has since been corrected. The second parcel that we're discussing tonight has been conveyed, so it is under the ownership of the Board of Supervisors, but it was not included in the public hearing that we did last year for the disposition of the elementary school property. So this will clean that up, and it'll allow us to either sell or lease the parcel as part of that larger elementary school property. Alternatively, if there's a need to expand the adjacent solid waste collection site, this parcel could also be utilized for that purpose. The last property is 1.42 acres at the corner of Route 122 and Burnt Chimney Road. This parcel does house the solid waste collection site that I just mentioned. And this public hearing is being held so the county can consider a master services agreement with ZYTEL. This is something that Mr. Sandy brought up very briefly last month. An action item has been included for consideration of that agreement following this public hearing. So just to be clear, there is no commitment by the board to approve that agreement as part of this hearing. So just very quickly, this has been properly advertised to the public as documented in the affidavit of publication. Staff is respectfully requesting that the board hear public comment regarding the potential sale or lease of these three properties. And after holding the required public hearing, the board can determine the appropriate steps concerning the building and or properties. So there is no action required for tonight, but I'll be happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you, Ms. Rosser. Does the board have any questions for Ms. Rosser on these properties? Okay, hearing none. Brandi, I'll go ahead and open the public hearing. Thank you. Do we have anyone signed up?

There's no one signed up to speak.

Okay. I will therefore close the public hearing. And so I'm guessing that we need to take action on this, correct, Brandi? Nope, no action whatsoever.

I think some feedback on the property on 122, if you want us to go ahead and move that to list it for sale.

Would you like that by motion? I would assume so.

That would be good. And then the Zytel item is actually another agenda item on your agenda tonight.

So do we need to take action on the Zytel piece twice, or just will it suffice?

No, I think we'll get to that on the agenda.

Okay, so just the 122 parcel on Hardy and 122. Okay, so board, we will need a motion to approve that tax map parcel of the 0.21 acres located on Route 122, Hardy.

I'll make a motion to go ahead and move that to the broker for sale.

Thank you, Mr. Mitchell. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Mr. Quinn. Madam Clerk.

Supervisor Carter. Yes. Supervisor Tatum. Yes. Supervisor Quinn. Yes. Supervisor Law. Yes. Supervisor Jamison.

Yes.

Supervisor Mitchell. Yes. And Chair Smith. Yes. Thank you.

Okay. Ms. Rosser, does that satisfy your needs for this evening? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Very good. Okay. The next item on our agenda is Zytel Agreement. Mr. Sandy. Okay.

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. This is tab 18 in your book, and it does relate to the property there at Burnt Chimney. So the proposed lease would be Zytel, who's one of our partners we're working with on the broadband project, will be allowing them to use our shelter, which is located on that parcel where the water tank is. And really, in exchange for that, they will be providing fiber services to several of our radio communication sites. those sites now have microwave backups and so for us it's it's really important to have that proper redundancy with fiber and so again it's just kind of an in-kind service if you will it's not necessarily exchange of payments but they'll be providing those services for us in exchange for allowing them to use space on the county's property so I'll be happy to answer any questions related to that if you have any

Any questions for Mr. Sandy? Mr. Quinn. I have a question.

So Steve, did you price out the value of the lease versus the value of the services that they're providing us? It's not intuitive to me whether it's a better deal for them or us. I'm just curious how you evaluated that and if it's close to being a fair deal.

Yeah, I think it's a very fair deal, and I would say, I don't know if Rodney's here from Zytel, but he could speak as well. I think, personally, I think we are getting the better deal by getting those fiber services to our sites to keep those critical resources operating and functional.

Any other questions, comments? Okay, hearing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve the Master Services Agreement.

Madam Chair.

Yes, please.

I make a motion to approve the Master Services Agreement for co-located grounded ground leasing with Zytel LLC and authorize a county administrator and county attorney to execute the agreement on behalf of Franklin County.

Thank you, Mr. Tatum. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Mr. Mitchell.

Madam Clerk? Supervisor Quinn?

Yes.

Supervisor Tatum? Yes. Supervisor Law? Yes. Supervisor Carter?

Yes.

Supervisor Jamison.

Yes.

Supervisor Mitchell. Yes. And Chair Smith.

Yes. Okay. Thank you all very much for your consideration of those items. Next on the agenda, our county administrators report. Mr. Sandy.

Thank you, Madam Chair. A couple of things. I'll start first with I'll do the events at the end, but I wanted to start with noticed in our upcoming meeting schedule in October, for our work session date, which is October 22nd. There's a couple of us I think are gonna have a conflict with some other meetings that are occurring that day, and so wanted to present consideration for you guys to move that meeting. This will be the work session day, so the Thursday, the 22nd. I think some options would be moving it to the day before which would be which would mean you'd have your regular meeting on the 20th and then another work session on the 21st or move it to the following week which would be the 29th would be the following Thursday or of course the 27th would be the following Tuesday so I didn't know I don't necessarily have to have an answer now but wanted to throw that out that then if you can get back to us we can properly advertise the change of that meeting date so it's up to you if you want to try to get consensus now we can try to do that but I know I'm kind of springing it on you.

No that's okay. We could do this one of two ways. We can ask Samantha to put this out in an email for you to look at your calendars and communicate your desire, or we could try to reach a date here at the Dias this evening. What's your pleasure?

Have Samantha reach out.

Is that okay with everybody? Okay, if you would, Samantha, that would be very helpful.

great great and then um just this is the time of the year when we seem to have a lot of events going on so just a reminder of course we just finished up with the fair and we'll hear more about that uh thursday but um locally here for with our aging services department we have the senior expo coming up on thursday at the essex center that's that's a big event that a lot of people turn out to so really want to recommend you guys and anybody in our audience come out to that event at the Essex Center I think it's 10 to 2 if I'm not mistaken I think is the time on Thursday the 17th of course we have Rocky Mount Fest coming up on the 19th the smith mountain lake wine festival is the 26th and 27th out of bernard's landing then in october we're looking at the franklin county va 250 historic property tour and then this law miss law might share some info on that october 9th through 11th we have the smith mountain lake charity home tour And then the 24th of October, Mr. Tatum, is our usual event out in Ferrum, the Ferrum College Blue Red Folklife Festival and Arts and Crafts Show. And then the final one I'll just point out is November 7th, the Smith Mountain Lake Chili Cook-Off. Again, this time of year, this is the festival time of year, so there's a lot of good things going on in the community. So really want to make sure everybody's aware of those and come on out and support those efforts.

Right.

And I think that's really all I had. I mentioned earlier just a lot of work that our finance staff has been doing with the school system to really get a handle on that. And I appreciate Brian and his folks in our and our consultants that we've used to to really help us get a better handle on that and and have a good way forward. So thanks again to them.

Thank you, Mr. Sandy. Do any supervisors have any questions for Mr. Sandy? We'll move on to the county attorney's report. Mr. Gwynn, do you have anything, sir?

Nothing to report this week.

Okay, thank you. Next up are other matters by supervisors. Mr. Jamison, I'm going to start with you, sir. For other matters, are you still available?

Yes, ma'am. I'm good, though. I don't have anything.

Okay, thank you. Mr. Tatum.

Just to reiterate, the Ferrum Folklife Festival will be the 24th of October. They're changing some things up. We'll hopefully see some new exhibits going on up there. I will tell you this. It's no longer going to charge admission. So it's not going to be counted at the gate. But there will be a fee to park. So load your vehicle up. Come on up for a fun day at the Ferrum-Blue Ridge Folklife Festival on the 24th.

Is that all you have, Mr. Taylor? Mr. Carter?

Thank you, Madam Chair. If you all didn't make it out to the Ag Fair, I think it was another good year, and I'd like to thank Kevin Tosh and the staff of Parks and Rec for all their hard work, as usual, and all the volunteers that pulled that off again this year. That's all I have.

Thank you, Mr. Carter. Mr. Mitchell?

I'll echo Mike's comments there. I had a big time at the fair with my kids. A lot of rides. The donkey ball was very entertaining. Had a great time. And I'd like to thank Kevin and all of them too. It was a pile of volunteers there that made a huge difference. So thanks to everyone that made it happen.

Thank you, Mr. Mitchell. Mr. Quinn.

Just a couple of things. I wanted to mention a lot of work was put into getting the 1% school tax put on the referendum. And now with Dr. Sears leaving, I think without a concerted marketing effort, it's going to be dead on arrival. And it would be nice to see something happen. Even with him here, I don't think they were doing enough to get it passed, not even close. And now with him leaving, I fear that it's something that will just fall away and we won't get it. I also wondered, you know, it sunsets at 20 years. Is there any option to change that period? Or you must stick with the 20 years? Because I thought if it was a shorter period, it might be more palatable to people than 20 years.

I think that's state code mandated, Mr. Quinn. I figured that, yeah.

Hey, Dan, for the benefit of the audience, would you go into a little detail how that money would be captured and what it'd be used for? Because we've got a lot of people here.

Sure. I'll try to do justice to it, and then you can correct my errors. So it would be a 1% sales tax that is collected. As other sales taxes are collected, there'd be certain items that are exempt. I believe it's food and personal hygiene, but maybe there's some other things too, but I know at least those two items are exempt. And then the money that's collected is specifically earmarked for capital improvements and other items like that at the school. And so it's a really important tax for us, I believe, because the alternative is to have a property tax order or to simply not do some of the improvements that needed to be done. And these improvements are really expensive. I know we have THREE SCHOOLS WHERE THEY'RE PLANNING TO PUT HVAC IN NEXT YEAR, AND THOSE WILL TOTAL PROBABLY ON THE ORDER OF $10 MILLION ONCE THEY'RE BID OUT. WE DON'T KNOW FOR SURE, BUT THAT'S WORK THAT NEEDS TO BE DONE NEXT SUMMER. AND THESE ARE NOT NICE TO DO PROJECTS. THEY'RE HVACS WITH END OF LIFE THAT WAS PROBABLY FIVE TO TEN YEARS AGO, SO THEY'RE NOT BEING REPLACED PREMATURELY. AND THEN, OF COURSE, WE HAVE THE CTE, AND THAT'S A VERY LARGE EXPENDITURE THAT'S LOOMING THAT is a capital improvement that would be funded by this too. And so it would just be so nice to have the sales tax, which a lot of it would fall on non-residents to fund this rather than trying to burden the county constituents with yet another property tax increase. So I don't know, you can tell me what I missed.

Would just add there are there are some school town hall meetings that are scheduled to talk about that and they are on our agenda and So just for the good of the audience, September 21st, there'll be a school town hall meeting at Snow Creek Elementary at 6 p.m., on October 5th at Callaway Elementary at 6 p.m., and then October 19th at Rocky Mount Elementary at 6 p.m. And so the purpose of those is to present information about the tax and what it can be used for, how it'll be collected, so forth. Not really to tell people how to vote on it, but really just to provide information So everybody has the factual information before they see that item on the November ballot this year.

And Mr. Quinn, if I could just piggyback on that. I'm sorry, Ms. Law. Just to kind of echo, you know, it's for school construction and school renovation. And when you're living in a locality such as we are, our schools are very aged. We've got schools, as you all are aware, 40, 50, 60 years old. So the nature of repairs that are needed, especially like these large HVAC systems and so forth, there's a lot of issues that we've got to work with the school board on to keep the kids and the teachers, the janitors, cafeteria workers safe. And so as we sit and look at the landscape of the amount of money that we feel is just starting to come around in terms of these four schools with the HVAC units, we don't think these things are just gonna go away. They're just gonna get worse and they're gonna be landing on our lap to deal with from a financial perspective. And I think the reason this 1% is important for consideration by the taxpayers is because we're going to have to find a way to fund major capital renovations and the building construction of new schools, perhaps. And the only place that we have to go to in lieu of this, of course, as you know, are taxation, levels of taxation on typically real estate. And so from our perspective as a governing body, we view this as an opportunity to take and lift that burden off of the real estate tax rate when we have to deal with these very, very large capital expenditures. And it's very restricted money, and the state will be managing this. and so I just would appreciate I know our board would appreciate your consideration these costs are going to hit us one way or the other and so this is just another tool in the toolbox if you will for our board to have accessible to try to deal with what are now very impending problems that we're going to have with our schools

Yeah, the only other thing I'd add is that I feel really good about the process that we have in place for bidding out these projects in the past. Some of these projects have been sole sourced, or another way to put it is not competitively bid. And now the school is on a path to bid out these three major HVAC projects totaling about $10 million. and they had to start this summer you can't wait until the fall or the spring and hope to get those competitively bid so i feel really good about the money that we'll be spending on those that we're going to get the best value for the dollar and then brandy's been heading up all the work on on the cte and again getting those contracts competitively bid so i have a really good feeling about that we're getting our the best value for our dollar that we'll get the most out of our money and and and that's that's a good part of this also

Thank you, Mr. Quinn.

I just had one other item. So, Lori, I know that you have been following up with the Ag Development Board, and I wondered, not to put you on the spot now, but if you could give us an update either now or Thursday or at the meeting in October, it would just be nice for us to really put that whole thing to bed at some point because it's kind of been out there for a while. So I don't know if you want to just put that on the agenda in the future or if you want to talk about it now.

I think what I would prefer to do, Mr. Quinn, and you know it's been something that we've been trying to work with for months, what I would prefer is I have a little preparatory work that I would like to do for the board, and I would suggest that we take it up at our October meeting, if that's okay with everyone. I think several scenarios and options have been talked about over recent months. So we do. You're correct, Mr. Quinn. It would be great if we could have that discussion and bring that to conclusion. And so, Mr. Sandy, if you would make a note for us to get that on our October agenda, please.

And then the last item, I've mentioned at a couple meetings the need for us to have a strategic economic development plan. And I've done some additional work on that, if the board would like to hear about that, to really put some meat on the bones and show people what I'm thinking about in that area. So that's something we could do at a future work session, just to start beginning work on it. Because I think it's just really important We move to do proactive economic development, particularly as it relates to Summit View and even the DGAs within the village plans. And so I think there's a lot of work to do, and I think it'll pay off if we do it. And I've done some work to kind of help people see what that vision would be for a strategy.

Thank you. Mr. Quinn, I keep a running list of work session requests from you all, my colleagues, and I will certainly put that on the list and honor your request. Ms. Hall.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Franklin County VA 250 Committee has worked very, very, very hard for the last year and a half to two years on various projects, but we're actually gonna have a county historical tour coming up on Saturday, October the 3rd, from 10 to four, there's gonna be five locations that are gonna be on the tour that day. Four of these places are actually privately owned and they're very significant historical sites. So I really encourage everyone to come out and enjoy the tour and enjoy the opportunity to take a look at some of these sites that you may not be able to see otherwise. So anyway, we're all looking forward to it and hope we have a good turnout. So thank you all.

Thank you, Ms. Law. And I was remiss at the top of the meeting, since we have such a great audience this evening, we welcomed Ms. Law earlier this afternoon. She was sworn in to be our new supervisor for the Boone District. So I hope that you'll join us in welcoming her to be a supervisor on your behalf for Franklin County. We're very pleased to have her. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, ma'am, of course. Okay, next item, we've got several appointments that we need to take care of this evening. Mr. Jamison, if you are there, I think you've got two appointments that you would like to make a motion on. Mr. Jamison? Yeah, we'll circle back. We'll circle back, Samantha. Okay. Okay, we'll go to the next.

I'm sorry.

No, are you there? Are you okay with connection and so forth?

Yes, ma'am. Operator.

Okay. I was going to open the floor to you, sir, to make motions for the two appointments that you'd like to do tonight.

Yes, ma'am. The first one is I'd like to make a motion to appoint Ed Greer. Reappoint him, excuse me, to the IDA board.

Okay.

He served well, and he's done a good job.

Okay, we'll take these one at a time, Mr. Jamison. So that's your motion. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Mr. Tatum. Madam Chair, Clark, excuse me.

Supervisor Law? Yes. Supervisor Quinn? Yes. Supervisor Tatum? Yes. Supervisor Jamison? Yes.

Yes.

Supervisor Mitchell? Yes. Supervisor Carter? Yes. And Chair Smith? Yes. Okay, Mr. Jamison, carry on, sir.

The second one is for the library board. Marilyn Amerson, reappoint her to that, please.

Yes, sir.

Been there a long time. She's done a great job.

And that's in the form of a motion, sir, correct?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, is there a second? Second. Thank you, Ms. Law. Madam Clerk.

Supervisor Jamison?

Yes.

Supervisor Mitchell? Yes. Supervisor Carter? Yes. Supervisor Quinn? Yes. Supervisor Tatum? Yes. Supervisor Law? Yes. And Chair Smith?

Yes. The next item appointment rather that we have is for the alternate to the school divisions rep on CPMT and we have Dawn Verhoff offered as the alternate. So I would entertain a motion to appoint her.

I nominate Don Verhoof for the CPMT board.

Thank you. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Mr. Tatum. Madam Clerk. Supervisor Tatum? Yes. Supervisor Carter? Yes. Supervisor Quinn? Yes. Supervisor Mitchell? Yes. Supervisor Law? Yes. Supervisor Jamison? Yes. And Chair Smith?

Yes. Okay. Lastly, we've got two seats on the West Piedmont Planning Commission Board, Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Tatum. Madam Clerk, could we combine these, or would you rather have them in separate motions?

We can combine them.

Okay. So I would entertain a motion to appoint both Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Tatum back on the West Piedmont Planning Commission Board.

So moved.

Thank you, Mr. Carter. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Mr. Jamison.

Madam Clerk. Supervisor Carter? Yes. Supervisor Tatum? Yes. Supervisor Quinn?

Yes.

Supervisor Law? Yes. Supervisor Jamison? Yes. Supervisor Mitchell? Yes. And Chair Smith? Yes. Mr. Carter, you had an appointment.

Yes, ma'am. I would like to reappoint Sharon Tudor to the IDA. In the form of a motion.

Yes, sir, of course. Is there a second? Second.

Thank you, Mr. Mitchell. Madam Clark? Supervisor Quinn?

Yes.

Supervisor Tatum? Yes. Supervisor Law? Yes. Supervisor Carter? Yes. Supervisor Jamison? Yes. Supervisor Mitchell? Yes.

And Chair Smith? Yes. And that concludes our appointments for this evening. And I'd like to remind everybody, either through our clerk's office or online, the county website, we keep a current list of all of the vacancies that we have on various boards and commissions. And we would love to have you check that out. And if you have interest, please let us know. We would love you to entertain this. These are great experiences to learn more about our county. So I just wanted to just ask you for your consideration. Okay, we are going to move on. I have asked Mr. Mitchell if he'll help me. My voice is not all that strong tonight. If you would help me in reading the preamble, sir, for public comment.

We've reached the time set aside in our meeting for public comment. Public comment gives citizens an opportunity to address the board in person or in writing on matters appropriate to the responsibilities of the board. Each speaker will be limited to three minutes for their comments. Speakers must direct all comments to the board as a whole and not to individual board members or employees of the board or county. Personal attacks and insulting, defamatory, profane, or vulgar language directed to individual supervisors will not be tolerated. Likewise, commentary on issues that are not within the purview of the board and that are not a function of local government over which we have no control are not acceptable. Public comment is not a question and answer session, and board members will not answer questions during public comment. The chair of the board has the ultimate authority to manage the time the board allocates to public comment. The chair's authority includes but is not limited to limiting public comment to one person per side or position of a topic, shortening the time that each speaker has to speak and or waive in any of the public comment provisions when appropriate and or necessary. If the speaker violates these rules, the chair may rule the speaker out of order and upon second violation, have the speaker removed from the podium. We recognize that everyone has a First Amendment right to speak and be heard at this meeting. However, no one has the right to disrupt this meeting either while they are speaking or while others are speaking. First Amendment does not protect disruption. Therefore, we ask that you respect each speaker's right to be heard. It is disruptive to interrupt the presentation of others. We're going to call two speakers at a time this evening so that one will be on deck, so to speak, while the other is speaking. We hope this will move the meeting along and allow everyone to get home at a reasonable hour. With that, I'll call the first speaker.

Okay, thank you.

Pam Flanders and Sasha Ananda, if you would please come up front to the reserve seat.

Good evening. Good evening.

Pam Flanders, 3540 Novelty Road, Pinhook, and that's the Union Hall District.

Madam Chair and board members.

Thank you for this opportunity to address you regarding the economic development of our beloved county. I see significant changes in our world on the horizon, and I sense we are ill prepared for them. I watched a recent Tucker Carlson interview with an AI whistleblower, Nate Soares, a computer scientist who had worked at Google and the Defense Department. He, along with Eliezer Joukowsky, are co-leaders of the nonprofit Machine Intelligence Research Institute. The institute has been working on questions relating to machine superintelligence since 2001. In early 2023, hundreds of artificial intelligence scientists, including Soares and Joukowsky, signed an open letter stating, Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority along other societal scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war. Concerned regarding the speed with which AI companies are charging headlong To create superhuman AI, they published a book in September 25 called, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All. Their premise, if any company or group anywhere on the planet builds an artificial superintelligence using anything remotely like current techniques based on anything remotely like the present understanding of AI, then everyone everywhere on Earth will die. As resources available, water and power, to support a data center in Franklin County are considered, I hope there will be careful evaluation by the board before opening the door to this technology. This is not just chat GPT. And to end on a gentler note, last month Wendell Berry died at the age of 92. A prominent author and Kentucky-born lover of the land, Barry graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1957. He went to Stanford and studied as a creative writing fellow under Wallace Stegner, later spending a year in Italy on a Guggenheim fellowship. He then taught at NYU, but finding city life lacking, he returned to Kentucky to teach at the university and dedicate himself to small-scale farming. The rural lifestyle was a part of who he was and where he thrived. I have a couple of Mr. Berry's quotes. A viable neighborhood in a community, and a community is made up of neighbors who cherish and protect what they have in common. A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other's lives. One more. Whether we and our politicians... party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sturdier sense of justice for the region.

CHRISTIE WOODARD- Thank you, Ms. Flanders. Thank you.