Board of Supervisors Budget Work Sessions - Regular Meeting

crowd followed by the pledge of allegiance. All right. Are there any amendments to the agenda? Seeing none, I will open the floor up for public comment. comments will be limited three minutes per person. In order for everyone opportunity to speak, please provide your name, your full name, and district in which you live so it can be properly included in the public record. Do I have anyone for public comment? All right, come on. Yep. Got hand out to go with Thank you. Good morning. Morning. My name is Ryan Ragdale and I'm with the Love Thy

Neighbor Food Pantry here in King George and we serve all the districts. Uh the board provided us with some funding last year. Thank you. I'm here to ask you to continue your support. Fortunately, supporting our neighbors in need makes good economic sense. I'm going to read from a report by the US Department of Agricultures economic research service. It's titled Food Insecurity, Chronic Disease, and Health Among Working Age Adults. We examined the relationship between food security and health as measured by 10 chronic conditions. Lower food security is associated with higher probability of each of the chronic diseases examined. Hypertension, coronary heart disease, hepatitis, stroke, cancer, asthma, diabetes, arthritis, COPD, and kidney disease. The chart from the report shows that the people who have the hardest time putting food on their tables are twice as likely to have diabetes, three times as likely to have heart disease, and five times as likely to suffer a stroke. And when someone suffers a stroke, what happens? They stop working. They stop being a productive taxpaying citizen. They go to social services and they get disability dollars which come out of your budget. And why does this happen? Because when you're in poverty and you need food, you're going to spend the fewest dollars you can for the most calories you can. And the most calories per buck is your double cheeseburger from McDonald's. 430 calories for just a dollar. But it's high sodium, high cholesterol, high high saturated fat. So no wonder they're having more strokes.

I talked to a customer down at the pantry uh last night. Uh King George dad got a kid in the middle school and he's working hard and he's paying the rent, but his family is on the edge. So, he comes down to the food pantry to get healthy options to keep his family healthy. And that's good. That's good for all of us to keep him healthy, keep him working. That's good economic sense. Now, I don't have an economist on staff, so I can't give you exact numbers for King George. What I can tell you is that multiple nationwide studies of SNAP, that's the food stamp program, have found that every dollar the government provides in SNAP food benefits, translates to $1.79 injected back into the economy because chronically ill people can't work, but healthy people can work and they do work and they pay taxes on that work money and they spend their paycheck and that gets more taxes into the economy. So, in conclusion, fund your food pantry. It makes good economic sense to keep our families healthy. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you. Is there anyone else? Good morning. My name is Sanja Galahan and I'm a almost 80 year resident of King George and a volunteer at Love Thy Neighbor and one of the um founding I guess in the beginning volunteers and um I'm just here to say probably in the history of the board this hasn't happened but you never get a chance to make a good second impression. So, we're based on um the scripture, feed my people. And with that being said, I have homemade crab cakes for the board members, and I'm going to trust them to Terry. And that's all I have to say. Well, thank you.

Thank you very much. Anyone else? Is anyone online? All right. Any correspondence received? And we'll close public comment then. We'll move on to the agenda. Mr. Smallic. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. So before I begin with the presentation and come through some of the departments um a couple I want to set a you know a couple not ground rules for the day but how things are going to look. So it is my goal that I will do the majority of the talking. I I don't know the ins and outs of every single department. That's why you'll see some of the the department heads coming on a timeline in and out throughout the day. The goal is for for you know the the budget team here to to really answer the questions. If there's a specific question uh for departments I'm one of them here. I don't want to give the board an answer of I don't know let me check on it. So so that's why you'll see some of the staff coming in and out and I want to walk you through how everything is organized uh you know for for the board members and for everything that is online for the public and for those who are watching. So I've got control here. So the first the first thing um on the the the revenue budget summary. So when you click on that this is all the revenue that and and there's an it the last updated of March 10th 2025 at the very top. Oh sorry sorry. Yes. So um these are the expenditures. These are the expenditures. Me let me just go back. Hang on.

Let me let me go back here and just one second. So, what we're going to I'll start with this this this top document right here, the the budget presentation. So this is this is the really the follow along um page by page line item by line item changes that were made since my initial March 18th presentation. So the way this is set up so we have if there was a change made from March 18th on the departmental budget uh budget team and I went back looked at uh each each department a little bit harder heard got some guidance from the board. So with this particular you'll see sheet 2 R. R stands for revise um and this is the department the county administration and these are the the ledger codes 1 1221 and the the goal here was to reduce overtime for the administrative assistance and then I broke it out a little bit further. So line 1200 went from 5,000 to 2,000 if there was a change. The red font means that is a savings. I've got some uh let me go down here. There there's there's other ones here. Here's an example with the circuit court judges. So the red you see it went from$,550 to $850, a savings of $700. Line 5240 added a cell phone for the judicial assistant. That is in black. That is an extra expenditure to the cost of $492. So you you'll notice some of these like this goes from sheet 9R to 12R. That means on pages 10 and 11 of the March 18th budget, there were no changes to those particular departments. Okay, you guys, you everybody follow me from here? All right. So, when we go back to when we go to the department, the department budgets, which is the last link, these are the individual departments for for um for

the county. And so, this is here we go. Here's county administration. So the two at the bottom, this was the March 18th two, but again we talked about two R. So you'll see in red font H2 revised on 41025. So this is the document that we're that we're working off of right now. And then the line items, we talked about those two line items. So we we can zoom in here and and you can see um overtime this this was a line item that was changed. You can see there was 5,000. I reduced it by let me zoom in a little bit more for the public. So o over time there was 5,000 I changed it by 3,000 and this is my new recommendation. So this is the this is how they they correspond. And I'm going to I'm going to just turn it over to I need to give control to Levita right now. I want to show the board and the public how how these numbers are derived. I'm going to unplug my computer and if Levita will need switch over to Levita's

Put it back in. All right. So, I'm I'm going to show you. We're having technical difficulties with Miss Cob's computer, but this was the same thing that she was going to show you. I'm going to show you how these these budgets are built. And if you have if the board has any specific questions, this is where we can drill down soon as it comes up on the screen. All right. All right.

You need a break.

I was okay. We talked about the operating budget. I want to talk about a couple more. Let me now let me let me focus on this. So, how does the how does the the individual uh budget get created? Um and I want to show the board members and the public what the budget team looks at. So whenever you see this, this is a county administrator. How are these numbers derived and and and really how we look at this when when uh individuals are looking at it, you've got their request, any adjustments made by the county administrator in red, what I recommend, and then this is, you know, if if the board makes any changes, and this is the the budget. This is the new section, this notes section that we added for transparency this year. So, somebody can look at, you know, how is 3311 vehicle maintenance uh this this line item right here. How is this money being spent? It's $300. And in this note section, maintenance for department vehicles. So, again, just to to indicate to the public how the money is being spent. And if if if the board has any questions, we can even go further. So, this is this is what the budget team receives. And you all have a summary of this, but whenever we look at it, you have let's let's take for instance um 5540. That's a that's a travel item. So uh line item 5540. Hang on. Where's my view? There we go. I want to make sure you all can see this. 5540. Where we at here? Okay. Uh 5540 travels uh conference and fees $9,000 in the notes section. Veo conference, VL, GMA, ICMA, hotels, travels, and meals. And then the budget

builder, this lists the specific conferences and the dollar amount. And we do this for all all the different departments. And this is how this $9,000 uh to when you total these up, it transfers over to uh this this $9,000 here. So, it's not the note section. I know that there was a comment and I want to say was a a note made by Mr. Collins at the 18th uh meeting and I think it was with the sheriff's department. It was for there was you mentioned gym equipment is what I wrote down. We can go through that one. It's gym equipment, but there were about 12 or 14 different things. We don't want to write a dissertation on that note section. You know, there more of a a general here's how it's built. But if you have any questions on a specific, you know, Mr. SM, what is this for? We can pull this up right here and we can show you how this budget was created um by each department. So, going back to the agenda, what we've got for the agenda for the public. Um, so you've got the the revenue budget. This is the overall summary. When you click on this, this is the overall summary. And this actually looks at historical data. So the FY26 budget is the column highlighted in yellow. These are the projections that we have made. Um, and then there's a FY25 and there was a 25 amended budget. And when you go back you can see FY24 actual 23 22 and 21 going to the left. These are actual numbers based on the audits. So real estate you can look at the real estate what we actually collected in 21 was 19847 and that trend has been going up. And then we use the the current assessed value from the commission revenue multiply it by the the tax rate 98% collection rate. That's how we come up with uh um the the total amount projected by real estate. So we can go

through this every single and this is a a large document. This is all presented to the board and it's to the public. I just want to explain what that looks like. And then whenever you the the last tab that we're going to use is the uh the budget budget summary. So you pull the individual departments, they have their requests and then we go through and we put it all together. So for instance, uh, general administration, uh, county administration, this line 1210 was the, um, the the last couple years going back to 2021. These are the actuals, the numbers. FY24 actual was 874,000. Then you've got the adopted 25. You've got the adopted 26 budget, $522,000. Um, and then you see that is a 3% decrease over last year. So this is the column where you look at how much has that budget changed from 2025. Then how much the percentage of that is due to salary. So that that's kind of the how things are set up for the board and for the public. Um if there's any questions feel free to stop me. But the way we have uh today set up we have um yeah we we're going to start with my my word document here. Um, let's build this. So, the the the the first first uh department that I want to focus on and is the board ready? Are are you all comfortable the way everything's set up? You you follow. Okay. Thank you. So, the first uh order of business is the the the clerk of the court and then the judges. So, clerk of the court, when we go to page 15, there there were no changes with that particular one. However, when you go to the circuit

court judges, there was there there was an email I received um requesting a couple of changes from what was presented on March 18th. And that's shown here on on Mr. Small. I'm just How do you want to do as far as if we have questions as you're going? Just just exactly what you just did. I'm I'm good with that. All right. Well, the the the way we we we will be bouncing around. The reason this the agenda was set up the way it was if we went right through the page numbers, some of these departments may have a little bit more conversation. Some of them are going to be quicker to get in and out. So, I wanted to space out the the I guess school, fire, and sheriff are the three big ones. So, I want to split those automatically morning and afternoon sessions. So, we'll be So, this was it's not going to be page by page. However, we staggered in terms of how long I think each department will take. Okay. So, so on the on the back page of your agenda, you'll see the morning session. First, we're going to talk about the clerk of the court and the judges. That that's the first one that's listed. So, so um page 12 right here, the clerk of the circuit court there there there were changes for their budget. So if you go to 12 revise and the document that you all received revi 12 revises in red font. So I'll give a summary here and then I'll and I'll flip to the page so everybody can see it. So, circuit court judges, line item 5230, reduce telecommunications budget to from$,550 to $850, a savings of $700. And we removed the note about the fax line. They removed their fax line, a savings of $700. Um, Judge Strickland requested a cell phone for the judicial assistant,

uh, line item 5240 at a cost of $492. And then the savings that was uh taken from the fact fund we added to the supply uh list uh item 601. So add $700 from office supplies to 750 to 1450. So when you go to the um you go to the budget, I I'll show you how those how those uh translate up. Yeah. So back out here so I can see my page numbers. So you had 12R So there's tw this is 12 revised and then you'll notice the changes that I just talked about here. Telecommunications this line item there was $700 removed. We removed the note for the fax line. We uh added the cell phone at $492 and we added $700 to the general office supplies. That's the only change that is made from the clerk of the circuit court and the circuit court judges from the March 18th presentation. Are there any questions on this, Mr. Collins? So, judges conferences and training $2,500. Yes. Is that reimbured from the state? It is not. Oh, I'd like to remove that. Is is that required? I mean, I know that there's training that sometimes has to be done to keep your certificate or

whatever it is. I don't know what it is for judicial, but you got to speak into the mic. Nobody can hear you. Yeah, it would be continued education for the Sorry. yet for um but for the benefit of both counties because we we also um he sits in West Morland as well um which actually a portion just so that you guys know a portion of my salary is paid by West Morland. They pay 40% and they are also helping some with this budget as well. So some some money does get reimbured but the travel expenses is something that he asked for. Um, and I didn't He's in court this morning, so I didn't uh think that I was going to have any issues to to address, but yeah, he would like it for continued education. We already have a conference scheduled um in September that he requested a he did get some money for a scholarship. So, he is trying to save, you know, trying to not use your money as much. And so, he got a little bit to pay for it, but this is to pay for the remainder of it. It's a legal writing class. So the if he's required to go to the conference, it should be paid for by the state. Shouldn't be paid for by the locality. I think this is supplemented from the he's asking the county to supplement it because the state is not going to cover this. They do cover the judges conference, but that is paid for. That comes as every May. And so that is covered solely by the state. This is just for additional continued education for the benefit of both counties. I mean, and if you would like for me to talk to him more to see if he has any additional to what I'm saying because I feel like he would probably explain it better than I, but I can do that. You said West Mullen is already covering part of this. Well, they're they cover

well, they're covering bits of they're 40% of That's how our It's not covering the travel. There's not 40% covering. So So King George is covering all the travel. Yes, that's So on that 2500, I'd like to cut it or at least drop it 40%. I would definitely agree with the the the class because that's continue education and that is part of what we have to do to stay in compliance with certification. I don't know. You don't know what those numbers are. I don't I don't and I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. Can we have allow her to to get that answer and come back later to at least Yes. Thank you. All right. I do I do have a question on the postage and this comes up. Have we factor I don't know if postal rates are increasing anytime soon. I've heard rumblings. Have we factored in for any increases in postage rates? The departments have considered that and you know looking at the volume. So so yes ma'am and I want to just inform the board. So timeline this and then for any any of the speakers to keep us on track. This will be presented uh uh at the uh board meeting on Tuesday the 15th. So I will need any changes. Um I mean the packet is out right now. We couldn't submit the budget document. We could not put that online because I knew we had to take care of this. So, I I just want to let let the board and the public know that that document is a living document and any requests such as the one that

was just made, I will need those back sometime over the weekend so that we can get this this budget put together and out for the public to consider any of these changes for the board for the Tuesday night meeting. So, Mr. Chair, with that, so any questions we have, can can they be jotted down and then compiled? We are. Yeah. Yes, ma'am. So, so today can't we um add or subtract? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean any additions or deletion you know whatever you all want to do we were we are taking notes and we will work uh to compile this over the weekend or you know or you know tonight to to get it ready for the public so we can get it out there for the Tuesday night meeting. Can we at least cut the judges um conference and training 40%. the West Mullery needs to pick up the 40%. All right. Okay. We'll make that note. Well, I think don't we all need to agree on that? I would like to see the answer to my question before that and Can you get that later before we leave? Okay. Thank you. What about the other two? Get the button to stay on. I do like just common courtesy to get the answer before I give a vote on that. That what I was asking. How about the other two? Yeah, you two. Agreed with you. I do too. So, we can go ahead and do that by 40%. She can still come back with um anything she wishes, right? Thank you.

All right. What was your question again? My question was on the amount. What of that was the travel and what was the certificate the continuing education that is required to stay compliant? So I don't know what the breakdown is. So I don't know what the $2,500. It might be that the majority of it is for the certification or continuing education. That's why I was asking before I made the decision. No, that's that's fine. I still agree with TC though there that we should not be put in the bill for all of that if West Morland's benefiting from it. I didn't say I didn't disagree. I just wanted to have the information first. Right. All right. Thank you. Um, moving on to combined courts page 13R, which is up on the screen. This has been amended again since the March meeting. And you will see um the change that was made just reduced office supplies from 3,000 down to 2500. That's the only change made to uh combine courts. Any questions from the board? Judges, clerk, and travel $1,000. And um the public defender court appointed So historically last couple of years the actuals 2640 for that then 2280. Um I kept it flat from last year's budget at 3500.

So the judges and clerk travel again should be picked up by the state. This is the portion that is not covered by state funds. It's for four judges and clerks. So, do we um have to do 60% on this one, too? No. No, sir. This is different. This is combined courts. This is different than from circuit courts. General district and juvenile, right? I just wondered if we doing the same thing with 6040. No. No, sir. Do they sit in West Mullen with combined judges? No, they do not. They sit in any other jurisdiction. Yes, Mrs. Gusman. Yeah, Miss Gusman is indicating yes, they do. What other jurisdictions? I'll go up to the mic. General District Court. We have Judge O' Conor right now. I think this is going to be an issue because they just switched around judges. I believe she's also sitting in Hanover, but I am not a 100% where else she sits. Uh, Judge Vance is one of our JDR judges. He sits in the city of Freddersburg and King George. And Judge Jones is also one of our JDR judges. He also sits in other jurisdictions. Which ones, I can't tell you. I don't know. So, our percentage, do you have any idea what our percentage is for? Well, I mean, if we're talking I'm I'm just jumping in. I think you said it was $1,000. Yes. So, that's going to be three different judges. Four different judges is what they're they submitted. Four judge. So, $250 per judge. That that the I can't tell you what it's

going for, but $250 per judge for travel expenses is very low. So the the conference is paid for by the state. In other words, and this is one of those things I don't know if they're talking about the judges have their conferences and this includes circuit court that they have a week in May. Our lower court judges have a week at the end of August, beginning of September. That time frame that is included in their state budget. I don't know if this $250 is an add-on for a different conference that they need to go to or if it's just the yearly judge conference. So, I think what might need to happen is to ask Miss Honor her J&B court is running this morning. So, can we find out what the percentage we're required and see if we're over the percentage we're required for all those judges? We we can do that. It's $250 a judge. If it's 5050, you're saving $125. I mean, I want to look, I'm all about cutting down the pennies, too, but we're talking about 250 a judge for a year. And the court appointed public defender on the combined courts 3500. It's a it's a flat fund from last year. Um do you see the historical numbers there? How much does the um when they're found guilty, they have to pay for their own uh defense. So how much does that bring in?

I was talking about the combined. Yeah. Are you talking about But you're talking about the public defender fee for the combined. Yeah. And I understand and I'm but I will say that they they do get reimbured once the the court costs are paid. So it's I guess it's the hold to pay them and then we get the money back. That is correct. Yeah. Once a month we send over checks from both of our courts to you guys and give you all our money so you can Right. So they send over the money and um if it's more than um $3500 that shouldn't even be a line item. Yes, you have to budget your um expense um and the revenue on that piece in order for the budget to balance. So, we couldn't just collect the money without budgeting the expense because we pay out parts for these items. So, it's budgeted um the request is based on an estimate of 30 cases um times $120 per case. And so, the funds are collected from the defendant and then it reimburses the county. Well, do we get more funds than than we pay out? More than likely, yes. I would have to look at that revenue line, but I do believe we do get more funds than we pay out, but we have to budget it in our expenditures so that um our revenues and everything. Couldn't you lower that number since you get paid out more so you at least have a line item for it? You could lower, right? you you could could lower that, but then if we end up paying out more than your expenditures will look like we overspent in that line and our line would be negative and then we would have to do um possibly a transfer so that at the end of the fiscal year we're not negative on the um expenditure side. But you said we're not negative on that. We're getting more in than we pay out, right? But that's on the revenue. So, if we're looking at it from a budget standpoint and let's say

if we spend spend spend, then although you're getting the revenue in, um you don't want your expenditure to look like you over spent. So, we just have to do budget transfers to make sure our expenditures um are are good. So, it's just kind of how you you you look at. But, we do give it is a revenue generating line, but you could lower it if that is the consensus of the board. Well, so total budget, if you lower some of these items in the total budget, it'll be less. So, if you put $2,000 in there and you bring in more money, you're still going to you're still going to cover your 2,000. That is correct. But it'll it'll but by lowering that dollar line item, it will lower the budget, right? That is correct. Yeah. But if we've lowered it to 2,000 and we spend 3500, then on the expenditure side, it looks like we overspent by 1,500. What I'm saying is the money comes in as they as they pay it, right? It comes in as they pay it and it goes directly into our general fund fun. So if there was a problem, um, it wasn't coming in fast enough, then we could amend that line. Yes, sir. we could do a transfer from somewhere else to um cover that line if necessary. So my goal in this budget is is to get down to where there's no tax rate increase, which means we have to lower budget numbers and also um fund some things that wasn't put in there. So that's why I'm want to drop some of these numbers, especially when you're going to get money in. So you can see that you can see the holding place for the total amount. Mr. Chairman, if I may, so so the budget that you are

looking at right now is based off of no tax rate increase in personal property and real estate. So what you see before you is is not based on a real estate. Make up for that. And and I I want to let you know. So there the revenues for the past, you know, this year, last year, we we've really honed down on these numbers. If you go back four or five years, the revenues traditionally that King George County has put in a budget were over inflated. The numbers and I feel in in my my you know, my professional opinion that that the revenues that are that are you see before you are closer to the actual what we really collect. You can put in a budget that we're collecting $5 million in cigarette tax, but if you only collect $2 million, that's you know what good does that do? So, so the numbers presented here were more. This is actually what we've collected. So, the the big difference is to balance this budget, we had to transfer from the general fund. Last year, they transferred $2,551,913. In order to keep the tax rate zero, which you have before you, we had to transfer four million or 3,490,531. So an increase of $938,000. So So without a tax rate because we're borrowing from the rainy day fund and you know, so so this year's $3.5 million we're borrowing against that. Well, that's what the rainy day fund is for. But if you um keep borrowing from that fund, you won't have a fund. And if you lower some of these numbers, you'll be less borrowing and you can spend uh some of that money on other things. So that's that's my point of view. You're going Mr. Sins. Mr. Small, um I know we invested a lot of money this year and we were getting interest off that. Um how much interest

did the rainy day fund generate this year? [Music] I'll have Miss Cobb pull that up. Mr. Smalling, I'm correct that the rainy day fund could have even more investment income. Yes. And and and to that to that um point, Miss Bender, um I'd like to make a motion that we move $20,000 um to an investment fund. Um so if we make a motion and we agree on it, then the treasurer has to move the money. Can we answer my question first? I'm sorry. should do that alone. So, so the fund balance uh right now this is per the audit $50,437,660 and how much of that was was interest earned from last year from the invested money. Where I'm going with this is I realize we're asking to use more of the rainy day fund, but the rainy day fund should have increased because of the investments that were that were made last year. So, are we breaking even or are we still digging deeper into the fund? Right. So, so I I I think there's been a I've been here for 10 months. When I first got here, there there wasn't much invested at all. Most of it was sitting in a checking account. So, if you're asking me for we can pull up year to date. It's not going to show up in the audit to actuals because that money was in sitting in a checking account. It was not invested is being invested now. I mean, we I don't have a whole year's data on that. But the whole amount is not being invested now. That that is my understanding and I know talking to Mr. Rousavi the the county has lost out on

you know according to Mr. Rousavi you know $1.2 million a year in interest earned that we could have been earning all these years that we just weren't. Yes sir. That's why my motion was what it was. So if we is this not a correct statement? If we if we make a motion and agree to it as a board to transfer money to um interestbearing account or an investment account that the treasurer has to do it. He can't just say no I'm not going to do it like he like he did when he was here the other other that's a legal question. I know there's a provision I don't have it I don't have the code memorized but I know there is a provision in state code Mr. I want to say it it's the treasurer's purview as a constitutional officer. It is their discretion where and when to invest the money. I could be wrong. That is more of a legal question. But in my review of this when I looked at this a couple months ago, I believe that is what we discuss what what what I discovered whenever we look at state code section. So it's not the treasurer's money, it's the county's money. So the treasurer can't tell us what to where to spend our money. He can only send the money to where we want it to be spent. Mr. SM, he said that's a legal question though, right? So that we need legal here to speak on that. So maybe right. I don't know if we're not 100%. It's it's a waste of time. Can we get an answer on that before uh Tuesday because we need to move some of that money into make money instead of nothing? Well, there's several things we can do. Like what I talked about last night going forward, we can like money we're making off the battery storage. Now, in the fire department's eyes, that money is already spent, right? They already know what they want to spend it on. What I would like to see is money we make off those

things go into automatically be invested where it's just collecting money and it may be like the fire department accounts, right? But it's just automatically like where any money we make from those things is going into and automatically being invested. We can do stuff like that. You know, if we say yes to a solar farm, not saying we will or not, but that money instead of being going and being spent automatically is what we historically have done with that money, that money that we make from that is automatically going to an investment account. We can do stuff like that. So, he has some legal things. The um like the ambulance fee, it's it's pretty sizable amount every year that comes into the budget. I mean, comes into the as revenue. You want to put that right into an investment account. Is that what I'm So I do I do want us to keep in while we're sitting here today that we we've kind of I want us to be thorough but we have kind of time marked out every kind of where we want to start each department and we're going on 10 o'clock and I think we're still in the very beginning of this thing which is we should be way past some of the stuff that we're doing. So I don't want to nickel and dime us and maybe these are some discussions we can have at a later time. Our investment we all agree on the investment point piece of it Mr. Chairman. So, um, I thought we were here for the nickel and diamond because that's what we had this work session for and why I got cut off on the last meeting. So, um, the two questions that I had had in regards to the investment, can we can we get and Mr. Davis's question, can we get a qu that answered by by the meeting? And yes, sir. Two, the um it's on it's on the agenda for an action. So the decisions have to be made now. The board the it is it is set for an action to set the public hearing. The public hearing is not occurring on on Tuesday. It is an action to move forward to set a public hearing on the budget. You would move forward with the budget

that was agreed upon for the public hearing. So we what I'm saying is today is supposed to be the day that we agree upon the numbers. Yes. And it is a working document up until the very end also. So even before that public hearing as long you can advertise a budget so long as you approve a budget that is less than what is advertised you are fine. If you approve a budget that is more than what was advertised state law requires another uh duly noted advertisement. So that that the budget can be changed up until the final vote is tallied at the public hearing so long as the overall number is less than what was advertised but you can get the answers by Tuesday and then we can we can change it. And one other thing I wanted to note with the general fund which I would like or yeah the rainy day fund general fund is the service authority is sitting in there that doesn't make any investment and I've we need that needs to be split out so that those funds are are accounted for that those are the service authorities. That's correct. that $50 million that was referenced, that includes maybe 8 million of service authority funds. That has always been a problem with me. That needs to be allocated out because that's the service authority customers fund, not the county's fund. So, Mr. Mr. Davis, so can we um get through these pages and um make decisions as we go? Oh, we we can. Thought that's what we were here for. We are, but I at the at the same time if we're going to get we're talking about $250 per judge, right? I mean, Yes, sir. So, so to that argument, 250 uh times or a,000 and 4,000 and so forth add up to four judges. a large number from my calculations that we could use that money for some other

things that the county administrator wants to do like an EDA person. Right now there's no people in the budget board to add on. So um if we can get the number where you can get that other person, Mr. Chair. Yes. So I I understand what Mr. Collins is saying and I don't I don't disagree with the concept. However, the some of these things are actually protective measures so that once it's approved then if it goes down then you don't have to go back to a public hearing. So it can go down but if you run it down and then you have to go back up then we have an issue. Um, so there's a little bit of protective measures in that is that budget process and there are some safeguards in there. So I'm not against what Mr. Collins is saying. The other thing is is that holistically the process has been broken for years and that process which includes the investments um it's still broken and I believe and what I'd like to see is that the treasur's office and the finance work together so finance knows what their expenditures are historically and they can base that and the treasur can base how much money he moves and how much money he invest based off that. And that's that's that's what I don't believe is happening yet. And and I'm talking in in a large perspective here, but I can explain it in more detail. And and and I know Miss Cobb knows what I'm talking about. But that would be proper financial management. That's not what's happening. And if it was happening in the county, then we would be better off fiscally overall and there would be more money to the citizens be used. But anyway, we're not going to get there right now, but that's some that's what we need to work towards. The these small

things though, um, you know, I'm okay with that. Um, I don't it it's good that, you know, Mr. Collins is identifying some of these, but some of those are decisions that I'm comfortable with being at the uh, county administrator's level because he needs the ability also to be able to work things at that level throughout the county. There are some larger issues, some larger things that are of concern of mine, not that aren't aren't necessarily these very small things. And I think that there are other ways to fund the the bill that you're talking about without and I'm not saying without this, but um more holistically, this may be a part of it, but that's would be managed at his level. Um, and the the same with funding this billet or person job, if you will. But six months ago or so, we talked about um we even had the treasur come in and um um about the money um that we wanted more money invested. That didn't happen. And then we tasked Mr. small with understanding how much money needs to be in the account for daily expenses. So there's still a sum left over and that's you know why why have we not made a decision on that? That's a good point sir. But some of that money was for the last meeting we had with the treasur and he brought in the Atlantic Union Bank. it was uh invested in that they moved a large portion of it into essentially like a mutual fund account. So the the return on it did go up considerably. Yes, sir. It just wasn't put in in other other ways that may have been more financial advantage. The other thing that didn't

happen and should have and we're getting off track here a little bit. I'm just trying to respond to this, but what didn't happen is we didn't shop around. So with that, I'll I I I had only one question on this budget and and from what I heard earlier before we started, they have some court cases, so I don't want to keep them here. They're way past their time that they're supposed to be here. I don't want them to jeopardize anything they have to do in the afternoon. But uh I do have one question. This is just a general question. Is why do we rent PO boxes? Yeah, because that that's in here for the combined course. That's just a random I just caught my attention here. Why do we rent PO boxes? I don't want to speak for combined court, but I did she has talked to me about since we're over there. She's getting rid of those is what my understanding is, but Mrs. Con uh Rebecca Connor is the one that um she's over combined courts and they're the only ones I know of that have PO boxes. We just our mail is at the box at the courthouse and we don't we don't rent any extra. Mr. Small, could you check on that because I know we were talking about Nick and another, but that just seems silly to have a P.O. box. That's $300. It's just Come on now, Miss Bender. We're not supposed to be picking about $300, are we? That's what I just heard. What was that? We're not supposed to be picking about $300. But but that one is just an obvious if you want to pick something. A Why do we have a PO box? Don't we have a mailbox at our new courthouse? What's the next page, Mr. S? So, the next next uh we have the Commonwealth attorney. So, there is um there were no proposed changes from her budget. Um I I did not take any notes uh from from the

the board meeting on the 18th. So, the the budget stands as is presented on March 18th. Mr. Collins, what's the page, please? Page 18. So I did have some notes on the 18th. One was preventive maintenance for county vehicles. Why would that be in her budget? That is an agreement with the sheriff's office. They provide me with the vehicle. I keep up on the maintenance. This should come out of their budget if that's their car. Quite candidly, that was an agreement that was made between Sheriff Dobson and Matt Britain 15, 20 years ago now that we have kept up with that agreement through the years. So, I'd like to remove that and put it in the sheriff's budget. I think it makes most sense to leave it in mind. The reason why I say that is because I'm the one who's driving it on a regular basis. I know when the oil needs to be changed and I take it or the brakes are bad, what have you, instead of then I would have to ask the lieutenant to then schedule the maintenance and have the car taken over by a member of the sheriff's office. In the interest of efficiency, it makes more sense for me to be in control of that. But when you go over and get your brakes done over at wherever and and it's the sheriff's office vehicle, they put it on the sheriff's office account.

Yeah, they can. They could, right? I I think actually it might be more miz c because uh we have agreements with the different vendors who do that sort of thing. They charge it directly to the county and so then it comes out of my budget. Issue then would be when the sheriff's office it's coming out of their budget and they're like, "Well, we didn't take a car over. We didn't have this work done." But it's their car. That is correct. So they need to take care of their car. I don't drive your car around and then or my car around and you and I make you um pay for it. But anyhow, let's let's just get through this. And um that's that's my view. Y'all agree or disagree? I would disagree because in the end the money is coming out of the taxes that are raised from the citizens. So where it sits or not is it's still coming out of the same pot. So I feel just leave that one alone. It's allocation. It's allocated to the department that's that's using it and who is supporting. So So is that a yes or no? Do you agree or disagree? Well, I would leave it where it's at, but that's where I would look to finance because finance has to they have to figure out where's the money going and what was it used for. So, they allocate it accordingly and this probably helps them uh with that. But that would be their decision. So, you want to leave it there everybody else. All right. Yep. That's all for that one. Okay. Next uh is commissioner of the

revenue. This is page four revised. Four revised. So this was a reduction in travel conference fees they had requested and was presented March 18th was $7,420. This is a reduction of $2,920 down to 4,500 which is um less than what was allocated last year and is slightly over $900 over the FY23 actuals. FY24 actuals. I'm sorry, Mr. Collins. So, there's 46,000 for professional services other. Yes. What's what's professional services other? Mr. Collins, it says right there, this is for software for online business licenses. It's on our revive sheet. What it says that appraisals, new construction, Jire vehicle valuation, vessel valuation, shredding, diamond spring software and online business license. It's in our new sheet revised page four in the notes. Yellow notes. Yeah, I'm having a hard time going through. Okay, it's it's on four. It was in it was in the March 18th packet. Also, under the column, the yellow column that says notes, if you scroll down, you can see what the 46416, this is what it was spent on right here. He said a highlighted text appraisal new the highlighted text that is on the screen right now. Mr. Smolnick, I'm guessing with

everything else in the United States, software licensing has gone up. I'm I'm guessing that's what I'm seeing. Yes, ma'am. But that it it includes a bunch of other stuff in there. So it's not just that. So the JD Power uh vehicle um valuation, you can get the book um on that and tell you what the valuation is every year. I don't think you need to pay a a company. Why can't you just get Can you talk in the mic? You do need to pay for the books as well, but it's in the past we were having to send the bulk file out to JD Power to have it file have it valued and they send it back and we dump it into our system because we would never make the budget if we had to look them all up by hand from book the book and then now it's gone through Keystone and and they value. So they c they charge us an amount. How much? Um the amount that's listed there and it went up the $46,000. No, that's that's all of that combined in that category. But that's what I'm trying to break out. How much is that for the last um how much is Keystone charging? Mr. Cons, I just want to say one thing because it's bugging me a little bit is we're in the computer age and if this helps our employees be more efficient and not have to spend

time. I'm willing to pay for a little bit of software to help their time and help the citizens come up with the information. I don't see what the problem is. The problem is we're getting screwed over for all these business l I mean all these licenses that we're paying and same thing with the schools. they're getting screwed over for all their licenses that they're paying. You can you can um do a lot better on these licenses than we just accept whatever number somebody wants to give us. Unfortunately, and I don't the reason why I don't pay for Adobe editing software anymore. You have to pay it yearly. I wish we you could just buy it and that's it. But unfortunately, that's the way technology is going and that's how they make money is to make it you license everything every year. So, so I I have a question on this, ma'am. Now, you said you send this off to them and then they send it back to you. Yes. So, what are you sending off to them? The um individual VIN numbers for each account, for each vehicle, and it's been done this way ever since I work here. Okay. Just now we're not going directly to JD Power, going through Keystone. And it went from 45 maybe in 23 22 23 45 cent per vehicle to now it's increased to 52 cent everything has increased so 52 cents per vehicle and so the total cost that we spent before um so if it was 31,200 vehicles um because now we do proration so I overestimated so that I wouldn't have to come back before the board and ask for more money. And that averages to 16,224. You have a higher rate of vehicles that now come in also. Like you probably more vehicles you have to now look at.

Correct. Exactly. Right. But what I'm trying to get at is what I'm trying to figure out is about how many vehicles do you have? So probably 28,000 or something vehicles. We have 28,000 vehicles in the county. Yeah. Okay. So, you're referring to um our citizens vehicles. You're taking those VINs and sending them out to get evaluation. So, you're taxing them based off that information. Correct. Miss Puck, since we prorate now, we used to not, you know, whatever you owned on January 1st is what you were taxed on whether you sold it or not. Now, we we prorrate. So if somebody sells their vehicle, you have to probably go into the same account and pay to update or if somebody gets a vehicle like in September. Now, normally we would be waiting to next year, but now you have to look at it in September. Correct. That's correct. So that we should can issue the supplement. Well, how much was JD Power? They were about 45 and then when 45 cents each and then when Keystone took over it went to 50 now it's 52. Well that's that's my point exactly. So if we don't pay attention to these items why won't we just stay with JD Power? They are it's not an option anymore. You have to go with Keystone Aity or some other third party. JD Power doesn't offer that anymore. Can it go out the bid? See what you get the lowest price. Well, they are all right. I can get you the information, but they're all right around that price. This is We may be talking about a few cents, but this is probably one that we're not going to be able to get around because we're going to have

to we almost have to use a third party to do it. Um, Mr. Child, if you use third party, but why can't you get the best price for your third party? I'm not I'm not I'm not getting away from that. I don't know. That's what happens in this county is is um constantly is we just take whatever we get. We just go to one people and we get this. And I can assure you that what I did, Mr. Collins, well, I'm not I'm not talking about you specifically. We go to Mosley and we get this crazy price because we have to other people. So this is just a small example in the large picture and it is what what's the number you have to go out to bid for the min minimum amount. Huh? There is no amount. We could put anything out to bid or we can put anything out for um like request for information or things like that. so we can get more uh background on a particular product, service or anything like that. In the county policy, there's a number. I'm sorry, it's 50,000. 50,000. Okay. My other question is unfortunately in some of these things there's not a lot of vendors to to put it out for bid. There might be very few or the state might mandate you have to use one particular vendor. Is that for this? They do not mandate, but there's only like um I think I got three in um Brightite wasn't able to do what I need them to do and Aventity I I got a call from them and I got a call from Houston. And is JD Power bought out by somebody or they still JD Power? It's kind of confusing. They're still JD Power but they just don't offer the service. Is this the least expensive of the options you had? Yes, Mr. Solen.

Hey, good morning. So, I I do have a a question on clarification. So, we're on the line there talking about the 46,000 and change for JD Power. You come down the page about twothirds of the way. There's another one for 5,800 also for JD Power appraisal guides. Is that a different service or are we double paying? So, it's line 3160 versus line 612. That that is going to be for Oh, so that is partly for the books that we have to order, partly for um a program Lexus Nexus that we use and Virginia interactive which is for the boats and the price digest is the So it looks similar but it's two different things. Yes. Okay. Thank you. You want to lower that amount or not? Said leave it where it is. Yeah. I'm okay just leaving it. Oh, wait. Where it is?

Next page. So, moving on. The treasurer page six. I have a question. Are we going to come back to the to revenue today? Yes. I don't have page six of revised. There is no revision. It's just page six. There's there there were no changes since March 18th. So, it's just straight page six. This is what was presented on March 18th to the board. The next page. Are there any questions on the treasur? I'm I don't see any. Okay. Next page will be the register page 11. Again, it is page 11 because there are no changes from what was presented to the board on the 18th of March. But I see the register here to answer any questions that I cannot answer for the board. Okay. What's the next page? Questions on that? All right. All right. We're good. So, next page is administration page two revise. You're good. Yeah, there there's Yeah, no questions. Yeah, we're good. Thank you. H2 provides for administration. This was the change uh where I there was there's a comment made about overtime for the part-time or for

the full-time person. So, that was been reduced from 5,000 down to 2,000 and it subsequently changed the FICA for $230. So, a savings of $3,230 in finance or I'm sorry, in county administration. Any questions on county administration? some. Nope. All right. Next one. Okay. Next one will be the board of supervisors page one. No adjustments made from March 18th on the board of supervisors. Let me know if you have any questions. Think you need to up our pay. I know. I just That was a joke. Sorry. That's true. But it is a joke. We good with the board? It looks good. Okay. Moving on to Department of Finance and Procurement page seven, revised. So, the revision uh from March 18th deals with the travel and conference line item 5540. There was a reduction of $3,800 and that does not send two employees to the BG GFOA conference. So, so there was a reduction um in that particular line item. Let me know if you have any other questions.

1,596 for the pro camp manager cell phones. Is that one cell phone? Three cell phones, but it's only for one manager, right? How many co- managers do you have? There are three individuals tied to that um that that particular line item. Oh, it only has one in here in the note. I'll I'll I'll I'll show you how that budget was calculated. So that's three. So 1,600 divided by three. What? How much? 535 each for a cell phone per year. There you go. There's there's there's three. 1596. one for the director, accounting manager, procurement manager. This is how it was as was budgeted. It's on the screen. So, it's $500 a year. Yeah. Well, it was 612 for the director, 492 for the accounting manager, $492 for the procurement manager for a total of $1,596 for the entire year. Why aren't all of them the same amount? I have a hot spot connected to my phone because the internet is spotting out. So I had the hotspot in the event that I have to work from home. So that's where the additional 10 bucks for my phone comes. Thank you. You're welcome. Next. Okay. Information technology. This will be page eight revise. Page eight revise. I believe with it was just a deletion of a note. I believe the there was a carryover for the note. Yes, we removed a note for the

enterprise lease vehicle that was inadvertently left in the notes column. So that is the only change. No monetary changes from the March 18th presentation for it. Any questions on that one? Tell me again about the device lease vehicle. We are we are working with Enterprise to pay off those vehicles. The county has entered into leases over the years that do not make financial sense. So, we're looking to buy those out using the remaining funds here uh for FY25. It doesn't I mean, for instance, the vehicle that I had whenever I arrived was a a Ford Explorer with a price tag of $42,000. It was a um it was 800 $790 a month for for 60 months. So that's more than the price tag of the car. So we're trying to get out of leases and trying to purchase vehicles moving forward and we're just trying to buy out all the leases right now. So that's that's behind us. All right. Any other questions? Mr. Sins. Again, we've got a couple of entries that seem to be duplicates. On site support is needed for hardware software. That's uh 3130 and again down below on lost it right but there are two of them in there that look like we're paying twice. Okay. It it kind of runs together. So um so the 128,000 is for on-site support services as needed for hardware software and then down below um is 610,000 for hardware and software maintenance for various county systems

for those different things. So what are the two line items Mr. SS? I'll pull them up here for you. Uh the first one is 3160. Okay. The second is 3320. So you see you can see on the screen 3160. I may make this a little bit bigger. So one which one were you looking at Mr. Sins? The uh 3130 $128,273. So you're looking at the to what I have is how that's broken down. I want to see if there's a duplicate within here or if it's just a duplicate note and then one below that was a line item 3320 um hardware and software maintenance for various county systems 610,000. So this is a summary of the $610,000. Yeah. As long as they're different things and we're not double paying them. I don't really mind how they're how they're calculated. I will verify that with it prior to Tuesday night. They are I got they are different. Cool. That's that's all I wanted. We're good. Yes. Thank you. They were different. Any other questions on it? Mr. Well, I have some some detailed questions that would require it to to respond to regarding the professional services, the on-site support. And is that a contract that we have with a company um that provides that and they charge us? I'm I'm told that it is a contract. Yes,

sir. And do we know what do we know what that's for? Yeah, that'd be a question we can ask it. We can put that on the on the docket to get an answer to you by Tuesday. I just just curious there's the other there's some other things on there that you know I'm not trying to nitpick or anything and I can go see it on but on some of the cyber security training and and certifications or stuff like that. I'm just kind of curious about some of that stuff's free. So, um then we can attain it free and I just want to make sure they're using the free stuff and not the stuff we have to pay for. Um a lot of our stuff is mandated especially cyber security like I know for instance um with the registars's office um they just mandated us maybe beginning of the year or so with some other cyber security training and things that have to be done and they have certain vendors and everything that we have to use. So but yeah if we can get some more clarification from it I think that'll quite interesting. Thank you ma'am. Next is community engagement and tourism. So, so I want to make the point community engagement comes out of fund 100. Uh tourism is its own separate fund. So my understanding I see Miss Southall here. Um, Miss Alog, maybe would you be able to explain how, you know, I think community engagement was put under administration, but it wasn't funded. Can you just talk about that or maybe Miss Cop, one or the other? This was prior to my time. I want to make sure it is right. Um, yes. So, last fiscal year before the budget was approved, first of all, good morning. I didn't even say hi. How are you guys doing? Um last year before the budget was approved um it was asked of me if I would be interested in taking on

tourism and um in that process of us trying to make a balanced budget um my department got moved under tourism. However, the way that tourism funds work is there is a state mandate in the code of Virginia that says that tourism funds have to be used towards marketing additional tourism efforts. So my community engagement aspect of my job is mostly communicating to residents. So that's not bringing in tourism and bringing in people to stay at our hotels and increasing our occupancy time. So that is why we split it this year. So um $4,500 for intern position. Yes. Can we cut that? That would be for like special projects. Um, an example would be finally getting to those catchup videos we talked about, debriefing on things that are going on in the county, other things like that. Um, but again, discretion of the board. Like to cut that and we're looking to restructure just so the board so looking at you economic and development and tourism and community engagement are are all kind are all intertwined. right now um there is a part-time individual working part-time economic development part-time tourism you'll see in the tourism budget again a separate funded um position or separate a separate uh fund I have the conversion of that part-time into a full-time person that would work between economic development and tourism with a 7030 split 70% coming out of the general fund for economic development, 30% coming out of the tourism fund. So, that is one change I will make. Um, and that that that we the positions that right now are in the budget. Um, there's there's we've got a full-time we've got an event coordinator and two part-time positions in the budget. So, there's there's no new

positions that are there that are coming online. I want to make that. But, uh, you know, if it's the will of the board to to remove an intern, you know, that that's your your decision as requested by Mr. Cob. I just want to kind of get you what I think economic development, uh, community engagement and tourism look like moving forward. So, this this money here, this is for the same person that's working in both. Well, this the the budget that's in front of you right now, the $4,500 is working specifically as an intern for community engagement. That is the request. And right now there are you have two interns in your current your budget. So again, want to cut that 4500. Is it looking for some direction from the board? I say leave it. Don't bother me. I like to leave it. Let me just ask Miss South. The person we have there now in that position, she's been updating our website. Correct. Correct. Um she's the one fulfilling that role right now. Yes. So we have been using these interns for very positive things. She's updating our website. We've had interns in the past for um helping with communications. We had tourism interns helping with the Native American Heritage Trail. Usually I try to use interns for special projects so they have a deliverable that they can use when they use interview interviews in the future so they can say they've done a work product. Um so I just have projects that take a lot of time consuming that they can be the owners of. For example, I'd also like to get get a um resident welcome guide that gives information all about the different resources in the county that we could provide to people that move into the county and also existing residents. Um but that's something that would be very timeconuming on my plate, but would be a really great project for an intern. And then also those some of the interns we've had at least in your time here have been King George residents that have used their time to then go after they graduated college to further their endeavors, you know, and

there are our our residents. Correct. Correct. Well, is that a yes or no, Miss Bender? That's a yes. The request was to remove it in to keep it in. That's that's three to keep it in. So, okay. And so my next question for you, the South Hall, is all these choskies that um um are floating around out there, can't we lower that number, which I think is in the 45,000 group with um personal property bills and the 25,000 for two newsletters. Oh, yes. Correct. So, um, that was something that I proposed in the budget last year that did not get funded, but it was of the an idea that came about from the new board members orientation in November 2023. Um, where we're trying to figure out how we can reach residents who do not have internet access or reliable internet access and residents who might not be comfortable with using the internet. And that's the main resource that we communicate right now with residents. So, I um last year I did get a quote from our existing contractor who sends out our personal property bills. Um and so that is an estimate for sending out um a newsletter that would be um about probably four pages front and back, like a large booklet folded in half. Um and it would be obviously every six months, so it have a lot of information in it. Um, so that was just in there because that was something that was expressed to me was an interest. If that's something that it's a will of the board to remove, that's perfectly fine. How much are you spending on um these chopskies on, you know, keychains and pens and um pamphlets and um all this other stuff I see floating around? Um you spend a year on that. Some of that would be in this proposed of splitting. Some of that would be covered under tourism. Um, and some of that would be covered over um, yeah, community engagement. I'd say probably around like

5,000 or so. Most of that is doing print materials that would have information for people. So, we have like the map of all of the county um, facilities and also a flowchart of what every county department does as well as elected official and their contact information as an example. It would also be that resident welcome guide that I discussed if that ever comes to fruition as well. So, can we cut out $5,000 from that line item? Uh, the tourism fund is pretty is pretty um thick. We have plenty of money in the tourism fund. So, you can just um if you need money from that, these promotional chis and stuff, you can get it out of the tourism fund. I I support that. But I would also like to say that um this department has made a huge advancement. It is. Everything is so much better uh now than it was. The website and everything that's coming out of there is far better. So, you've got my support u in the budget. Uh but I do think that would be a better alignment of where the money the funding comes from for that. I would agree with that. And just for the board's knowledge, um the south hall, as of this day, how many responses have you gotten from the irrigation survey for the service authority? I looked yesterday. I think we're close to 60 or so. So, what she did and her staff, it's had an amazing response because we didn't even think we were going to get that many responses. And on the on the the mailouts, you know, that's a lot of money, but it it befuddles me. I've had two people I've spoke to in the last week that don't even have email and they're not they have a phone, but that's it. So, some of the people in the county really don't use technology. It's a lot of money to pay to meet those people. So, I don't know what the workaround is to find out who those people are. Just mail it in them. But you're right, Mr. um Straoud, but as you've seen when

you're on the board here, um you can lead the horse to water, but they don't they don't drink it. So, we send out information on the website and in these newsletters and and on and on and on and on and on and personal contacts with people every day and and people still don't know what's going on. So, we can't we can only do what we can do to do the best we can do. So, you know, but the $5,000 I think that was an agreement with three of us at least. Yes, sir. We have that noted moving $5,000 out of this line item into the tourism budget. We will make that change. Yes, sir. Chairman, next. That's right. All right. Next. Uh this is the tourism. So again, this is a its own separate um line item. Let me tourism will be found on page 53 revised. 53 revised. You're killing me. Oh, is it good? Thank you. 53 53. All right. So, 53 revised. This is tourism fund 140. Um, this is the I I talked about the full-time um employee here. So we're going to incre from the March 18th that this job was already in the March 18th presentation. However, we increased the salary, pulled some more from the general fund and put it in the tourism fund. Just like Mr. Collins just said, it seems to be a more robust fund based on occupancy of of our hotels. So I wanted to pull some money out of the general fund and switch it to um the tourism fund. So the notes that are made

uh here uh extra 10% of their salary the new the the full-time the conversion of the full-time salary will come out of the tourism fund that changes the salary the FICA the VRS and in the word document you you will see all these changes right down to uh line item 2700 uh an increase of $29. Again, the black font recom uh is is indicative of the uh the increases also. Um so it's so noted that the funding of the full-time positions currently in the budget. So again, this is not a new position. Um and then um this would be an increase taking it from part-time to full-time uh for for line item $1327,000 from the March 18th. There are tax grants. I know Miss Alol was in front of the board late maybe maybe fall of 24 talking about TA grants. So this is where you know what do we invest in? And as a county administrator I want to invest in our employees to to make sure that we have the best product the best service to get people here to spend the money. So will can that be done through tax grants or can that be done through uh employees? My vote goes to our employees. So the TAG grants there and and a reason we wanted to add this in also the the deadline for the FY26 T grants just came upon us on April 1. Initially there was there was um you know a thought of how much are we going to get I believe it was no more than $12,000 in T grants. So, if you can recall, the the board gave Miss South Hall in late 2024. Once the TAC grants are are paid out, whatever that amount is, it is her discretion how to utilize the the remainder of those funds. Having a conversation with Miss South Hall, you know, even if these these two grants get funded uh to their fullest, we still have a good amount of money and versus

having her use this discretion. it was our call that let's put this into an employee to work between economic development and tourism. So that's that's why we have $27,000 for the funding of this position and the remainder uh $38,000 will be for tech grants and scholarships uh used at the discretion of Miss South Hall. So that is an increase of $38,000 and there was a minimal reduce office supplies from $3500 to $2,000. So there's a lot of moving parts with this one. Again, we're we're trying to clean up and then make sure that the departments the the individuals um are are being funded out of the right department utilizing the tourism funds that come from the extra 3% uh transient occupancy tax and limiting the use of general funds. I know that's a lot, but that's that that's where we're at right now. And this is how I this is my vision for again economic development, community engagement, and tourism moving forward. So yes, we M this general so money we get from the tourism fund 3% should be funding the pretty much the whole tourism uh budget. Um but my question is the 17,000 for mowing. I know that's for the median strip for those trees. Um now if the board the water service board decides to go with Emboden then right now building and grounds does all the mowing for the um for the um water authority. So they won't be doing all that. So, I think that we should not be paying we should have general properties doing the mowing for that since they're not going to be mowing all the other stuff to take out the $17,000 contract. Mr. Collins, I I'm not exactly following what why you're bringing up the service

authority in this matter because the county building and grounds, correct? that's in the general fund budget mows all of the service authority places like a hundred and some places they mow them now so who would mow it afterwards that we haven't even thought about that in the emboding contract that because that's a maintenance from the county now Mr. Why wouldn't they be mowing it if they're already taking care of it as a part of maintenance? Well, that's something we haven't even considered that would have to be brought up. But I'm just throwing out a caveat because the service authority is not supposed to be included in here right now because we're not discussing that budget. But hold on before you finish because I'll let you finish is that then you know finance helps the service authority. Um the treasurer's office we don't charge for all those functions. So, that's a discussion that has to be done later. That $17,000 for mowing. I'm not talking about all the other things. I'm talking about we we should no longer be mowing come if that contract goes on Tuesday. So then our building and grounds will be available to mow other properties which we're paying on contract outside contract of $17,000 to mow that property. Why would we continue paying that if building and grounds is not going to be doing the mowing? Why would building and grounds be authority first? Because I I haven't seen that what we've negotiated with Boden. So can we find out if that's part of it or not? I I can look at that to the you know looking at the contract. I I think it's maintenance of the facilities and stuff. That's where I was bringing it up. I did not see anything in the contract about mowing and tending to the yards. The the the the proposed

contract that I have reviewed it talks about the facilities themselves, not the grounds. So I believe that would be an add-on based on my read of the of the the draft contract right now. I believe that would be an add-on. And I believe if you mow in VOTE, there's there's there's VOTE certification that you would have to get. Um, you know, and and I don't know since we've been contracting this out. I don't know if there's any other things that would be a charge um to to general property should they want to take this. Is there an annual fee for, you know, for working in the rightway? I don't know that answer. Um I I know anytime work is done in the ZOT rightway, you need a C7, a land use permit. But I know as far as specific mowing, I can't speak to that. The grounds that those facilities lie on, is that considered county property or service authority property? Service authority property. This just traditionally been done like that shared services like using finance. We don't have a procurement. That's something I would have to check with the embod contract. That's why I was it hasn't been brought up and that wasn't part of the negotiations. Mr. Smolnik, Mr. Rasabi, and Mr. Stewart have been That's fine. I I was just looking for an easy discriminator. If it's considered a county property, then the county ought to be taking care of it, not the service authority. But, uh, it it sounds like it's service authority property. So, I get where you're coming from, but I also uh think that the contract we're referring to in terms of emboden it's for technical maintenance of of the water and service equipment, not the grounds. So, it's I think if we start trying to roll that in there, we're going to end up paying a lot more to Boden than we would for these guys. So, we're still going to you're still going to have building and grounds mowing all the service authority properties? That's pretty ridiculous. Do you want to come out of the service authority budget funds? Is that what you're saying? Or Well, the 17,000 is for the out there in the VOTE. All those trees

from uh Stanley Road to 301, all those all that median strip is mowed by um this contractor once or twice a year. And if they're certified by VOTE, they they blow rocks and people's cars and all that stuff. I don't I don't I don't I I I don't know why we wouldn't have our people do that and get rid of this $17,000 contract especially when they're going should be doing less less work on these uh service authority things. How do you transfer 17,000 for the lunchtime already? Mr. Smold, I have a question on that because this was back long ago when we be previous boards beautified those areas and put trees. Do we even have to mow it anymore or because we planted those trees, we have some agreement. Is there an agreement that forces us to have to mow that? Does that make sense? It's it's my understanding that VOTE will not mow that that those areas where the trees were planted, that was part of agreement whenever they were planted, we will be responsible for that area. Well, not not to make the argument, but if you turn it over to VOTE, they'd mow it twice a year whether their trees are not in there. They're they're required not to have the grass over a certain height for for um safety. So, um and they and the people that mow it now mow it about twice twice or three times um um thing. And because a previous board wanted that area to be tight, tightly mowed so it would have a better presentation. But my point of the matter is is the service authority uh grounds should be taken care of by if you're going to have a maintenance

contract. That means maintenance contract. I'd like to remove the $17,000 um out of there. either put it over in the service authority, but it doesn't make sense because it's a mowing contract. But to get rid of it, is there anybody else interested in that? No, because if we roll that in there, we're going to end up paying somebody to do it anyway. It's just going to get passed through through Bowden and we're still going to pay even more for it. I'm a no. I'm a no. I I agree with All right. So, we're going to keep paying $17,000 to mow the median. Mr. Chairman, I don't think there's any more questions on that. What's What's next, sir? So, so if we're done with community engagement and tourism, next is schools. I see Dr. Dr. Boyd here. What page? Well, the schools is it's a it's a separate it's not a specific uh this we need to take a quick break before we get into schools. I don't know. Is it okay with you? Well, it's it's not it's not lunch. It's breakfast by the way. Oh, we're going to have breakfast after him or breakfast right now if you want it. Just take a quick break. Is that cool? Yeah, no problem at all. I'm just going to give Good morning.

part of it. That was pretty great. How you doing, Mr.

where we've come from and where we are currently. I think when we started this process, thank you for pulling that up. When we started this process initially, we delivered the needsbased budget and we were going off the governor's c tool. At that point, I think the total amount of local funds needed was 4.1 million. If you remember on the very front end of this it was 4.1 million. We then received a cow tool from the general assembly. That cow tool dropped us down to 3.1 million. Uh that included everything again in the needsbased budget positions every everything that we had discussed in previous meetings and in our work session. We then got better news back for our healthcare. Our healthcare was predicted to be at 20%. It dropped to 12%. That put us down at uh 2.8 million. And then I think when we all last met, we uh you had a clear directive for me to go back to my board and I think we were on the same page with um and we've done a lot of good work with Mr. Smallic and working through this. But uh as of right now uh we've reduced our request or our expenditures to just the 3% salary increase, the compression step which we've discussed at step 10, the 12% healthcare increase and the bare minimum of the budget builder, we've cut that nearly in half. So right now I would say based on the general assembly cow tool and the reason I say based on the general assembly cow tool because we all know that we don't have a real accurate cow tool right now. It's difficult to see. It's down there in the bottom yellow. But the the request locally at this point, uh, like I said, we started with 4.1 million. Based on the general assembly council, we're down to uh 1,233,423. Thanks for trying to change the font on

that. Yeah. So I think it's it's easier to see there on the right hand side you've got the general assembly cow tool currently based on those things I mentioned again it's the salary increase of 3% healthcare increase of 12% compression at step 10 and bare minimum budget builder that's $1.2 million if you're still using the governor's calc tool that's over on the lefth hand side that's $2.2 $2 million. As of right now, what I understand is the governor comes back to the general assembly with a budget on uh May 2nd. And that's going to really give us a clear idea of what CAP tool we're actually operating off of. As you all know, the school division relies heavily on that state budget, probably more so than any department in the county. And so, right now, if we're if we're going off general assembly, it's 1.2. If we're going off governor, it's 2.2. And I think what Mr. Smallik has worked into the budget right now is is um the general assembly's couch 2 and I can pause there for any questions. Any questions from the board? I do have a question because I want to make sure of this. So this includes the step in step increase for that vital area. Is it year five to 10? Correct. That that was uh step 10 is what we've discussed and it does include that. Yes ma'am. And I just want to make sure no matter what we do that the employees get their the the 100% health insurance and to get the increases they are and that that later on that money is not sent somewhere else. No, absolutely. I I think right now and and the only reason I hesitate is the $1.2 million of local funding will get the 3% salary increase across the board. The compression step at 10 is what you're referring to. healthcare at 12% increase and then the bare minimum stuff that we have in the budget builder and that's at 1.2. If the if the general assembly count tool comes back through. I'm sure there'll be some variation in it. If it's if we're

working off the governor's cow tool, it's it's 2.2. Then my second follow-up question on that is so what kind of increase for all the employees would that be? three. It's 3% for all employees and if you're at step 10 or above, it's it's just around 4% 4% and some change. Then my second question and and I'm not sure if you were prepared to have these numbers, but as you know, what the state gives us with the 3% is not for every position. So what is the cost to the locality for those unfunded positions that the state really should pay for, but they don't? Yeah, I don't have that number broken out. You're right. That that's a that's a very valid point and and it's the point that that it puts you guys in a very difficult position because the state comes out and says we're going to give 3% salary increase 3% salary increases for SOQ positions. Every school division in the state of Virginia hires above SOQ positions. So it really puts local governing bodies in a bind of covering the difference between SOQ positions and the other funded employees, you know, in the school division. All of that is included in that 1.2. So the difference that that you would have to pay to include the 12% healthcare increase compression step, all of that's included in the 1.2. Okay. I just wanted that on record. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. And I just want to point out too, since this is a salary increase, this is going to be an ongoing thing every year from now on. Uh so yes, correct. It's it's a continuing cost. Yeah. It's not a sunk cost that goes away. It's going Yeah, that's correct. Yes. Thank you. have a question. No, but I guess we need to decide on which column we're going for. Would that be a valid? I I would say right now, Mr. Smallnick and I have worked on column on the right hand

column. That's the the 1.2. We will get a further update from the state I think around May 2nd. And I I think it following May 2nd, it might be beneficial to see what we can do in terms of having a conversation maybe between boards or between Mr. Smallnick and I because if if it does come in somewhere in between those two, then we're going to have to offset costs in other ways. So maybe compression doesn't get addressed or something like that. But we can talk about that after May 2nd if if that's agreeable to the board and the county administrator. But that's not going to that's not going to go over very well with our teachers if that compression is taken over. So I guess my question is because it always we always look and I've said this before looking at the admin side return on investment that that could be a where we find the cost because the teachers need to be taken care of because I've already heard about how many we could lose based on rumors. So I want to make sure that no matter what we find other places to take it and not from the teachers salaries or the compression. I hear you loud and clear. This is similar to what we did last year when we came back. Uh like I said our our the schools are more dependent upon the state budget than probably every other department. So until we really have a state passed budget, th those numbers are a little loose and and once we do have that, we can come back and probably have a further discussion and and you know work collaborative collaboratively together to figure out what to do. So I'm kind of tired of people trying to hold the government hostage. If you don't do this, then I'm going to do that. Well, if you don't want to work here, go somewhere else. We'll find somebody else. So I'm tired of hearing that. If you don't do this, we're going to do that. These numbers also include the cost for Virtual Virginia and that new math curriculum you were talking about earlier. Uh the math curriculum we covered through the fund balance. So

that is not in this at all. Uh and then the that we took out the position for Virtual Virginia that's no longer in there. How much money do you guys like have in your just your accounts? It's like rotating. Uh you mean like a carryover fund? Yeah, just you I'm assuming you guys have separate bank accounts. What kind of money is in those accounts? So, what we So, this is the first year that we were allowed to have a that we discussed the fund carryover, you know, the the fund balance. Prior to that, at the end of every fiscal year, we're turning all that money back over to you guys. But something we talked about a little bit is ways to invest money to make money, right? So even instead of like giving you guys a big check and you just throw it into a checking account, right, is what you do. Investing that money along the way to have that money. Even say in a checking account, it's making a little bit of money, right? I mean, that's something that we should be looking at. And even at the end like money that that it would be returned to us, money that you guys save, letting that money stay invested into like the school or whatever you the name's going to be so that we have this money that's just that that's building up, you know, that we're not just looking to spend it, but we're looking to have that money start making money for us. Does that make sense? It absolutely makes sense. I've talked in depth with Mr. shroud about it and I think as long as we have this agreement and this arrangement where we're continuing the fund balance forward the end of the year fund balance request then that helps our piggy bank build up and we can start doing things you know outside of our operating budget which is I think and it does things in years like turf fields and whatever else you know exactly salaries whatever s Mr. Davis, other localities have taken some of their revenue from data centers and other things and now create accounts for like school construction or the school budget. That's something that if we approve projects might be something to look at because some of the Northern

Virginia localities have started to do that. So go ahead. So, um, what's not included in your in the budget are your slush funds for athletics and so forth and, um, where they receive fees or they receive, um, um, ticket sales, all that type of stuff. And I know that the high school brings in a lot of money, but we don't ever get to see where that those slush funds are spent. I know that last year you all spent like 10,000 on graduation out of that slush fund, but um it seems to be high balance. Same thing with the parks and wreck. They have that fund that they don't report to us. Mr. Small, you listening? I'm sorry. I was looking at reading something else. Correct. Tons of money sitting in a fund. It comes from tickets and all kinds of other stuff. It's not included in the budget. And um that's how Parks and Rec buys all these things that we we don't approve. So they go around the block to um buy things. It's for all their um there's a what's the name of that? The park activity fund. Recre activity fund is school activity funds. What's what what's 204 fund 204. Yeah, but it's not it's not including in revenues in the budget. But yes, it is. Well, he is part of the re the overall revenues and expenditures. Yes, sir. But the parks continually use that money without authorization from the board. They buy trailers and all this stuff that we said no to. Check it out. Anyhow, Dr. Boyd. Yeah, no problem. If you want a more

detailed report of our school activity funds moving forward, I can tell you that when we were exploring the um the the bleacher question, I did get information about rental fees on the stadium. I I think where we are right now is we just rent to one entity. It's uh KGYA and that's about $13,000 a year is is the rental uh uptake for that. Now, I can tell you, you know, I think you know this too, school activity funds, I mean, when you're talking about ticket sales and things like that, that's that's typically what pays officials with, you know, money in, money out kind of thing. But if you want a more detailed report of what that looks like, high school has much more activity than the elementary schools and middle school, but that's something we could provide moving forward if that helps you. Yeah, I think the reason why is because why have that money just sitting there if we can help make you more money with it? That's that's the kind of what we're looking at is what money is being left available that we could invest, right? So, Mr. Davis, so we give the school um five categories. Is that what it is? Yes. So, five categories of funding and so they decide how they're going to spend it. So they they have to decide to put their the money in an investment. You know what I mean? Yeah. We can't we can't decide for them. We can't. What we could do is we can work with them is what I think I it's this stuff has never been done here before. Right. Well, no, it hasn't. And I and I think it pairs well with that fund balance conversation because it that fund balance is not in one of those five categories. Those five categories break down into our that's our annual operating budget. uh the fund balance is is outside of that and as that continues to grow and we continue to change the culture of not spending down in June. Yeah. Then we you know we have that arrangement to keep that money

in a in in an account where we can invest. So you know what's your budget now? Uh according to this if if this goes through 68 million. 68 million. Wow. That's state and federal. So $68 million. Um, you don't spend $68 million off the bat. If you put $32 million in a CD for 6 months, you know, you get 3% or that's probably lower than that today, but um, on that money, I mean, you know, and then you call in that CD and then you spend the rest of the money. You know what I'm saying? So, I I know what you're saying. I'm I'm I'd have to look into whether or not we're able to do that on with an annual school bond as a school fund. That is beyond anything I've worked with before, but I certainly don't mind looking into You can do anything. Um all you got to do is ask the county attorney. He'll he'll make sure you can do it legally. Okay. Appreciate it. And Dr. Boy, from my understanding too, the money that these um fees we charge too also helps support the programs including like buying uniforms and and that especially for those sports that are not a lot of revenue generating. Correct. But still provide opportunities. Correct. Yes, ma'am. Seems there's a lot of discretion there with that money as opposed to budgetary money. So the the athletic director usually decides what they're going to spend the money on. It should I agree, Mr. But the one thing I from being a coach for a very long time is I was in some of those non-revenue sports and having kids have uniforms that are 20 years old is kind of a problem and want to make sure that we continue providing safe environments and sanitary

environments for for some of our athletes especially not like the football team those high revenue sports. Mr. D. Sure. Thank you. So um definitely interested in meeting talking about the investment portion. There are some limitations on us being able to invest other people's money the federal state because then we have to that there's limitations on that. But my concern goes back to one of your earlier statements where um that all the employees get a 3% pay increase. Um I'm I'm not a big fan of everybody getting a pay raise because I still believe that somewhere there's a 10% of the employees that aren't performing that um you know I believe in performance based the higher performing guys get more percentage the lower performing get zero to lower percentage so that's my concern and I know at our level we're probably limited in in our visibility of that and and you how that is executed. But that's what interests me. Um, and if there's anything I can do to reinforce or help you in your job in ensuring that people who aren't performing, those teachers that that are doing things against the county, those things that are the ones that they're causing a problem for the school system, um, some of the things that have happened in our past that those employees are no longer employed and they definitely aren't getting a blooming pay raise. Okay, those are, you know, that that's what's got my interest. Thank you, Mr. Strad. The only only problem I have with performance-based pay is that you'll find that let's say a supervisor doesn't like this particular person, so they don't give them anything. It has nothing to do with their performance because you can you can

um every employee can have do better no matter what their greater status but I found that um that that is not always a fair tool. Um, not that I don't disagree with it because I'm you was usually always a high performing employee, you know, and my supervisors like me, but I know that there was performing employees that didn't get the same raise I got and they deserved it. You know what I'm saying? No, I do, sir. And that comes with Dr. board's training of the supervisors uh instructing them and evaluating them and ensuring that they're doing that they're doing that fairly and that the counseling that whenever whenever they're doing these counseling that he's evaluating that and then also he himself is talking to the the teachers. So it makes it more difficult for somebody to be unjust or unfair about that. There's also measurables in some of this like just whether or not they're following policy. You know there's there's policy we talked about it last time when you were sitting over here there's certain policies there's certain clicks and and there say like cancers cancerous individuals in a sense who are just always causing issues and causing culture problems you know so you have to I'm I'm always been about sometimes you know you have to let people go right and the reason why is because when you do that the people who are doing the job right now feel safe they feel protected in a culture to speak their mind. Like there's good teachers who are scared to talk scared do because they're gonna, you know, they're going to be outcast by the clicks and whatnot. And then as those people will feel safe and the only people that are scared are the people who aren't doing the right thing because just like children, everyone needs guidelines and barriers. That's what makes people feel safe in their environment to be themselves, do the things. So those are measurables that we have, right? I I I agree with all of that and and and don't have any issue with the merit based pay in in most

industries. I think your point about measurables and and policy that's that's black and white and and that's I don't know if merit based play and that fits together. That's more of a that's a different approach sometimes. What becomes difficult with teaching in meritbased pay is the number of confounding variables. You know in some industries you know you this effort goes in and you expect this outcome to come out. It's very difficult to do that in teaching sometimes given the variables that are at play. You don't they can't always be constants for for example the uh the population of students that you teach. So we've had these discussions I have with uh m Mr. Bush and so I understand there's a lot of challenges. You know, I'm willing to work with you and have discussions on ways that you can because other industries use things like surveys. They use customer surveys. So, you could use parent surveys, student surveys, and and other ways to to get metrics on the performance of the teachers so you're not just using the grades alone. I can't wait to see Facebook on this discussion. Well, Dr. Dr. Boyd needs a way to ensure that teachers that are performing better, he can he can take care of those because one of the problems I think we've all seen before is whenever you're working along people who are not performing to your level and they get the same reward that you get and you're not and there's not a difference there, then you're looking for another job and you're looking to go somewhere else where they do do thank you for that. And that's what we need to take care of the teachers that are performing and you know they they get recognized. I've seen in my time on the school board um the administrator, the superintendent spend a ungodly amount of time on troubled employees. And um they, you know, they got

650 employees and you have 650 employees, you're going to have a certain percentage of them that you deal with all the time that are are trouble. And so, you know, um you know, they have policies uh for teachers and for students and um that's where the rubber meets the road. The policies need to be enforced. Um those are metrics. Those are things that make it easy for Dr. Boyd to to not give them. But like when a superintendent tries to enforce a policy, they try to, you know, these uh unions or whatever you want to call them. They just try to, you know, do everything they can disable the superintendent or the school board for following the rules. We need to find a way to empower him. Yeah, it's school board's job to empower him. Mr. Sullins, sorry we got out on that one. No, that's okay. I appreciate hearing it from you. I'm going to deviate from the budget a little bit, but I'll bring it back around. I promise. Um, is is the high school principal taking his kids to a different school? Not that I know of. Okay. Yeah. All right. So, that was a rumor that's going around that he's going to move his kids to another school. And my question there, following question will be, would it be to a school where his wife works? And if not, is he getting a raise? Uh, I don't know that I can speak specifically to, you know, personnel matters right now. That that's, uh, not a conversation I've had with the high school. Okay. Yeah, that's been kind of widely circulating. Yeah, there's there's I know there's a lot of different things happening. Yeah, I'm going to throw it out here because I'm passionate about this is we could acknowledge there is a culture problem right now in some of the schools. Correct, Dr. Boyd?

And it comes it comes from answer let me answer it this way if you wouldn't mind. We have had a history of some very very good schools in King George County. That is absolutely correct. I've been in Fairfax born and raised. I've been in Richmond County born and raised. I spent a lot of time with other superintendents and I spent a lot of time in other school divisions. If you compare us to my historical experience and if you compare us to geographically King George County schools, we have a very very good school division. Uh we have fully accredited schools in King George County which no one around us can say that. Uh do we have our challenges? Yes. Will we continue to have our challenges? Yes. Will public education continue to have challenges? Most certainly. And we'll continue hopefully together to work through all of those. So that that good way to dance around that one. But this is a conversation for the whole country per se, but I'm just talking about King George because I've been around in the school system when we had the really good cultures. But we can go back to parents, we can go back to kids, we can go back to admin, we can go back to teachers is where a culture comes from. But I know for a fact that what Mr. Strad was saying about that there are really good employees that feel they have no voice. There's a lot of kids that feel they don't have a voice. There are parents that feel they don't have a voice and there are clicks in some of these schools and we got to make sure that because when the citizens talk to us, they say to us, we're the board of supervisors and we control the money and if the school board doesn't do anything and the admin doesn't do anything, somebody's got to speak for the residents and they elect us as schoolboard members and board of supervisors to try to speak for those that are either afraid to speak or don't know how to speak in this manner. But we do need to holistically look at it because Facebook is, as Mr. Collins said, very popular with throwing all the bad out. Sometimes a lot of good gets

lost. But there is some issues that we really need to have a hard conversation about because there are some classrooms projected for next year that might have 45 kids in it or 30 some kids in it. And that that's not a way teachers shouldn't be teaching just to the disruptive behavior. They need and small classrooms are more effective of teaching kids and getting to them to understand the information they're providing. I mean, we're trying to set these kids up for success. So, we need to have this hard conversation because they're, you know, sometimes we get teachers not always the best teachers sometimes unfortunately because that's just the way of the industry. Not a lot of people are going into teaching. So, we got to make sure we reward the teachers that are the best teachers and that do provide a lot for the students of our population because we have quite a few of them. I know a lot of them and we need to take care of them and make sure that they don't feel in an unsafe environment. So, I just wanted to bring that out there because somebody needs to speak for them and some of us up here have already spoke for them. So I just want to reiterate that that we do need to holistically look at this because there is unfortunately a little bit of some issues and it is in other school divisions. But one suggestion somebody from the public made in other localities they move around administrators to different schools so that there's sort of that silo effect doesn't happen. it gets moved around to the, you know, not moved around the silo, but makes them experiences other school like you move from a high school principal to middle school principal or a middle school principal down to one of the elementary schools and it kind of cuts down on some of that clickish power structure. So, I just wondered if you thought about that. Well, Miss Bender, um, so you the schools have been tasked with solving all the social problems of today. So they're a mirror of the society that sucks that we live in. So you

know if we start holding parents accountable or their children then you would probably have less issues. But everybody seems to want to blame somebody else or something else in their life. And it it schools are there supposed to be to teach. They're not supposed there to, you know, be mental health counselors and and be whatever they everything they that society has made them to be. So until we pull away and get back to what they're supposed to be doing, which is teaching children instead of um you know trying to solve their their family issues. I know that you got to bring all kids up to um to a level so they can all compete, but some of the things you see in the news these days in the region um these parents need to be called accountable and nobody seems to want to hold them accountable. I included here. So, I want to hit on a couple things that are said, and we're straying from the budget, so I'll I'll re I'll reel it back into the the budget. You made a Mrs. Bender, you made a a point about some classes having 45 students. You know, I I think as a school board and and as a superintendent, we have diligently tried to work collaboratively with board of supervisors and the county administrator and try to understand where we fit in the overall budget given the constraints we have as a county. With that said, we're going into at least year two of pulling additional teaching positions out of the budget request because we understand where that fits right now in our county. Uh but as

we continue to add 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 new kids a year, uh we're doing that without the addition of new kids. Mr. Collins, you brought up societal problems. Uh just this past week when you're looking around, we had three elementary schools around us that had elementary school kids that brought handguns to school in backpacks. We had a situation in Spennsylvania County where some adolescents were, you know, having a gun deal or something like that and individuals ended up dying. I can tell you my board and my I I think the community I speak with is very interested in school safety. And I think if you look at that uh these these weapon detection systems are probably the newest and most advanced technology needed to ensure safety in our school buildings. It comes at quite a cost. Um we right now I believe maybe with the exception of West Men I'd have to check are surrounded by school divisions that have weapon detection systems. Stafford, Spoty, Fredericksburg, Caroline, Colonial Beach, all have weapon detection systems. So, when you're talking about these society issues and you're talking about budget issues and and we're trying to, you know, we're trying to do all of these things in consideration of where we are as a collective county, too. Those weapon detection systems cost about $250,000 per doorway. At very minimum, we would need probably eight to cover our five schools. So, that's about $2 million, and that that's a um four-year lease on those on on those pieces of equipment. So, so it's expensive, but you know, many many folks believe it's something

that that's needed. Dr. When what's next in the CIP for the schools? Is it going to be u 16 foot high fences with razor wire and um you know, armed guards at the entrance? Because that's where we're heading. We can't regulate We can't regulate safety. It has to be it has to come from the from the family and the community. And until we start getting these parents to um take care of their own children, you're not going to be able to regulate. I mean, you're literally going to 10 years you will have fences around schools. Yeah. And if you go down to um the city of Richmond or actually Henriiko County, they do have fences around the schools. Yeah, you're right. I don't dis I don't disagree with you. I'm just trying to think of what we have control over and and how we can mitigate the issue, but I don't disagree with you at all. So, you and I talked before about the the weapons detection stuff, and I know that the very expensive one, that's a very exquisite, very capable system. Do we have to have that system? Is there are there other options that will be less expensive? I actually received something today where there's a competitor. We're gonna we're gonna reach out to them and get a demo and see what type of technology they have. There was another uh software that was out that I considered. Um turns out it's really not going to do what I think I need it to do. What that software does is connect to our existing camera system and it's about $400 per camera. And what it is, it's still they they categorize it as a weapon detection system, but it's it's not a concealed weapon detection system, meaning that the cameras can pick up a gun in plain sight and as a result immediately dials the sheriff's department, so there's no delay in response. uh which can be appropriate and useful in certain situations, but the situations we I just

described with elementary kids bringing stuff to school in backpacks, the only the only system I know for that is is the evolve system right now or possibly this competitor that we're going to set up a meeting with and talk to. But why don't you all um you know get weapon protection dogs and um instead of a security guard to walk around the school. Yeah, I'm I'm not sure about that. But you also could use um uh the police departments for weapon detection dogs. They all have them and they're not aggressive. What they do is they sit down when they see it find a a weapon or any of those other traces of um bomb making materials. Bomb making material. Drug dog is different. So I I haven't heard in a long long long time. And when I was on the school board, it was, you know, it was really hard to get the dogs in. Not because they didn't want to come. It's because the school system didn't want make it look bad. We have an open invitation right now. We're we're and we have to call with uh you have to call them for them to come with Captain Weston. We Yeah. And and and really I think it's more now of a regional effort, I think, is what you're referring to. Making sure that everybody gets together. The the drug sniffing dogs from what I and I this is not my area of expertise, but what I understand is they've they've changed in the sense that they're no longer picking up on certain drugs. Um, they do have, as you pointed out, I think bomb sniffing dogs and I assume that's ammo and everything else. But, uh, we're certainly o and publicly I'll say we're open to to working continually with our sheriff's department to address any type of school safety issues we can we can address. Well, there's more than just the sheriff's office. There's state police, there's um department of corrections have tons of passive dogs. Um, and I I've talked to all these guys

and girls and they say, "Well, they they never call us, you know." So, I I think what I think what we've done in the past is we'll work through our sheriff's department and our sheriff's department does, I believe, call those other entities to to get a task force together before we do a a search at a school. That that was my understanding. So, um, let's a couple more. Let's bring it back into the budget. Oh, we were doing so well. No, I want Ken to go ahead and go. Society's problems. And I want Ken, I want you to go ahead and go. Don't look so distraught. Um, well, I think this deals with the budget because you're talking about the metal detectors. Yes, sir. Um, I think that deterrence is huge. And so, whenever you're looking at those detectors, some of them have to be calibrated every time they're moved. But the thing is is there may be the option of don't put the schedule out purely, but move them around because the kids don't know when they're going to be there. That's a deterrent and you know that that alone you may not pay the full price but you get a kind of a mobile capability. Yeah. And you know have them come through it from the outside before they enter into the school. Yes, somebody's there and hey, you got to walk through here. Somebody tries to get around, funnel them through that and move that around so you can reduce the cost and still achieve it. Now, if you start getting hits on this thing, this becomes a problem. Now, we say, "Okay, there's enough here to warrant. We need to get them everywhere." That's a very good idea. So, I just kind of put that out there. I appreciate that. So, I'm I'm all about the dogs. That's a deterrent, too. Um, you know, you know, I've got some other thoughts I want to share here. Um but so the only thing the only real

con thing that we have as pointed out by Mr. Bender is the the power of the purse and figuring out you know how how we um execute that to achieve our constituents uh objectives as well. So, do you have and I I don't know this, but do you have a uh like do you Dr. Boyd have uh town halls with with residents? Uh we have in the past. Yes. Mhm. Okay. But I mean without I mean external don't you know where you don't have it's just like you and them. So they can come in they can tell you things you know without you know maybe other people there. I I'm just you know asking. Yes. by myself. So, so we will have um leading up to the in the budget process, we've done town hall meetings. The other thing that I have set up right now on an annual basis, usually I think it's about quarterly right now. I've got a standing invitation with our uh PTSA. It's our county council of PTA. So, I've got a parent advisory group that I that I hear with that I speak with. Uh I've got a student advisory group that I also get information from. Uh, and then I've got a staff one as well. But, and to answer your question, those are usually the avenues that I ask for to get some outside feedback because sometimes you're going to get stuff that sometimes it's warranted, sometimes it's not. I know you got to filter it through all that. Um, so my last question is do do the kids say the pledge of allegiance? Yes. In our schools? Yes, they do. We say the pledge of allegiance every morning followed by a moment of silence. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. All right. Okay. Anything else? I guess I just need to clarify, but we're going with the column on the right. Correct. Just ending ending. Yes. I believe that's what's plugged in

right now. We never really officially I just wanted to make sure we had that on record. I think in your budget document right now, that's the number that's plugged in. And then if it's okay with you guys, I'll you know if that count tool changes at all, I wouldn't mind just continuing that conversation and talking about how to move forward. So one one million one two three four correct. Okay. Just for the public record. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Boyd. So are you all in compliance with the um the Yes, sir. Yes, sir. All right. Thank you. All right. Do we have an option? Because I just took a break. We can break. I Mr. Chairman, if I may, I was thinking about this. I know Supervisor Straoud had some IT questions. I see Mr. Dyn is now in the audience. This may be a good opportunity to ask those questions, get some answers instead of waiting till Tuesday. If that if that's Yes, sir. uh on the cyber security training there's some of it there there's some paid in there there's some uh funding allocated to the cyber security my question is there's some free cyber security training that's provided by the federal government um that that can be used um like DoD and agencies and such is it possible for us to use that um without paying for it or is this some other is is the cyber security training that we're getting we're paying for are different than that. Well, I think Mr. Stra the directed training was originally because of the elections and so from the electoral boards of the state of Virginia, we had to be compliant and they had specific classes that certain

training centers had. Now, this year they did come out with some places sponsored by the federal government that we can look at and see if we can start getting that directed training. I don't know if it'll ever be a permanent thing, but we'll never have to worry about paying for that, but I could look into that. But before it was it was what we use is no before and most of the counties and jurisdictions in the state use the same. And so they had specific classes that the board of elections wanted to have each individual have access to so that they would be up to date with um the physical security security. This was more for the electoral the people working in the register's office. It this first this whole thing was prompted by their assessment. So, we had to be compliant with the elections, the LESS assessment, and it was like a 1500 question thing. And that spearheaded being able to make sure that you weren't just having your elections secure from the registars's office, but it went all the way through every little detail of your IT department and the communications and infrastructure that you have in your system, your network system, because the the cyber security training that we take that you provide, you put on the I don't know whether it's on our servers or in the cloud that the cloud. Mhm. Okay. So, that is that what we're paying for? Yes. Okay. And they add little things every year. So, then we have to go and get different classes to keep everyone up to date. Correct. Yep. Absolutely. Okay. My other question was regarding the professional services $120 something,000 uh a year, $128,000 or

something like that. Um what are those services for? for cyber security specifically. I'll have to go back to that page. I've got it in. Yeah. So, let's start with uh Well, the whole whole line item is 128,000, right? Well, I thought I saw one. Okay, this is the break that was the breakdown of the 128,000 one you just had up was the breakdown of that. Okay, can you put that back up? That would answer my question. That would for the the backup server admin support that is for a server admin or for the server it itself that's somebody an administrator that we're paying. Oh no that's the the AIA is our avoid phone

system. So we have a server here and a server at the sheriff's office as a redundant. So it backs up the whole phone system so that if the county's phone system went out, the sheriff's office server would be able to maintain the calls through there. If their server went down, the admin building would be able to maintain the calls. Okay. So whenever it says admin, it's talking about the physical location. Yes. physically at the admin building has the main. So that's not a cloud. That's not in the cloud. That's on prim. Yeah. Yeah. And we pay that. So does that also does that cover both of them? Yes, it does. The cyber security training you were talking about is a different line item, but it's 5540 and the cost is 18,216. It's not on the screen. Yeah, that's that's up there now. The countywide noble force cyber security train. Yeah, that's the no before. That's one that goes up. So the other one that $30,000 from the last screen. cyber security prevention training. Oh, it's the penetration testing. We have to have two of those at least a year. That's something that's in one of the assessments that we have to comply for the the NCSR. We're familiar with that with CISA. Yes. Okay. show that you got the backup server

uh line I can't make it out 23 and then you got a one further down you've got another server the sheriff's office so there's separate topline items yeah that's the one for the instance for the sheriff's office for 20 $23,000 to that is the I I'm trying to figure out the $13,000 that it says support. So, we're paying somebody to maintain to do the admin of the server. Yes, they can monitor 365 because the key thing especially with both of these is it has to incorporate the 911 geo locator so that if you're in your office and you dial 911, the police, the sheriff's office, fire rescue knows exactly where you are. That's from that rule. I think it's called Kate's rule from when their child had to didn't know how to call 911 when someone came in and hurt his mom. And so there's a there's a federal law. So this makes sure that that is always working. It includes the support that we get physically if we have to have our phone people come out to take care of any issue. Okay. Our phone vendor All right. Thank you, sir. You're welcome. Feeling good, thank you. Feeling good. All right. Looking good. Good to see

you. You, too. Anything else, Mr. Dimes? Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Do we want to we do we want to try and knock out one more for noon before we take a break at noon? We just one. Let's try to knock out one more. Since Kelly's in the audience, I would say the next one on the agenda. Casual Friday today. I've never seen seen Kelly dress so casual. So GIS was in here first. He's with you. What page are we on for them? We're on the afternoon session number one. What? What page? Department of Community Development. Yes. What page? What page? That I don't know. 42R 42R. Okay. So, with um community development 5410, this was just a a a deletion of the note for the seven lease vehicles as we talked about in the previous department. So that note is now gone out of 5410 and we reduced the office supplies from 7,000 to 4500 for 2500. Okay. So I've had some talks with with with Kelly and you know talked about the board and we had a a ZOTC meeting on Wednesday. There's been a lot of discussion about comprehensive plans whether or not you know state law says you have to look at it once every five years. you know, our our last full-blown renewal is 2019. So, looking at this budget, this budget does not include any funds for comprehensive plan updates. I've done two of them um in other localities. You're looking

at 125 to probably $65,000 to get this done. So just because I know this has been a discussion and I think this may actually come as a recommendation from the ZOTAC committee um zoning ordinance u the agricultural district I wanted you all to be aware that is not in the FY26 budget and if you did I would recommend budgeting probably $150,000 for those services should you want to proceed with that. So I just wanted to talk about that. Um, I'll be happy to answer any questions on this budget. And there's while we're while we're on, we have the these two folks in the room. The next page 43R, uh, this is for the planning commission, BCAA planning commission. Initially, I taken out all the money for legal counsel. It was $96,000. And I I checked Mr. Stewart's contract, and that did include representation at the planning commission meeting. However, it does not include the BZA, the Board of Zoning Appeals. So, on page 43R, I went ahead and added um $7,500 back in. So, we can look at 42R and 43R kind of together since the staff. Um Yes, sir. I don't have either one of those. Yeah, it's not in our I just checked twice. One minute, please. So on your um increasing legal representation from

zero to 7 7,500. Yes, sir. On the um BA wetlands, are you saying that um you move that over to the county attorney budget? No. No sir, that this the county attorney does not represent the BCA. They are quasi judicial board. So they have their own legal representation through Sans Anderson. So that $7,500 is there. Should the BZA I mean we've had four BCA meetings since I've been here. Um so so I'm not sure what the future will hold. I just want to budget for it. I don't think that we should have legal representation for the BCA. It's not required. It's that's it's a discretion of the board, right? And my other question on that is how long has a go has it been put out to bid because watching a couple of those I think maybe it should be put out reput out to bid if it's required. It's not required. So, while they're looking at get these 42RS or whatever, can we get rid of the um $7,500 for the for the BCA attorney? Is there more than one? Yes. Is there another yes? I would say yes. I'd just like to by Tuesday just to confirm whether we legally need it or not. We'll do. I've heard I heard a majority of the yeses to to move $7,500 from it H43R. You don't like my legal opinions, Miss Vender? I just want to confirm. That's right.

So, I don't think she does. Okay. So, so if you have your computer, I have it up 42R on the screen. If you have your laptops, you can is linked right to the the agenda. Miss Fish is also printing off uh hard copies for you all whatever way you want to look at. But this is the change uh this is the the one change that I I'm sorry. Yeah, the one change that I noted here office supply 60001. If we did, um I got I guess just want to entertain a discussion on the comprehensive plan. Where do you where's the board feel on that for FY26? I'll jump in right away. I know we differ on this one, Mr. Smold, but I really think this is important and especially we as we've heard in two of our public hearings that have come up. one that's coming to us has been to the planning commission and one that has come to both the planning commission and the board of supervisors the citizens keep bringing up the comp plan and that these uh projects come and they don't comply with the comp plan. So if the conversation with the citizen they really want a conversation to mold that comp plan and I think we should be having that sooner than later because there are a lot of development projects on the horizon and I know staff is tasked and I know this is I just think it's really important and it did come up in the Zotek meeting is it was it was a question of how does the planning commission evaluate um you know a potential resoning well just look at the land use map and that's when I brought up the current comprehensive plan does not have a land use map every every parcel in this county should have a future land use designation it does not so that is a major deficiency that I see with the comp plan there's a lot of maps that need to be in the comp plan that are not in there I what she Yeah. So on the 12,543 142 under community development for employee continue education and

required certificates. So the inspectors and zoning folks they have to take these classes online state stuff. Correct. Yeah. to get their certifications and to keep their certifications. Yeah, but we don't have to pay for that. Yeah, some of it's covered by um what is the the the building fee? I I think the there's a portion of each building permit that comes in um my understanding from Mr. Herren was there's a certain portion of each building permit that comes in and that is allocated specifically for taking of tests. But we still need to show that as far as an expenditure in the budget, right? Even though that money is coming in and earmarked just for test taking justifies why we charge we can't charge a show why we're charging a public for that. But some of the the certification requires they have to go take the test. Correct. Yeah. They can't just take it online and there's there's there's an expense for that. There's proctors and is there what's the expense? It's $12,500 a year. This the breakdown for how to get to $12,543 is on the screen. This is really digging down into line item 5540. I can't see that screen. I'll make it bigger. And it's more than just for the building folks, too. Yeah. Yeah, I understand. Yeah. Um, I've taken these tests and you go in Charlottesville, Richmond or wherever and you go in, nurses are taking tests, you know, and they treat you like a criminal and take all your and you go in and have these time tests, but the fees aren't that expensive. If if you take the classes that coincide, so sometimes the classes you take them and then six months later you can take the test. Um, I went and did

them myself. I paid for my own way to do it and and uh but they aren't they're not in inexpensive places. So, it's you know that's that's not cheap. Well, you only have to pay for the test. You don't have to pay for the training online. Just go online and take the training and then um then you in order to get certified you have to go and take the test at one of these proctors. I don't know if it's online. What I took was in person between 25 and $150. So, they can't be taking that many tests is what I'm saying. Yeah. It wasn't It was There was a hotel. There was travel. I mean, I paid like I said, I paid out my pocket, but there was a hotel and there was a there was a county person there and the county paid for the persons that was there, but it wasn't it wasn't cheap. It doesn't mean no hotels to go take these tests. there were involved with it. Charlottesville and Richmond um they're not in the knowledge or spend their night. So, um the am I correct? These are the certification tests for inspectors and the zoning and all that. Some of there's no overnight stay for some of the testing. There's not, but like for the permit tech classes, some of them are up in Alexandria, um, North Virginia. Um, and then like for myself, my conference is all the way over in Giles County. So, I do spend the night. That's for APA. I think that'd be under conferences. Yeah, it's all under one line item 5540. Sometimes they they in Virginia Beach different, sometimes in Rowan Oak, sometimes in Virginia Beach. Yeah. So that actually is not continue education required certification. That's conferences and everything else. 12,500 and any 5540 is travel conferences, continue education, anything to deal with, you

know, if there's mileage, if there is overnight hotel stay, they they're put into this 5540 line item. So it is the classes itself, but it's also a hotel stay. It's also mileage. I don't even see Basil on there. I see the number two. Yeah, I see the zoning. Yeah. Is that covering your the conference? Say again. Is that what that is? That's the conference. Yeah, the annual conference for these ours because that says that is that says a frequency of four 300. Really? There's like there's only one of those basil conferences. Um I'm sorry. Is there a question about what was just handed out? Which one is 42R? So those are the the 2R and 43R. Thank you. Yes. 42R. Okay. I'll just make a statement about the CLA. I think we should pay for the classes and I think we should pay for the taking of the test because that's just help continuing in uh certification requirements of our employees. Yeah. Take any uh community service classes, community customer service classes. I would look into that. Yeah, I can look to see if they are offered. HR might know of some other type classes like that.

Mr. Chairman, so with the 40 with both of these items, the two pages, we're going to remove the $7,500. There's consensus on that for attorneys. Did I receive consensus for adding 150 for the comprehensive plan? Okay. Okay. That so that's still on the table. Thank you, Mr. Small. We're going to get the answer to the question on the legal right for Tuesday. I will. Yes. Whether or not is legally required. Yes, we'll we'll note that. I would put out there to add in the 150 for the comp plan. I'm going to throw it out there because I think it really is important. I feel like the comp plan needs to be part of what we're doing now. Keep talking about it. We haven't done one in a long time. And just for education, the the old comp plan, it was started before I was even on the board in 2017. So, it's really outdated. Yeah. Just need to figure out where you're going to cut that money and pay for it. I just I'm just kidding. But also, honestly, this is actually something important that can be taken from the general fund, the 150, because the whole community has been asking for this. So, is that consensus that we need to add the comp plan to this? I mean, what we we got to do what we kick it down to next year, but we got to get one done sooner or later. I feel like you should be part of it now. Three. I I see Mr. Sull. We have three. Yep. So, we will add $150,000 to professional services and community development for comprehensive plan update.

Any other questions for community development or for planning commission BZA wetlands board? Where did we end up on this? We cut the lawyer fee, right? Yeah, we removed the the attorney fees that one and then we added 150. Okay. for complaint. Those are the two two changes, food and lodging. This this is for for the overnight stays for associated with any conferences. So any of these conferences or training that require overnight stay and or meals for the county policy, that that's where that number comes from, Mr. Small. So, um, there was some talk about overnight stays and rooms and so forth and that we're supposed to be on the government government rates, the GSA rate. Yes, sir. Right. So, um, not your department, but other departments, I don't think, are following that. Um so the the ladies my right in finance they've at our department head meetings they've passed that all out most recently maybe a month or so ago and they are on it and it's clear directive that whenever you do travel these are the rates you were held to and we've actually had some individuals I you know just I know there there's a couple instances where they went out and purchased a meal that was above the GSA rate so they requested reimbursement we only paid up to the GSA rate and they they had to eat the So that that that's good. That applies to supervisors and anybody. So, and you guys are getting your expense reports done or giving her receipts and if they're not, you're letting let us know. Thank you. Um, thank you. So then that that line 13, I'm not sure what that one's for. I was thinking that was

actually the Bezo. It is, but it is. So it's really one and you know the cost is may be sufficient for the Bezo. Yep. I'll look into that. It's It's offered twice a year, but to keep the certification only required to go once. Yeah. To get Yeah. to to one of the conferences. Yeah. I mean, it's just good connections to have. Um but they do have the dial in the I mean the online um the virtual one. Yes. Some of them do offer virtual. Yep. And keep your certifications. You do have to pay for some of those a little bit, but it's not nearly as much as the in person. Right. So, so Mr. Smolick, the public hearings are out of control, you know, for the for the county, and I know they're required by law, but um can we not um upon agreement with these people that are having, you know, these big public hearings at the large cost of the advertisements. Can we recoup that money through them somehow on offers and stuff? Because I mean it's it's it's huge nowadays. Yeah. Looks like every piece of land in this property is under a public hearing. You drive around. There are a lot of public hearings right now and with the the requirements for the signs, there are plenty of them and that is built into the cost, their application cost. Yes. So So we So would you consider that? Yes, sir. Good. So why so but why it would be a line item in both the community development and the board of supervisors even though I know one's planning commission and one's board of supervisor but wouldn't it all be in a general line item for well I think that has to do with you know the miss leuke takes care of any planning commission items public hearings and there are certain things that come just to the

board of supervisors so those are the if if they're specifically for board of supervisors uh they come out the I think it's the administration budget or the board of supervisors outside of community development. Do we add an admin administrative fee to those because um it takes people time to get those squared away and then the cost of the the well there there are some take for instance the the height amendment that you know there's there's really no applicant for that right but there is a bunch of other applicants right but but with with that one that's that's an administrative um change that that will be made. So there's not an applicant who's walked through the door and says, "Here's my application fee because that was initiated by us, right? The proposed changes to the the the lot size and agricultural districts, it was initiated by the board. So that would be something that would just have to come out of the budget and you will not recoup any of those costs, right? But so we could charge oursel an application fee, administrative fee, and then return it back to our budget. Um, and we could also do that to these companies, charge an administrative fee, and so we can cover some of the cost of our, um, workers that, you know, it takes a lot to put these public hearings together. And I know uh Kelly's department has been looking at the fees um to to make sure we're in line with you know making sure we're covering our costs. Um so so if that's something we can continue to look at it's not part of this budget cycle because I don't think they're part of the code are they part of the code. So they're actually not part of the code if they're if they're an appendix to the code that requires a public hearing to change a fee. Um, so I don't know if you have anything else to add on that matter, but this is something we're looking at. Um, the only thing I'll add

is that if if for some case an applicant requests a deferral where we have to have another public hearing, that's a separate charge that they also get. So they pay for both of them. Thank you very much, ma'am. some of the some of the changes that we're uh looking at as far as the education reimbursement and such is applicable to certifications. That that is correct. Uh the my my staff is I will have I should be my my deadline was end of business today to have a deadline. I will that'll be part of my county administrator's report on Tuesday night where we stand on that. Yes, sir. Thank you. Y how long a break you guys you want to take our lunch time. So there's a couple other people here we can probably knock out quickly. Not parks and recreck. Um, library. Did we knock out that one? Library is next on the schedule. Mr. Mr. Chairman, what page? Okay, so the library will be page 52 52. So again, the the library is a a separate fund from fund 100. There were no so on page 52. There were no changes from what was initially presented on March 18th. I have the budget in front of you and we have a representative from the library to

answer any questions the board may have. So the the $10,187 for um scheduling contract will work on the building. Doesn't the building and grounds do the work on the building? 31. I'll I'll pull up the detail here. Are you referring to the repairs and maintenance budget for 10,00 10,000 187 line 3160? Yeah. Which which budget code? I'm sorry. 3160. Uh well, some of that is uh that is program presenters under professional services. other what so vendors for summer reading program that's summer reading program is YMCA no that is the summer reading program held by the library every summer all right so it's $10,000 for the summer reading program no what is also in there is waste management fire safety systems we have to have the sprinklers and the fire extinguishers uh inspected every here the electric controls this that's the security system but family programming is also under there for vendors uh our portion of -ate services are there and the alarm services is also there so doesn't the building and

grounds do the alarm services and the um so they bring the people over that does all the county work that does stuff on the library honey well for the air conditioning and all that stuff so what is What is how much is the summer reading program? What's what's what's the number for that one? Well, it's broken down into various children, adult, teen, family. So, it's broken into each budget, each department. So, it's out of this 10,150. What's the total? I did um on my budget submission, I did make a note about moving waste management, fire safety systems, everything building related to general properties. I have no problem with that whatsoever. But you still have that in your budget, right? I made a note on there and I I'm assuming it was not But they do it anyhow. They do not. We pay those bills. So when they come in to inspect the fire extinguishers, we're paying that bill. So when I go through the warrants, I see that the general properties are paying these bills. No, sir, not ours. Can you look into that? I will look into it. I believe they are coded to the library fund, which is a separate fund. Okay. And um the 21,294 is the um yearly renewal of multiple library software programs. Yeah. So is that reimbursed from the state? Some of this has been moved to the state, some of it has not. And we in order to you the county made an investment in the RFID at the library, the selfch checkckout systems, but in order to maintain those systems, we do have to pay the yearly maintenance for

this software and the the hardware. So wouldn't there be a lower employee cost? No. That that is proprietary to the vendor. No, no, no. So you you you go in and you come out and you and you selfch checkckout, but you have three or four people that aren't doing anything. That's We do not have three or four people at the circulation desk. We have one person at the circulation desk. Okay. I'm just show I'm telling you from my experience. Every time I go in there, there's three or four people at the checkout counter and and everybody's doing their own checkouts. I'm just telling you what my observations are. Well, we do have library pages that check in books at the circulation desk. We do not allow patrons to check in the books. So, I mean, we have numerous staff members working on the floor and they may be doing other tasks. Um, but we do have one staff member that is at the circulation. Okay. Again, I'll just say we have four selfch check. I'm just telling you what I see. So, 10, 584 for telephone and faxes. What is that breakout per month? This seemed a lot of money for telephone effects. That is the internet, the long distance, the telephone, the web hosting and the SIP service that we have to have for the telephone. So the it is not Mr. Dyn. You're not paying for the sum of that in your budget. Okay. Is that refunded by the state? Uh part of it is refunded by the e grants, e- rate grants

and we do charge for faxing. So some of those monies do come back to the county for the fax through the fax. For clarification for the public, your funds come from federal, state, the b the board, you know, the county, and then also you have the trust fund, right, that Mrs. Smoot set up a long time ago. We have the endowment interest off the endowment which goes back to the county, state funds, and county funds. I always been wondering about that endowment. So, you all don't use the money, you just use the interest. the interest goes to the the uh a certain portion of the endowment has to stay intact. So is that where it's at now? Um as far as where I'm sorry I mean is only only thing from the endowment you're getting is interest or using interest right now we're only the only the interest is going to the county because it is dependent upon um the market investment. How much is the endowment? How the 700,000 was the original endowment that has to stay intact. I do not have the number currently. Okay. Well, I am not heard so many numbers. The board of trustees. I've heard $50 million, $2 million. It is nowhere near that. Yeah. Well, I figured it couldn't be that big because when they gave that money so many years ago, that was still a huge amount of money, right? And some of those funds were used to purchase the properties um for which the library was expanded upon of the 750. Um it was I'm assuming it was higher at that point. It was before I was I was I I was at the library. Gotcha. Um but there were two properties where the library was expanded upon and the board of trustees used the funds to purchase that so they could expand. I'm glad you um clarified that for the public because there's been so many so much speculation

on what it really is. I didn't have never had the answer. I I I apologize. I just don't have the exact number of question. It varies from month to month. So, I have a question for you. What was your name again? Robin Tenny. I'm so sorry. That's okay. So, we talked a little bit internally. This is off the budget issue about there's county things that we want to advertise on the sign of the library and just kind of coordinate that with you whether it might be a public hearing or just anything that might be just to help because we we need better ways to communicate with the public. So, we'd like to coordinate something with you about there's certain items we'd like to advertise on the sign over there. We recently uh advertised the opening of the courthouse on the sign that went up for nearly two weeks, I think. All right, good. And there's other I know there's just other things we've talked about in the past. It I mean we could put up another sign, but there'd be three blinking signs right in a row. We'd probably have a couple people get run over or something, you know. And it should be noted that that sign was purchased by our friends of the sweet library. That was all that which is another source of revenue for us. Um so they paid for the entire sign. Forgot about that. But I was on the library board for a little while and and I do know that they have when their monthly meetings they do talk about their investments and where to move the money and all that. But what Mr. Davis said with the public hearing, I've had citizens asked about that to be more transparent and more so people could see driving by to put those public hearing notices and things like that on there. Thank you. Uh I have a question. Um, so I see longdistance phone and faxing. Yes. Um, if we're paying for internet service, why are we paying for fax service? Because we fax through the internet. We don't have a way to do that at this point unless I believe uh here at the

county the fax lines are through Verizon um and then that is separate from our internet providers breeze lines and I a good question Mr. out. We can look into this. Um but but I know the the fax lines are separate. They're through Verizon, so they are different. But we can look into can we fax over the internet user breeze line service that we currently pay for I think is what your question was to get rid of the fax line. I mean that it's all one for us. So all right, thank you. We did try to make that happen through our Xerox machine. It just we were not able to get the functionality on that because it is connected to an Ethernet line. So will you have that at at next on Tuesday? Yes, sir. We've added that to our list to to report back to the board on Tuesday. That may be something we look at either your guys or my guys or somebody because while we're on either line, well, Verizon rips us off in general. Anyhow, if you look through all the warrants and and you go to the V section at the end, there must be I don't know. They charge us for everything, you know, every single line, every I mean, it's crazy. So, that's where the secondary road fund comes from is the tele Verizon bill. Yeah, but I I the Verizon bill is out of control. If I had that kind of if I paid that kind of stuff at my home, I'd have to find another home to live in. I don't understand why some of these things that we pay for we pay for more than ma'am than everybody else pays for because everyone's doing their own separate thing as opposed to coming together and say what can we get as a county as a deal on these no right this not directed at you this is just happen

to be here while we're having a talk amongst ourselves but you know I do fuss about your power a lot there are a lot of space heaters over there let me just tell you the truth there space heaters under the Yes, there are some, but it is very cold. We have no um as the staff, we have no control over that system, right? Um it's all through a computer. Yeah. Um so we no one can move the dials on it. It's whatever it's set at. So is what it is. Yeah. Just But I I assure you that everything is shut down. Everything that can be shut down at night is shut down at the end of the day. So, when I go over there during the day when you're in operating mode, I've been over there three hours at a time, but it's been a a pleasant day outside and that thing is just running full blast. So, like in the board meetings, I've I've said that that the building and grounds there's a problem. Somebody needs to find out. And I think Mr. I think they have Didn't you say they went over there and are looking into the matter? Yes, I believe there was a train representative with Mr. my a little while ago looking at those systems. That is correct. Who controls the dial that she's referring to? Uh that would be that would be Mikey. I believe he has. I do not have access. Can we look and see if it's programmed to go off at night, come on in the morning because it may save a buck or two here and there, but it's kind of Well, some of it can shorten the life of the system. Well, that's the that's that's not the air conditioning heating. That that's what's causing you the big money. But I mean we do have some air we have uh where our servers are some of them have their own units because they have to I'm just asking can we look to make sure that your HVAC isn't going off at night coming back on in the morning and trying to reverse you know eight hours worth of you know freezing air or or vice versa you know because that may save a buck or two in the short term but it's going to shorten the lifespan of the HVAC system by reversing it back and

forth that way every day. And I think following the April 1 meeting, we did receive our kilowatt hours, which would dictate our our membership fee to VPKA. That's the group who who uh works on our rate. So, there's a couple things in play. We've got uh the I agree what I understand get the train man or or whomever out there to make sure those systems are talking to one another. And also, it it's the rates if we can cut down on both of those things. But when on the library, I believe, and I'm not an air conditioning, heating man, but I'm an expert in everything else. Um I I believe that um that so lot most of these big systems have a preheat or precool from the exterior air. And I I believe they don't have that in that system over there. So when when the air is 30 degrees outside, it's got to heat up that 30 degree air right off of 30 degrees instead of a a preheat system or a pre-cool system. So we'll see what happens with that. Not my area of expertise. Well, I used to be a library expert, too. That's a joke. We know. I don't know if she knows because she kind of gave me that look. She did. But we are we good? Are we done? Yes, sir. Thank you, Robin. Appreciate it. Well, Chris will take forever. You know how he is. Yeah, Chris, we got a lot of stuff to cut from him. Oh, Lord. It's another joke, Chris. It's another joke. No, that was that was serious. I know. Do we Do we um You guys want to do parks and wrecks? I think that's going to be lengthy, Mr. Chairman. Got to do lunch first. You want to do lunch first? Yes, sir. Good with

you. How long are we going to take the lunch? 2 hours and 40 minutes. 3 days. Mr. Chairman, in order to we we had parks and recognition scheduled at 12:45. So, I guess if we want to stay on schedule, there'd be a 22m minute break. That's why I'm like knocked it out if we were to take I'm I'm good with knocking it out right now. And then why don't we um I want to we can just do parks and wrecks now and then that way we can take a good 30 nap. Sir 4 through 13 right after lunch will be solid waste county attorney economic development engineering. Those are the next four. Okay. I got to run home and let the dog out um at lunchtime. So I need a little bit of time. That's why I'm giving you more than 20 minutes. All right. Okay. So we have parks and recck in front of us. There are two different items. One is park and recck administration which is page 40 revised 40 40. We only have one. It's look the red text is on the top right corner of this page. Top right corner. That's where the red font is just due to the way the page is laid out. Okay. So, is everybody there? Yes. All right. So, with with parks and recck administration, uh reducing the line item 3500, another $2,000 out for reducing the printing and binding budget. Um 3,700 reduced the laundry budget from 3120 to 2500 savings of 620. And the two others were just some some technical things. Line 5410, we deleted the text for the lease truck. And line 8101, we deleted the text for

the new truck and trailer, which was uh cut out at the during my March 18th presentation. I know um Mr. Clark has has has sent me an email, contacted me this morning about some of the cuts, one of them to do with laundry. Um so, you know, if if Mr. Clark, if you'd like to if that's okay with the board, talk about, you know, the I guess the two proposed cuts, we're just going to focus on parks and wreck administration right now if that's okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, the number that Mr. Small sent about our laundry, our base bill is $51 and change a week, 52 weeks a year. Um, our second the other the every other week includes the mops mop heads uh from from Unif. I had not been separating those out because those are general properties expense because they maintain the interior of our building, but we've been lumping those into our laundry which then takes that bill over $60 a month. And I what was the number I gave you, sir? Um, let me pull up the budget so we can pull this up. So here's here's the uh here's your laundry. So the the numbers our bill base for the four four full-time parts work is 51 a week. Other weeks mops are included. That's 65 a week. We need 3,000 in that line item to meet the actual expenses. So the mop heads the mop heads are included. Mopads and the four the four got four uniforms. Four uniforms and mop heads. whenever he adds the mop heads that that price goes from 51 a week to 65 a week. So you're buying a new mop every day a week? No, the laundering them so you don't have to buy a new one. Are you sending them to a a launder? Universe takes care of them with our uniforms. I mean specifically the Mopeds if we want to go letter of the law should be

in the paid for out of the general properties account. But for ease and making trying to make the purchases quicker and get the bills paid on time, I don't we don't separate that. So, it's $50 for the mop heads or the mop heads and the uniforms. $51 is the uniforms. 65 includes mop heads. Um dry dry and wet mops. So, it's $15 for those. Yeah, it's it's all part of it's all part of the state contract if I'm correct. Right. Thought it was just mop heads. Okay. So, so what what I Mr. Clark is he had 3120 on there. I cut out 620 to try to trim a little bit. He said he needs $3,000 just to break even. So So the um the um 28,000 for the fireworks I thought that was uh terrorism money the fireworks display. So that that item has been paid for from the tourism fund previously. Um with our new and it's been part of the application process for a grant. Um this year we are in year six of doing fireworks including the 2020 program with the 300th anniversary. So we don't qualify for the grant. Um by the way it's been rewritten. Um also Mr. Miner and Miss uh Miss Ala both believe that it's not truly a tourism event. It is more of a hometown community event, but you know, if we take the 3,500 people there, yes, there are some that do come across the the county line, but for the most part, they are our citizens. So, it really should be in a general fund budget versus being out of our tourism occupancy tax. So, we have a ton of money from the tourism. So it if you got two people that are coming across the county line, you need to take it out of that general fund and put it in tourism where there's tons of

money. So that's my suggestion. Put it in tourism where where where it would because what's what's the balance of the tourism fund? I think the annual budget's $230,000. It's a it's a self-funding budget. I think we're about 236 this year. I think that would qualify for tourism. If if you look at there might be people down in Dow that came over the bridge and staying at a hotel and see the fireworks. So, if the if the board is looking to consider this, there was aside from the TAC grants that we got, I believe there was another $38,000 remaining for discretionary funding as it was approved four or five months ago for the director. We could take that 20 that $38,000, pull 25K for the fireworks, and still leave 13,000 for discretionary spending for marketing. That's that's not a bad idea. I'm not disagreeing with Mr. columns on that because I know for a fact there are people now that come over from Maryland to see our fireworks because they said it's an awesome show. So that would be So that's two. Is there a three? There's three. Okay, we'll do we'll move 25,000 from operating parks and rec administration to tourism. Thank you, sir. And the other thing I had was the fuel for vehicles, motors, and utility vehicles. $10,000 a year. Yes, sir. I'm going to pull up my current. So, looking at the last couple of years, FY23 actuals was 10,400 146, FY24 actual 12,652 and it was uh 10,950 from last year's budget. So, I I don't know what the actuals are, you know, I don't know what they're at or the year to date for 25, but the last two actuals per the audit have actually spent more than what is budgeted. Don't we have a fuel depot now? We have a fuel

depot. It is it's it's not for We can go We can all go there. Yes. But there the tanks are limited in size. So So that I think it's just about ready to be rolled out. It's behind station one. So So he's right next to station one. And you know you get bulk pricing when you buy in bulk. Correct. So whether you're put you're putting fuel in fire trucks or lawnmowers, you know, I know one's diesel and one's gas, but does that fuel have mo gas or just diesel back there? There's both. There are two tanks. So I think it' be more cost effective because we'll be buying in bulk. They can just fill up their stuff there. That that's what I mean. To date, we have spent well through the 15th of March, three we have $3,243 remaining in the account. We spent $7,700. Right. So, but you're you're buying it from uh sheets and everywhere else, right? Yes. So, why can't we have him go to the fuel depot and take that out of the budget? We can make that change. We know how much it is per gallon when we buy it in bulk. I don't know because I don't even think the the station's up and running yet. So I I don't know what the bulk rates are out there. So I I can't speak to that. I know what I believe whenever we use our Voyager card sheets that is we don't pay the price at the pump obviously. So you know the the taxes are backed out for us on that. But what those deliveries are going to look like I I don't know because we don't have a I don't have any data yet. So he has $3,000 left. You might if you want to leave that in there and then next year take him out to the fuel depot. That should be up by then. You know, it's kind of like propane. You know, in some places, we're paying $5.99 and and when you buy in bulk, you

pay a dollar a gallon. So, it's the same kind of concept. My only question from staff would be, how big are the actual tanks at fire station, and would we be exhausting them quickly and then not be ready in case there was an emergency? I want to say one's 1,000 and one's 2,000. They're they're they're decent sized tanks. We can have Chief Moody will be here later on so we can have some but I think that's where was installed. I hope that those tanks maybe 5001 maybe 5001,000. I know one's bigger than the other. I hope those tanks have the uh controls like most propane tanks where it automatically goes to the company and it tells them they need to come out and fill it up. That's what most of these tanks are doing now. Okay. So I I hope it's not that depending on a person and stick a stick down there like the old days and say you need some more. Yeah, right. That's what I was talking about. But it on like a lot of these other tanks, it goes directly to the company. So you can monitor it and they monitor it and they can Right. Okay. It's it'd probably be a good idea to switch over that just Mr. Shroud talked just so we know no one's using things for person using cards for personal fillups or anything of that nature. We we can we'll be to you track things a lot better. Exactly. And that's going to help us in budget season. I mean if we like we can we track exactly how much you're using. You know when you're going to use more during the summertime and things like that. You're just you got three thou you got a little bit of money left over but you're getting ready to start cutting grass. Yeah, actually we we're under budgeted for this year. Yeah, we're gonna be we're gonna I'm gonna have to transfer something. I got a question topic, too. So, how much money do you guys

have in your accounts from all the things that you do? I mean, they give us savings and for the activity fund, I do not know our current number. While Miss Cobb is is logging in there, the other item that you know for Mr. Clark is the next page down 41R. Um the there was a maintenance service contract for for wax stripping and waxing the floors at the the community center. And the reason I cut that I looked back at FY23 actuals, FY24 actuals, there was no money. Last year there was 3,000. Now it's 4,500. So I guess you know the reason I cut this and made Mr. can explain to it. Do we have the general property staff who can who can wax the floor on the weekend and then what what was going on like in 23 and 24 those years? So So don't you have a custodian assigned to that building? We do. Um so he can he or she can strip and wax that floor? We requested that service um during COVID. who wanted to do the bathrooms separate a second time within six months and he was unable to perform that service for us. So he can't strip and wax floors. I was he was he his response was he was unable to do that for us. He reports Well, he's Don't you Doesn't he work for you? He does not work for me, sir. He works for Mr. Muny. Well, Mr. Munzy tells that needs to tell him that that's his part of his job. You doesn't tell you what he can and can't do if he's if he's taking care of that building. He can change light bulbs. He can change filters. He can strip and wax floors. He can wash bathrooms or sheep, who what whoever it is, but that's nonsense. I'm sorry. There's different There's some tasks that are done by the the groundskeeper/custodian that we have and there are some tasks that he does have to he calls out to the maintenance side and that Mr. Pennington and his

operation. So what is is the maintenance staff the building and grounds changing light bulbs? Well, we we now have all LED lights, so we don't have that issue. But previously, yes. Mr. Mr. Pennington and his crew would come in and change the fluorescent light bulbs when we have them. Well, so the building and grounds, they're supposed to, you know, fix the doors, fix the the um fix things that building and grounds do. They're not supposed to be doing changing the filters and all that kind of stuff, you know. That's that's that's a that is a a I could just tell you Huh. I could just tell you who's in my ceiling and who's doing the task because they are all part of general properties. Okay. But what I'm saying is the folks that are cleaning the buildings need to do their job and not try to push it off on others. I I wasn't directing that specifically to you. was in general because um not stripping your floors when you're the janitor is is ridiculous. So my understanding of when I when I arrived in 2018 at prior to that we did have general property staff do the stripping and waxing. It was done over a weekend. It was all overtime. It was a minimum 16 hours for three, four, three, four, five guys plus the product, which takes us very close to the 4,500 number. Plus, they don't do it every day. Whereas using a professional company coming in for that $4,500 rate, they do it all the time. They knock it out. Um, they come in typically come in Friday night after we close and start shipping and they come back Saturday morning and wax and they're gone. Uh, we try to do that on Yeah, but you're paying a a person to do a job that they're not doing. You're pay then you're contracting out somebody

else to do their job. Yes, sir. I I I agree with you on that. Um, we took it on on and moved it to our account last year because we were doing all of the leg work with the operations except paying the invoice. We were meeting with the vendors, we were scheduling the vendors, we were the keys for the vendors. Um, and then they would hand us the invoice and I'd send it down to general property. So to get that expense actually into the citizen center account as a part of the citizen center because, you know, we can compare that with the revenue it makes is why we've moved it over. Correct me if I'm wrong. What I think I just heard you say a minute ago was that when we were doing it inhouse between the materials, the supplies, the overtime, yada yada, it was almost the same as what we're doing paying when we contract out. Yeah. Yeah. Last night I was trying to pull the numbers together. It was 11 o'clock or so when I saw the email and was, you know, trying to if I went with a base salary of $20 an hour, we're paying overtime at $30. It it would it was adding up quick. So $4,000 or I'm sorry, $4,500 to strip and wax the floors in there. I'll do it for 3500 about 7,000 square feet. No problem. You know what I'm telling you is that the people need to do their job. It It is not cheaper. It is not cheaper to subcontract. You have someone there working. They can do that job. I mean like in the in the big build in the big room they can do half at a time if that's what they need to do. You know that's how most buildings operate. they they you know they do half the floor and they go it's compound it is feasible. I mean if you've got somebody that does that all the time and they know how to do it and they they've come up with an efficient way of doing it their hourly cost is going to cost less than somebody that only does it part-time.

You said you said yourself when you buy in bulk you you know so that's what that company does all the time they buy their materials in bulk it costs less money. don't. And we should be buying our our um janitorial supplies in bulk instead of each individual um department buying their own. I'm telling you, there's no way that there's no way it costs more. If you have the person doing the work that's there, it's ridiculous that it would ever cost $4,500 to supplies them do that him or she her him to do that work because they're already there. And I don't know if you've been over there, but seems to be a lot of extra time on their hands. I didn't want to go have to go there, but I'm just telling you. So, he already cut it out, so I don't know why I'm arguing about it. Letting you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We get that answer. So, so no there the two items for discussion are the laundry and the does the board just want to go with my recommendation to cut it out keep it in house two items that are discussed for these two page 41 42 are respectively can I have clarification on the laundry part because we've talked about quite a few things here just ask Mr. Smick, you know, where are we exactly? Are we talking about the uniforms, the cleaning? So, so I think it's both. It's the It's the cleaning of the uniforms and the other every other week cleaning of the mop heads. $61 a week for just the uniforms.

When the mop heads are thrown in at $65 a week, Mr. Clark states that just to break even, it's $3,000. So, I had cut um I went down to 2500. That was that was that's that's what I did for saving the 620. He had 3120 in his budget. This is stuff that has to be done. Correct. So all of my employees are on laundry service with Universe. So they have 11 sets of clothes and two two jackets and they in turn can turn those in every week. They turn in five or six that they've worn and they come back the following Tuesday. Um there are other options to do. We can do sell the lease of them where then the the staff takes care of it themselves but they only get five or six sets. That's what I'm looking at lever because she was in the conversation with us last year with universe. Um or we could go and completely purchase uniforms for them. But then we would have to clean them. Correct. Well, the worry then is if they were to have something severe happen. I'm just asking for clarification. We've been jumping around on this one. Yeah. When I was a state police, we got three uniforms. We had to clean them oursel. I mean, why why are we taking everything in letting somebody else do it? Why can't people just, you know, you're getting uniforms for God's sakes? Why can't you take them home and clean them? So, my my staff came when they came over for general properties, we kept them on the exact same plan they had been on in general properties probably back to the 1990s because somebody allowed it and now it's continued on. Right. So, and 11 uniforms is kind of ridiculous. If you get in cleaning, you're already bringing them in once a week, right? Well, that's why that's why they have 11 is that they work an overtime day on Saturday. I've been coming in Tuesday, I turn in six uniforms to go to be clean and the other five uniforms have now come back. 11 uniforms is a lot. Unless you're, you know, a mechanic where you're greasy

every day. I mean, I I think my guys need one for every day. I mean, there there's definitely plenty of days where in the summer where they probably need to change should change shirts halfway through the day. Um, so they if five are out being laundered, they need to have five at home for this week because the universe only comes every seven days. They can't wash their clothes at home. They have that option. Um, right now they are all on the full rental service. I think we need to cut back on those 11 uniforms a bit. If that happens, I just ask that it be consistent amongst the departments. So there's only a usually only the building and grounds, the maintenance people. Um, and the service authority that I know of that had uniforms. Finance doesn't have uniforms. Um, I'm not talking about fire department. Correct, sir. I'm just I just want to know if we make a change to to my guys that we are making the similar change with general properties because they are equivalent position. So sometimes what happens what I've observed is that um when you buy uniforms people will order them so they can bulk up their supply at home. And in the state police we had to bring it to a supervisor to show it was damaged and then we order another one. Stop that type of thing. So would you, Mr. Chairman, would you like us to look at you the options of just buying them versus just, you know, it sounds like this going to go on for for quite some time and just accept it, but you utilizing purchasing uniforms and have the employees launder them themselves versus the unif and and service. Let's see what the best I guess you asked him that question, but or was it for the board? Yeah. Any any I just So, can you see what the cost difference

would be? We can look at that. Absolutely. And the uh the other question I had for you, sir, um more directed towards the county administrator, but it's your in your department, the activity fund. Um it's usually pretty pretty substantial and um that money gets spent without any controls from the board or from the uh county administrator. So, I think we need to bring that in to where we know what's going on because I know that we've denied equipment before at the board and they've used the activity funds to go buy that equipment. Basically, we said don't buy it and it was bought anyhow with the activity funds. So, I don't want that to be happening anymore. I want I want to know what the activity funds are being spent for and to have approval for either the board or the county administrator. So, you know. Okay. Thank you. We'll do. Yeah. I have a question. Um, it's on line 5540 in the ad admin budget, sir. Page 40 that admin. I've got the spreadsheet. Yeah. So, It's uh uh travel conference fees. Yes, sir. What What conferences are those? Yeah. Give me one second. So, our program supervisor, she goes to the Virginia Festivals and Fairs Conference. Um which because the fall festival was one of her largest programs she operates. Our new athletics coordinator um we have slated to come to the Virginia Recreation and Park Society conference this year will be in Rowan Oak. I also am scheduled to go there as well. I have the Virginia Recreation

Park Society's director's conference which was held for the first time last week in Fredericksburg. I do not know where it will be in fiscal year 26. What h what happens at these conferences? Uh Virginia Festivals conference there are presentations about how to operate faires and festivals. Um they come back with a lot of good there's members of the fall festival committee that are volunteers that go and there's also we send our staff member there. she has her continue education for work really on special events. Um it's the state recreation conference whenever they go whenever they go to these I mean these are employees that we've had for a while. So the supervisor has been in her position since the September of 2020. Um the athletic coordinator started in April. Um I've I've been here six years. I just mean we're if they're going to these things that there's some vesting the same as with um we apply towards the education there there's a payback. So if they go to this to get these certifications or this training there's a payback to it. Well that's a good point Mr. Stout. Now we'll make sure the the policy that is currently being drafted we include a provision for that. Please. And then also um if we have a requirement um I think we should that um like if I send somebody to a conference or somewhere then they have an afteraction report. They provide a report back. Here's what I learned. Here's the benefits um recommendations for the next conference. That's all included. I mean, so we know we're not wasting our money or wasting our time that they provide an afteraction report and and we can we can come up with a countywide format for that and we send somebody to this that they come back and they provide a report to us on what they learned and what you

know what were the advantages of that. So I'd like I'd like to offer that recommendation not just for parks and recck but just countywide if we send somebody this that Yeah. Didn't we give um the county administrator that directive already to approve conferences and stuff and and then um um have some type of payback if there certain we did that goes with the education you yes that that's that's the email that I sent out to you all last week and I'll have a timeline the close of business an update on Tuesday the afteraction report the afteraction report is new and I think that's a good idea here. So, um the $3,000 for the wall divider is that that's a re every year you got to pay $3,000 for a contract on the wall divider. So, we have the a modern full door wall like yes we discussed for the library very similar similar wall. We do bring the contractor in because it was a $40,000 expense, I think, to rehang it if I remember correctly. Um, which was paid for by with COVID funds that we have the we actually have the installer to come back and do a full day check of it and they oil everything, grease everything, repair things that need to be done. Um, you know, are in for if we need additional equipment for it. We lost we had we have two wrenches for it at one point. We we somehow misplaced one, so we ordered a new one. um just to make sure we always have two on on hand so that we can get the door open if we need to. We don't want but $3,000 a year to have somebody look at the wall. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, you call them. I I I do like I don't know about the amount, but I like the maintenance aspect because that's what has got the county in a problem in the past. They didn't maintain things. So, I like the maintenance aspect. And

I'm right there with you. I was going to say the same thing. Well, I'm not I'm for the maintenance, but I'm not for I'm for the departments having their own preventive maintenance services forms that they they they they fill out that they whoever whether it's building and grounds and come does the maintenance on the door. But I don't think we need to pay $3,000 a year just to have somebody come and say, "Yep, door's working. Put a little oil on it." But that's not what he said. He said they also put oil and do other needed repairs and if it I don't know if our maintenance staff you're telling me that the has certification pay for us. They don't we don't have to pay for the repairs but this is just a service contract. This is there are two items within this this budget. Um there is $1,000 for maintenance to our floor scrubber. Um when things go bad, we have to call the technician to come in and look at it. He typically comes from Richmond. He looks at it. you, you know, either repairs it on site or will send us equipment um if it's easy plug-and-play stuff that just have gone out that we have budgeted $1,000 and then the wall annual checkup is $2,000. And you know, with the expense of that wall, if it were to fail on a Friday night and we couldn't get it open for a 12-h hour wedding rental on Saturday, I do the cut. just consider the doors aren't rocket science because we're just going to leave it in there. We're just going to leave it in there. All right. That's why if Mr. Chairman, when you go through these budgets and and and these monies, all these little monies amount to big money. They do. They do. And so this one this one makes sense. And you know, I I take care of the the floor and um at my dad's gym, you could probably get a easy a better price if you wanted someone to come in and wax that stuff than probably what you probably needed. What I would like to see is like over like you use the same company to do

things every couple years. We need to kind of repric things out. You know, we get comfortable. It's easy. Someone's taking care of it. Every three someone might start off the cheapest, but every now and then you got to go out there and get, okay, let me let me repric this stuff out. So, let's get uncomfortable in that area. I will say that. Did we find out how much money? $419,552, right? So, it's not millions of dollars. What? $400,000 in the activity fund. Yeah, that's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. But that's another thing that is it just sitting in a checking account. I I do not know how that's managed. You You spend it though, sir. We well I mean we add to it every day and we spend from it every day. So you you do spend it. That's the perfect That's a perfect example of where I don't need the treasurer or anything to invest money where where you could take 300,000 plus of that money and invest it into a an account in the names of park and Rex where that money is just actually just making money for us as opposed to sitting there. That way things come up, we we have money being made for us, right? I love the idea. I don't know that I'm authorized to be the one who could invest that money. We need a we need a we need a countywide we need to we need to to have a plan and we need to put this together to in to come up with a better way of managing the county's money. All of it. I mean, I want to help you make money. Absolutely. I would love to be getting 10%. I don't know that it's my in my purview, right? I don't think it's not. It's not. It's not. But you're the you're the head of that department, right? Correct. So you're there's some say so. Yeah. We want to hear your opinions on things. But what we want to do you understand where we're going with this stuff? Yes. And actually we actually have a plan in place to um assist with that because all of the county money is sitting in the bank account including rack activity. Um what

we've been working with the treasurer with is um taking that money, investing it, and then what finance is going to do, we're running um a report to show the average cash balance for each fund. And then what we'll do is do an entry to move that interest that's earned um in the where the money allocating it to the fund and allocated to the different funds so that they're not losing out on that money that's just sitting there in the checking account. It's like there's millions million dollars a year that you know we could be making and that is correct to offset stuff like stuff you know I just don't understand. So what you're going to do is allocate the interest in the big fund. You're going to allocate the interest to each department. Each department, which makes sense because a bigger chunk of money will earn more interest and then you just put it into the department that needs it. I mean, not that needs it, but yeah, each fund that should be, you know, earning interest and typically this is a treasurer um deal, but finance is going to take that and make sure that that gets done. I love that idea. So I I want the county administrator to manage the activity fund. In other words, he decides where the money gets spent. I I I I told you why I have a problem in that because the board said no, we're not going to spend money on that and then it was spent out of the activity fund on that. So we need to know he needs to know where that money is going. Is that okay? We're putting we're putting checks and balances in place, right? I mean, you weren't here. You weren't here when we stepped into this, but you got an idea of what there just were no checks and balance in place for anything. That That's correct. While we had different propane bills, you know, everyone's on their own Verizon thing, and it's just that we have no universal anything. So, and then they call it a

cluster. Yeah. Cluster. Yeah. I I think just, you know, since uh Mr. Small got here. He's had a relatively full plate and we've been constantly improving. But um you know part of that involves I think should involve and I don't know if we have um this is something I was going to ask later but if all the employees have their job descriptions now. Do we have those? I don't know. They didn't exist before. We're we're we're working on it. Okay. Because if we prioritize the department heads and then we include in there responsible officer, you know, what what they're responsible for, maintaining their equipment, counseling their employees, you know, doing quarterly employee evaluations or at least every six month quarterly, you know, where they meet with their employees and they talk about they talk to their employees about their performance that they report their performance. We have they can have metrics of their performance. Um, but then you do that for the department heads. But the department heads are they all the equipment that is purchased, there's like an audit. It's called like a fire. And finance knows what I'm talking about. I think they finance um u accountability. And if something's bought that they make sure that it still exists and we're not reporting on something that doesn't exist, then everything that we did pay for we have. These are all just the way we should do business. and every department head then you know we we train them if they need it they need help with it but we tell them that look we want you to maintain your department the way you maintain your household in other words if you're going to spend money on it we want you to spend it the wisest so we want you to make sure that you're getting the best bang for the county's buck and then we evaluate them on that and make sure they're doing it that way whenever they come in it's like okay he says hey I talked to three companies here's the best you know of the ones that do floors And this is the best price that's out

there. And and then we know whenever we're getting briefed by department as the the county, the citizens are getting the best bang for their buck across the board. Chris, thank you. Is that that time? All right. It's that time. So it is almost one o'clock. Mr. Collins, how long you need to go home let your puppy out? until she until she's done. 35 25 minutes. Seriously. 35 25. I I'll do the best I can. I'll go let her out. 45 minutes. Yes, sir. Thank you so much. 45 minutes. Good break for us right now. All right, then. Um I gave

back in session. Are you ready? Just in my orders. All right, Mr. Chairman, members of board, our next item to discuss is solid waste and recycling. So, these budgets can be found on pages 31 and 32. There are no changes from the March 18th budget that was presented to you. Uh, Mr. New Chuck is here. I'll be happy to answer any questions and if I can't get them, I can direct them to Mr. New. I did want to make one one quick note. There will be one revision for the Tuesday night budget in on page 31. The word equinox was still in lease of equipment. Uh, we just we just missed that one. So the word equinox because we're we're not going to be renting any more vehicles. So that will be the one noted change for Tuesday night moving forward. What number is solid waste again? 31. 31. Yeah. Page 31. I thought we bought the backho. We bought a backhoe for the uh the service authority. How much is the lease? I'll pull it up. We've had just to mention there's been recurring issues electronically with packos and we're on our third one this year. So I would certainly recommend against a purchase um since it's a machine that we cannot operate without um with a we have no charge switch outs if it's a internal component failure. Uh so it's right now I think it's $2,154 every four weeks. So $2,000 a month. Two

and they switch out the entire unit. You use it full time? Yeah. So, at Sealston, we don't have compactors. So the six open tops as well as the metal open tops and the overflow are all manually compacted with a backo. Um so without a with on a weekend without a backho the facility can only operate for one and a half hours. Now I was just going to ask if you if we could uh lease internally the one that's uh that we bought for the the service authority but doesn't sound like that's feasible because you need it too much. Yeah, we we we rack up hours on um and especially on the weekends, we cannot operate for more than 25 to 30 minutes without it. The other thing is people can be a little rough on them and that's the other thing about it being leashed. All right. Anything else on that? questions, concerns, comments. Okay, moving on. So, so the next item will be uh the county attorney and at the start of the meeting, I put a hard copy in front of you. So, the county attorney, rest assured that their budget is included in the final numbers. It was inadvertently omitted from the uh March 18th presentation. So, I have the the county attorney's budget up here. Again, the final numbers were included. Um, there just the paper copy did not make it to the packet. We will ensure that it will be there moving forward. So, uh, pretty basic. This is a a contract with Richard Stewart. There was a an escalator in there for for cost on an each annual basis. He's got some legal

conferences, um, some dues and memberships, office supplies and subscriptions. I believe that's Lexus Nexus and Thomas Reuters. So, um, the budget for the county attorney or the proposed budget for FY26 is $266,415. What's the page number? So, it's not a page number. It was It was So, that's the one that was inarently left out. So, I placed it on the on the brown. Yeah. So, we we will have a page number to reference. It should be up near near the start, though. [Music] Any questions, comments, county attorney? All right, on to the next. Okay, next one is economic development. Let me pull this up. So, economic development can be found on page 45 R. There were some revisions from the 18 There's no 45. No, I got 35. I don't have a 45R either. Okay, I've got 45R up on the screen. So, let me talk a little bit about economic development and we'll get you hard copies of this. So, a couple of the changes that were made um line item 5540 taking uh traveled from 7,000 $2,000 was cut to take that down that line item down to 5,000. And then vehicle fuel, there's one vehicle for economic development. Uh it was backed at $1,080. I took it took it down to

$500. Um so those are the two changes and the the big change will be the the position. So right now in the budget there is a position for um the director. I know we've had a lot of discussion about you know this particular department. So I mentioned it earlier there's there's you know my vision for for these couple departments that are working together. There'll be a a full-timer um tour to economic development manager, tourism manager that works um 70% with economic development, 30% out of tourism. And with this, we also added well what's in the budget is a project manager. So the question you know we've talked about is do we need an economic development director? Um I I think if we you know we can build a team um I I think we can do that there then there are some steps that we need to to address prior to really getting solid economic development such as infrastructure that we're working on right now. But the budget in front of you does add the project manager in salary and benefit. Um you know if you want to go a different direction that's fine if you want to leave it out for this year if you want to hire a full-time economic development director. But this is you know kind of some of the discussions that I've heard the board and this is what I'm putting forward for for for discussion. Now when you meet a project manager is that can you give me give yourself and the public? So so your your typical hierarchy in an economic development department you know you've got your director then you've got either and they're they're called project managers. It's almost I say the next step down but it really is. It's that, you know, mid management, somebody who's not ready for a director yet, but maybe has, you know, five, seven years underneath their belt who can, you know,

focus on BR, business retention, uh, or expansion, uh, or, you know, focus on business attraction, but they're they're not quite ready to be their director, but they're above somebody who's just has a degree in economics and never worked in in the economic development department before. So that's where I see this this somebody coming in with five, seven years experience who's willing to learn and you know one day can you know grow into those shoes and become a director him or herself. Oh Mr. Snark and I have talked about this extensively and my my thoughts were and I know I've talked to you guys is you know we went I wanted to go this route because we we brought Matt in to kind of get that going right to be the head of that for a little bit but at the same time he can as opposed to hiring someone hired a staff or a part-timer to that does all the stuff Ken that you don't do at your business but you come in the door to make to close the deal and make the money right it doesn't have to be in all those meetings someone else be doing those dayto-day task ask it. That would actually be cheaper to do it that way, I think, is what we kind of discussed, right? I I think a director is going to run you honestly 120 140,000 and that and what we could do is that you take someone you and you're kind of grooming them to one day take that position over, right? Yes. So, Mr. small neck with the salary there and the uh benefits the benefits are over 30,000 over half of the um including that'd be like 91,000. So so these are the one position is entirely economic development. The part-time position is a 7030 split that that's everything benefits and and salaries. I was looking at it what what specific

So for 4728 18510 820 3 828 324 and 9,545 right so these are the the way these are calculated Miss Cobb has it everything is based on the salary we put in a salary and and it projects what the the VRS retirement what life insurance you know what all those extra benefits and and it calculates the it it puts out a number um based on a percentage or based on the person's salary I think. Is there anything else is that? Usually it's 25% but that's 50%. So I just did the rough math. It's over $30,000 in benefits right there. Seems like the health insurance is a little inflated is what I'm saying. Okay. To look at that, Mr. Collins. Does everything else look good on there? Yes. So, so whenever we do the budgeting, it's a worst case scenario. If if you're familiar with the VRS system, the the VRS1 plan or the VRS hybrid, VRS hybrid is it cost the county more money. So, whenever we budget, we take the most conservative route and and plug them into VRS hybrid option. Now, if we did hire somebody with 5 to seven years experience who happens to be vested with VRS, they would come in under the old plan and that would be a savings to the county. So, this is this is worst case scenario. This is worst case scenario for two individuals uh two full-time

individuals. No more questions on economic development. All right. Sounds good. Next we have engineering. So this will be page 33R. confusing. All right. So, with the public works engineering, so this is a a department that we've uh I think making good strides on as far as restructure, rebuilding, and adding some good staff members. So, uh, recently, uh, I think it's been talked about at the board of supervisor meeting. Our county engineer, Mr. Bryce Young, has passed his TE's, uh, PE exam, going through that certification right now. So, we will have a a PE on staff to help manage some of the projects. And, you know, Mr. Young was instrumental in getting all of the the ARPA projects out under a timeline. So, uh, I remember sitting down with him back in September says, "Bryce, this is your chance to prove to me you can do this." and we got them all out. Uh, and those projects are underway right now. So, Mr. Young has passed his uh his test. So, looking at this for for the for the compensation of a PE, I'm telling you, you know, looking at these engineering firms, they can't find PE and they're they're they're $200,000 um for for anybody who can, you know, read a read a scale or or know how to run AutoCAD. So there is a bump in in certification or pay base salary $37,968 that would take his salary to $140,000 a year. And then you have the the extra cost of FICA and the VRS insurance line item 2100 22 2025 10 and

2400. So those are those are all uh incumbrances for extra um charges you know that that are part of this budget. Uh we deleted the vehicle tax line 5410 and then reduced the the furniture budget. I know um with the the courthouse clearing out. There are some extra chairs and some we're going to do some furniture shopping over there. See what we can utilize over there. There's still some good furniture. So I I did reduce that um minimal amount, but I did reduce it by $600. So Mr. Shroud, you got some furniture. So, the 55,000 for the third party review. We got two people over there now. Why are we paying more money for another third party review? I'm going to let Mr. Young uh explain this line item. Good afternoon. that is uh money earmarked for specialty services such as uh inspections of buildings when it comes to asbestous and things that we cannot do in house but what was this is going back a minute so I just want to see so in FY23 it was like 21,000 then in FY24 it jumped up to like actual cost of almost 80,000 you know what that was I know they originally budgeted for a hundred the third party review and consulting services. It's 3140 and that was in 2024. Yeah, it jumped up like 50,000. I want to say that had to do with plan review at the time that got partially funded out of our budget for some of the storm water plan review. You think this 55,000 is going to

going to suffice. Um, it should I think it should be cut by at least 10,000. If you going to if you need to put more money in it, you can amend them it later. Anybody agree? Well, I mean, you could earmark for that and just conscientious like in every department that the money's there doesn't mean we have to spend it, right? So, absolutely. They did spend $80,000 in FY24. So, to be down as opposed to up. Well, what I've what I've observed over time is that if there's $55,000 in that particular thing and they don't spend that, they spend it on something else. They just move it to some somewhere else. So that's why I'd rather add money than than um you find that to be the case that it's going to get spent on something else or we're good that 55 is for what it's supposed to be for. I will say while my department spends a lot of money, we do everything we can to save money. That being said, we if it's in the budget, we don't make efforts to spend it because it's in the budget. If that makes sense. Yes, that answers your question. Whenever you go outside, who are you going who do you go to for that those reviews? Um, that is part of the engineer on call contract and we are currently about to get uh bids back in to renew that to get fresh engineers in here. Okay. So, the office I thought they you were getting them out of there and putting them over in the old courthouse. Well, we haven't Have we gotten back any kind of what it's going to cost? I've got I've got a couple

questions a couple people about. Well, you already got people in there. We We've got general properties in there on all the uh So, we got them out of there at least and all the referential unit storage units are in there. So, so those are the savings. Talking to Mr. Young. I I know that the next thing that he's I think April 15th those RFPs come in for the engineering services. The next bit for for Mr. Young and Mr. Kylie are to get on the courthouse. So I know they're working on nine projects right now that are or almost not maybe not nine underway, but there are multiple projects or projects that they're managing right now and inspecting on a daily basis. Why can't they move in there them in the it, you know, um, work as we go instead of spending $18,000 for another year when there's two of them and what, three more it? Four it. But that building has to be renovated. Yes. When is the lease due? Let us look at that. I mean, that's going to make a difference. If the lease is due next month, yeah, we need to plan to get out soon. If it's not due until October, then you're going to you're not going to leave early on a lease unless there's some sort of early outall. So, that's something we need to look at is find that. Um, but that third party review, we're not using emoji for that. No, that uh third party review is almost always through on call contractors and right now we're out from new Mr. Mr. You know, one of them we use I know in the service story is for asbestous and we don't have anybody on staff that can do like asbestous review. And for example with the uh courthouse any kind of environmental

sampling that have to be done with that. That would be done through that line item. That's why I said take it down $10,000. Actually, I'd like to bring it down 30,000 and amend it as we needed, but I was um making some consensus for 10,000. Let me jumping off that. Could Mr. Smolnik, would that be po and then if we need to sometime in this year in the budget, we we'd have to increase that line item. Is that possible? Absolutely. And and with the the board, sorry, with the budget, just like last year, there's a couple hundred,000 contingency line item at my discretion. So if an say for instance Mr. Young comes up and spends all his money if it gets cut down to $30,000 and he says you know Matt I need a little bit more money I can transfer that from contingency or we can come back if contingency dries up I'd come back to the board. So there's there's a couple safeguards there. So I I think we can cut this and if we need money I can either transfer or come back to you all. I would agree with that. Mr. Collins then do we know what the actual so far are so far are for 2025 right at $1,000. Okay. Are you okay? Yep. What what what number is the consensus? What would you like to cut it down to? Mine is 10. Okay. Minus $10,000 for on calling on call services. And when was the lease um up? The lease is upstairs. Um they don't have access to it right now, but we we can we can look at that. I can have that information for you available on Tuesday night. So, if the lease is ends up I for some reason I'm thinking June July. I don't know why that sticks in my mind, but um if it's up in that time, let them stay there till June or July. But if it's if it's up next month or something like that, let's get them over here. Would you all agree to that? I'd rather use the money to for the move than I had use it for a

lease. My my only question is say we do that then when we renovate there where where does he go? There's no place to put him. That's a big building. So, you know, like in a lot of um state buildings, what they do is they they renovate parts at a time and you know, it's just it's like the middle school, they renovated part of it at a time. Okay, I agree with that. But we still have the debate on whether the whole building stays or not. So you're not willing to have that debate. I'm not really interested in that at this time. Well, right now it's pretty understand understood that it is staying. Yes, in some parts, but I still don't agree that that whole building stays. So that is a debate that we need to have. And but the engineering and IT building not they're not going to they're not going I mean look at the space they're in now. It's just two offices up there. I would agree with that. Put them in a bedroom if you needed. I'm talking about the courthouse. They do need some storage space though. Wait, just I'm just so So is is Are you all agree on that, Mr. Strauss was? Yes. This vendor made No, we already have people in the courthouse now, right? Not very many. Maintenance and all the files that were in the storage units. Well, the files are in um an office over on the side and some um two conference rooms, right? The the two little uh attorneys conference rooms. Is that right? Is that correct? I believe that is the location of the files. There's still plenty of room. But that still doesn't go back to deciding what we're doing that with the building first before we start shuffling deck chairs. So no matter what you're going to do with the building, if you're going to if you put them over there now or when their lease runs out and if they if we if you if you decide to tear down the

building, which I don't think anybody other than you might agree to that, um then um then we'll have to move out of there. I mean, Mr. Collins, I didn't say tear down the whole building. You're just throwing that out there. I I said to evaluate whether the whole building is worth the money to renovate it or not is what I said. So it's the the building has to be air conditioned and heated. Now why why do we need to why do we need to pay $18,000 for you know that's one of the problems that we all inherited, you know, leasing all these places. Why can't they those four does he say four? Six six employees across two departments. Yes. You could put them back in the judges areas where there's plenty of offices along there and it would be clean, healthy, no mold, no nothing. So why wouldn't you do that? It seems to make if Wouldn't you do that at home if that was your an option? But we haven't even made a decision what we're doing with the building. There are parts of that building that do need to be mold mitigated and you're just saying it's a clean good building. Let's just throw them in there. No, what? That's not what I said. And no, it doesn't need to be mold mitigated. You keep saying that same narrative and I will, Mr. Collins. Mr. Collins. No, I'm talking they they have taken care of that and you just want to keep this drama going about this. I will keep this drama going, Mr. Collins, because I don't think you understand really when someone has My son has asthma and that building over there, I would not have him working there. So, I do take offense when you won't even consider that. And one of the one things I heard from one of the courthouse staff when they moved over the building is they said, "I can actually breathe better, Mr. Collins." So, I'm just going to leave it at that. So, you want to have this debate or argument, I will have it all day. Well, you you want to keep these buildings forever, and that's why you've been on this board for eight years, and these

buildings have been emptied, vacant. Let's bring it back. Let's bring it back. And so I'm tired of this whole um you know just let's just wait. Let's just put it off. Let's defer. I did not say that Mr. Collins tell you for how many years and didn't do anything. I didn't have any. Yes, I did. It turned over the middle school to you all that you wanted that you did nothing with. Bring it back. Get along so good today. See what you did. Messed it all up. That's all. Thank you, sir. So, can we get them out of the building? We need to we find out when the lease we will have that lease available for Tuesday night or that's the find out when the lease is up. But when's when's the study into the building? Is that have that started yet as far as the courthouse goes of what needs to be done to make it healthy environment? We have to start started that study yet, but that's something we can work on. I need that to be started. I think that that we as a board are agreed. One of the things we do in this county is we sit on properties forever. Like that is like to the top of the list because there's so many of the things that it affects far as not just money but what we're going to do with the old schoolboard building. All kinds of it affects that's the piece that affects all those things. So it's kind of up the list a little bit. I know I know you got a lot of stuff on your plate, my friend. So please don't think it I'm thinking that way. But this is an urgent piece to it as far as what we're going to do with social services. They're red, yours, countless others. So, can I offer something? Yes, sir. This just a thought. But if that was my building, regardless what I was going to do inside of it, like I know there's some parts of it that like the courtrooms, probably no other department is going to need a courtroom. So that's where I would if I was going to get ahead of things, I would I would have a contract just start taking that

stuff out. I would start make a wide open clean space to rebuild from in in the areas that I know I'm not going to use in its current condition. Then I would start cleaning it out. You know, have somebody put a contract in place to remove that stuff. And that way you're you start fresh and you're ready to start doing. So once you decide what you're going to do and you you get your plan put together, it's ready to go. You might even start looking at some walls that aren't loadbearing and right to be able to utilize the space better and the square footage to the max that we can because we're not going to need all this stuff always want some of this stuff now. I mean that's looking at Yeah, sure. Other words, do what we can, I guess. Right. Right now we're going to wait till Tuesday to find out when that lease ends. Yes. Okay, good. Right. Any other questions? M. So, so I have the the real estate lease in front of me. And just looking at this real quick entered December 6 of 2019. The term the lease term shall begin on to be determined and will terminate on to be determined. This is the executed lease. This is what it says. And then at the very end uh there clauses renewal period lease shall have the right to extend lease with landlord for three five year periods le shall provide landlord with six months prior written notice to exercise the renewal period I don't see I mean with no hard dates on here I doesn't say they need six months before we yeah the question is do we need six months or can we can we leave in two months I will get this to to Mr. Steuart to look at this lease because it's it's definitely not hard and fast. I mean, this is this is one of those things like there's $18,000 on there, but if we come in under budget after we post it, then we're good. But if we So, it's one of

those things we can leave in there. We can take it out as we as we go along. We can if we can move out of the building and cancel that lease this year. We could repurpose it. Yeah. All right. Anything else? Good. Are you all right? All right. Thank you, sir. Appreciate you. Congratulations, too. So, next we have uh general properties. This is on page 35 revised. I think this was just a note change. We deleted a text for enterprise lease building lease taxes insurance as we've moved out of the the facility on Bloomsberry and across the parking lot. So other than that, no other monetary changes from what was presented on March 18th. Apologize. What number? No, no, you're fine. Uh page 35 revised. So, so really the the the changes are are just text tax text based. We remove the the wording about the the vehicle and the lease and insurance and rent of the facility on Bloomsberry that we are soon to be out of as they move across the parking lots. I do have one question on all the leases just to ask because this covers everything. It are we able we are able to purchase the vehicles right the ones we've identified. Do we need to purchase all of them or are there some we don't really need? So, actually that is something we're working with Enterprise with. Um, we've had some push back. They do not want to let us off the loop, but our department, we've been hitting them hard because their thing is they have a 20 20

vehicle limit and anything under that is not um viable for them. So, um we're we're going back and forth and that's what, you know, we'll probably get Madden legal involved and try to figure all of that out because we're not going to carry that into 26. Um, we're trying to use 25 funds to take care of all of them. So, if they're not willing to do that, just send them down the road. Send the vehicles back. We'll buy vehicles. That is an option is just to turn the vehicles back in and be done, but then we would have to purchase vehicles. Is there would we be breaking the lease? Would is there a penalty? Um, my team, we're still reviewing that. Like I said, we've been going back and forth with them, so it's been a couple of weeks now. So, we're on page 35. So, um that's you, Mr. Muny. Have to come up there. Everybody else did. Um so, this whole janitorial applies for county buildings. So, you know, if you look at people's budgets, everybody's buying janitorial supplies. Again, can't we just buy janitorial supplies? You know, one building and grime built buy the supplies for all all the buildings instead of piece milling and out. Well, the way it's set up right now, I go through born and sons, okay? And each building they come and do an inventory once a month and that building gets those building supplies that's needed or required to, you know, replace what's been used. It's easy to keep

track of. Well, so we're not looking at what's easy. We're looking at what's best. Well, it's the best price I've gotten so far. Like I said, I had um oh god was u one of the cleaning companies had come in several years ago when I first took over and gave us a price on doing that also and they were way higher. They're a cleaning company. They're not they don't sell janitorial supplies. I mean they do it their main PBM. Is that who you had? I had PBM and I had um you know they're high. Yeah. So, I think we could probably do a little better on uh entire uh deal. Also, um the elevator 245. How many elevators inspections? I have this building and I have the sheriff's building. And now we got four elevators in the new courthouse. All right. So, six elevators. Well, the ones at the new courthouse haven't been inspected yet. Well, it's six next year. That's six total. Yeah. So, how much does it cost per elevator inspection? It depends on the company. So, but we put money in a budget and we didn't we don't know exactly really what it costs. I mean, I have to look at, you know, the invoice, but they haven't changed. Well, that's that's the whole idea. Otis does this elevator here because that's who installed it. Otis inspects their own. Same with the one down at the sheriff's office. Are they Otis, too? That is not Otis. Then you you don't know how much it costs? I'd have to look at the invoice, TC. Well, that's what I'm saying. I mean, we should have We shouldn't just expect people to bill us, whatever. No, no. I I mean, it's negotiated every year. There's a price. And of course, with everything else,

there's a percentage that goes up every year because of, I guess, travel cost and material or whatever. a quarter of a million dollars for elevator inspection just seems pretty pretty high to me. I'm sure there's other inspections in that. That's just there. There are there on the screen how the 245,000 is broken up. You can see the breakdown for the eight different items that make up 245606. I can't see it. No, sorry. I can't. I'll blow it up here. Hang on. The 245 I mean, what is the big one in there is is the train select service contract for the elevators. No, for the HVAC. I was talking about the 245. These items in in total make it 245,000. It says elevators etc. So that etc is 25. So the etc is trained and Hback etc. Okay. Well, that makes better sense the way I should say, right? We we'll change the note. And how's it going on the 52,000 on the electrical? How many kilowatts is all our county builders using? Did you come up with that number? Didn't he task you with doing that? question. I have not. When are you going to get to that? I think right now I haven't been tasked with the total kilowatts for all the county buildings to my knowledge. Mr. Smalling, isn't that something that you were

doing? I I I Yes. I I find the the kilowatt hours I find to finance which they got back to me a couple days ago. I'm looking here in George County for 25. So kilowatt hours for the county 7,083 and the service authority for well this is 25. Yeah, let me look at 24 for the entire year. Okay, so for the King George County for 24 total kilowatt [Music] hours, Mr. Muny, let me I'll looking that up. So, I think where Mr. columns who want to go is if we were to like warehouse the the um order in bulk or the supplies that you've got the company coming around they check in they and they deliver it would be cheaper to do that and so in doing like an evaluation of that taking the cost or whatever it cost today and then if we were to order um and uh I could do uh you know and then so you know somewhere to store those and then a person to take and deliver those you know to each location. Yeah. So could be done. Yeah, there would be a couple a couple options with that. Um there's something that we are we are communicating to uh Mr. uh Silk Smolding um on some things for the county and um with department heads and department heads just different changes some management within the county you know hopefully making things

better empowering department heads but um checks and balances the the ability to to um do performance appraisals based on evaluations things like that so part of that what I was thinking this is my brain while we're waiting is if one of your guys was or you know they're doing building inspections and they're going around checking on these things they could they could at the same time they were they could be the delivery guy too and and then you would have a better control on usage where it was going. I mean if your guy came in and said wait a second you know why is it last month they used 50 rolls and this month they use 100. I mean, but so that's what I was thinking and and so it's what the cost advantage is, you know, clearly there needs to be one, but so we have a we have the old courthouse that we can store stuff in like is in store now. Hopefully he's going to have a new building to store stuff in. Yeah, we're in the old courthouse, right? They're in the old courthouse so they can put the stuff over there and people can come by and get what they need, you know, and Well, people could they could do that. they can pick it up, but then they don't have the advantage of going and seeing, which well, some of the employees that work at these locations don't have access to a county vehicle. That would run into a problem. So, what happens when you have uh somebody call out sick who does the building? I have a float. So, doesn't that person have to get there? It does. Has a county vehicle. Okay. So, can't they take the supplies? It could or like that's what we were just we just we just we just talked through that. Yeah. None of this stuff today is rocket science but everybody wants to make it that way. But the one thing we need to remember is that we also don't want to dump all this stuff into every abandoned building that we've done for years also because I've brought up before having a centralized warehouse location for the

school system and for the county where it's all there and cataloged and and to make sure we don't over buy or waste. I thought we were going to do that. We're going to go together that that that's a discussion for the 27 CIP. I know we we we kind of kick the uh the school's request this year for a combined shared facility. And then board members, I do have the kilowatt hours. So in 2024, King George County average kilowatt usage 333,000 for the service authority for that same county year 2024 was 269338. So over over half a million kilowatts. Correct. And then I had my finance pool. These are the piece. This is what we need for Vepka to join it. It's 10% of your kilowatt usage. So you know just looking at this, the Vepka membership will cost you um where we at here 33 43 53 about $60,000 a year to join Bepka who would negotiate the rate with Dominion Energy on behalf of the county. But what's the kilowatt? Do we have average kilowatt hour? We're paying a should probably be two numbers. One for peak and one for non- peak. I don't have that right in front of me. While they're figuring that out, sir, is there anything that we can do to help you in your job? Uh, I think y'all are helping me tremendously so far. I appreciate it. Appreciate you, sir. When does anybody know when that building's going up? We're still waiting on the uh plans comments. The site plans have been submitted to the county. How long a comment letter? Um 60 days

as as of the fourth. I think you've had it there for 60 days. I reached out to uh the site engineer yesterday. Yesterday, day before yesterday, they said it was submitted 60 days ago. They have had them for 60 days. They're waiting on the comments. I I'll look at that. I know we waited months to get even a set of plans in, but if it's 60 days, I'll I'll I'll address that. Yeah. Put some fire on the Let's get this building built. Where's Where's the building at? It's down at the culde-sac by the animal shelter. No, I mean the building. It's sitting on the ground there. Yes, sir. Okay. Um, I think go down and take an inventory every once in a while. Make sure. Okay. So, there's there's a triw wall there. Cardboard box the parts in it. Oh, no. The box. We've got that here. Okay. With all the So, the only connector all the The only thing out is the is the steel. Okay. And the decking. Okay. Insulation is in the shed down here. Okay. Good. Where's the exact location? Is it going to be at the end of the culde-sac? End when you look at face the end of the culde-sac to the left. Okay, thank you. It's a good thing we bought it when we did. Oh, yeah. Teriffs. Good move. What about the insulation? We didn't insulate it, did we? We did. The building insulation's down here in the shed is okay. Good. The only thing that we're going to have to purchase are the rollup doors. that did not come with the package. Oh, dang. The framing would not be. So, we know what they cost. Can we can we can we uh get them before the tariffs hit on that stuff because maybe it may be too late. We may be paying, you know, three or four times the cost. We can look at it

though. Yeah. Something we can look at. I don't we have to go through um I'd have to look at the rough open so we get you know correct size for the roll of floor. Yeah. Is there United States manufacturing, Mr. ground for those doors there. There are there are Are we fully out of the lease? I'm sorry, Kim. We're going insulated doors, too. I mean, so yeah, it'll be in the plans, the drawings. What did we we ordered for those size doors? Yeah. Then we can That's all we need to to work off of. Okay. Been a while since I looked at them. Yeah. Mr. as long those doors they that they need the size. We see what what the cost of them are so we can see what if we can find a United States manufacturer and try to get that you know get them done um so we don't have to get it cost everything's going up right yeah right right cannot turn these things off was asking Mr. Did we fully move out of Are you all in the courthouse now? We're in the courthouse. I'm in the judges section down there. We've got everything that general property zones is in that section. So, you're fully out of the other building. Uh we don't have to be fully out until the end of this month. So, the tractor still up there and the snow. So, the little metal um garage carport, is that y'all's I ordered that yesterday. The one sitting up there now. Oh, no. That's not ours. No, I ordered one yesterday. That was that was that was the Yeah. And that's not even I don't think it would make the move. Oh, so did you you you going to get one for over here? Yes, sir. Oh my god. Why don't you just you just need somewhere to park it in the in the inter room?

Yes, but I also need somewhere to to work on these lawnmowers and the vehicle as needed. Um but now there's a double door where they used to go in at the court. What the lawnmowers? No, the double doors are 30inch doors a piece. I thought they were 36s. So, a 60 inch more won't even go through because the way the doors open, the jam clearance. I thought we could do that at first, but on it yesterday some way to get them. You ordered a little metal building to use in the interim for that or I just ordered it offline. It's $2,100, but it'll be in the parking lot. No, it's going to be over here in the salt. You won't see it. Oh, in the sally port. He's still be locked up, right? Be on that concrete slab. That's good. What color? Uh kind of like a white matches building here. Yeah, I was just wondering. That's all. You done? Thank you sir. Thank you very much sir. Thank you guys. Human resources right? Yes. HR is next. That will be page three R. Three R. All right. With human resources, uh, the the good, Miss Bender, all set. Okay.

Good deal. All right. Thank you. So, easy one, a reduced travel budget, 7,600 to to 5,000. Um, that's $2,600 cut. And I know there's been a lot of discussion around, you know, the the the personnel policy manual and some of these other things that the the board would like to see get done, gone back and forth thinking about this and initially we had an HR director in this budget. I've since called around, you know, talked to experienced HR directors to say, you know, so and so who people who I've known been in this business for 10, 15, 20 years. the HR directors that I know and at least in the government side doesn't matter we farm ours out you know we we we do not do our policy manuals I know you know I've had you know talked to Mr. out about this. You can have attorneys write them. That is another option to go. Looking at the budget, um, you know, when I really step back, look at this whole budget, I said, I just need to keep the HR department as it is, unless I'm directed otherwise from this board. HR director is going to run you about $120,000. Um, so that's where we're at. I mean, we can make changes to it, but no other personnel changes from what we've got right now is is what is in the current budget before you right now. I'll be happy to answer any questions about outsourcing that this the policy menu. I know Mr. Stout and I've had some conversations about, you know, having attorneys write them and and I think Miss Courtney and I have had some discussions um after we had some of our HR training in here and, you know, my my thought was we could do it in house. Um based on the individuals that I know, local government HR, they they farm it out. So, you know, we we can get an HR director in here. I'm not sure they're going to answer all our questions or we can explore the options

of having an attorney draft it for us. Um but I I think we are going to need some help now. They are working on the policy that I mentioned earlier about the um education tuition reimbursement staying longer. They are working on that and I saw the timeline that came in a little while ago. Um so I will have a project timeline for the board members for presentation on Tuesday night. But other than that um I'm happy to answer any questions the board may have. All right. So I have not read an HR manual. I'll start with that. So, I'm, you know, approaching this from a position of ignorance, but are they so specialized that that we can't take um copies from like three surrounding counties and pick and choose the best of each one and pull them together? I mean, if if that's something, you know, we could do um you know, you could. Yes, we could. You know, it depends, you know, how the how they're written, what what your goals are, what you want to see in a in a personnel policy. It's different. It's easier to do something like you couldn't do a a comprehensive plan or something like that, but a zoning ordinance. Yeah, we steal all the time from from other localities. They already wrote the code. So, if there was good examples out there, I think we can kind of pick the the best of the best and and tailor it that way if that's something we want to do. How much when we talk about farming it out, what how much are we talking? We talking a few thousand dollars? We talking a few tens of thousands? Few tens of thousands of dollars is what I've is what localities have paid. I know. I heard, you know, maybe 510,000 is is is what Mr. Strauss, you know, I think those are some of the numbers that you've mentioned. Yeah. I I I can't see you paying more than $5,000. So, an attorney is going to charge you anywhere from 400 to 550 an hour. That that's, you know, they have so they have um they have other people on our staff that aren't as expensive that do a lot of the leg work for it. um

especially if they've done this before. Um so they've got good operating models to work off of. I mean that that they have. So they're based on the law, both federal law, state law, and then from there you can be more uh prescriptive, I guess, like you said. Um, but so you could take surrounding counties, but you've got to have the knowledge to know, you still need to know what in those is law and what is it somebody just put in there. Okay? Because um there's things in there that we may not want. Oh, there's a law in there that should have a reference to the code section. When it goes through the when it goes through the um um policy, there will be a reference that or state code or state or federal code because some there's a lot of stuff in there that isn't code, right? Um, you can go to the office of personnel management and um and get a um a boilerplate which is it's pretty good one and then you can get to sponsia staffford and then you can make what fits here and I think you could probably do that that for less than $5,000. All right, I have another question. So, uh, 3110 professional service health service services. So, where were we at on the um on the policy manual? Yeah, I I'm guess. Um, one, I like using an attorney's office um who's doing it to make sure that it's current. And also there's

things that you can discuss with them that is you can ask them questions. What is um just best practice? And you can say well is this something I have to have in here or something that I have to have um because there's things in there can drive up your cost can drive up our cost that aren't that aren't by law. It's not anything that's required. It's just things that some people may add and and that's like paying for training and education and stuff like that or reimbursement and how you go about it. Um but or if you want to take the surrounding, not even just surrounding counties, you can pick counties, you know, anywhere to take some. You know, the good thing about that that could be a good exercise for your HR personnel because they're going to have to learn and spend time reading and and and taking that and putting it together for you. And um but it still has to have a legal review. You're still going to need a legal review in the end anyway. So if if you just want to have your you know your HR people learn and go through and pull stuff and you're going to want to go back and research it yourself to make sure that what they pulled is you know probably valid. But if you get it from a law firm to begin with then you know you're starting out with a good slate and you can take away from there. You can get where you want to go a lot quicker. I guess Mr. Mr. Strat, I agree with you because in talking to Mr. Stewart about issues that we've had in the past year is that federal law, HR law is changing all the time and so it's good to have that legal advice tell us because it might not be the personnel policy sort of needs to be reviewed yearly to make sure that we're up on all the federal laws and everything instead of just out there for years. Yeah, they have there's training that comes out and law firms um like Kaufman is one of them. I know um Fox Rock Child they do it for us but so they come out every year once it's done they'll come out and they give these

they'll do training for your people and and they can they can get it from them and then they can go ahead and make the edits too there or you can pay them to do it for you. I think it really depends on how significant it is. So are we going to get that ball rolling? I mean the first step is I mean I think is having Mr. small, you know, reach out to two or three of these law firms and ask them what it's going to cost to do this for us if if they're willing to and what it's going to cost and then making a making a decision from there. When you think we should have that back based on their schedules, I mean I can I can call everybody right now if they don't I mean someone will be on their schedule. Yeah. Like if they say, "Hey, going to cost you $100,000." Then I could It will not be I can tell you. I'm just saying at least I should be able to tell you that. Yeah. And then we can go from there and at least get somebody going to get that done. There's Because you know there's a lot of problems with that policy. All of you all read it. There are. And I think we should have it in place before the budget. You didn't read the policy. We got some things we need to put in there. Um, but the county attorney recommended one firm, so maybe make a phone call there. Okay, I can I can do that. Hopefully, I have something back some information for Tuesday night. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Um, I've got uh something on here I can I see whenever you're looking at the D810 dues and memberships, it it's got professional memberships and there's SHERM on there. And I personally don't support having a membership to Sherm because that's a liberal organization pushing that DEI liberal type stuff. So, I

wouldn't support paying for a membership if they want to pay for it themselves, but I wouldn't have the county paying for it. There you go. There's two. Is there three? Is that How much is that out of there? It says got professional memberships. There's three there. It's on the on the I got it up on the screen here. Let a little bit bigger. Whatever the cost that membership SHM264 so four units at so $1,56 I would agree to take that off. There's three. Okay. We'll take SH membership off. All right. Anything else? Human resources. All right. Department of Social Services. Page sir. Um, social services is page 36. There were no changes since my initial presentation. I see Mr. Franklin out the corner of my eye already up at the podium. So, board members, do you have any specific questions, concerns? Um there there's there's a few different components to DSS. DSS administration is the large one. So you know what my concerns are, especially when you're paying 70 is that $8,000 a year for rent. The the energy 5,500 should be included in that. And that was I think the very next day Mr. Franklin got me the email. Um there and that is uh know the question about DSS electrical utilities. Those are separate uh because electricity is not included and at least only water and sewer. So

when that lease was negotiated, electricity was not included. So what when's when's that lease over? Lease is up November. November. And just for the board's um you know planning purposes, uh I've been anticipating this this conversation actually for many years because I I would love a new new space with more room and meetings and visitation rooms. Um but I do need six to 12 months to coordinate with the state because we have to go through VA and and various other aspects to to get things shifted over. Have you looked around the old courthouse to see if any if that would um be um what would be the best space for you? Uh I looked at the the building plans that were on the public website just a few weeks ago. Um uh just kind of see what the the layout was. I mean, I've been in the courthouse many, many times, but um uh you know, I mean, a lot of it is I mean, I have 22 employees, so um I think there's probably square footage that would house us. Um but, you know, there there would probably need to be a good amount of uh walls moved and and such to make it reasonable and and all. So, how many how many rooms do you have at the one you got now? Uh, so everyone has an office except for three in our front office. They they share uh the front office um the front desk area. Um and then there's a like a little kitchenet like a little rest area. There's a small conference room. Uh, a large chunk of our current space is actually the utility room right in the center of the building, which is really inconvenient. Um, what's the square footage? I know

you need more square footage, but I know that is it 8,000? I want to say it's 8,000. So, we're trying to We've been there since the early 70s. Yeah. Well, we have an interest in getting you out of there. you and the school board out of there. We're trying to figure out how much room is in that building to see how many of these off sites can be moved in there. Yeah. But they have to be colllocated to an entrance door too. Yeah. Yeah. Public access is really significant for us. We have a lot of um disabled individuals who who need easy access. You need ADA compliant all the all of them currently 6,000 I'm just saying what we're looking at a building it has to be we can't look at a building has stairs and correct right so that building over there there's several um places that could be uh ingress egress for um that would comply and there's some that you could make comply Yeah. Yeah. Well, I we're not we haven't figured that part out yet, though. But I um would encourage you to or Mr. Sonic to talk to your landlord and tell them that we're paying $78,000 that that you think should be included, too. If they're going to fuss over $5,000, then should have been going out of there years ago anyhow. We can certainly include that in the negotiation. Well, how about now just go to him and say, "Hey, we want you to pull this out of our lease because we're paying you this amount of

money. We think it would be fair if you remove that from our lease." And they would say no. They'd say yes. I think it'd be also beneficial and you know I can come and meet with you but to start thinking about how you want to organize your st as large is as large as your staff is and your needs to start thinking about some sort of a floor plan or a layout that would that would be it may not be what you end up with but a given idea. So if we have to because some of the building over there is going to get ripped out, you know. So if it needs to be rebuilt, what does it need to look like? Sure. Yeah. Some of your thoughts might want to go towards um for office space, cubicles, and then you have an interview room and those type private things. The private like so in the you know the circuit court, you could put everybody in there in cubicles. Need cubicles. I know a bunch of them you got for free that are really nice. High ceilings and everything. Yeah. Yeah. And and that's actually So I've I've already been having conversations with Spsylvania because they're currently in the process of moving um uh and talked about layout with them. Um other agencies in our in our area um are in similar predicaments. Small spaces kind of peace meal over the years. Stafford is kind of throughout uh their two different buildings. Um and so yeah, I I welcome those conversations and any ideas, but uh I know a major need for us is um uh some smaller visitation rooms or smaller meeting rooms as opposed to just a large conference room. do need a large conference room so we can have staff trainings and such like that um

and our board meetings and and all but um what we what we lack right now is just meeting space um with families, you know, so uh kids come and they sit at a board table to visit their parents if they're in foster care and it's it's just not it's not conducive. So, well, like like I was mentioning right outside the courtrooms, there's there's two um lawyer rooms that could be perfectly adapted to your needs. Correct. Um so, let's just think about that and so we can try to get you all out of there. Yeah. You know, sounds good. And we I would prefer that you all be in one building and not be in two buildings. Yes. I mean, even if also think about some of these rooms in here because they could be moved into that and you could be in this direction or those type of things. But we I think that we're trying to move along quickly on that. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else? Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you. Appreciate you. Okay. Sheriff Marion Sheriff, let me pull this up. So, sheriff can be found on page 19, revised. How you doing today, Mr. Charles? Living the dream, chairman. Living the dream. So, since the March 18th presentation, I've made two changes uh to the sheriff's budget. Uh the first is regarding uh 5540 the travel it was 112850 I took it down to 85,000 flat and the reason for doing this you know looked at last year's budget was 84987

and I looked at the the years before that 43,000 actual expenditures 57,000 actual expenditures the year before I believe there's there's one specific course that the sheriff has added I think that threw the cost up but you know looking at the uh the the actual expenditure for the last couple years. I I've kept it at a flat budget at 85,000. The other large uh it's a large cut, but um down in 80 80 where we at 8201, $120,000. This is for the upfit of of new patrol vehicles. So, this item was actually passed in the CIP, so it is no longer needed. um the the police interceptors that are the packages that are purchased. There's the upfitting of the equipment on those vehicles that was included in the $65,000 total price tag for each vehicle in the CIP. So we we were able to pull it out of the operating budget. So those are the the two large cuts that I've made from sheriff and I think he has a sheriff and I spoke 30 minutes ago. Um is it this or the 911? It's the 911 budget. So, he's here for a couple. We've got the um we've got the sheriff's office and the 911 um with Sheriff Giles here. So, animal control. Animal control. We got three. So, you want to focus on you want me to go through there's there's some cuts to the animal control that I'm proposing also. Would you like to hear them all right now and then come back or how would you like to do it? Everything he's involved with. Sounds good. So, animal control is uh page 30 revised. So, so there were some changes since the the March 18th and those changes involved uh we the the vehicle um it was actually not remove was reduced the vehicle repair maintenance budget from 5,000 to 3,000. That was a $2,000 cut. And then

remove funds for adoption for advertising um in its entirety for $1,000. I think pet adoption is great. You know, one thing that caught my eye as I drove down the road a couple days ago was the vaccination clinic on the sign out there. I was like, well, there's an option right there for for advertising. If you board wants to keep it, that's fine. Again, I'm I'm looking at, you know, really everything here in the budget in its totality. And the other uh that the other item would be E91, which is page 23. Those are three departments uh under sheriff. Can we go to the increase in the due to replacement of the kennels on page 19? Okay. What are the increases? Which budget are you talking there? Are you talking the sheriff's office or you talking animal control? Sheriff's office. Page 19 increases due to replacement of kendalls is 20,000. No, that that's a misrepresentation. It's it's the whole K9 services that includes the care and maintenance insurance and then the replacement of the kennels. The replacement of the kennels is only 5,000 each. Okay. So that's not increased due to replacement of the kennels. Well 5,000 of 5,000 of that. Okay. Is the increase. What was the other 15? You had care and maintenance at 4,000 for two dogs which is the 8,000. And then the K9 insurance is for two K9s is a thousand each. So it's the same. Last year was 10K for the um for the services and with the addition of the 10,000 for the um two kennels bumps it up to the 20K. Okay. It's up here on the board. Miss Collins, you want to see? I can't see that. I keep telling y'all I can't see that. Big. Yeah, I still can't see it. Okay. Thanks. there. Um the 54,000

for on page 19 still on the main budget replace outdated equipment. I don't I don't have those numbers for as far as for the pages. I need the account number. What's the account? The what? What's the account? Is it 3162? What is the 8103? Yes, these are the patrol dash cams. I believe they're replacing the outdated equipment that's no longer in in service. I mean, under warranty. So, there's a $54,000 one and a $10,000 one and 8107 L. So 8107 is the um ID card printers that we would use to do our our badges to get in and out of our building and the battery backups are to replace the existing outdated battery backups in the office. Okay. The um human resources doesn't do your ID thing. No, we do it ourselves. the smelling. Why is that? It's easier for us to get them and more expeditiously done when we do changes. That's interesting. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Um Okay. I'm I'm kind of surprised that it's only $1,000 in the budget for extradition of prisoners out of state because that because we get reimbured by the Supreme

Court of Virginia. So you have you have000 extra that that co that covers what we do and then we we get reimbursed. Okay. Okay. I got good question. I I like Can we do the 911 that we started to do? What page is that, sir? Mr. uh 23 under under 3160 professional services employee wellness that was that was inadvertently put in there for telecommunications week. We cover that under our law enforcement project um funds. So I've asked Mr. Smolick and Levita to take that out. That's a $3,000 that we were going to budget for telecommunications week which is next week. But um that doesn't need to be in there because it was duplicated inadvertently. And then there's 5801 and dues and membership. Um 20 a quantity of 22 was put in there for APCO memberships and APCO is the automated um medical system that we use. They have to we have to have be members of that and we had inadvertently put in a quantity of 22 for 160 each which was was a total of 3,520. I'm reducing it to 12 which would put the total at 1,920. Thank you for the voluntary

reductions. I thought you'd like that. Is there any Is there anything else, Mr. Chairman, on this one? Good. Thank you, Sheriff. Appreciate. Thank you, Chief. All right. Thank you, board. Next, we have fire rescue. There are several budgets here. Let me pull these up. Can we do them one page at a time so I can Yes, you can do one page at a time. What's the first one? Um, we'll go emergency services 24 revised 24R. Okay. So, looking at this, looking at the the the budget, and I know I've already read some things. I think we all got an email from Mr. Beverly. Um I know it's already out on social media right now. So the state gets it's it's an aid to locality. So the way this works is 1% of insurance premiums go into a pot in the Commonwealth and then those funds are divvied out by population. As the population goes up, the amount of money goes up. FY26, our allocation will be 1,00 $136,950. and I pulled the the age of localities program and I'm going to read you eligible uses of the funds. So eligible uses of the funds include funding fire prevention and public education programs um payment of personnel costs related to fire and medical training, purchasing personal protective equipment and purchasing equipment and supplies. So these are eligible costs. This is free money that does not come out of the

taxpayers money. However, it comes to us. Last year, I know with the eight localities, uh most recently there was a a purchase of a new boat, $43,000. And I know some of the warrants that have been discussed at the boards were for education for bachelor degrees for some of our staff members. My position on this is if we have $136,000 for to pay for PPE, to pay for gears, to pay for training, we should use the free money first rather than using the taxpayer money. So, whenever I read this uh memorandum from Mr. Beverly talking about areas that are cut $45,000 for train 455 for training PPE and turnout gear $35,000 and then fire prevention education 5,000 reduction which is a total elimination not a total elimination because these funds that I cut these are part of them are fully covered by the grant. It encourages our staff to use the grant first and to buy PPE turnout gear rather than paying for college education for some staff members. And that's why I pulled it out. On top of that, looking at, you know, the the the the budget as an overall um Mr. Stone, before we get to that next thing about when you mentioned that those um supposed the cuts. So first off there uh Virginia doesn't recognize unions. Okay. Second of all there is no collective bargaining unless the localities agreed and we haven't agreed. So therefore any employee that's not a constitutional officer's employee is governed by the county administrator and their supervisor. So, according to our

county policy and the fire department's SOPs, they cannot put out that type of stuff without it going through the chief and you. And and I'm really tired of them circumventing these policies because they think they have some negotiating powers. They need to be held accountable for what they're doing. And I'm I'm tired of it. So they're not union, you know, they don't scare me. There needs to be some sort of action taken on this disciplinary action. Okay. So noted what I was and in addition on top of this again focus on using free money instead of taxpayer money to pay for the turnout gear. Um, looking right now, so we are 10 weeks away from the end of this fiscal year. Right now, the emergency service budget has about $2.9 million that they have not spent from FY25. That's a substantial amount of money. $400,000 is a penny. So, I mean, you're looking at seven and a half pennies worth of money that's still there for 10 weeks left to go in the year. And then looking at uh what I did for all departments, I went ahead and pulled a four-year look back of of you know what was returned at the end of every year. This particular department emergency services the four-year average was $1,40,249 returned to the county. So I wanted to to set the stage with that because I know this this came out to the board members. It's already out on social media right now. We are not making cuts. There's money that will pay for the turnout gear. There's money that will pay for fire prevention and there's money that will pay for the training. So, you know, my recommendation is to

use that money versus how it's been spent in the past. So, that's if any board members have any questions on that, use the grant money first. That's use the grant money first. That's why um in emergency services 5540 I've reduced the travel budget from 49,600 to 4100 savings of 455. I removed all funds from fire prevention education 5,000 down to zero. Remove uh removed all funds for supplies for the upkeep of vehicles that was a savings of 11,000. And remove all funds for the replacement of PPP and turnout gear. No, not all funds. Um I removed 35,000. and it went from 96,720 to 61720. So all those funds, those cuts in uh sheet 24R are and reimburseable by the age of localities grant. Very good job, sir. Thank you. Thank you. So um the 7437 which is code books, the NFPA and subscriptions. How many code books? How many sets of code books? I'll pull that up real shortly here, sir. I believe it's fine. I believe so. Let me let me pull it up myself as Mr. Sm looking at it. These are online subscriptions. This is so here we NFPA code subscription 1777. There's a weather bug subscription for a

th00and active 911 subscriptions um 125 at 1350 the freelance start uh no that's that's taken out I'm sorry fire engineering one at $34 fire and police selection one at $1612 NFPA 921 code books there's one at $325 and a digital codebook subscription one at $1,000 So one one one digital code book. One digital code book. So that means that all fire and rescue can see that one. That's correct. Right. Yes. We don't need the others, right? Or uh what he mentioned was not code books with Mr. Smolder. I think he just read down the list. So there's other things that are subscriptions. So, for example, the NFPA code subscription is uh our online to the entire fire code. Um, so we um I won't get into I guess all the details, but I can tell you that if we uh if we did not utilize it the way we are utilizing it, it would be 10 times as expensive. So, there's one subscription to that, correct? Okay, no problem. But that's not and that's not a code book. That's the subscription to the code. And then the code books on number eight. That's at one digital that's shared. That's Virginia code books. Yes, sir. Okay. So there's one in one. One in one. Okay. And then uh the other subscriptions. Um so you need the code books and you need the the NFPA, but I don't think that that's necessary for all the for the other um subscriptions. Well, the fire engineering and all that type of stuff. Well, I can tell you the freelance star after this week, they can

probably not going to be renewing that. Um, hope not. So, that that's a that's a different story. If you want to wipe out uh reduce our budget by $55. Um, already noted. Already reduced. Okay. I must have reduced it before I submitted the budget. Was that So, uh, freelance is out. freelances out. Good. $55. Uh, and you can go online and get that for free anyhow. No, that's No, we we were told uh this week that the $160 that we paid for an online subscription was uh that three days later after we we made that purchase, they changed the terms and they never notified us and they took that $160 credit or payment that we made and charged us $40 per month. So today, if you want freelance star online subscription, it's $40 per month, which is 560 bucks a year. Well, that's that, isn't it? That's that. So, if you if u maybe I'll share Mr. uh Small account. So, do you get a subscription at this office? We do just to keep up with all the the advertisements and what we have to put to make sure that everything's in there. Yes, sir. We share it and and I Yeah, keep up on the news. The um there there's definitely some other ones in here that I would I would certainly advocate not um not eliminating the fire and police selection. This is our what that is is when we hold a when we bring we hire new people, we have to hire a company and the company provides us a test. So when we have 40 people show up and they want

to be firefighters, they have to take a written exam. And so they provide these written exams. They provide all of our promotional exams. These exams, you cannot just say, "Hey, I'm gonna whip up an exam. Here you go." They have to be vetted, accredited, and authorized because there's times that those exams have gotten into question. Mr. Collins certainly knows, you know, uh where he retired from, promotional processes are very uh at least in our department, they are a very uh it's a very regimental process and it has to be very very vetted. So everything you paying for those I'm sorry, how much you pay? It depends on the exam and it uh on a this the it it's in the 1612. Okay. So that's uh uh that would be new and and and promotional. No problem. Fire engineering. Fire engineering is a is is magazine. We get fire engineering. We've had it for years. It's got a lot of good articles. It's great for career development. We got a hundred people that will that can read the same magazine. That's a lot better than um you know buying a whole lot of separate subscriptions or we have one for the department. There's a lot of subscriptions we don't have. We don't we don't do a lot of them, but that's one that we have done. If we want to cut out $34 a year and find that that's more value, I wouldn't recommend it, but we could do that. The active 911 subscription, um as uh Supervisor Bender, Supervisor Collins, you you are you are on active 911. Uh, Mr. Smoldick's on active 911. Like to get the others on it, too. But that is every time we get a fire and rescue call, that pops across your phone. Tells you what the call is, tells you where it's at, tells you um, you know, who may be responding, whether it's a mutual aid

call or not, and it gives us a map. I would I would highly We utilize it more from a operational standpoint. How much is that? that is uh yeah it's about it's 13 what I'm seeing 125 at 1350 a subscription I don't have any problem with that um would could you the past exam that you gave for new firefighters and your promotional exams past I don't want future I don't want people's I just want a blank copy. I'd like to I'd like to look at them. We can't give you one. Why not? I can't even keep one, right? Because people take it and then they'll start using it. Once it gets out, they start selling to people and I'm not I I want to see what the questions are. Doesn't work like that, though. Yeah. They I would I would get in trouble. It's a proctor. They uh the fire police selection uh police would come lock me up and I I I can't even keep one. In fact, they are so when these tests come in, they are they are security taped. Okay, we have to open each tape for each individual and and that's how they charge us. So they charge us per each broken book booklet and then we have then then they give us the you know the three-page copyright uh legal ease uh of all the uh you know action that would be taken if you decide to put it on the Xerox machine. How about the study guides then? Surely they're com they're accessible. Have a study guide? There's there's no study guide for it. You don't have study guides? No. Well, the promotion there's there's like, you know, there's like books of like, you know, what our industry like it may say, hey, we're going to test you on um Yeah, they're based on certain text. That's correct. Uh could could you send me the contact of that testing

organization? Absolutely. It's called fire and police selection. I can send you the u by email, please. Sure. Yep. Is there anything else on um on this page 24? I have a question. It was brought up earlier. So I we're talking on there. There's a line for uh postage meter in Reicho, right? Reicho, which is a uh which um let me line I think it's 5410. Okay. I'm pretty sure we got rid of the postage meter, but see 410 on on page 24R. Yes, sir. I'm with you. Yes, sir. That that is um that's not that is listed in there. It is not part of the budget. We got rid of it. Is am I right? That that is correct. It's I've got it up on the screen here. Yes. the initial request came in, but it it was deleted when it came in, and I've since pulled off the the lease for the one vehicle. So, just the Rico copier. I'm thinking it may have uh came in. It may that may have been carried over from last year, but we we got rid of it last year. So, the postage meter is gone. Gone. Yes. So, this amount is only for the copy machine, correct? Yes. 3,21384. And we need a new copy machine. The one we have now has been in service for over probably close to a decade. And we bought it used. We've had it repaired. The repair prices are going up. The last three times it's been repaired. The repair man came there from Southern Copier and he said, "You need to start planning to get rid of this thing." He said, "The parts are just getting," he said, "We can't even hardly find them." And then we were out without a copy machine, which is also not the copier, it's it's the facts, it's the scanner,

it's the you know, all it's a multi. you get one. Don't get one that comes from China when you get a replace. Not sure of Rico, but yeah, I agree. I think we can get one here. More the better. Does the union is the union allowed to use the copier? Uh, no. And let can I state something before I I don't speak on behalf of the of Mr. Beverly or local 4438. So, and I know you know that I work for for this man and and for you and um and and that's a county department. So, I'm not I'm I am not as the chief of the department. I know I've heard some people say, "Hey, chief, you know, you're a member of the union." I'm not a member of the union. I can't be a member of the union even if I wanted to be a member. So, I I I don't come here today. I don't speak on his behalf. I I did see the letter this morning. Personally, I thought it was I thought it was written fairly, I guess, respectful. Um I didn't see anything derogatory in the letter. Um but, you know, I think they're just you certainly advocating for for for a robust budget to provide services to the community. And I think it was is it is in good intent. Um but I understand where some of you are coming from. So chief, so what? He is an employee of yours, correct? He doesn't have the authority to put out that information. He can put it out as a private citizen, but he is not anything that has to do with a fire service. He is your employee, all of them. And they can't just be spilling out stuff and then causing community havoc. That's usually their goal. You don't have to respond to me on that. I I'd like to, but but what I'm

telling you is is that you manage them. They need to stop doing some of their actions be and follow your their SOPs and the county um personnel policies as they are presented. Now, can I respond? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would uh encourage that if that is the direction of the board. Um I have been told I have been told to uh that that is not the case in the past and that um there are they they they have a lot of rights. Now he can't put the county can't write that on county letterhead. I've been told that they cannot uh that if they want to have a if they want to have a union association, I as the chief and this us as a county cannot say whether they can exist or cannot exist. That's true. And they can't use the shield. They can't use the logos. They can't say that um King George Fire and Rescue because they don't have the the authority to do that. only you do and small. So, so that I've I've watched their pages and they they're out there with King George vehicles. There's no there's I mean it's pretty obvious and King George uniforms and King George names and hats and showing people's um fires and showing people in in um uh negative situations, showing people's vehicles and accidents when their family members aren't even notified. So, I've read your SOPs. I've read all the county thing and and they are in violation. I didn't say

they couldn't participate in the union. I said they can't represent themselves as King George firefighters. I I would um I would uh I would like to have more of a you know a discussion with Mr. Smolnik and and probably just get something something black and white for me of what it is that I'm supposed to enforce. I've been told by by a county attorney in the past that that I have I you know I I can't do anything about that. Well, I've run like I've run all this through our current county. Yes, sir. That's all that really matters at this point. Correct. Whatever was in the past is doesn't make a difference is today's rules and today's laws, today's SOPs, today's county um policies. tomorrow the county policies and the SOPs could be different but you have to operate on what you got what you got I'm in I'm in clear uh and in my view I'm is very clear and the county attorney is very clear in these views this is not open for interpretation but that's between you and him okay Mr. So, I'd just like to make the point I don't have a problem with this email that came to us because it only came to us, you know, and it was all inside the lifelines of of your department and and here among the board of supervisors. I absolutely don't want to see it on Facebook because it only tells one side of the story. And as Mr. small neck um you know laid out earlier there there's a whole other side of this you know where these things that are being represented as being completely cut there are alternate means of paying for it if it's out there like this it looks like we're just telling you to do everything with nothing lie anything that's a halftruth is a lie and and they don't ever I'm sorry but they

don't ever put anything out to make us look good okay and what they do is they try to pressure and bully And it makes me want to do the opposite. It doesn't work on me. And I know it doesn't work on the rest of us either. And it's not the way to to want to communicate with us by trying to bring other people in to go against us. And then I got to explain it and then the why wherever I am. And people go, "Oh, I didn't know." Of course you didn't know because they didn't let you know that. They let you know a side that reflects in a certain way to lead to lead people to believe a certain perspective that's not absolutely true. Half truth is a lie. Right. And as I as I stated, I I don't I'm not here to speak on the the local 44. But Mr. Collins is is right about one thing. They are your employees regardless of what little group they're in. But they have they basically whenever they post this on Facebook, they're attacking us because they only told half the story. And honestly, I've been so busy today, I haven't even checked that they even posted anything. And and we're not even being attacking against you, making you and this is look, this is no different than the conversation I had with the school superintendent about teachers breaking the same policy. So, I'm not holding you to a different standard than I hold anybody else to. You know, there's teachers that go on, they break policy, and I'm going, "What are you going to do about that? That's against the guidelines. That's against the rules." He's like, "Okay, Mr. Davis, didn't that's what you want? It's your It's your job. It's your thing. Do what you got to do. But if people break rules. Yeah. I just I would like some of that clarity that Mr. Collins, Supervisor Collins had spoke about because So we we're going to table this off because it's not part of the budget. Sure. Right. And and it's not why you came here, but this is a conversation that you need to have with Mr. Small y'all. And then just we'll catch up Mr. Smark where it is and and maybe you and I can catch up about some of the stuff later on down the line, too. Okay. That sound good? Yeah, absolutely. All right,

but this this is not budget talk, so let's get off of this. I do have a question just on the last one because we're talking about leases. Yep. We're talking about leases. Is this another one that's going to roll off as a lease? The Dodge Ram that's right there on the bottom. Yes. You see the the reduction, the county administrator adjustment 43.99. That is that is off. Yes, ma'am. I just wanted clarifying because I was going to ask that earlier, but we kind of deviated. Can I ask a question because I actually have one on on the the lease? I'm not at least on my copy. I'm not showing where it's per month. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Never mind. Y'all got y'all got the y'all got the right one. The one I printed off did not. So maybe there was some last minute adjustments. This is the one that was submitted by your department right here. Okay. Yeah. I'm not sure why I didn't print on my end, but that's yours is the main one. Yes, sir. So, just so you know, the letter as written, it's on Facebook right now. Understood. Yeah. I mean, I don't have a problem at all with them coming to us and advocating. Not a problem at all. But when you're putting a halftruth out there on Facebook, that pisses me off. Got understood. But we're supposed to be finished with this topic. We are. But Sully jumped in one more comment, so I am too. So, um, I've sent Mr. Mullnik every violation of the SOP and county policy that has occurred he has a copy of it. So he's fully aware of the violations with the union. With that with with certain members of your department? Yes. Means that the state doesn't recognize them as a union or They're we we refer to them as your employees. I don't what they're what little group that they're part of and

all that, but at the end of the day, they're your employees. Sure. That's just how we look at them. If they're Republican or Democrat or independents or liberals, they can be that, but they can't go out as a firefighter in their uniforms and so forth representing the fire department and whatever that is. Like you could come to the Republican party but not not represent. You'd be saying justformational. You can't say I support this person or that person. You understand what I'm saying? Same thing. Very much understand what you're saying. Yes. This again. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Moody. Anything else for the chief? Wasn't there another um We have more budgets for the fire. Yeah. Oh, well, I'm certainly happy. I can go through any questions you have. Yeah, we have the uh emergency services. What number next? Oh, I'm sorry. Uh fire rescue sheet 25R 25R. All right. And I was um listening earlier um and I took some notes. I think there was a question about how do we about our fuel tanks, our new fuel tanks we have in and uh later I'll be at some point I'll be giving a coming back to you in one of your meetings and giving a presentation about that project. Uh very excited about that project coming in way way under budget. I think you'll be very pleased with the um with the turnout. Um but uh to answer that question that was asked in case it was forgotten, I I I jotted it down when I before I came in. Is that about the size? It was about the

size and also how do we know when they have to be filled up, right? And the the answer to that is is that so we we will have corals. Corals will be will be our vendor that will supplies and they have a transmitter just like like a lot of your propane tanks. your propane tanks will has a transmitter. The company knows when it gets to a certain level and and it's on automatic delivery. The beauty of that is is that we can log into that and see it. We can see where it's at when it gets filled. We also have a fuel management system and that fuel management system will allow uh so you just don't pick the nozzle up and start pumping gas. You got to have we're we're we're working on it as we speak, but it'll be kind of like a a two-part uh verification, authentification. You'll have to put in the vehicle number and then you'll have to put in your unique ID and then we will be able to run a report at the end of the month. So, we just got diesel. Diesel uh was delivered last week, 327 a gallon. Probably not too bad for where diesel is, right at all. So, we got a price uh today on gasoline and I I I was uh really shocked because I I I um told my staff I said I I want a price on regular pump gas and I want a price on non-ethanol gas because a lot of we use we use a lot of chainsaws and generators and things need non-ethanol gas in them preferably and 317 a gallon regardless whether it's non-ethanol. So I said non-ethanol, same price for pump gas and non-eanol. And anybody knows about getting non-ethanol. Usually it's about 20 30 cents more a gallon if not more. So u so we're excited about that and more to come. More to come. I'll walk through the project. We're going to we're going to give you more information on it. We So with putting that that verification that's a great that's we're going to be able you're going to know

you know who pumped the fuel or what far. That's right. Supposedly, so if you put in a bin or something, but what about for a chainsaw? Or what about for a fuel can? It's being used for chainsaws, power equipment, lawnmowers, things. So, we were talking about having the the uh is it general properties or parks and wreck coming over to be able to get fuel because I mean, right now they're going to sheets. Yes. Yes. So, if they come over, we're going to have to maybe in in your system. I'm just thinking that there is a code that identifies parks and wreck and maybe another so maybe the first three digits park and wreck, the fourth digit tells them what it's whether it's going for landscaping or whatever, it's going to vehicle fuel, something some type of a Yeah. way to put that code in so that we can figure it out, you know. Yes, sir. and and and we we are um we were anticipating that to be for there for it to be set up with multiple users other than our department and then we can track them and then come the end of the month when I or I have to get it filled up I come to them and say here's what you owe us okay here's your bill and that way we can uh we can keep it separated by department for the fuel expenses and plus you can it helps budget for the year so you'll you know you have one year you see what this is and next year. So it'll give you an average usage, you know, and by by the by the um even by the weather usage because you know, you run more stuff, plows and stuff in the winter with snowb blowers and all that stuff. But yeah, I mean, you know, like parks and wreck and a vehicle number 2705. 2705. I'm employee number 5263. it goes in there. If I'm getting gas for my

lawnmowers, um, still the same employee number, but it's lawnmower gas. Of course, you know, somebody is using 25,000 gallons of lawnmower gas a year, there might be a problem. You know what I mean? And and we, if I could mention two points about this, I'm excited about their project, as you probably tell. It's been a long time in the making. The biggest thing that I that I think that it brings to the county is is it is a critical infrastructure for us as an entire county. Okay. We we've had, you know, in when when we had the um the Colonial Pipeline hacked and all every and we were in a fuel crisis for about a week, we had emergency vehicles, ambulances, and fire trucks backed up past Company One trying to get into the sheets. Gas stations were running out of fuel. Okay. In 2012, there was a diesel fuel crisis. The state can provide us in a state of emergency fuel. Guess what? We got to have a place to put it. Now, we have a place to put it. So, we So, more than just saving money. We'll save some money, but more than saving money, we're going to have that. The fuel is a critical commodity, especially in a state of emergency. And and we have that now. And that's uh that's good. And the second second point is is that also about security secure we are we're going to have a camera pointed out there and it's going to be under video surveillance. So if we ever have say hey we got a question what's this what's this this weird uh you know uh 30 gallons of for for a lawnmower. Well we can go back and look at the tape on it. So let me ask you a question. Um, moving on from there, the cleaning supplies. If you were listening earlier, you heard me speak to Mr. Muny about the cleaning supplies. You're at

$3,600. And so I I've been asking for us to buy in bulk and that includes y'all cleaning supplies. Mr. Small, when you do that whole cleaning supplies business. Yes. And then Chief Moody, just like uh Mr. Franklin, Mr. Clark had a response. They've watched the uh the March 18th meeting. So, um the $3,600 cleaning supplies is for three volunteer county owned buildings. It includes $1,200 per building per year. It also includes cleaning materials to clean and disinfect ambulances, fire trucks, bathrooms, bunk houses, and equipment decontamination. So, you know what that's used for? That's it's a $100 a month you can figure for uh for each station to to do the f to do those uh those items that I just mentioned. Yeah. And so and a lot of that also uh in decon part of that 1,200 first station. Okay. That's not bad. Is there anything else on that? Mr. Chairman, I don't see anything else. Any other questions? Well, if I can move. We have the two other budgets. The the one that's up right now. Uh the the next one will be uh the 35R. So this is a fire rescue. So item 611 remove funds for turnout gear and PPE from 525 to 22,000. Again, this came across yes as a county administrator cut. This does not mean the county administrator were not buying PPE. This means we're saving the taxpayers $30,500 and using the free grant money instead of the general fund. So the the turnout gear is still going to be purchased and and rest assured our firefighters will be safe. Um so that is that is one cut and the other cut was remove funds from the general operations equipment 50,100 to 40,150 for a reduction of 9950 again using the the age to localities grant. This will still be purchased. There's still money to

purchase it just just from the grant money instead of taxpayers. And Mr. Smolding, just to um add on that line also about some of the protected gear. I'm hoping we get some of that um that funding out of the um eventually out of that sighting agreement for the battery energy storage. They they went on record said they provide us five sets of gear every um I think every five years. So that's a that's a good add-on. Well, so if you were listening to the soldier solar, um, I advocated for equipment and training and pay we're trying to get these these organizations that are um, interested in coming here to pay their fair share of your needs. Yes. And we we we appreciate you being the advocate for that because if not then it goes back in the budget request like we're here today. Well, if you would if you read Facebook, you would think that I'm not an advocate of the of the uh of the fire and rescue, which I am, but you wouldn't believe that by reading that. I'm not I'm not I don't do Facebook. I don't have an account. Never had. So, anyhow, is there another one with Mr. Steve Moody? No. No, sir. That was it. I'm looking at my notes here. 911 is covered under sheriff. So, we just had fire rescue emergency services. What's next? Whenever you're talking to department heads, Mr. Smolding, I mean, whenever you're doing your reviews on them, that's another thing is is identifying the review how much money they were able to cut out of the budget and save. So, yes. So, and if I could, I just got uh some correspondence from this came from Judge

Strickland. Um, regarding So, he's he he's I guess is relate back to him. He want to apologize for not being here. I'm not going to read this. Um, he was attending duties in West Morland County. As it relates to request for travel money, I advise you that the Commonwealth of Virginia does in fact pay for travel and fees for their annual judicial conference required by the code of Virginia. Beyond that, all the education and training that we as judges participate in must be either paid by the localities in which we serve or in some cases is provided by other federal or state grants. I've endeavored over the years to be frugal in my travel and training. I've attended when possible various free and grant funded seminars both in the Commonwealth and elsewhere. For example, the National Computer Forensics Institute puts on a week-long seminar relating to digital evidence, privacy, and fourth amendment issues related to the same. I took that class in 2022 and I found it to be extremely helpful in my work reviewing search warrants and handling everyday criminal cases. Uh, this class was in Hoover, Alabama, but all was paid by federal government. Another example is a one-day seminar I attended last year at the Department of Forensic Sciences in Richmond. This class gave judges an inside look at how blood and breath samples were analyzed in criminal cases that was free. While I was sitting in Stafford, I attended a neuroscience seminar in Boston sponsored in part by Harvard Medical School about the science behind addiction. This was paid partially by the grants and Stafford County paid a particular pdeium for any meals. The bottom line is that I'm here to serve King George County. I would like to uh avail myself the opportunities to learn and better myself as a judge so I can do a better job more efficiently and more effectively. The money which is being sought would only be used annually to attend educational seminars on var various topics. It is entirely possible that some years I will not attend any such programs where in other years I may attend more than one. Rest assured I am not choosing the seminars and classes based on the subject matter, my schedule and the ultimate decision that I think they will make to make me a better judge. I

recognize the need for you to scrutinize and make sure you are prudent gatekeepers of the county's money. Rest assured, I take very seriously my obligation to being a good steward of this position in all its efforts. Regarding the consist regarding the current situation I am in, I signed up for a judicial writing class at the National Judicial College in Reno, Nevada. This is a nationally accredited facility that trains judges on a wide array of topics. The total cost of the class itself was $1,998. This does not include any travel and is solely for the course which is four days. I was able to obtain a $1,000 scholarship from the college and then use $998 of funds from the Virginia Supreme Court fund that is limited annually to 1,500. They approved and paid that amount. This will leave my airfare, travel, and meals to be paid hopefully by the county. The hotels are at discounted rates for either government employees or at the college itself and some of the lunches and breakfastes are included. I anticipate $500 to $700 in airfare, $500 to $7 in hotel fees, and perhaps $200 in meals. Thus, most of my travel train will be used for one class. Thank you in advance for consideration of this request. If you need further information or anything you would like to discuss, I'll be happy to do so. Sincerely, J. Bruce Strickland. So, is is Wes Mullen going to do 40%, we do 60% since he's sitting in both? That was kind of the question. I think it was would be do we do the 250 or do we do 60% of 250 I think is the question I think it was 250 is it 250 a judge I think that's what they had the hand I think that was I think that was combined for that was combined combined for was 250 a judge I guess I shouldn't get too fussy with the judges I have a feeling that the county is going to be in front of some judges here. So, so, uh, Judge Strickland had

$2500 in his budget. To be honest, it is reasonable and what he mentioned in that letter is very vital to being a judge to be well informed on different topics. So, we have uh outside agencies. But before before I go there, as as was presented on the I guess I can pull it up here. Um, so Mr. Sona, can can I tell you which ones I support for fire rescue or for the for the outside agencies? Okay. Okay. You want to just go to outside agencies? That that's let's let's go to outside agencies. Yes, sir. Um, so really where we're at just just for the the public's knowledge, we have we had many requests come in for outside agencies, you know, looking at the budget, trying to to find every penny in the budget. Um, we we made the decision to the ones that are state mandate, the ones that are mandated to be funded, we included those. Everything else, it was pulled. This was not an easy decision, but this is a a fluid document. So, Mr. I just wanted to to start with that some information. All right. Um support the Ferrisburg Regional Food Bank, the um Raphanic Council Against Sexual Abuse, the Thurman Briston Homeless Shelter, uh the SPCA and Safe Harbor and a dollar for the FRA. [Music] If I remember last year they br sent back I figure FRA just nothing not even bring it up no money for and also love thy neighbor. I'm sorry I missed that one that was on my list. Well I would like to add on to to Mr. Collins love thy neighbor because I do support love thy neighbor but there's I did find out

that they I would like to restrict it just to amount for King George residents not for Caroline because they do give to anyone who comes. So if we are looking at it strategically, it should be for King George residents only because I know the Thurman Brisbane Center is the data they provided is for the residents from King George that come and use their services. Are they able to do that? I mean kind of like a I don't know, but I know they had a very big ask I think was a little too much and I even said that. Yeah, I agree. That's way over the top. We can't do that. But I don't think I don't think the way they set things up. I don't think it lends itself to being able to track whether the money is going to a King George or a Carolina resident. Yeah. But you you also better um So if somebody comes to that organization who gives out food, then there should not be a restriction. You know, you should give them the food. You know, Christ said, "Love your neighbor, not love thy neighbor if they're in King George." Love your enemies, too. Yeah, I love G. That's the tough one. Um, so but the food bank in Fricsburg, if I'm not if I'm correct, um, helps u bring food down to the, um, love thy neighbor, so they need to be in the mix, too. They get a large portion from that. in Thurman Briston. Um, back in the old days, I was against Thurman Briston because I don't like handouts. But what I learned over time is that it's a hand up, not a hand out. So, they there's many I'm advocating for you all right now. Um, so when people come there, they have responsibilities. They can't be sex offenders and so forth. they they get um help with any type of addiction or those type of

things they have to work. They have um for families, they have for male, they have for female. I mean, it it um I wish the other one in Fredericksburg worked that way, but um I'm all for Thurman Burton. So hopefully you can fund that. And I do get your mail every month. You don't have to keep sending me mail. I'm all in. You can save that. We do get you know what they call them upstairs when our box love letters from Brisbane Center. But I will I will I'm totally in support with you and I've spoken out many times that I think there should be more multiple models and especially I think the Brisbane Center they don't always get the love because you don't take everyone because you wanted to do a hand up and to make sure everybody's safe. So I 100% support that. The one other thing that I would like to add in that we funded for the last time for the first time last year was the legal aid because there are as the the lady came out and I forget her name. feel bad that I did forget her name. She came and spoke to us that there were King George residents that were served last year with legal aid assistance. So, I I would at least like to add the legal aid works into that. So, can I ask is there any of them we all agree on? It's not even that, but you got to you brought in love by neighbor. What dollar amount are you looking at with love? Well, whatever you all agree I want to be funded it. So, I don't uh like the the food banks. Um I Well, Ken, the only reason I'm saying the food bank is because they bring a bunch of food to Love Thy Neighbor. So, they're their biggest supplier. So, if you take money from them, then they will bring food down here for Love by

Neighbor. So, that's the only reason why I added them with it. M Mr. Chairman, when you look at the outside, just just for clarification, just so you everyone's on the same page, this Love Neighbors requesting 76,800. So, this will also fund one full-time staffer plus a second staffer at 30 hours a week. We go down the list. Sure. one at a time, not the popcorn all over the place crap. And and actually address whether we want to fund this one or not. And then I mean if if we want to, we can talk about how much with each one or that we can come back and make a second pass and and address the amounts, but I mean I I can't keep up with the bam bam bam all over. All right. Go one at a time. So So the first one on the list would be American Red Cross or Raphanic. No, I'm okay with no okay with no. Okay. Disability Resource Center. No. You know what that is? You know what that is? that there was uh I think it was in it was in the um in our um it was an email there was there was a hyperlink for all the requests. Yes. That Mitch Fish had sent to you all and all of them tell you why they want money. If they have anything to do with that DEI or anything like that, they don't get my vote. The disability is more about like um individuals say with functional autism, getting them to where they can have a job at Walmart and they have a little apartment where they share with like two

or three people, you know, kind of living it on their own independently. It helps with that type thing. That's that disability resource center, right? I think I like Sully's approach, we may have to come back because, you know, whenever these saints work on your heart, then it it makes it it does make it tough. But, you know, that um because what you just said that makes me want to help those guys, right? So, salesman. So, when we go through these, I think about what what benefits King George citizens, not Fredericksburg. We have to Yeah. So, a lot of these things, they don't really help much down here. Like the loss the uh the loss clinic, you know, they there's hardly any. Anyhow, what's the next one? Empower health domestic violence uh education supports. No, because you got safe harbor down there. That that does the domestic violence for the folks in in here. system. The safe harbor is the one that the sheriff supports. That's why I support that one so they so people can be safe for you guys on that one. Okay. If it's being redundant, I would rather go with a safe harbor. Okay. So, we'll move uh next one is Fredericksburg Regional Food Bank. Yes. What did we do last year? Another 10. I was going to ask, can we reduce the amount for some of these to be able to fund more? But how much? How about the same as last year? Isn't that 10?

$10,000. Yes, it was 10, right? Yes. Okay. Well, here's the other thing. So, TC, you're saying we should fund Freddersburg because they give food to here. They give a large quantity than love thy neighbor. Okay. So, but but it it is it more beneficial just to give that straight to love thy neighbor then? Well, so the the food bank buys in super bulk. So, they bring you know they they buy that that love thy neighbor. So, it's better to contribute. So, $10,000, let's say, to the food bank and then maybe $35,000 for the um Love My Neighbor. Okay. You're saying you get more bang for the buck going to the Freddersburg? Yeah. Rather than going Love by Neighbor. Yes. So, we said 10,000 further. 10,000. Um Jon Community College. I would say no because you know if you especially when you're talking about your DEI if you've been reading the freelance start lately they're all about they're become very liberal just I said it well I would say because one of our um outside our statemandated it is is Rapahhanic community college because that's the one we're assigned to so this would be on you know that's how I look at it the one that was bringing the vocational things though to the county. They were talking about bringing the vocational, right? Worth development. Yeah. Yeah. But that's that's neither here nor there. Whether we give them money or don't give them money, that's through the school programs. The school, Miss Rinko, is that's all through their funding. Okay.

Yeah. Ken, if you look down here, Rapahana Community College, we already fund is a statemandated Healthy families. No, I'm I'm sorry. Can we go back? So, Germaine is at three. Keep it unfunded or I don't Okay, three. Very good. Thank you. You can skip down to love thy neighbor. I think we're not going to do any of the other ones. Love thy neighbor. So, you all wanted to Yeah. Well, so the 76. Yeah. because you know I don't think we really want to be funding their personnel because then we'll be that we did last year when we decided to give them money that was for their first person. Well, it was 35,000 last year. Yeah, I know. So, if you want to up it to 40, you know, talk about inflation as opposed to the 76. They uh they're a 501c. Yeah, there's several of them in there that What if we did 35? I'm trying to also be able to just say keep it at 35 because that would be 500. Yeah. Okay. We'll keep uh love that neighbor. We'll increase it 500 to 35 flat. Okay. America. No. Micah. No. Northern Virginia for age education. No. Does that does that help the 4? Does that support the 4 in high school? That basically is for their ed I think it's in front Royal. It basically funds that if I remember correctly. So So the school has the FHA. So this is for Northern Virginia 4 educational center. So we're agreed no on that one.

Rapan Council. Yes. Last year we did $450 or $400. Make it 500. I was just going to say that. What about five? Five. Okay. Actually, we didn't fund them last year. That's that's agreement. No. Then Raph Refuge DBA. Don't know what that one is. We got three nos for the uh house. Just want to make sure we're hearing the notes. I just want to make sure we're getting clear direction. Okay. If you don't hear a dollar amount, it's we're moving on to Okay. And for Brisbane, I would suggest 36. Wait a minute. Back at Rapahanic Refuge, that's Lois Hands Hope House. Yeah, but we didn't fund them last year. I was going to suggest Brisbane 36 since we're adding a little bit to each person's. How about 42? About 36. How about 45? About 36. How about 47? About 30. 36. You know, I love you guys. You can tell. I do too. But we're going in the hole with each one of these. Remember within 36,000? No community food connection. No. Fail safe error. No. For a guess. No. Yes. I say no. Yes. Why? Why are you say yes on it beside your 17-year-old dog you love so much? Did you just talk badly about my King George?

So, you know, when you we have King George Shelter and and we have the SPCA. And so, um, what I found in my time, um, in public service is that the things that people love in King George are their dogs and their guns. And so they I have heard more about supporting the SPCA than anything actually on this list. Sorry. So, um how about then we about $3,000. Is this through the this SBCA? That's not King George. That's Fredd. Well, it's Fishburg, but it we I've adopted dogs out of there. So, you know, they they're down here, too. They um they come down for events. Um the SPCA does all the time. No shelter. They do the I don't know that answer. They do the tearjerker commercials. Oh, you're talking about the dog. They're all tearjerker commercials where dogs. So, somebody suggested 3,000. I suggested 3,000 just to make you happy. Okay. Is there one more for 3,000? I'll take that as long as we can give uh legal aid works some money to 3,000 FPCA. You got three people did that? Yeah. I would skip the Bay Consortium. Yes. And then the Legal Aid Works. I'm going to put a pitch for 5,000. Oh my. I thought you said you're going to do 3,000 since we did the took the three off the SPCA. Well, the SPCA we never funded before, did we? Yeah. We didn't fund that last year. How about 3,000 for legal aid? All right. Hold on. Let me I don't really want to

fund it, but I was trying to be a team player. Well, we've gone up on all of them, so that's why I was trying to be fair to because we did fund them last year for the first time. How about four? Four street. Four for what? Oh, we skipped over. We go legal a No. What was what was legal aids? 3,000. 3,000. There's a reason I wanted to go one at a time. I went to four. I'm three. How many we got on three? Three. Three. Three. Three. Three. 3,000 legal aid work. And then the rest of them, the bold bid, these are statemandated. So they are all funded from Department of Forestry down to Tri County Soil Water Conservation District. All righty. All right, then. So, those amounts are solid. That's non-negotiable. That's just what we do. That's That's correct. We're done. That's not a donation. That's an expense then if it's mandated. Right. So, is there anything else, Mr. Chairman? Uh, that depends if you have anything else you want to talk about, Mr. Collins. No, I think I've done pretty well for today. You have done your spare share. Yes, sir. Is everybody happy and content? I probably I don't think so. Well, you know what we're going to do then? We're going to close out outside agencies. I'm going open up the secondary public comment. Is there anyone who wants to speak for public comment? No one. Would you guys like to speak? Come on. Since there's no one else, you get three minutes. Mr. chair, vice chair, supervisors, thank you very much for your support over the years. I'm David Cooper, the director of the Brisbane Center. Just wanted to drill down to some numbers. We

served eight individuals from King George County over the last year. One of those was a child. We served those over 807 bed nights. The cost for those bed nights is $5821. That's about $46,000 worth of services. So, we're grateful for the 35 $36,000 of support coming from the county. But what we do, as Mr. Collins is saying, we do provide a hand up. We work with folks. We equip folks with the tools that they need to be successful in the community. So, when we work with them about returning to the community, we we want them to be employed. We want them to be good parents. We want them to participate in our programming so they can be successful, productive citizens when they come back to the community. So, we're grateful for your support. Thank you, sir. I thought you said 36. It's 46,000. Yeah, it was $35,396 last year and I just heard Did I hear 36 or 46 just now? 46, right? Went to 46, DC. Yes, sir. That's a kid. That's a tax write off for you, buddy. That Yeah, it went right on profit. It went right on through. But um so where do you live, sir? I live in Caroline County, but I work in Yeah. King George. Yeah. King George. And I want to say very briefly, we have a lady that comes from King George. She served the elementary school children here as a cafeteria worker for years. She comes out to our center almost every day. And Gloria Burl, I can tell you, is a wonderful lady. She, too, you probably know her name. And without her, we wouldn't could not produce some of the food and services that we do. So, we're grateful for King George. And we serve recently eight folks from King George. We're hoping that number doesn't go up, but we're

preparing. She is a great lady. I grew up her her one of her her sons was one of my best friends. So, she was another mom, you know. I know you're talking about him. Thank you for everything you guys do because that's that's a good model. Thank you very much. Hand up. Yes, sir. Thank you. Try that pitch in the other other places. You got that changed, Mr. Small. Is there anyone else? Anyone online? That was a correspondence, Mr. Mr. Chair, I move that we adjourn the board of supervisors to Tuesday, April 15th, 2025 at 5:30 p.m. in the boardroom of the River Home Building. Second. Motion properly second. Any further discussion? All in favor say I. I. We are journed.