Service Authority Board - Regular Meeting

Yeah, it should be him. Yeah, it should be him. All right, I'll call to order this. All right, I'll call to order this. Do you get the King George County Board of Supervisors? Do you get the King George County Board of Supervisors?

I call to order the King George County Board of Directors. King George County Board of Directors. Will you please join me? Will you please join me? We stand for the invocation that will be led by Bill Davis.

Bill Davis. The pledge of allegiance is to follow. The pledge of allegiance is to follow.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time just to come together. And we just acknowledge you, Lord. We acknowledge your presence. Your word says where two or more gathered in your name that you're there. And we just thank you for that. We thank you for the fact you're always present. You're always with us. We thank you for a chance today, dear God, to go about the county's business. Give us wisdom to make those decisions. And thank you for a chance tonight to honor a true pillar to our community who served our community. And now he's with you and his wife. And we appreciate you. We love you in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

all right folks thanks y'all for thank you all for joining us tonight come on in grab a seat um if you didn't see it i don't see how you couldn't probably tripped over it on the way in there's a bigger cooler of ice water over there please help yourself the air conditioning's been busted for a little while we're working on getting it fixed but it's not going to be tonight you'll see announcements that our next several meetings we couldn't get it scheduled in time for tonight but our next several meetings are going to be over the sheriff's office um what we use uh you know for as an alternate place of meeting sometimes so it'll be a little bit cooler over there next time um but for tonight please help yourself um i want to thank everybody for coming out tonight and um let's see what else oh i wanted to let you know that you can see that mr o'botham is is acting as the the chair for the board of directors tonight for the service authority miss uh bender will be joining us here shortly but her daughter is being inducted into the national honor society tonight you only get those moments once in a lifetime so um she's going to be checking that out so for now we'll move back to the uh to our agenda do we have any amendments to the agenda I'll listen to what others are, but there's a couple that I want to propose as well. All right, seeing none, I'd like to move the consent agenda to the end. We can go ahead and talk to some of it, but we're going to need to put both for the board of directors as well as the board of supervisors to the end. The numbers that were published are incorrect. They're going through the process of correcting those numbers and getting it set up online, and they'll bring them down later in the meeting so that we actually know the real numbers that we're voting on. But the printer upstairs is acting up. It's probably related to the air conditioning somehow, if I had to guess. And the other thing I'd like to move item 0505, the Davenport presentation up before the 0503 public hearing so that we can hear the presentation from those gentlemen before we actually start thinking about how we want to respond tonight. Is that okay with the board? All right. So we'll make those changes. And at this time, we'll open the floor up to public comment. Comments should be limited to three minutes per person in order to afford everyone an opportunity to speak. Please provide your full name and the district that you live in when submitting your public comment so that it can be properly included in the public record. And we'll start off with a sign-up sheet. Ms. Lovell.

Hi. My name is Ana Maria Lovell, and I live in Presidential Lakes. I want to thank you for your service to the community. And I know this job is very hard, especially when is the reassessment time. In 2022, property values increased by almost 40%, and the people were not very happy. But now they increased by 20%. Well, everything is more expensive. Well, I think you're working on the budget, which I think is very hard. I was worried when Mr. Rezavi left because finance is hard job. I saw Mr. Rezavi and Mrs. Kathy Bender working very hard to find money in different places In the past, the finance department wasn't doing very well. Mr. Rezavi tried to make me understand what was happening with the finances, but it was too much for me to really understand. When Mr. Rezavi left, I was very worried about who will keep doing the work, but he told me not to worry because he was living in good hands, Mr. Matthew Small Egg. was well trained and he will do a great job. On April 22nd, he did an excellent presentation. I know it's hard job, but my concern is to pay down the debt and keep up the maintenance and things that need to be fixed. Sometimes not fixing things make them more expensive to repair. A good example of that is the elevator in the old courthouse has been out of order for a long time. I don't know if I hear right, Mr. Strauss said that they were going to check who is using the landfill to throw their garbage so that only Gingrich residents will be using this county facilities. Also, I want to give a special thanks to the Department of Community Development, Mrs. Lucy Tadhill, and the whole staff. They went above and beyond to help us with the consolidation boundary line adjustment plan. I also want to thank Mrs. Jessica Matinle. She was always very polite and answered all my questions when I didn't understand what was required. also special thank you to mrs amy south hall and mr kritzer for helping me post in the turismo website for the plants they are for the jane madden garden club we saw a lot of plants it went very good thanks again for everything thank you thank you ma'am next up is pastor davis

Thank you for the opportunity. I'm Pastor Davis. This 17th of this month, I'll be celebrating my 49th year as pastor at Tabernacle Baptist Church, and I would like to invite all of you to come for our homecoming event. After saying that, I'm going to read from you from the Gospel of John, one of my most, such a word as most favorite, one of my most favorite verses in all the Bible. So when Jesus, therefore, had received the vinegar, he said, it is finished. And he bowed his head and gave up the ghost. Even on the cross, he was still in full control. You don't have the power to bow your head and give up the ghost. But everything was complete, as he said, it's finished. And he forgave from the cross. He said, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they do. He didn't wait for anybody to apologize first. He forgave them. But the word there is finished as , which is three different definitions for that word or three different meanings of that word. It is finished as a business context. which in ancient times, it was a receipt in Bible times for saying that a debt had been paid in full. And so that meant in business context, there was a debt owed and it was paid. In a judicial sense, in the context, in court when a sentence was served or handed down for crimes present tense then of course that means that a sentence has been handed down and here in a judicial context it means a sentence has been paid this also has a military context which means that the battle has been won the victory has been won and the enemy has been defeated. So when Jesus cries down on the cross, He cries from the cross, tetelassai, it is finished. It means the debt has been fully paid. Everything that you owe, we're all in debt. The Bible says in the Lord's Prayer, forgive us our debts. it's sin is a debt that we owe and so we're in debt and so jesus tells us from the cross the debt has been paid in full there's nothing else left to pay the sentence has been served by another he has pulled your time he has served your sentence as far as the sentence is concerned the debt is paid the sentence is served and then of course the battle has been won over sin over satan over death over hell over the grave every battle Jesus Christ gives us the victory. And so one glorious day for those who have believed and trusted in him, you'll know what life really means. If you ever read my name in the obituary column, don't believe a word of it. I'll be the more alive I've ever been in my life. And because Jesus was able to take the price on Calvary's cross and everything I owed, everything debt, the victories all taken care of by the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you. God bless.

All right. Pastor James Shaw.

James Shaw, James Monroe District, columnist for the Northern X Sentinel, citizen journalist, kgmedia.top, speaking in part in my capacity as an EDA member. New hat, Prophet Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. Eeyore is the down-in-the-dumps donkey that saw all of life as quite negative. So in facing down the... setting of what's coming with this year's tax rates, who will volunteer to bring the bad news to this August body here? I volunteer to take the first set of St. Sebastian arrows. I volunteer to be the prophet that brings the bad prophecy so that the people then throw that prophet out of town and into exile as the history goes. I did some Jethro Bodine ciphering on the back of an envelope. The current property tax rate is 68 cents per $100, and the proposed tax rate is also 68 cents per $100. And at first glance, these may appear as if there will be no tax increase. As perceptions go, that may be true. However, a recent reassessment, as required periodically by state law, changes that Calculation. The report of the Commissioner of the Revenue has stated that on average, the assessments went up 21%. This makes the equalized tax rate at $0.58 per $100. So we're looking at, when you do the math with the new 68, 17.2% property tax increase in effect. The inflation and living in a high demand county quite simply bids up land and house prices as we have seen through this reassessment. so to pay for the roughly 100 or 10 million dollar budget increase 143 versus 133 the money has to come from somewhere the first data center buildings are not completed yet that's two to three years away And so what do you do in the meantime? This is the $10 million question for you, the Board of Supervisors this evening, and the very capable people who have been contributing to making that decision-making process possible. May God continue to bless the King George Renaissance, and for your information, the estimated King George population is 28,889 souls as of tonight. Thank you, sir. All right.

Mr. Howard Swenson?

How you doing, gentlemen?

I'm Howard Swenson. I live on the same block as Kathy Bender. Anyway, I'm a 24-year vet in the military. I lived in the neighborhood for the last 22 years.

I worked on Dahlgren as a... Mr. Swenson, can you pull the mic up so we can hear you better?

I'm sorry. Okay. And I worked on Dahlgren as a civilian there in Warheads on Foreheads. I'm just saying I'm always accustomed to doing my job. The assessor who came out, 68 cents per 100 and all this stuff, I try to make contact with him, not once, not twice, but three times. He's a contractor. What does he do for his money? Does he get back with you? I went down there personally, right here to the tax office, delivered it by hand. No reaction. What's up? What he valued my property at was $668,800. And I'm like, what the heck? It went up nearly $80,000. And I said, the condition of this property, because of health issues, I'm not going to get into the politics of the shot and heart attacks and stints and very severe health problems. Last few years, I can't maintain that property as well as I want to or should. Having said that, has anybody taken a look at it? I have a back porch. I like how they call it a porch. It's a concrete seven foot by six foot. That's a patio, really? Anyway, my real patio out the back needs to be rebuilt. I got a shop I built, and all the stairway up to that needs to be rebuilt. I had a driveway I just put in. Me and my wife almost passed away last December when we had the fire department come out. Good boys. Thank you, sirs. An HVAC went down. I'm trying to maintain my property. That was $15,000. Another $15,000. I put $40,000 to maintain our property in the last year. Six months, actually. And they hit me with this. And there's so much more to do. Windows, siding, roof, you name it. Did he actually come out and look at this or did he just assume, well, it was this last time, so it's this this time? I would like somebody's reaction when I apply three or four times. I come on down, I physically do that, and I volunteer with Lori Gump and Jensey. I mean, I worked at the voter's office here, register, last voting. I'm all in to supporting my community. Why are they not, since they're getting paid as a contractor? Do you do your job or do we pay you? I know when I got paid to defend the country, that's what I did. And I'm still doing it to some extent. Please, somebody, help me. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. All right, that's the last person that signed up. Is there anybody else in the audience that would like to make public comment at this time? Come on up.

Terry Morgan, Shiloh District. I'm going to do two items. First is the intersection of Route 3 and 301, the VDOT. I plan on getting in touch with a VDOT person, but I want everybody to recognize that that VDOT situation, that they want to switch around and make U-turns in front of Walker and then down in front of the lower part of Green Acres, Baker Acre, Green Acre, sorry, is... The data that they came up with and did the research on was one, during COVID, and two, they used that intersection for accidents, three and 301, when actually the accidents were more at the sheets and the CVS there. those haven't even been corrected because anybody that goes in and out of the cvs or the sheets or the tractor supply in there will see that the left turn lane into sheets and the left turn lane to go into cvs so if you're going west going into cvs or you're going east to go into the sheets those turn lanes intersect they're not individual turn lanes so if somebody wants to turn into sheets at the same time somebody wants to turn in cvs they're going to have a head-on collision That's the first thing that was wrong with that. The data was based on the COVID, so they didn't get a correct number on the number of vehicles that go through that intersection. It was pointed out during the public hearing over at the high school, and someone eloquently pointed out, because there is regulations for these turnarounds, for these no left turns, through the Virginia state. And I think if they did an updated... assessment of the vehicles they would find that the number of vehicles in those intersections is way higher the last thing which really would in uh how should i say uh interrupt what we're talking about right now with the budget is if they do no turn lane left that you have to go down in front of if you're going south on 301 and you have to go down in front of walker and do a u-turn which they stated they will eventually very quickly put a stoplight there then Come back. If I was Royal Farms, I'd put a nice billboard right there at that intersection saying three miles down the road, there's Royal Farms because that sheet is one of the highest tax revenue for King George out of the sheets in the area. And you're going to lose that because nobody's going to want to go down Walker, do a U-turn, come back to go into that sheet. So that's a consideration for everyone. Second thing about the assessments, I hadn't thought about it, but I do want to say I've made my meeting with the Equalization Board not a problem. I'll go to them. I've been to them before. They listened in the past. I assume they'll listen in the present. But Some of the things they don't take in consideration, we made a purchase this year and we made it out of nostalgia. The price we paid was beyond what we should have paid. However, it was attached to the family cemetery. Therefore, we paid probably $50,000 more than what we should have. That's going to mess up everybody else's assessments, but yet nobody takes that in consideration. Second thing, we have multiple lots that are 10 acres. I'm having land values assessed for 10 acres for $170,000. And then the next one right next to it, $117,000. That'll be all.

Thank you, ma'am. Anyone else at this time? Did anybody get any correspondence? Mr. Don, do you have anybody online?

No, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, sir. All right. We will close public comment at this time and move on to the reports of the board members. And we'll kick it off with Mr. Robotham.

I know it's warm in here, so I just want to thank everybody for coming out. I'll keep it short. Glad you're all here, and I got nothing else for the group. Thank you, sir. Mr. Stroud.

I'll keep it short. Went to the Family Fun Day on Saturday. Community Engagement did a good job of putting that on with Tourism Group, and a lot of great vendors were there. Hope everybody got a chance to get out, and we'll see you again there next year.

Thank you everybody that came out, especially Ms. Morgan. I'm interested in talking more. I'm familiar with paying more for land than it's valued for some other reason, sentimental reason or something like that. It accurately, to an assessor, it accurately raises the value of the property beyond what it's actually worth. And there's a number of factors that I don't think the assessors took into place. But I've got constituents I spent over an hour today talking to people about the assessments and they're not happy with them. And I'm looking at them. I brought some with me. People are trying to rush through this. I was going to go through it, but... they just don't look right. So, you know, it's gonna take, and I've sent some in myself and I haven't heard from the board of equalization yet though. so i got to figure that one out but uh they're the assessments some of them just don't make sense so on paper when you look at the numbers you look at that oh yeah this makes sense but in reality if you go to the property and you actually see it and there's some things that i call common sense that aren't taken into place that doesn't make sense so uh I'm not happy there. I guess I'm along. I'm with the people who are speaking. Um, and I have a question for Mr Swenson whether you actually spoke to Miss Bender about your situation.

Come on up to the microphone if you would, please, because we had to put it on public record. I'm sorry.

So yes i spoke to her um she told me about this meeting and to bring the attention to detail to you um like i said i was looking for the gentleman to come out nathan i believe his name was not quite sure called his number several times no response over and over again i came down there and she go he's got a lot on physically handed it to him gave it to the text right here, and they physically handed it to him, and I had no response from him. She says she got a note on her door that he responded. She's two houses away. Where is this? Where is he? I'm at home all the time. I'm retired now. I got, like I said, health issues, trying to do the best I can. I had a fire a couple years back in the kitchen. There was fire damage inside. I still got to take care of it. Yes, I actually physically handed it to the people over there. And you haven't heard anything back? Absolutely nothing. And I said, what's his number? They gave me a number. His name is Nathan. I guess he's a contractor that goes out and assesses all the values. Right. So what were you saying, sir?

So I talked to Ms. Regina Puckett. The deadline for submittals to the Board of Equalization was yesterday afternoon at 4.30. And I pulled GIS just for board's information. We have about 16,000 properties in the county. Now, a lot of those, I mean, county, Dahlgren, that's including everything, 16,000. We had 65 individuals appeal their assessments to the Board of Equalization. I believe it was 770 went to meet with the assessor one-on-one and if they weren't happy with that then the 65 appeal to the BOE which I believe is down is before my time I believe the last time the reassessment I think was about 130. But it's just some information that I just want to pass on to the board and the public.

If your appeal was delivered to the Revenues Office, that doesn't get to the Board of Equalization?

It will go to the Board of Equalization. I was not involved in this. If it came in by the deadline yesterday, this is Ms. Puckett's realm to...

to quantify you know to quantify how many were there were and then to schedule the board of equalization hearings but i do know that yesterday was the deadline to submit to the board of equalization all right well i guess the mail went out march 5th i had it at the office no later than march 9th or i would say the 11th between the 1911 i can't remember the exact date was handed back in with my reply saying you need to come on out and look at this again Now, we went through March, we went through April, and I kept calling and calling. I walked back down to the office. He said, oh, yeah, he's got it. I know he does. You know, he received it way back in the day. I said, okay, what do I do? I try to respond again by calling a number. I never, I just got to, you know, leave a message, whatever. Okay. When am I going to see you to come on down? And the way it's, like you said, assessed is ridiculous. I mean, I have... I'm embarrassed. I'm just saying I have a wooden deck built onto the house, wooden deck, and actually the 8x8s are rotting right in the ground. They're just rotting. It's not safe. Have you even taken a look at this?

What we'll do is if you still have challenges, tomorrow I'll make time to meet with you. Okay. Okay. The office is right across from Domino's down here. All right. So we'll connect. My name is Ken Stroud. Right here. Okay. Okay. Thanks, sir.

I appreciate it, gentlemen. I'm just saying it's just so maddening. You're doing what you need to do and no response.

Agree. Sure. Thank you. So I think the rest of my comments will probably come out in the rest later meeting. Thank you, sir.

Are you going to call on me? Mr. Davis. All right. Thank you. First, it is hot. Thank everyone for coming out. Ms. Ann Marie, always. Thank you for sharing with us. Pastor Davis, thank you very much. I appreciate it. I think he was stealing my sermon from Sunday a little bit, but he does that. Now he steals his, now he steals mine. It's all right. Pastor Shaw, thank you for a new hat tonight. I really appreciate that. My daughter would have loved it. Howard, we have addressed you. We'll do what we can to make sure it gets to the Equalization Board. And we've done all we can to encourage people to do that, to turn their stuff in if they have any kind of complaints. And we've had it posted on every social media that we can, through our social media outlets and things of that nature. There's a lot of people unhappy about them. And I tell you, most of the people on the board aren't really that excited about them. I know I'm Seen plenty of properties that seem out of whack, and it seems the people that, yes, they're hitting houses, but there's also people that own large land that are getting taken advantage of. But I just thank everyone for being here and taking part in our community. Thanks.

All right. Thank you. And like everybody else, I want to thank you all again for coming out tonight. I'll keep it short. I won't go through all the engagements. The one fun thing that I got to do over the last couple of weeks in between meetings was I got to make a presentation of a proclamation from the board at an Eagle Scout court of honor for Miss Sydney Landreth on Sunday after church. That was fun. um she's the second generation in her family eagle scout um she's the third overall in her family her her older sister picked it up last year and so that was fun and there was a question when we talked about this at the last meeting about what was her her um project her eagle scout project was uh building benches and spreading mulch along the happy tails trail at the king george animal shelter so way to go sydney um and now we will switch over and pick up a proclamation. This proclamation is honoring the lives and legacy of Leonard Gregory Bland and Caroline Inez Bland. Whereas Leonard Gregory Bland and Caroline Inez Bland were devoted members of their community, united in marriage for 56 years and bound together by a shared life of faith, service, and compassion, And whereas for 45 years, they faithfully served in leadership, including in Salem Baptist Church, nurturing the spiritual growth of countless individuals and strengthening the foundation of their church family. And whereas Leonard and Carolyn Bland were deeply involved in numerous community associations and ministries, demonstrating a steadfast commitment to uplifting others and meeting the needs of those around them. And whereas they were passionate advocates for youth and those in need, often expressing their belief that the youth are our future and dedicating their time and energy to guiding and supporting younger generations. And whereas their generosity extended to their support of charitable causes, including contributions to the St. Jude Foundation, men's and women's shelters and social services holiday initiatives, reflecting their enduring compassion for all people. And whereas they were known for their appropriate and humble nature, always willing to listen, lend a helping hand, and treat every individual with dignity and respect, and were as though through the example of their lives they inspired others to grow to serve and to strive to be better, leaving a lasting impact on the spiritual and personal lives of all who knew them. and whereas their legacy lives on through their loving family, including their ten grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, as well as the many individuals whose lives were touched by their kindness, wisdom, and faith, and whereas their enduring message of love, faith in God, and care for others continues to resonate within the church family and the broader community. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that the King George Board of Supervisors hereby honors and celebrates the lives of Leonard Gregory Bland and Carolyn Inez Bland, recognizing their extraordinary legacy of faith, service, and love. Be it further proclaimed that their memory will forever inspire the community to live with compassion, to serve selflessly, and to walk in faith and love toward one another. Adopted this fifth day of May, 2026, by the King George County Board of Supervisors, signed by myself, david sullens chairman of the board of supervisors and we have a presentation we'd like to make um to the family yeah oh thank you do i have a motion i make a motion to receive the proclamation as presented second properly seconded any further discussion all in favor aye aye here votes aye motion carries now we all join me down front for photos and and we have a presentation for family members

Well,

I just personally want to say thank you. to the Blands, the family and to their service. So we're in the same boat, right? So PKs and all that stuff. We know what it's like to grow up. But, um, I'm sorry, but I had brought this up about a proclamation and and a lady that I ran into said, You know, it's always a shame that we gotta wait till people pass to honor him. It's absolutely correct. We just assume that the pillars and the good ones are just always going to be there doing it and being that mountain that can't cast a shadow that we all feel comfort and safe under. That makes sense to you. Especially for a dad, that's what it is. And a pastor, it's just like this mountain that casts a shadow over you and you're under that shadow and you feel protected and safe like a shepherd, right? And I just, when this came to me, I just personally wanted to just thank you guys and thank him and honor him. And yes, I wish he was still here, but the honor he's getting and already gotten and where he's at right now, he's more alive than he'll ever be. And we're going to be there a lot longer than we're going to be here. This will be over like that, and it's going to be fun, right? But thank you guys, and thank you for serving us. We appreciate you.

All right, we'll bring it back around to the board of Supervisors agenda. Um, we do have those corrected numbers right now, and I'll actually pause for a minute for the for the folks that want to leave. Thank you all again for coming and brave in the heat.

Yeah, I was mad. I didn't see Nana here.

Thank you.

Thank you. We just didn't think that anybody but us thought so much of our pastor. We want to thank you for just thinking so much of our pastor. May God continue to bless you all and keep you in his care. Amen.

Thank you, brother.

Thank you.

Alright, thank you for your patience with as we transition to the next portion. We'll be going back to the Board of Supervisors agenda and we do have the corrected numbers on the board now so we can actually go ahead and take a vote for the consent agenda.

Make a motion we pass the consent agenda as presented.

Motion. Motion properly seconded. Any further discussion? All right. Mr. Stroud. Aye. Mr. Metz. Aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. Motion carries. Now we'll move on to the constitutional officers, and we're going to have a presentation by Ms. Lori Gump, registrar.

Good evening, board members, chair, Sullins, Mr. Sullins.

Sully, thank you for coming out.

So it's with my great pleasure that I get to introduce my board, who is actually going to be coming up and speaking tonight. And then I will give you a little bit of stats afterwards of how we fared in this last election that we just had. But I have Mr. Rick Cruikshank, who is our secretary. He's been with me for about 20 years. Susan Park is our vice chair. She's brand new. This was her first election. And then I have Miss Phyllis Cook, who's been with me for about six years. So they're going to do the talking tonight.

So be brief, no charts, no slides, no rehearsal. So, uh, Thank you, Laurie. Just a short little recap. Even in a county our size, Election Day is a huge undertaking. We are grateful to our 51 officers of election who were working at the precincts all Election Day, some of whom have served for decades. But there are numerous county departments who are affected by or directly involved in elections that many are not aware.

We know you as supervisors are affected and we appreciate you graciously shifting your regular meeting last month to a different location so these rooms could be used for election activities. We understand that inconvenience and we're grateful for the priority you place on the election process in this county. Another key person who is always available and valuable is Jackie Fish, who worked closely with the registrar's office to coordinate the scheduling of the boardroom and made sure it was always available, which was not an easy task because the dates kept shifting. and obviously school division personnel are essential in our election process we want to thank the school division superintendent and all five of the school principals especially in light of that last minute usage for our alternate voting location at potomac elementary We want to thank the central office secretaries and the maintenance people for use of their school facilities on election day and the day before when we set up the voting precincts. They made sure that all the gym activities were completed when our setup was scheduled and they also provided tables and chairs for our use. An election is much larger than one day, and we would like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation to several of our county departments. So Rick.

It takes hours to go around the county to set up on the day before the election, and we are always grateful to the Director of General Properties, Mike Muncy, and particularly his General Properties Manager, Jimmy Pennington, and his crew who work beyond regular hours, meeting us at each of the five precincts, bringing and unloading equipment. On election night, they retrieve signs, orange cones, and other equipment long after the polls have closed. Director of Technology Chris Dines works with Lori throughout the year, and he meets annually with our electoral board to review the security standards required by the state. Others behind the scenes, but also essential, include Fire Chief David Mooney and his Emergency Management Coordinator Captain Steve Lind. They may not be seen on Election Day, but assist the election process by having a plan in place to ensure each Election Day is given top priority in their area of expertise.

It's important to note that in King George, we have so far escaped the high tensions sometimes displayed in national news reports. Though a situation happened during the November election and that is why we are enormously grateful to Sheriff Chris Giles and his numerous deputies who are highly visible on election day. Sheriff Giles The sheriff ensures that a deputy is in place inside each precinct and remains until all officers of election have completed poll closing requirements and go to their cars. This is important to us. That can take till around nine o'clock or later. Sheriff Giles also provides additional deputies to rove around the county and visit each precinct location several times throughout election day. We very much appreciate his diligence And so do the two local political parties who want it safe for their volunteers electioneering outside the 40-foot line at polling places. I'd like to say that I firmly believe that we are all part of this election process. But we left one very important group out, the voters. It's because of the voters, all this is in place to enable them to exercise their right under Virginia laws and the US Constitution to have a safe opportunity to cast their ballots. Like now, Lori introduced us. I'd like to reintroduce her. She is the finest registrar in the Commonwealth, Lori Gump. Please tell us, please tell us how many residents voted on election day and anything else.

I paid her to say that. So in the past, when I've come to do the stats for you, I've always said that we're kind of neck and neck with our early voting and our election day. And this is no different. Our early voting, excuse me, we had 5,152 voters. And election day, we had 5,165. Now that 5,152 doesn't include the absentee by mail that I had sent out because I sent out 1,017. And out of those 1,017, only 204 were not returned. So that tells you we ended up with a 53% turnout in this election. Interesting stats though, I did want to just kind of comically tell you that I did get asked that we put a bike rack up on the porch because in our early voting, we go out and do curbside. We had 108 curbsides and one of them actually happened to be somebody on a bike. I'm not lying, seriously. And we asked him why, because curbside is really designated for 65 and older and for those that have a handicap. Now, of course, we're not allowed to ask what the handicap is, but the person was not 65 years or older. He was riding a bike, so I really didn't think he had a handicap, but I couldn't ask him that. So the question we asked was, Why? And the answer we got was because we didn't have a bike rack to lock his bike up. So just FYI, if y'all want to put a bike rack up, we might get some more voters who ride their bikes. So really, we had 108 curbside voters. There's only two days out of the 45-day voting period that we did not have any. We averaged anywhere from 131 voters to up to 378 a day. The only day that we had less than 100, that was the 53. And that was the day that you all let us go home early because of the snow. And I'm sure that we probably would have had more if we would have stayed open. And I literally did two curbsides that day holding an umbrella with the snow, you know. So, you know, anyway, but... Like I said, we had a 53% turnout. And unfortunately, this is the election that keeps going because it's not certified yet. We have a very small window right now in May before we start early voting in June because the early voting for the August 4th primary starts June 18th. And then we go right into September for the November election. But I personally want to thank you all for supporting our office. You all so graciously do that every time I ask, and I really appreciate that from the county administrator to the county attorney to all of the board of supervisors. So I guess I will be back to see you, or my board will be back to see you, not for the August, but we will definitely be back for the November. So thank you.

Thank you very much for coming out. Any questions? I don't think so. Thanks again. Are there any other constitutional officers in the audience who would like to speak tonight? Don't see any, so I'll hand it over to Mr. O'botham with the board of directors.

Thank you, Mr. Sullins. So for the King George County Service Authority Board of Directors, we'll start with the consent agenda. Do I have a motion? make a motion to approve the extent agenda as it presented second motion properly seconded any discussion all right uh we'll do this uh roll call vote mr mitts hi mr sullens hi mr davis hi chair votes i motion carries uh moving on we to the discussion item uh mr hamilton you can uh take away the water leak at dahlgren

Hey, unit folks. As you all know, I provided a written board report this time, this month, yesterday. Before I touch on the lawyer leak, I just wanted to see if there were any questions about that. If you have any, if you haven't had a chance to take a look at it, of course, let me know at any time. Any input would be welcome on information you didn't get or information that you don't want or any other type of constructive criticism. Oh, and then I emailed this to Jackie late this is just a little photographic documentary of what happened at Wawa on Thursday the 23rd but anyway just to wrap things up on the report so I'm not going to give any kind of verbal report tonight there's too much going on I know you have a budget to review it's too hot and hopefully I shared the information with you that you need already but we did have a very significant week that occurred on Thursday evening the 23rd I believe that was the night after our last board meeting which was on a Wednesday night It actually occurred in the afternoon. It was reported around 2 o'clock. It was at the Wawa in Dahlgren on the corner of Dahlgren Road and Route 301. The photo there on the top, and thank you for whoever is doing that. Maybe it's IT in the back. That just shows you the drainage ditch, vehicle parked at the top of the photo there is in the parking area wow wow there's a fire I'm sorry there's a fire hydrant right behind it our original thought was that it was the fire hydrant that was actually leaking or the assembly where it's bolted underground we attempted to shut the valve that isolates that fire hydrant and the valve assembly moved and failed and so what you can see in the next photo if whoever voodoo person out there is Showing this second photo, thank you. Again, I'll do a better job next time. That is the top of the valve assembly. There are four bolts that hold the bonnet together. Those were corroded off, two of the bolts. That did not happen catastrophically in one fell swoop. That had been leaking for some time. I suspected at least one of the bolts had failed. months or even years ago once the second bolt corroded there was not much hold nothing together and we put the wrench on top and tried to operate the valve the valve basically fell apart at that point it was underwater there was nothing we could do we had to go and shut everything down so we did we'd end up having to shut off about 120 customers most of those were commercial customers that actually took quite a while because we had a number of valves that we either couldn't locate or didn't operate which kind of expanded the perimeter of the group that was impacted, but it was mostly the food line industry businesses there in that plaza, the Wawa, the Arby's, the commercial establishments up the hill, and I think there's a medical office center there and a couple of gas stations, and a few customers up in the Bunbury area off of Dahlgren Road. In any case, we got that turned off probably about 10, 10.30 Thursday night. It took a long time. We were very short staffed. We had a couple people out sick and one person on vacation. We did have to call in a contractor to make this repair. This was beyond the scope of our tools and equipment. Once we got it turned off, we were able to get it fixed relatively quickly. We had it fixed by about two o'clock in the morning. And then it took a little while. We have to recharge the system and open up fire hydrants to remove air. Got to let air out to let water in. I can't estimate for you the amount of water that was lost. As I said, it's been leaking for some time. This may well be related to what we know is a discrepancy in Dahlgren related to the amount we're pumping versus the amount we're billing. There has not been enough time since last Thursday or Thursday a week ago for us to accumulate enough data to really be sure. I'm confident that there's a relationship here and actually the last photo at the bottom is a stormwater pond adjacent to the Wawa that was constructed I'm sure when it was built 301 is passing there on the left that stormwater pond was dry in aerial photos that we reviewed Matt and I looked on google maps and went backwards some period of years so at some point that's become a wetland and I suspect that it's related to the leak I'm hopeful that this is the major leak we've been looking for for a while. In any case, we were able to get it fixed. It was a relatively limited impact. We do have to report breaks like this if it impacts over 50 customers to the state. There are certain parameters that dictate whether or not we have to do a bore water alert. We met the parameters. We were able to control the shutdown when we made the repair. and we actually we did just as a measure of caution collect two bacteria samples the next day on the system after some flushing both of those samples came back on Saturday from the lab as negative and so we're relieved that we didn't have any water quality issues there and that really is a summary of what happened and I hope I wasn't too brief and I'm sorry I'll do a better job with the pictures next time. Are there any questions? All right. Well, I'm sorry.

Yes, sir. Just for my own self. The water went up like 2, like 2 p.m. when you discovered the leak, right, on Wednesday? It was reported somewhere around 2. It was about 2.30 by the time we got there.

What time did it come back on again? Was it by breakfast? 3.30 in the morning. 2.30 in the morning? 2.30, 3.30 in the morning. Thank you. I mean, we turned it on again, and just because it's on doesn't mean everybody instantly has water. We have to go to the various areas that have been impacted and open fire hydrants and flush air. and probably customers after the time we all went home still had, you know, if you get air in the pipes, it kind of spits and sputters out of the faucet. But we didn't have any complaints the next day. We were definitely on alert for that. Actually had another small leak the next day in Dahlgren that was minor and related to a a utility marking and somebody hitting it with a boring machine but um anyway yeah the water was back on within about 12 or 13 hours and frankly it should have been a lot quicker than that there should have been a valve on the six inch line that feeds that hydrant on the other side of dog and road and there was none and there's nothing i can do you know that was installed 20 years ago it just is what it is but that's definitely something we'll be looking at hopefully as we move into a proactive state of maintenance sometime in the next few years thank you sure Nope. So that concludes my report. Unless anybody has any questions, I appreciate everybody coming out as well. I know it's very warm in here and you've got a lot to tackle tonight. I do expect to be back in two weeks to at least present a draft budget, if not what I hope will be a final budget for the fiscal 2027.

all right with that i will open it up for secondary public comment this is for the service authority only comments will be limited to three minutes per person to afford everyone an opportunity to speak please provide your full name and district when submitting your public comments so it could be properly included in the public record is there anybody that wants to speak on matters of the service authority all right seeing nothing i will go ahead and close public comment and with that i will move for a motion for adjournment

I move that we adjourn the Board of Directors to Monday, May 18th, 2026 at 5.30 p.m. in the boardroom of the Reverend Cone Building.

Second.

Motion properly seconded. All in favor? Aye. Chair votes aye. Motion carries. That concludes the Board of Directors for the Service Authority. Thank you.

Mr. Davis brought up a good point. I we are actually in the River Cone building next week. I know I've been saying for the last few minutes that our next several meetings are in the sheriff's office. The next meeting will actually be in the River Cone building. It's the June and July meetings that are going to be in the sheriff's office. What didn't cause anybody confusion? Okay. uh we'll pick up our agenda again with item 0502 the public hearing the king george county board of supervisors will now hold a public hearing that has been properly advertised to receive public input regarding item 0502 the middle school turn lane phase two which is a continuation of the improvements planned with the king george middle school expansion and will construct a left turn lane to the access to access king george middle school from route 206. The left turn lane will be a 200-foot turn lane for vehicles turning into the middle school and will allow traffic to the intersection at Kings Highway Route 3. Pavement markings and signage will be a part of this project. And we'll go with the board report. Come on up, Bryce.

Good afternoon. You took a little bit of my thunder there. Sorry.

it's perfectly fine uh i don't have anything really to add any questions so we uh can you over the cost of this the cost of it yeah i just want to get it on public record for our folks that are listening

I do not believe I had it on hand. I remember is somewhere in around 400,000 to the county out of the county's budget and 200 and some from V dot. Stand by. I'll call it up.

Yeah, Bryce. It's in the motion from 2025. It was a total cost $651,460.

Mr. Chairman, BDOT's 414. I apologize for interrupting, but this is a public hearing, I think, so I think Bryce needs to give at least an overview of what this is about so the public is informed enough to comment if they so choose. Okay.

all right well the project is a continuation of the improvements planned for the king george middle school expansion and will construct a left turn lane off of darwin road into the middle school of 206 and allow traffic from darwin on darwin road to continue to king george without being held up by the people turning left into the middle school this was a part of the 2324 cip and it was passed a there was a resolution passed by the board of supervisors to fund it on july 1st 2025. all right thank you all right are there any questions from mr young uh

all right i'll open the floor for public comment on the completion of public comment i'll bring the matter back to the board for instruction public comment is limited to three minutes per speaker to ensure everyone has an opportunity to speak please state your name and address before you comment we didn't have anyone sign up is there anyone in the audience who would like to make public comment this time coming up pastor charles

james sean james monroe district um everybody knows but um it doesn't say specifically this is for making a left for the southbound uh travelers any other public comment anybody have any written correspondence

Seeing that, Mr. Don, do you have anybody on line?

No, Mr. Chairman.

All right. This time I'll close the floor for public comment. I'll close the public hearing and bring it back before the board. Any discussion? Do we have a motion? the action you want to take.

Yeah.

I see a motion written here.

Is there a contract?

There was a, there was actually some documentation that went along with this that had the cost breakdown when this was originally discussed back in 2020. It was. half the cost it is now but because the the board at the time did not act on it it actually cost us more cost the county more now than it does vdot so um i don't have those numbers for whatever reason they're not popping up like they did when i was studying at home the total cost was about four morning when what we're paying right now was the total cost before because we were paying like two hundred and twenty five thousand yeah before it's about two hundred thousand dollars for the county about two hundred thousand for v dot give or take a few thousand but now it's about four hundred thousand for the county and remains two hundred thousand or so for v dot because um the cost has gone up so much in uh the last five six years for the record mr uh young is nodding yes sir all right Do you have any documentation on what line items this would come out of in the budget, who it would be sent to or anything like that?

This was the 23 to 24 CIP. It was approved as a project in that CIP. That's where the funding is.

Did you close public hearing? Yes.

We don't know what action there is. Are you asking for action tonight? is there an action with this it was a public hearing i'm not sure though it's not unstated on here but it's the public hearings up to us to take action or not all right i recommend that we defer any action until the next meeting can i get a motion yeah we'll defer action on it and i'll have my engineer and get with v dot to make sure we have the proper motion okay thank you

Thank you. All right, we will pick it up with item 0505, a presentation by the Davenport Company on the fiscal year 27 budget. And Mr. David Rose will be joining us tonight. And Mr. Kyle, I apologize, I forgot the last name. Oh, sorry. Thank you very much.

Good evening, Mr. Chairman. Again, David Rose here. Ethan Johnson, one of my young colleagues. Kyle Alex, who I think you may be talking about, is out of town tonight. So again, up on the screen, we're here for education purposes only. For those of you who may not recall, we are the financial advisors to you. We're not here to sell you anything, but rather just to give you some perspective. Not all the things that I give you over the years are popular, but hopefully you're provided to keep the county going in the right direction financially. So if we go to the page, I guess I can turn it then, I guess. Okay.

Let's see here.

Okay. Again, as I indicated, we were asked by your staff to come this evening and give some talk about some recommendations, some strategies as it relates to the FY 2027 budget. um i will tell you it's a work in progress we have certain recommendations and observations and we'll share that with you but hopefully um you will allow us to come back in the next couple of months as you move forward uh so that we can give a holistic recommendation over several years not just taking care of the 2027 budget at hand As it says here in that middle point, we've been advisor for over 25 years. In fairness, I've been working with you since the days of Eldon James, probably about 35 years ago. So nevertheless, it's been a while. All right, a little bit more on background. Let me make it clear that the county is in solid financial shape. That is, it's in good shape. Your credit ratings, which I helped you get back in 2004, demonstrate that. You've moved upwards over the years. But at the same time, that second bullet point, we no longer are having the benefit of ARPA dollars and one-time CARES dollars, what have you. And so as a result, with the county like this, the robust needs that you have, the investments that you've made for the quality of life, we are looking at, you're looking at collectively, some increases that are being proposed with regard to some tax increases. Historically, you've had to use some of the fund balance. You've got a very strong fund balance, but that's not sustainable. Those are one-time dollars to take care of ongoing needs that continue every year. Some of those needs you have no control over. As you know, the state dictates the dollars at a minimum you have to give for schools. The state dictates what you have to do for retirement, VRS, if you would, also for health care and other things. um in your proposed budget by your county administrator there are increases for some of those critical staff people that's going to continue and in fact whether we like it or not it seems to me over the next year or two or maybe a little bit more maybe a little bit less sounds like collective bargaining is going to be here and the cost of that's going to be significant So I think the takeaway for me is a couple things. Number one is we want to make sure that this county budget moves you towards structural balance for the long run. Second, we want to make sure that we don't just rely on that one time dollars, because we do have excess dollars. And we're going to talk about a strategy to take care of and use some of those to minimize impacts on rate increases in the future. The third thing is we also know, and we'll say this in a moment or two, that you have capital needs that are necessary in the future. So we put all of those into the mix, and we're going to make some recommendations tonight. But what you're faced with, the third bullet right there, it's been identified by staff to ask for basically 10 pennies in one of the options in addition to a 2% increase in the meals tax rate. Even with that, you're going to look at a shortfall if you were to take care of everything. And so, again, with all of that being said, we know some tough decisions are on the horizon. So I mentioned a couple of moments ago, you could listen to me, but really I may be biased. Try not to be, but I am representing you, even though I'd like to think I'm truly a fiduciary and only thinking about your best interests. What we do have collectively, the we, is outside credit ratings from three of the national rating agencies, and they are basically the three that count. And you'll notice here that back in 2004, we had ratings that were inaugural, and they were in the strong category. A range. Today, we are one step away from AAA, the highest possible. And there's a reason for that. And that's because you've done a lot of good things over the years. You've stick to your knitting over the years. But as I said, we're hitting an inflection point where over the last year or so, we've been using some fund balances one time to balance the budget, and that's really no longer a viable option. It'll put us in a very difficult spot very quickly in the next fiscal year. So, as I indicated, we've got some options. And the county administrator has got three options for you. And they involve a variety of those things that you see there. Using some fund balance to cover operational costs, something we never recommend. We use fund balance and recommend that to pay off some debt, possibly, to be used for some capital so we don't have to do just borrowing. And we also recommend thinking about using some fund balance to, again, help towards capital needs in the future. The last option is to look at some refinancing and restructuring of some of your existing debt. And we'll talk a little bit about that tonight, preliminarily, because we think there's some opportunities for you, particularly not in 27, but into 28 and beyond. And again, I'm very much aware that there is some potential for significant new revenues in a couple, three or four years with regard to some economic development. so with all that said i just want to underscore a couple of things number one you have an unassigned fund balance policy we helped create that which says 15 percent of in effect, revenues go towards that monies. Just for everybody's benefit, those dollars actually help with the interest earnings go back into the general fund. So it's important to point out those dollars are critical to helping you have a strong credit rating. That strong credit rating allows you to borrow money when you need to at the lowest possible costs. Yes, Ms. Stroud.

Do you want us to ask questions as you go through the slides?

By all means. If I say, you know, if I can answer them, again, if we can't answer them, we'll take those questions and we'll make sure we get you some answers. Because, again, I'm not asking you to do anything tonight specifically, but I'm just trying to provide some context. So, yes, Mr. Stroud.

On the previous slide. Yes. Up to the right.

Slide three, then.

The one that had the current county credit ratings and the initial county credit, that one. So that third one said the county most recently formally engaged in all three credit rating agencies. It says most recently. When is that most recently?

That is active as of right now. Your ratings are active as of today, effectively.

I guess who formally engaged?

Oh, so when we went to the bond market in 2023, one of the necessary things is to be able to have a credit rating so that we can sell those bonds at the lowest cost possible. So a credit rating basically goes out to all investors that let them understand this is where your debt should be priced. And so your debt in those days was priced in 2023. uh in the strong very strong double a category okay so by most recently it's referring to 2023. I'm sorry, I can't hear you.

Whenever it says most recently.

So what that meant was at that time, we actually engaged them, paid them a fee to give us a credit rating. However, if you look at the last bullet point, we actually were upgraded by Fitch from AA to AA+. We didn't formally engage them. They, in their surveillance, looked at it and they said, this is what we're rating. We're moving up your rating. We do not pay for that. They take that on themselves because any debt that we have outstanding that they've rated going back to 2023, it's on them, the rating agencies, to keep that up. They don't charge us when they review it. They're supposed to review it almost every year, but we're not sent a charge for that.

That answers my question. I was just curious, when was most recently?

2023. But again, to the point, in 2024, as they saw what things were happening, they liked that, and so they increased the actual rating without us asking them to do that. And of course, they also have the option, if they want to decrease our rating, or they could even say we're going to maintain the rating so they have all of those choices mr shroud and board members okay i know uh miss binder just came in here um do we have a copy of the book for her okay um We just started a few moments ago. Just for everyone's benefit and your benefit, as you know, we're the financial advisor to you. We're not here to tell you what to do, but rather to give you some suggestions and some thoughts as it relates to thinking about your current budget, 2027, and then beyond. So having said all that, on this page, page five, we have effectively two fund balance policies. One is that unassigned fund balance policy. We've had that for several years. It's actually increased over the years, and it's now, and you'll see in a moment, at 15% of overall revenues, and you're well in excess of that. It's one of the reasons you have a good credit rating. But again, there's a lot of pressure on that. We don't like to see you use what we call those one-time dollars to take care of recurring expenditures, meaning operating expenditures, because they're there every year once they're used. So the second thing is we also have a rate stabilization fund. You're in good shape with that as well. I'm going to show you what that looks like. That basically is to be used really for emergencies. And I will share with you what we're talking about.

Whoa. Give me a second. Wait a minute.

In the deliberations for the 2027 fiscal year, I would point out that none of what we're talking about for 2027 is emergency. It's not what we would use that rate stabilization fund for. You can see the reasons, whether it's a declared financial emergency or it's revenue shortfalls due to state and federal government funding that you don't know is going to happen. And let's face it, Since the budget is not done in Richmond, that could occur. So that's why that is there. It's for the unforeseen shortfalls that you do not expect as you're doing your budget right now. So that could potentially be used. But again, that has to get replenished under our policy of best practices. So let me just show you where you are. Your unassigned fund balance, that 15% on the right hand side, you're well above that. In fact, in 2025, that's the last audit information we had. You are basically at about 40%. So you may recall I made a presentation to the service authority many if not all of you were there back as I recall in one of the other facilities that y'all have and I said what we should look at going forward is strategically think about paying down some debt giving ourselves some capacity in the budget we're still recommending that and we'll talk about that in a couple moments we think that can help alleviates some pressures starting in the 2028 and beyond fiscal year. It's not a one shot. It's something that could last for multiple years. But I will tell you, we don't have near enough to pay down debt to erase a $5 million type of shortfall. We just don't. That's not even close to being possible. And I want to make sure everybody realizes that. We can do some things. We can help. We can make some things better. But we also know that you've got, and we're being asked to look at this, once this budget is done, we know we've got capital needs that must be done. That's not me saying it. That's from your staff giving us that information. So we're going to make sure that if we can make a presentation sometime this summer and talk about using some element of some of that excess dollars, we do that in tandem with how it impacts capital going forward and how to pay for all that. So again, we see that as all one as a holistic approach. So I mentioned you also have a revenue stabilization fund at 3%. You can see what that looks like. And again, in good shape. And that's about $3.7 million. Now, one of the things I kept saying before is that we don't want to see you, it's easy for me to say, I haven't been elected, I realize that, but we'd like to see you not use fund balance as it's been passed, done, to take care of an operating deficit. And it looks to us clearly that you've got an operating deficit. So how do we take care of this? Well, we were asked to look at strategies. The first recommendation that we do have is tied to 2027. And we have run this by bond counsel, which is legal counsel. And what we've said and what we've talked about as a strategy, and we've presented this to staff, And that is that you're sitting on, unrelated to those fund balances, about $20 million of unspent bond proceeds from that 2023 issue. That money is being held with the state in what's called a SNAP account. It's earning a good interest rate. um and so what we've got is what we call capitalized interest we've actually spent about two and a half million dollars of those monies towards paying interest on that we are able if we so choose as a board to use roughly that $2.5 million to help defray the need to do an equivalent of 10-penny increase. We basically can cut that 10 pennies down to 5 pennies and use that $2.5 million to get us through 2027. I don't know if, Simone, do you want to add anything for the moment when I talk about that? Okay. So that would work to, in effect, get us to a balance where we would not be using any of fund balance. That's the goal here, is to not use any fund balance for 2027. Yes, sir. Mr. Matt.

Yeah. Could you just help and help the public understand that that offer the bond offering in 2023? What was the major property CIP that was associated?

So I believe those 2023 series bonds were for company two and then for the pre-K. That's correct.

Absolutely. Yes, sir. And so we're able to redirect those bond proceeds, but we're not able to use those bond proceeds to balance the budget. We can take the capitalized interest at $2.5 million and we can use it. That is legal under bond council rules, but we cannot use the $20 million interest. to defer or to work towards debt service. What we can do, though, is going forward, analyze whether we use some of that towards other capital projects you've identified going forward and possibly to pay down some debt. So we can look at all of that over the next few months. But frankly, when we were contacted literally less than two weeks ago, there's just not enough time to do that analysis properly. And I think you all know we've been around a long time with you. We'd rather tell you we don't have all the answers right now than to give you Answers that are mistaken. So we do know with certainty with Bond Council, which is Sands Anderson, your longtime Bond Council, that we can use that $2.5 million and effectively chop in half that roughly $5 million, your shortfall. So we can do that. That's Mr. Stroud.

Yes, sir. So whenever you're referring on the first bullet there, sorry it's hard to hear you sorry the first bullet yes sir the board adopted financial policies prohibit use of fund balance for operations what we're referring to in the questions in our discussion that we had in that uh meeting um and this is a meeting that i had asked mr small to be set up at the last meeting um part of that budget what we were presented was 9.9 billion not sorry 9.9 million dollars of debt service fees the third bullet as such you know you you guys state that you can use it for paying existing debt yes that's right so part of our the deficit that we have from the budget that contributes to that is a 9.9 million of debt service right so our unassigned funds can be used to pay down the debt.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

So when we talk about operations, we're talking about personnel.

Running the county.

running the county, giving money to the schools that were required, things of that nature. So that's why when we look at debt, we can do something with that. That's correct. And that's part of, and you may recall, because I remember you were at that meeting, and we all agreed, I think, that it made sense to take a hard look at that. We were then talking about mostly, as I recall, the service authority. Here we're talking about, I think we were, maybe I'm wrong.

No, I wasn't talking about that. Okay, we're talking about I mean, the debt service may have been. I was just talking about the debt service. So the county owes, when we're being presented and were presented in our previous meetings, there's part of the budget, the $143 million that we're being asked for. Part of that is $9.9 million worth of debt service fees. And historically, the county has used the unassigned fund balance to for some purpose okay we did whatever mr wasabi was here uh you know it's happened right okay so this the county has you know typically it gives back about four to five million dollars a year okay so that's four to five million dollars and then um if we use some of that some of our liquidity to buy down our debt is it's authorized the other thing though is i'd just like to point out real quick is that the financial um policies that the county has yes sir are as march the 6 2012 right that's right okay that's a pretty long time ago 20 years ago So it may be time that we take a look at that and make some adjustments.

So we are totally in agreement. What we have essentially done informally is that 15% going back then today is inadequate. It needs to be upgraded. If you look at highly rated local governments like you, we're sitting typically in the 20, 25, 30%.

That would make, so far, the proposal that I'm hearing much more palatable, if that were the case.

Yeah, so that's why I'm saying we see you responsibly using some of that excess fund balance, but not going down to that 15%. Not at all.

Okay. Do you want to continue on?

Okay. so again what we're looking at is for the short run how to how to fill a gap in 2027 so we think that no one wants rate increases obviously no one wants their taxes going up we understand that but we do think this is why i say my job is to sometimes tell you maybe what you don't want to hear but I think is helpful to hear. And that is that I think we can meet halfway. I believe that one of the options that the County Administrator has is to say, fine, while it would be ideal in an ideal world to get the equivalent of 10 pennies, and that would take care of basically that roughly 5 million, because again, you get that and it's there on an ongoing basis. What we see is that we could get half of those dollars We could plug that for the 2027 year with this one-time dollars that we identified and discovered with regard to the capitalized interest that could be used. And then what we see is going forward and coming back to you this summer and talking about what Mr. Stroud and Mr. Metz and others y'all are talking about, which is how do we look at what real additional dollars we have. Also, how do we incorporate what you tell us through the staff is absolute capital needs that you have to do going forward. How do we look at all that? So it's basically a puzzle. And that's what we do. And we may come back and say, when we put all the puzzle pieces together, We may need additional equivalent tax increases. I use the word equivalent because somehow we may need some other new monies. Maybe it comes from tax increases. Maybe it comes from identified economic development that's going to add new revenues. Maybe it comes from natural growth. But again, that we're only going to know as we get closer to a state budget that's done and says, how does it impact King George County? When we know what we've finished 2026 fiscal year, because it's still going on. And when we put all those things together with what you do one way or another here in the 27 budget, We put that together. What again, you have told us through the county administrator, we must do on capital. We get all that together. We're going to have a plan that we'll share with you some options. And that's what we could do. So. This is your debt profile. To your point, Mr. Stroud and others, there's your roughly $10 million. You can see what it is. It drops down nicely. The good news here is that if you look out over 10 years, we have a thing called a 10-year payout ratio. It's a fancy way of saying, how much principal have we paid off in 10 years? I tell those in the audience, think of it this way. if you're fortunate to have a home have a mortgage let's say your mortgage just go with me for each sake of numbers is a hundred thousand dollars a 30-year mortgage that's a hundred thousand dollars after 10 years the average mortgage has paid off about 25 percent of the principal about 25 000 that's what typically you'll see But for you, if we look out, we're going to be in the 27 fiscal year, out to basically 2036, we're going to have paid off a very substantial amount of your principal. And then you see it drops down nicely starting in those years. So we're coming to your debt portfolio from a position of strength. We're in good shape. We pay our debts down responsibly. But again, we know we've got a bunch of new debt to come on board, but we also know we've got about $20 million sitting there that is not part of fund balance, can't be used for operations, but could be potentially used. smartly depending on what bond council gives us in terms of the refined views as to how we could potentially use some of that so again work in progress i don't have those answers for you but i have partial answers which is what we recommend to doing in 2027 which is to use two and a half million instead of going into your fund balances. It's much more cost-effective to use capitalized interest dollars to reimburse yourself. And part of that is because the cost of That debt is about, I think I want to say about 4.4%. I'm rounding off. And the earnings that we get are a little under 4%. Again, we don't do that. We don't invest that. But that's what basically. So it's a more strategic use of your dollars.

Yes, sir. During our call, I think you, I don't have, I don't think, I'm going to look real quick. I should have my nose because you had mentioned you don't do that. But the current cost of money is 3.6 to 3.7.

That's not on these bonds, not on the 23 bonds. Okay. That's what I'm saying. But we've got the opportunity. I'll show you that in a minute when we get to that.

Okay.

okay so i think that's what you're talking about so these are different loans to your point mr stroud that are closer to what you just talked about basically 3.59 and a little over three percent so there are opportunities here to work with some of those bonds and that's the point and we're going to look at that so we're going to look at that those are outstanding those have already been spent on those projects but this is the debt as part of that 9.9 million that we're going to look at um so to understand what he's just said we are

know we've talked to the past about it doesn't make sense to spend your money if we're making more uh more money with it and what this slide demonstrates is that it's a it's almost an even trade so if right now we trade money that with what we're making for what we would be getting then we're not going to be paying interest and we're not going to be losing so you know this would be a fair trade

And again, the way we'll call it bond math works, it's not a one for one and it has to do with call provisions. And so, for example, we can't just look at the 9.9 and say, let's pay down that highest interest rate debt because they have what's called call provisions. So that 2023 bond has a 10-year call provision. That's a standard call feature. So it would be very expensive for us. to pay that would make no sense. We'd have to use what we call taxable debt to refund tax exempt debt. That wasn't always the case a few years ago, but it is and has been for a number of years. So part of why I say this is it's not just a straight line mathematical, but Mr. Stroud is absolutely right. He understands this. We've had some discussions about it. There are some ways of thinking about and looking at this. So that's what we're hopeful to get your benefit to go do that responsibly over the next couple of months. I won't be much longer, I promise. So again, in conclusion, I think I've probably beaten this dead horse. That third or fourth bullet, redirect some of your borrowing dollars, like we said, pay yourself, use that towards the 2027 fiscal year, but it's a one time. It's only for 2027. It will still have us have a shortfall of the equivalent of 2.5 or so million in 2028. Now, make sure I'm clear. We could go into the 2028 year and have even more shortfall based on other things that are not tied to any of this. So I wanna make sure everybody understands that. And like I said, that assumes that we get five pennies as opposed to 10. And that's important. So there's a lot of variables. This certainly will help us for the 2027 year. It'll allow us not to tap into that unassigned fund balance prematurely. But again, it's not a cure-all. It's just going to help us get to the summer, see a number of those things that I mentioned, and then be able to make some smart decisions going into 28 and beyond. And that's what I would say. Mr. Chairman, happy to answer any questions. Ms. Bender?

Yeah, I don't know if this is a silly question, but just ask this. Does $2.5 million, is the number to borrow, do we have to pay that back in the end?

No, no, that's the view. No, that's, no, you've already, those are dollars. We don't have to pay those back, no. Okay, I just wanted to make. We're not moving it so that that'll, no, that's not, no.

So I got a quick question too. The increase in the fund balance, the increase in the fund balance. So the numbers I'm seeing here seem like they're a little bit different from what we saw a couple of weeks ago. Regardless, it looks like over the last couple of three years, it's still gone up $9 million. Now, did I understand you to say that you think that's because of ARPA dollars? Because I feel like the various departments, as Mr. Stroud pointed out, we're getting back about $4.5 million a year. To me, that says we're overtaxing people already.

allow your county administrator to answer that then i can come behind that so so yes i had a slide on april 22nd um i went back i think to fy 19 a low of 716 000 up to a high of like 6.5 million that was returned so the last couple years we've been averaging about four million dollars now is that you know i i guess you know to answer that question thank you So I guess the question, $719,291 back in 19 and FY22 is almost over $6.4 million. So is this a question of, and I think there's a combination, I think some of your departments, there is some frugality, if that's a word, conscious spending throughout the year. Is there some fat built on the budget? Probably. I think it's a combination. um you know so i i can't answer you know what was done before me but you know speaking since i've been here last year 4.175 you know are we are we over taxing the the citizens you know and we could and and remember early on i presented you some you know some cuts um you know Those total $2.3 million. Those are some raises. The board says, no, we want to move forward with those. So when you look at it, we went through the budget line by line at the work session. Where do you cut $4 million out? and then you know that's the challenge that we're in right now try to identify those specific areas there there was some of them some ideas were presented but we wanted to keep some of those in for our employees and for the citizens so like i told you before i love that departments are being frugal and i want to reward that as much as we can but for the last at least the last two years we're getting more back than we've taken out of the general fund

Again, we're either overtaxing people or it's Jesus math, and I'm pretty sure Jesus didn't do this.

And if you recall, the 22nd, there was a way that the budgets done here in King George never seen it done like this before with the CIP. So FY 25, and I just want to state this in my previous lives at three other localities, your 4.175 leftover in FY 25, that funds your FY 27 CIP. So in that event, if you if you spend $3.1 million on a CIP, you take care of that CIP and you put $1 million back in the bank. Can we get there? Do we need to re-look at how the budget's done here at King George holistically? We may want to think about that next year. This is something that I inherited when I got here a little under two years ago. I can't speak to what was done before me, but I really want to sit with Davenport and with the board to think about how we fund the CIP

moving forward it's not for this fiscal year but but for next fiscal year yeah i agree this is just my opinion and my opinion for whatever that's worth but i feel like we need to have a working session early in the year to look at you know our methods and our processes and how we're going about this go ahead brian yeah so i had done a lot of taking into this budget stuff when i was campaigning and um

one of the contributors, and I would definitely be happy to take a look at this too, is our hiring policy. The budget that we set is based on 100% staff of all those billets. We know that that's completely unrealistic across all the departments. We're always, like I just was looking up today, there's always departures and new hires. There's a gap between those in most of our departments. So if we want to hit the exact expense dollar that we have in our budget we need to look at our our hiring policy as part of that kind of goes along we got this our fund balance policy too i think we're both on this end agreeing that we definitely would like to take a look at that as well right and that 15 needs to grow a little bit because i mean we do it's still a growing county and that that bunch of this does grow a little bit every year another question looking at this and ms bender may be able to help me because i i think she's mentioned this before is some of that 48 million dollars some of that service authority money also i think there's about eight million dollars in there that's the service authorities

eight something. I just don't know what the member of the exact number.

Mala. Is everybody else already asked some questions that everybody else done? Go ahead. I have a question, Mr Rose.

Sure.

Has anybody asked you, um, to help the county look at ways to reduce the budget or to reduce our expenses?

No, no. But I do see where you're coming. I understand both discussions here. And I think what we care about, again, I can't comment on whether or not that $5.2 million is appropriate or not that's not what we are asked to look at okay that's not my world however what we're here trying to do though is to say if it is identified that there's roughly a five million dollar if true shortfall And there is going to be that kind of shortfall going forward on a recurring basis, which could then further be exacerbated by a very large capital program that you may or you've identified that you need to do. That's not me talking. That's if you tell us that. So that 9.9 can go higher. And so with all of that, the point I made up front though, is a lot of those ARPA and CARES dollars, they did a lot to mask real budgets and real fund balances from recurring dollars over the last half dozen years and so i have to rely on your staff to say that to operate in a prudent manner if we need five million dollars this is identified options so my role today was trying to say okay What are good options? What are bad options if you're telling us you need to come up with a real $5 million shortfall? The good news is it may not be $5 million, possibly, but if it is, we've identified a one-time for 2027 that's real, not a gimmick, that is using some of those dollars that are available to go back into for you for 2027. That's half of it. The other half would be, again, new taxes, if that's been presented to us. Again, that's y'all's call. That gets you the $5 million without dipping into, for the moment, meaning for the year, the unassigned fund balance. Now, as I said, as you've talked about, it will be very important to see how do we finish 2026. We're not going to know that. until probably August, late August, I would think, Yeah, August, September, usually it's six to eight weeks after June 30th. We have a sense of how those books close up and what dollars really come. And then to Mr. Smolnick's point, our point, what is the real likelihood that a 27 will have that kind of results? And it goes to your point, Mr. Metz, if indeed there is an embedded, I'm just picking a number here, one and a half million because of, you know, real you know sort of hiring slash attrition whatever we can look at that again so i think it's a work in progress and i can't tell you i don't i don't typically look at expenses i'm not i'm not an expert on and that's not my world i don't i don't view myself as an expert on operations of a local government I look to your staff and to y'all as experts on that. That's not really my world.

Okay.

I know debt and I know other things, but I'd be beyond my abilities.

Okay. Thank you. You mentioned early on, I think you said something about, I tried to write it down, but it was in one of the early slides. You mentioned something about a difficult time ahead.

I'm sorry?

Something about a difficult time ahead. And I was asked what you were referring to by that.

Well, what I see going forward, and I mentioned this, is most likely, and Ms. Stewart probably could speak to it since he's a part of the legislature, is it seems to be, and you correct Ms. Stewart, I hope I'm wrong, but that collective bargaining in some form is going to be a real cost for local governments. That right now is not in your 27 budget, but for 28, 29, perhaps, I don't know how fast, but it seems to be the consensus, and correct me, I hope I'm wrong, that that's going to be, we'll call it an unfunded mandate that local governments are going to have to deal with. And that's part of what I mean by difficult time. It just means dollars, means dollars that you're going to come up with. And I would defer back to your county attorney.

We don't know yet. Depends on what the governor does. So there was a bill that. would start collective bargaining in 2028 after the next election cycle for the General Assembly members. The governor sent down an amendment to have it not take effect until 2030 after she left office, and the General Assembly didn't take up her amendment. So she can either let it become law as it is in 2028, or she can veto it, and I can't tell you today what she's going to

So there it is. That is, Mr. Stroud, what I'm talking about. The other thing I'm talking about, as Mr. Pinder is here, there's going to be, I'm sure, and your engineers know this, there's probably going to be a variety of additional costs as it relates to utilities that you're going to have to do, like it or not. So we think about those things, meaning, again, whether it's state or federal, DEQ, things of that nature. So those are going to be real dollars. That's what I mean.

Okay. Those things you said Ms. Bender knows about it. Are those things that we should know about?

I mean, just over time. I mean, just we know

Okay, nothing particular.

No, I think you're referring to things with the PFAS regulations that are coming down, things that we're going to have to install because of EPA guidelines, things we've talked about before, but things we don't think about because it's stuff we have to retrofit our plants for.

Right. i wish i would have to take back my remark going no i don't see difficulties down the road for local governments but i've been doing this what 43 44 years and you know i could tell you i never knew what a pfas was 10 years ago maybe i'm i just it's stuff like that you know tertiary treatment things of those natures it just is what it is all right mr davis last question

So we have an audit done here, you know, just kind of make sure that money isn't getting stolen, things of that nature. I think it's about the depth of it, but something that we've been talking about is we, I think we need to have a physical responsibility audit done in our county, just to see where, that if we're on par in some parts of our county and other parts, you know, where leaking is taking place in a sense, and That's just really my two cents on the matter is we really need to dig deeper on an audit, like more of a physical responsibility type audit, just to find out exactly what's going on. That's the only way we're going to really get to some of it, and you know that as well. What's your thoughts on that?

Well, I think you're right. thinking in the right direction. I don't know if I'd call it an audit, but I think for example, it would be good to look at, which I'm sure you do, how you fund schools relative to your required minimum. And for example, how does some of your neighbors do that? And it varies. So then it boils down to how you as a board and how the community looks at that. So I think we could work with some of those things and staff can work with some of those things and give you a sense of it. I mean, relatively speaking, and again, this may be your absolute real estate tax rate is certainly not out of line. It's probably on the lower side of counties as opposed to the higher side of counties. Then we could take a deeper dive and look at all that. But again, I think you're moving in the right direction. You're asking the right questions is, okay, how are we spending our dollars? And how does that compare to some other places? You know, I know one county that has a very low tax rate, proud of it, but they also never give one extra dollar that they need to to schools. And school performance is not impressive. You know, also the schools are 75 years old. So, you know, there's the irony is county that I work with is as almost very little debt outstanding. very low tax rate, but is so far behind in all of the essential things that the citizens need.

But one day it just catches up to you. What's that? So one day it just catches up to you.

And it's caught up to them now, yes. Now they're under court order to do a courthouse. that will quadruple their debt. And they have no pathway for that. I mean, so again, I think we can help look at some of these things. But let's face it. Every county is different. Um, but you can get some sense of that. You can. Okay.

All right. Thank you, sir.

Thank you. I really appreciate this.

Appreciate it. So I'd like to thank you. I know this is in prop to effort that you guys did uh outside of schedule finished together so thank you i appreciate it thank you thank you all very much

All right, we'll move on to item 0503, another public hearing. The King George County Board of Supervisors will hold a public hearing that has been properly advertised to receive public input regarding item 0503, King George County tax rate for calendar year 2026. The Board of Supervisors has the right to adopt the tax rates equal to or lower than those advertised below the proposed calendar year 2026 calendar tax rates. I'm not going to read all those. They have been properly advertised and they're available on board and on the line. so i'll hand it off at this time or actually following the public hearing the board of supervisors may fix an appropriate tax levy for real estate mobile homes personal property and machinery and tools for calendar year 2026. the board of supervisors is not obligated to adopt the proposed tax rates and may adjourn to subsequent meetings and fix tax levies i'll now turn it over to mr smaller for the staff report

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. No particular staff report. One thing I would ask the board at the conclusion of the public hearing would be to, I believe the correct word is to table action until a little bit later on in the meeting. Is that as a table? Table until a little later on until after I make my budget presentation. I have a calendar that will set out kind of the timeline where we are today and where we need to get to through the end of the fiscal year. But this is the public hearing under state code. You do need to hold public hearing. Real estate tax rate, 68 cents per $100 of assessed valuation. Again, the board, we advertised 68 cents. This was determined at the work session. The board can adopt a tax rate that is lower than 68. You just cannot go greater than 68. For tangible proportional property, 325 per 100 of assessed valuation based on 100% of the market value. Machinery and Tools, $2.50 per hundred of assessed valuation based on 100% of the market value rate. And the mobile home tax also at 68 cents per hundred assessed valuation based on 100% of the market value. So other than the information presented before you, there's no official staff report. This is to garner input from the public on the proposed tax rates for the upcoming year.

Okay. Thank you, sir. At this time, we'll open the floor of public comment. Upon completion of public comment, I'll bring the matter back to the board for consideration. Public comment is limited to three minutes per speaker to ensure everyone has an opportunity to speak. Please state your name and address before your comment. And at this time, I have had no one sign up. Is there anyone in the audience who would like to make public comment? Seeing none, board members, has anybody gotten any written correspondence? Seeing none, Mr. Dines, do you have anybody online?

No, Mr. Chairman.

All right. Thank you, sir. At this time, I'll close public comment and I'll close the floor for the public hearing and bring it back to the board. So the recommendation by Mr. Smallnick was to defer any action until after his presentation, which is a few items down the list here. you need a motion make a motion we defer action until i think we could just go with consensus i mean we're all in the same meeting good with consensus yeah just don't do anything right now all right so we will pick it back up with presentations item 0504 the exodus family institute miss mary parnell

Good evening, Board and Chair. I'm happy to be back again because I know you have so many things going on, but I'm happy that you allowed me the opportunity to come back because of the concern that was raised at the end of our, at your last session when I was here. So our basic presentation, you already know about us, our 21 affordable homes for the workhouse, for the workforce. The only thing that I want to add tonight, really, because you've heard about our homes, we believe that it's as important now as ever that the wages of these essential workers that we are working with are not keeping up with the prices of homes and so we still feel that the EFI project is very important and and we certainly are dedicated to bringing it and want to address the concerns that you had so one concern was that staff time might be necessary if you allowed us the approval to go forward on the application with that We, with the help of Virginia Housing, we found a grant writer and also even beyond a grant writer, someone that knows a lot about the housing community and they are FaithWorks, this organization that's on the screen. So they have a similar mission to What we have, they also have experience in writing the grant. We have initiated, we have a draft agreement with them. When I found out, I think maybe about the middle of last week that we were gonna get a chance to come back again, but did not have enough time to finalize everything. So we have a draft contract that has been reviewed by FaithWorks. also reviewed by EFI. It has gone to our attorney. I sent it to Mr. Smolnick, and he also wanted that to be reviewed by the county's attorney. So we feel that we have addressed that concern. again he came highly recommended from Virginia Housing and when I spoke to Chip Boyles about this organization he thought that they were a good fit and so I believe we have taken care of that the other things real quick is how partners and supporters. I think it's important because another concern raised by Mr. Smolnick is that he wants to see a financial plan from us that we create a cash escrow account so that to ensure that the county is not gonna have to put out any upfront funds in the event that we get this this grant that we you allow us to go for the grant and then we get it so these are our partners we have one in the room Mr. Allen West I just would like to him to stand up and I think many of you know him that that he is here of Westbrook Homes and Virginia Housing, Fredericksburg Habitat for Humanity, Central Virginia Housing. So these are all organizations that are supporting us. Some have even provided funding, not all, but some. And so we are working on the cash flow escrow that Mr. Smolnick asked us to prepare. Our board members have also pledged cash assets to uh to to set up this cash escrow account and so but again due to the interest of time we were not able to to complete that but we we are certainly working on it I've started to to research the right mechanism that would be that would make sense to do this and letter of credit is one of those things that we looked into and then our community supporters i think is very important that you see who they are and and that the the king george county schools which is primarily the population that we want to serve is in support of our project and has written us a letter a recommendation when for our former grant So we do have one ask tonight and that is that you would allow us to start the application. It came the infrastructure grant CDBG infrastructure grant application came out last night. we have to have two public hearings for this particular grant as a part of the application. And so since the grant has already, since it has already out there, we thought in the interest of time that we would ask you to approve us to get it started. Of course, without that we would satisfy your concerns. and that nothing would get submitted, absolutely nothing would get submitted without your approval. And so contingent upon us determined getting the executed contract with FaithWorks and creating this cash flow escrow, we are asking for approved to move forward with the infrastructure grant application.

Thank you, ma'am. Any questions?

And one of the concerns, Mr. Chairman, that I had raised earlier, and I feel confident now, is the amount of staff time, really, that's going to be the CAM system to put the grant in. Talk to finance and procurement. We can allow Ms. Parnell to go ahead and to put that information in there. We've talked about it. I feel comfortable about that. So that's one big thing that, you know, one concern that the check has been checked. She touched on the other two, the agreement, the draft agreement with FaithWorks. Now, she did send that to me via email and asked to send it to Mr. Stewart. All my years of local government, I'd like to get something finalized on an applicant's end before I send it to our county attorney for his review or her review, just so that they're not two competing attorneys working on a moving document. So whenever that is finalized, I can get that on to our county attorney for review and then really the cash escrow. So there are two big things that are still out there, but I did want to let the board know that the CAM system, that item has been addressed.

And we think that the contract will be finalized as far as EFI and FaithWorks this next week. And so we don't see any problem with that. FaithWorks actually submitted that contract to us. So we don't expect that they will have any problems. But we have not received it back from our attorney. And I certainly understand that you want to have something final. But again, given the amount of time that we had,

we didn't have time to finalize the um or execute the the contract any other questions one point of clarification asking for authorization to move forward that entails what specifically

That would allow us to access CAM. We would like that to be able to see the application. We have a procedures handbook, but the application is totally different. So the instructions around these two public meetings that are part of this grant, that is not spelled out. uh specifically in the handbook and so having the um access to the the to cams would allow us that that's really one of the the main concerns I attended the public meeting for the CDBG planning grant last night and so they are already getting started and well ahead and so just have uh wanted to again kind of get started but knowing that we nothing would get some get submitted until these areas have been addressed so what is your deadline for uh submitting your final the final is due july one july one okay so there's there's plenty of time but we're not going to use all that time we want to get those things that you want to see wrapped up as soon as possible okay and you're confident that uh

the contract with the other organizations going to get signed?

Oh, yes, definitely. As I said, he submitted it to us and we didn't really have any major problems with it. It's just, you know, we wanted to get the legal review, though.

You said part of this grant requires two public hearings. Is that between now and July 1, or is that something that will happen after July 1?

Between now and July 1.

Okay. The calendar is filling up quick.

I guess my question is, who schedules and who pays for those public hearings?

we we will take care of all of it that's a part of of the the grant writing and and we will spell that out too if you need to see that okay so part of the grant writing will detail out those specifics and we can't submit anything until you come back to this board right correct not we could not submit the application but we do need your approval to move forward to get it started and it came out yesterday

Mr. Chairman, does the county have the public hearings, and are they the ones that give notice, and is the county the actual applicant?

According, as I said, this is new territory for me too because normally the PDC would do it. I attended the public meeting last night. Mr. Smallnick was there. It was a notice that went out. It said it was the county. Because this is a grant that will come to the county, yes, it will go out in the county's name just as,

uh the the meeting did last night but there will be no expense or uh or or anything it's it's a public meeting mr chairman i'm i'm just asking questions from a legal perspective i'm very familiar with the community block development grant that mrs parnell applied for last time i have no information about this i mean so we i don't know if the board is anxious to move but it just seems like if you could get us some information to even know what they're applying for well what their obligations responsibilities if there are i mean if they've got to pay money back it would just seem prudent that they see what they are actually applying for before they agree to do that i i don't know how the board feels about it but

Well, we have gone through the policy and procedures and so our board feels comfortable going forward. This infrastructure grant is just like the planning grant that you approved for us before and just like I believe you must have approved for the meeting that we were at last night. And so there is two meetings required and we we would hold those in the name and and and matt maybe you have some information on on the how the the meeting came about last night because it what we would have is the same kind of meeting

I think Mr. Stewart's concern, and certainly mine, is we haven't seen the language of what this looks like. And my concern is, is there a county match that's associated with this? Or is there any kind of recoup where the state may want something back from the county later? Without knowing that, I can't vote on that tonight.

Oh, if I can say one more thing. These things are not spelled out clearly again in the handbook. and the way to understand exactly what's there is to access the application I understand that you know that's not the the best way to do it but there was no when when we've done this before there was no expectation from of anything due back from the county as a result of attending that meeting Mr. Chairman um

My understanding is that the Community Block Development Grant was a state grant, and I'm very familiar with that. It typically is money given, let's use the Southwest, for example, because there's still homes in Virginia that don't even have indoor plumbing, and that's usually what that money goes to. I thought this was a federal grant, and typically any of these sort of federal grants, and was it for a million dollars?

It is the federal funds that comes through the state, the Department of Housing and Community Development.

In my experience, those grants have a number of strings attached to them. You have to make certain commitments in order to get it. There are provisions that require you to pay it back if things are not done properly. I don't know if that's the case here, but as their attorney, all I'm saying is I recommend you get those answers before you go head first into that.

And does get in the approval to go to see the actual application because that's where I believe those the answers are there. Again, we did this before. there there i i understand what the attorney is saying and and again this is new territory for me but we this this is exactly the the same pool of money that we did for the planning grant that the the planning grant for the meeting that we attended last night is coming out of and and that the yes they i understand that it these grants normally go to uh in southwest Virginia but it's we certainly would not you know except that we apply we we won't find that out and so we can be contingent to getting these answers it's just that the application has come out and there are things that are required and and certainly again I want to assure the board and you Mr. chairman that we we do not want to proceed in anything that is going to put the county in jeopardy and will not proceed that no nobody wins there but to to be able to see what's actually required in the application we can't do that without getting in camps matt i'm sorry i spoke over you did you have something to say no uh mr smolnick

So just a point of clarification, the meeting that Ms. Parnell referenced last night, that was for St. Paul's. That was for the planning grant. I didn't want you to be confused. So totally different project. I just wanted that point of clarification. St. Paul's is applying for the planning grant that Ms. Parnell's group applied for and was not awarded last year.

So I just want to make certain that you all understand that.

And it's typically the planning grant money that's used for the implementation and the administration of the planning grant and this infrastructure grant. That's the part that's missing here.

Mr. Chairman, I've got to believe that if Mrs. Parnell knows the grant that she's trying to get, that there is somebody with either the state housing office, which she referenced, or the federal office that's responsible for the grant knows the terms of this and could tell someone ahead of time so you know what you're getting into. That is typically the process anyway, that people usually don't apply unless they know what they're applying for and what their responsibilities are.

Well, because we applied before, and this is the same pool of funding that the planning grant comes out of this infrastructure grant is a part of this same amount of funding. So if the county has not been been asked to pay anything specific back under that particular grant, then I don't believe that will be the case with this one either.

I feel like we're making this harder than what your ask was. So you're not asking to apply for this grant. You're asking to do the homework to get the grant details out of CAMS and start your grant writer working on documenting these details for us. Is that, am I understanding this correct?

That is a simpler way of saying it, but in order to get CAMS, into CAMS, that's starting the application.

but it's not finishing the application.

No, no, no. There would be plenty of time to do the research and get the answers. I really don't feel and would not even be before you if I thought that there was some risk of exposure there. But in the CAMS application right now, that's the only way I understand where we can fully be able to research and know what is done.

Thank you. These questions are good questions. I hope somebody writing them down, because in the public hearings, I hope that you have an opportunity to engage on, you know, what are the responsibilities of the county? What are the responsibilities of Exodus? What are, you know, as we come through the, the real planning, and then we can make an informed decision? Yes, is this something we want to go forward with?

Okay, so then approval to get access to cams. I mean, that's a simpler way to put it.

So, we're having this conversation up here.

There's a few steps on our side. It sounds like you've got the contract that you're looking over. You don't have the final yet.

No, I've seen the draft contract that the applicant is working with on her side. I'm not going to send it to our attorney until it's finalized on the applicant's side. There's no point to. And that's just as good governance. That's what I always do with any sort of application that comes in. It has to be finalized on the applicant's side before it comes to the county for our review.

and we should be able to do that within a few days a short time as i said faith works did not have any objections to it mr chairman and and perhaps i misunderstood i i thought when mrs parnell was here before she actually said that this will have to be accessed through a county terminal and submitted through a county terminal which i think means you're going to have to have county staff assisting her, which was the discussion in the very beginning.

Well, I believe Mr. Simone had dealt with that and said he spoke to his staff and that they would be able to give us access to it.

Yet again, this is our first time doing this. Typically, this is done by a planning commission. You know, could we give her access to quite the question was, can we give her access? The answer was yes, we can. but how much time that takes of staff you know that the question was can we give her access partial access yes we can how much staff time is involved in that you know that that's that's the other another supervisor unsupervised access

My understanding is that it didn't take much time because you had to give that access to the PDC, to Chip Bowles. They did not have access when they did the application for us last year. And so from what I understand, it didn't. take a lot of staff time in fact there's a procedure there in in the uh application that tells you how you can grant access to uh to to someone other than the the and i believe in a planning grant uh chip and his staff did all the legwork behind it just pretty much sent it to us and we hit send that that's all we had to do they did a lot of the legwork and and that's what we're intending faith works would do And the DHCD does allow other organizations besides the PDCs to do these grants. That was why we went with FaithWorks. Virginia Housing provided them because they'd done a lot of work with them. And also, as I mentioned, Chip Walls did say he thought that they were a good fit. So he was familiar with them as well.

ahead ms fitter i just want for clarification because we've talked about this numerous times yes why can the planning commission not do it again

Well, they are assisting the church in doing, no one ever said this to me, but after attending the meeting last night, it appears to me that their staff is devoted to helping the church write their planning grant. And so therefore they didn't have staff time to assist us. Now, nobody ever said that.

Which is the same thing that happened last year. Chip helped you write your application for your planning grant.

Yes, but I didn't know that some other organization was wanting to, that they turned somebody else down. Again, I'm not familiar.

And these are two different grants, though.

These are two different grants. The planning grant is one, and that's As Ms. Smolnick said, that's what we applied for last year, and we were not successful, but everyone says it didn't have anything to do with Exodus. There were no overbearing requirements as a part of that process that I recall, and that's why I'm assuming the same as this, because this is the same pool of money. The planning grant is a smaller amount of money than the infrastructure grant.

That is the difference. The planning grant, if you get it, those funds are used to staff the application process and the administration process of the infrastructure grant.

I guess my confusion is, so there's no way, without this grant, there's no way you can continue your project? You don't have the funds to

no i'm not saying that but i'm saying with 21 homes and this is a product but what has been estimated is that it's a two million dollar project that divided over 21 homes is about a hundred thousand dollars so it's we would have to add that back to the price of the homes and so it just makes them less affordable no i'm not saying in any way that we this project is not going to get done it just helps us to continue

to fulfill our commitment to keep the the homes as affordable uh for our essential workforce right but you could find some really nice donors that might be able to help with that is where i'm coming from yes it's it's possible because i do know this is owned by a church right correct the property it's faith-based housing

For our property? Yes. Well, Exodus is not a religious organization. It grew out of a ministry of our church, but it is a 501c3 nonprofit, but not like the Episcopal Church.

Well, what I'm asking that is, and Senator Stewart can help me on this one, one of the bills that was passed was by right faith-based housing, correct? So that's why I'm asking that question.

Right, and I figured that was by the Episcopal churches involved now because of the legislation that got passed. Okay, thank you.

The intent for this grant, though, is to build the roads and the infrastructure in there. That really didn't, being by right doesn't help that at all.

So with the planning grant, I know the other applicant we met with last night is gearing up for the planning grant for this next year. Can you apply for this year again for the planning grant? Because I believe last year it's just simply they ran out of money. You got your application in late and they ran out of money. Could you apply for a planning grant again this year for $75,000, get your application in on day one there? It would set the project back, you know, 8, 10, 12 months. But then if you get your application in, if they said it was a very solid application, you would get that planning grant money to take care of the administration of the infrastructure grant. So is that a possibility?

that I don't know I can't answer but we do have the funding to to take care of the things that the planning grant would pay would have paid for the market analysis and and also community engagement we are prepared to to take those on and we we've actually submitted for requests for proposals for organizations and so we actually have a price of what those two items will will cost and you know I can share that that is 16 000 so that is certainly something that that is information that will be useful to help us to complete this infrastructure whether or not we can apply for the planning grant. That is not something that that I can answer. That's another one of those questions that you know, I don't but but what we would like to apply for is the infrastructure grant. And there were nothing would get submitted until all of these questions and concerns are addressed. so i guess even if we approved you allowing to go into the cam system we still have to have a staff member there to and and to make sure everything's okay what you have to have a staff member someone to give me access to it no one has to be there we just have to have access to the portal so that i believe would be a link or something like that it does would not have to be a person from what i understand I work with Samantha in Chip Boyle's office last year, and she actually worked with Lucy and some other folks in the planning department and got access to it is, again, what I understand.

mr chairman these this is again some of the stuff i'm wondering about because if it has to be submitted by the county it would have to be submitted under someone's authority like the county administrator the finance director somebody and i guess if they wanted to give unfettered access i mean theoretically something could get submitted and they didn't even know what it was i'm not saying ms parnell would ever do that but it would seem to me it should the individual whose name it would be submitted under would have to be a part of that process i'm happy if if mrs parnell can tell me the grant that she is trying to apply for and define it with specificity i'm happy to to find out what it entails and i'm sure i can do that through the state um That's all I'm suggesting. You should know what you're getting into before you get into it from a legal standpoint.

Okay. Y'all good? You good? Good? Yeah, I guess.

Last year we were okay with CBD and Chip and his team So last year we were okay with Chip Royals and the community planning working together to figure these details out. It seems like Exodus now has FaithWorks lined up to do that same scope of work that Chip said he didn't have the resources to cover this year. I'm not saying I'm okay approving and going forward with a grant. I just am curious. I'm curious what our hesitation is getting those details. Maybe Mr. Stewart defined an alternate path as opposed to getting into CAMS to get those details so that the grant writer can start working on those, right? Grant writing doesn't happen overnight. It takes a month.

He's already offered to get those details for us, right?

If she can identify to me with specificity the grant that she is seeking, I will find out from the state what the parameters are, obligations, requirements, etc.,

It's the same grant that the Episcopal Church that the county is supporting.

That doesn't help me at all. I need to know the grant that your organization wants to apply for with some form of specificity and I'm happy to call and I can't remember, Housing and Urban Development for the state and ask them the parameters and get them to send it to us. I need to know what you're trying to get.

It is the CDBG infrastructure grant. Again, it's the same pool of funding as the planning grant.

Go find out what in CAMS is the record number of that grant that came out yesterday and provide that to Mr. Stewart. because that'll give him something when he calls somebody to use as a record locator, right? But I love how we set things up in the state. There's always these catch 22s and you're kind of chasing your tail around trying to figure out how to get the data so you can get the information so that you can approve going forward with the data. It's just frustrating.

so i don't think that's i i think that we know what the parameters are up front and that someone can tell us before you get into it um these grants are typically as i say for areas that have been subjected to hurricanes and all those things like that trying to help people who already have a home in some cases you know it's a neighborhood of 10 small homes and they have a driveway that has holes in it six feet deep they they'll come in and fix that driveway for them or put plumbing in that typically is what it's for and and there are parameters we just i just need to know what she's trying to get i'll find out if you could do that that would be great because the feedback i heard from the application last year was very positive it just no resource no money available to do it so

oh that's a very different grant though seventy five thousand dollars versus a million right yeah but so but by not putting the grant you're taking a no away i mean you're not even asking for the money so of course it's going to be no if you don't ask for the money like i'm always willing to ask for the money yeah we're not saying no we're saying we need some more details and then we'll press on all right thank you ma'am

right action item 0506 king george county fiscal year 27 budget mr matthew j smolnick you

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, Matt Smolenski, County Administrator. So April 22nd, I presented a balanced budget to the Board of Supervisors. We had a lengthy discussion on that. And I left that meeting with, you know, we want to make sure we exhaust all different options, possibilities. Reason one, we had Mr. Rose with Davenport here tonight talking a little bit to you all. And I've done some homework since that meeting a couple weeks ago. And I've got a couple different options for the board for you all to consider. So I'm going to go through these. I don't have a lengthy presentation, but I feel it's pertinent to talk about. But before I get into this, I think one of the important questions that I've heard in the community and I think some individuals have asked me, and I've got Dr. Boyd over my left shoulder here, you know what what dollar amount is going to the schools whenever you see 72 million dollars to the schools i want to you know stress to this board i believe as is dr boyd it's not 72 million dollars of local money so these next two slides and i believe you have this handout here really a breakout of state federal and local funds now the the local funds there is a minimum match i believe uh mr rose referenced those earlier some localities just meet the minimum We go above and beyond those. We want to ensure that our schools aren't mediocre, but they're above and beyond and really leading that charge. So that local match does exceed the minimum amount that's required, $2.5 million of federal money. And the lion's share of this is really state funds. These are state funds that are coming to us. And right now, without a state budget, it's kind of hard to predict what we've got. I've got one more slide, and then I'm going to have Dr. Boyd, I don't know if you're antsy here, but I want to make sure everything gets, antsy is not the right word. I want to make sure that I'm covering the details that Dr. Boyd, I want to make sure they get across in the correct manner. So looking at this, we have our general fund. Remember I talked about our overall budget? of 145 million plus or minus then we get the general fund budget 86 million so of that the general fund a little over 28 million dollars goes to schools so a lot of times you'll see i think you know oh 56 or 60 percent of the the budget goes towards the schools let's focus on the local dollar shares actually 32.5 percent goes to the schools and these are just some king george county schools by the by the numbers employees students buildings support facilities a number of school buses and you look at these bottom two rings here where does the money go If you look at these, staffing and instruction, the staffing is the money that comes to them. And then the right-hand circle, these are the specific categories that the board appropriates funds to by category. What you see here is it's teachers and instruction. That's the big point of the schools here. And Dr. Boyd, I'm going to turn it over to you. I'm sure you can add stuff a little bit more eloquently than I can.

that was pretty good that was pretty good so uh good evening chairman sellers member of the board mr small did a good job we had an opportunity last week after your last meeting to get together and talk about where the budget was i really share with mr smallnick some of uh some of the questions that we had moving forward and in that conversation as he pointed out earlier we talked a lot about some of the misconceptions that we have in the community about how much money the school needs versus you know the total budget so that last slide Oftentimes, you know, we look at that $72 million and we know our total county budget within the entire county this year is $143 million. So oftentimes you see that illustration of the dollar bill and you take that $143 million and you figure out what percentage the $72 million is and you say, well, it's something like 50 cents of the dollar bill or 55 cents of the dollar bill. what we wanted to stress here and i know kathy you've talked about this a number of times is the majority of the state funds as mr smaldick mentioned is excuse me a majority of the funds comes from the state and as those state funds require i've heard you mention this before it kind of puts our locality on the hook for certain expenses as well. I loved hearing Davenport earlier talk about taking a closer look at efficiencies and how much money in the entire county specifically mentioned to the school division. I would be very interested in that study. I think that would be very interesting. Right now locally we use 90 or excuse me 39 percent From local funds, our local composite index right now is 36 and some change to give you reference. So again, what we tried to do is compare apples to apples up in the upper left-hand corner. Local funds required to satisfy the budget in King George County is 86 million. School division needs about 28 million of that, which equates to about almost 33%, 32 and a half percent. If you look at it by the numbers, King George County Schools has 719 employees, which is about twice the size of every other county department included. And again, if you look at our size compared to the amount of county budget we use, I think we're We're doing a pretty good job on the amount of money that you afford us in terms of what we're able to do with those dollars. Mr. Smolnick already mentioned below that most of that money on the left-hand side goes to staffing. So again, if we talk about cuts and additional cuts, 87% of our budget, we're a people business. So if we go into more of a negative area, we are starting to talk about people as that is 87% of our budget. And that on the right hand side, you guys know you appropriate us in five categories, technology, admin, health and attendance, transportation, operating and maintenance and facilities. And you can see the lion's share of that money, three quarters of it goes to instruction. So we did just wanna clear up some of those misconceptions in the community. Another point, I know you guys, I've listened all night and talked to Mr. Smolnick a lot. I know you've got a lot on your plate right now, and I don't envy the decisions that you have to make. I do just want to say to you, in terms of the timeline that I know Mr. Smolnick is going to present here this evening, we talked about this in great detail. uh contracts for our teachers we typically get to them before they leave for summer break so that they have a contract signed in hand and we know they intend to return to king george county schools we certainly wouldn't want to be in a position for them not to have a contract before leaving The latest that we could probably do that and stay within the timeline to allow them to have the number of days they need to turn it back around to us would be about May 18th. We have in the past pushed out a contract that says pending budget approval. That's not uncommon for us. But again, would like to be as sure as we possibly can on where we stand with the budget so that we don't have to reissue contracts. That would be the last thing we would want to do. So I can stop there. Thank you, Mr. Smolnick, for the opportunity. And answer any questions or just turn it over to Mr. Smolnick. Thank you.

So option one, this is the budget that was presented to you on April 22nd. You have the dollar amount there, proposed a 10 cent tax real estate increase with a tax, a proposed tax rate of 66 cents per hundred. And this included no borrowing of funds from the general fund. This is what preempted me to that night. I think we were emailed about midnight that night. David, I really need your help on a few things here. So we got them going that the night of the April, April 22nd. All right, so I know, Ms. Bender, we talked about this. This was a slide from April 22nd. What does the Option 1 budget include? You're going to see this three times, but I want to let you know all three options. I'm not going to go through them here. These are some of the things that we discussed at the April 10th work session here on a Friday afternoon. board of supervisors said you know let's keep this in or you know let's at least you know work with it and you'll see the the with the fifth bullet point down it did changes following the April 22nd meeting the two percent cola for county library social services plus the one percent merit that was the 317 000 you deducted from the school transfer and directed me to to run that into a merit program here for for those three groups of employees So option two, this was sent to the board earlier. I just wanted to reiterate it here for the public. So looking to cut this tax rate in half. So I went back and I made some additional cuts. Those are listed. And then I also went back and, you know, rethought about some of my revenue projections. I've said, you know, I'm a fiscal conservative, but that works both ways in expenditures and revenues. And the last thing I wanna do is say, hey, we're gonna make $5 million on this line item and bring in $2 million. and come up $3 million short at the end of the year. So I went back and looked at those, the personal property proration at the April 22nd meeting. That's where we talked about it. I'm not going to go into it, but there was no money going to that account, that specific line item. We've learned that there is money being collected on proration. It's just not going to the right line item. So we only have two years' worth of data at this average $352,000. So I put in another $350,000 of revenue. So what I did here is I cut down some expenditures and I increased some of the revenues to try to make up the shortfall. Local sales tax, you know, looked at this. This is the 1% sales tax. This is what we pay. This is not meals tax for anybody watching. This is the sales and use tax we pay on our groceries at Walmart, Food Lion, or wherever we shop. people were still buying groceries you were still going to need to eat we were still buying commodities and i went back and i think i was a little bit conservative with my initial estimate so i added 300 000 to local sales tax and in this option you know i know it's against your policy but i wanted to give you guys options uh one point almost six million dollars from fund balance so that's where we get at a 61 cent tax rate and again it gets you the same things as as the initial budget Option three, this is after we got some information from Davenport earlier this week. So five cent real estate tax rate increase and a 61 cent rate is proposed. One thing I did here, I want you to notice at this point in time, cut down some 182,000 from emergency services over time. You know, they've got almost a $10 million budget, you know, sitting, talking with chief, you know, it's, I can't cut $200,000 out of a budget. That's 220,000. I need to go to the big budgets. So option two pulled it option three, put it back in. Okay. then we we we did a 1 million 780 462 transfer from bond proceeds this is what mr rose talked about earlier this is a one-time fix but it will get us to to look ahead to are there some additional bond restructuring or something like that we can do later on this summer And I want to note the dollar amount here. I know when Ms. Cobb first sent this to me, I said, well, Levita, that's quite a bit different. Now we're over $145 million. This is an accounting thing. So please forgive me if I get this wrong. I want to look to Ms. Cobb. But the way I understand it is the bond proceeds, the interest from those 2023 series bonds, they need to be brought into the capital. So it's money into the capital. uh and then you have to take it out of the capital in and out and then you have to put those 1.7 into the general fund so that's why this top number is is larger it's a it's an accounting thing that levita and her team need to do for audit purposes so i wanted to kind of squash that if that question came up from some of the board members all right so again option three same same you get your same buying power as the other two options Here's one thing, I know Mr. Sollins asked me, we talked about timing. So here we are Tuesday, May 5. So we've had the public hearing, no action has been taken yet by the board on the tax rates. So you're gonna need to set the tax rates before the conclusion of this meeting. PPTRA, that's another resolution we have on you later on the agenda. And my goal for to leave this meeting tonight is to have a finite dollar amount for the fiscal year 27 budget. As I stated, when you look ahead to the calendar Friday, a public hearing ad is due to the paper. we need to break out how that 143 144 45 million dollars is spent by category schools law enforcement administration legislation that was the one of the long bar graphs that i had on april 22nd we need to advertise under state code in that manner that public hearing ad is due on tuesday or on friday If you advertise two concurrent weeks, I've worked with Ms. Fish on this. So if we advertise on the 12th and 19th of May, you can have a FY27 budget public hearing on Tuesday, June 2nd. So let's fast forward. The June 2nd of the top just carried over. Now we're looking at the month of June. so unless the board wants to have a special meeting we'll just say two weeks later we're going to adopt the budget so you would adopt the budget and appropriate funds for fr27 on tuesday june 16. Tax due date, the resolution before you tonight is not going to be June 5. The treasurer's recommending it goes to June 12, Friday, June 12. So that will be for your consideration up here in a short minute. But I do want to point out where we're getting near the end of the, you know, you got bookends here. You got that last bookend of the fiscal year. Start of the new fiscal year, Wednesday, July 1. if the board, if no funds are appropriated, we cannot operate the local government. So we've still got some time in there. We've got a little bit of time, but I just wanted to put this out there to let the board know that You know, if there are additional questions, you know, considerations, cuts the board's looking at, you know, we've talked about this, you know, for a little while, but it's going to come, go time's coming in the very near future. And as Dr. Boyd said, you know, he's got to get his contracts out. um i believe i i sent some correspondence to you from on behalf of dr boyd you know if if there are additional major cuts to to the school board that that one-time transfer that the school board dictates how that is spent if there's another you know a large amount of money that comes out there he's going to need to know how to draft those contracts before teachers get out so we're just looking for some guidance from the board but i wanted to show this just you know where we have a little bit of breathing room but the window is closing very quickly That's all I have. Again, my three different options for the board. The first one is what I presented on April 22nd, $0.10 tax rate increase. And then the other two, a $0.05 tax rate increase, one of them borrowing funds from the general fund, the other from the interest from the 2023 series bonds. I'll be happy to answer any questions the board may have.

All right, thanks. I'll start on the right. Ms. Binder.

i did think of one thing um i know we contract out some services especially in community development we have a full staff now which we did not have in the past correct

Yes, and that budget's been severely cut. Even for the contract? Absolutely. That was one of my major cuts whenever I did my million-plus cuts on the night of April 9th, and then I took out another $5,000 from that because we do have competent staff. I just wanted to clarify that because that used to be a problem for us. Now it's not. That's right, but there still are some issues when you get a full-blown traffic impact analysis at 350 pages. You need to be a traffic engineer to review those and provide information the the sufficient and the correct feedback we you know so so we still have a little bit of money for instances such as that what

First off, thanks for standing up there and taking our questions. This has not been an easy budget year. It's my job, sir. So earlier tonight, the Davenport presentation suggested a potential remedy of 2.5 million from proceeds. Is the 1.78 a more precise number or was there a reason you didn't take the full two and a half available?

Whenever we ran this, the 178 came in. And I think I know what your question is going to be. Could we go to a 4 cent tax rate increase and add another? We still have $800,000 to play with. I use the word play lightly. It's not playing with any money, but to transfer. You could do that again. Whenever you think of a penny, a penny is worth $517,000, right? So there's going to be some fractions of pennies in here also. So a $0.60 versus a $0.61 budget, it's not going to be exactly $517,330. So there's going to be some rounding. But I think, you know, can we go to a $0.04? and transfer some additional funds, I believe we do have room for that. I would look to my staff here, but that's a good question that you asked, Mr. Metz. So the 2.5, that is what we have available. And with this balanced budget, we are only using a little under 1.8. So we could take another penny's worth if the board wanted to add it to that transfer from bond proceeds and then take that tax rate from 61 cents to 60 cents, thus a 4 cent tax rate increase.

So one of the things I've asked in the past is the total compensation package. With us taking on with the county taking on greater portion of the the health care cost the the health insurance how much of the budget does that account for what percent or dollar wise it was one of my earlier presentations I can I can pull it up for you if you like me to just give me a second yeah would you please because to me that's a raise in and of itself right

And I know I had my HR, my finance team pull some information for Supervisor Stroud. And I don't want to... Mr. Dines, you don't have that.

What we don't have is we don't have the school's impact on that. Okay. But we have it for, I believe, everybody else. And that's in that file that... Ms. Cobb had sent out. And thank you guys. I'm kind of jumping in here. Hang on. I'm going to come back to you.

You always like to go last. Okay. While you're looking that up, Dr. Boyd, how much of a raise did the teachers get last year?

Last year we were at 3%.

3% in the year before that?

I'd have to go back and look. I don't want to misquote it. I want to say it's somewhere in that same ballpark.

Okay. Reason I'm asking that question is because with all three of these options, it's a foregone conclusion that we're going the full 5%. We have not looked at the 3%. We're still including in decompression, right?

Yeah. Actually, and I mean, our effort here was really to take us out of the last place in terms of teacher salary. We're losing teachers left and right. In fact, last night we approved... uh i think it was somewhere in the ballpark of 15 to 18 more resignations heading to uh out of county so the school board is really big i i know you guys appropriate a certain amount of money the school the school board right now is really big and most certainly i am as well on seeing if we can remain competitive 87 of our budget is is teaching you know staff positions and uh you know that ten cent request for that tax increase Right now, the school division needs $1.5 million to make our budget whole. We've taken out all new positions. We've absorbed the healthcare increase costs. We've taken our budget builder way down with your support in terms of one-time expenses with fund balance funds. The only thing left in there, that $1.5 million is strictly, to help us from hemorrhaging and losing teaching positions. Of that 10 cent salary or of that 10 cent tax increase, the entire school division equates for 3 cents. We've really been very conscious and thought very highly of the relationship that we've had with you guys, the Board of Supervisors, and really tried to come to you guys with as slim of a budget as we possibly can. We're just trying to make sure we don't lose any more educators. I got you.

And you've heard me say this before. I have no problem with a 3% last year, the year before. I don't have a problem with 3% this year. We have to remain competitive. It's that extra 2%. if we could use that extra two percent and use that for merit-based raises for those that are really doing well you know i i know it's hard i i don't know what i don't even know what metrics you would use for that yeah but they're there they've got to be there i mean we know we know how our school ranks against the other 130 some odd school systems across the state you know so there are metrics out there somewhere that we can use um So take that 2% and we find out what those metrics are, we find a cutoff line, and the people that are performing well, they'll get a larger portion of that 2% than just, you see where I'm going?

No, I do.

Even the crazy federal government, as messed up as we are, we get paid for performance. We're not under the GS scale anymore, so we don't get those automatic raises. If we don't perform, we get zero. And I can tell you, I've got three people in my branch now that are getting zero this year.

No, I totally agree with you, and I agree with the merit-based system. And I think it's easy to do with our 12-month positions and the positions that produce a product. I think when we get into instructional positions and they're responsible for student performance and student success, and that's the output. And again, there are other ways to do it. There's been models that have looked at this in the past. But honestly, you get into a system where people are very really cautious on what kids they want to teach and and how they want uh to to be perceived by their administration based on the fact that their compensation could be tied to student performance and and i i would like to stay away from that type of model but there are other ways that we can look at merit-based moving forward yeah go ahead mr strong good question now so real quick my question is

it's just sitting here so when i hear the school board who i know very well and yourself and i hear things like you know we're losing really good teachers so how do you know they're good what how are you so that's the question here how are you determined that that person is a good teacher and they're not just someone that's nice or someone that's still in the slot okay so that There have also been some teachers that have left where I've talked to constituents, and they're very happy that that teacher decided to leave and go somewhere else. so there's got to be a way to i am all about our starting pay is pretty much it's close to where it's not better than it's right on par with where people start pay now i know there's a new school that opened this there's a new school open stafford but when i when i went across the state and looked at the new school open stafford yeah they're starting people higher but for the most part our starting pay for teachers was on par

Right now, our starting pay is about $1,000 or $2,000 behind. Stafford's outpacing us now. They were the closest to us. Honestly, to your point, Stafford was very close to us. Right now, what we're seeing is when you get to that 5- and 10-year mark in King George County with the compression, we're seeing differences of $20,000 with our neighboring counties. Now, of course, I always make this point. That's your Stafford and your Spotsy and your Fredericksburg. Nobody's We don't, King George doesn't want to be them. But in order for me to continue- You got to compete with them.

We have to compete. I got it, I got it.

You got to be in the ballpark. And right now, when you're talking about a teacher's salary of $50,000 and the difference is $20,000 for a 20-minute drive, that's life-changing for an educator. Are you talking about starting? Five to 10 years down, you're making that difference.

So now that's where I'm going to get on track with. So you're going to have teachers that are there for one, two, three years, and they're going to go away. You're going to have people that are going to stick it out and be there seven, eight, nine, ten years. And those are the ones I have no problem with. Man, this is a good dirt asset. This is what they do, blah, blah. And they've been here this long. We need to catch them up, and they need to be. But the 3% things and this 5% across the board, when some of those teachers are starting out are going to leave you anyway in a couple years because it isn't the money. Because they've been leaving for Stafford for a long time, and Stafford, you just said, was very close to us, but I've been hearing the whole time I've been on the board, they're leaving us for Stafford. You're telling me that the pay is about the same until this year when they open up.

No, only on the start. Only on the start. That's what I'm saying.

Yeah. so yeah so i think what we're looking at is we're on par at the beginning we're close if not and we're better than most some but we are we got we got to look at those people down the line i'm all about the fact that those people assets are assets and people are assets you know and And I should mention that. But I'm separating the two. That's why the merit base is really important, you know, for this board and who we are. I'm not just out there to go, everybody gets a raise. I know Matt wants, Mr. Smartick wants to do it in the county. Everybody, no, everybody don't. There's some people who are your key star players and they're doing above and beyond what they're supposed to do. Some people just show up for work on time. Sure. And you'd come to you for a raise and go, I've been on time. It's like, well, when I first hired you, that's pretty much what we agreed on. And that was part of your deal was to show up on time. So you don't get a raise for doing what you're supposed to do. You get a raise for going beyond because we see the value in you being part of our culture and part of our team.

And by the time they get to that group that he's talking about that's leaving, they've established a reputation on who's good and who's, eh, by that point. This is more than just the SOL. That's a reputation among their peers and among the principals and vice principals at the school.

No, and it's often qualitative. It's often how they connect with parents. That's how you hear in the community how they're good. It's often how they connect with their students. It's very much qualitative analysis. It's not quantitative. which becomes a little more difficult. You can quantify it to some level, but you've got to be careful when it's know it's not a direct result it there's there's an indirect result to to uh and a lot of variables involved with student performance it's not just the teacher so so trying to figure out how to equate that i can tell you it's been tried in a number of places it's not very prevalent in a number of places right now when it comes to instructional staff it's very much it's much more prevalent probably you know in in professions where know you're creating a product where you know what the output you know what the output put's going to be based on what the input is and we can do that there's pockets in public education where that can be done and and i'm not opposed to that we would have to do a little more research and certainly i'd be willing to work with mr smallnick on what models the county's considering in terms of that i think we have some parallels with some of our positions as you know that match the county side instructional is a little different that we would have to

flesh out a little bit so i hear a couple things but one thing you just said a product our student is a product the product is they're they're they're taught and they're brought up to be good citizens and tributes to our community so i don't see how that we can't do some kind of merit base to make the teachers i mean we've got some good teachers and then we have some teachers that As Mr. Davis said, people are happy they leave. So, you know, maybe it made them step up to stay. It just seems a merit base. I've been thinking about this recently, and I think some kind of merit basis might be a good.

I want to try to say this in the most appropriate way I can possibly say. There is so much that goes into the outcome of student performance, their family situation, their special education status. Demographics, there's a number of factors that go into student performance. The teacher certainly has influence on that. But right now, if we were to stick with a strictly merit-based pay system and I would proposing to a teacher, would you like to take this group of honor students for the next year? Or would you like to take this group of students with IEPs? What do you think the answer is going to be? If it's strictly merit based on student outcome?

i kind of disagree a little bit with you because i know from experience honor students can be a bit of a pain too so you know there are some teachers that like to have find a passion in helping those kids achieve but i i don't know i guess my question is the three percent cola with a one percent merit increase or a two percent where you create why is that such a bad thing

that's what i guess i would like to know i mean you got five percent everybody gets five percent or you got three percent and two percent merit what's the problem with the merit part i don't i think the metrics is what we have to determine and i think that's also what's probably being determined on the county side again for all of our 12-month positions maintenance staff custodial staff everyone in the school board office we can look at probably similar to what's going to happen on the county side we're going to do an evaluation at the beginning of the, or excuse me, we're going to do a pre-assessment at the beginning of the year, we're going to set desirable outcomes, and we're going to measure you towards those desirable outcomes, which is easy to find out whether or not that individual got to that point given that metric. When you look strictly at student outcome. And again, I'm making the assumption that we're looking at student outcome because we're talking about what a good teacher is, which I believe that's a big factor. You can make merit based on professional development. You can make merit based on other responsibilities that we put on teachers right now. That's an easy way to do it.

No, that's fair. And another question I had totally besides this conversation that came is that 5%, is there any anticipation that the state might say 6% and then we have to cover another 1%? I guess that, what have you heard?

I don't think, so right now, that's a good question. We have based our building our budget right now on Governor Youngkin's initial presented budget. We don't have any information from the state right now. We're all waiting tooth and nail for that information. We do believe, whether it's the House, Senate, or something in between, that we will get additional state funds. I have no idea what that's going to be. What I'm hearing is it could be 3%. Could be 2%, could be 4%, somewhere in that ballpark. As you know, that's SOQ positions, and then we're on the hook for trying to figure out the difference. That's what I'm hearing right now from the state level. But again, I don't know if we're going to know anything until middle of June, as far as I can tell right now.

Mr. Chairman, maybe by the end of May. I suspect that we'll pick this back up. after the governor finishes her actions, which should be about the 23rd of May, 22nd of May, and then we'll go figure out the budget. Right now, the Senate budget, as the Senate passed it, has a 3% raise each of the years in the biennium. So that's 26, 27, 27, 28. The House has 2% each of those two years. The House's budget is structurally unbalanced. They've got... About an $800 million deficit or more in the second year. I can't remember what it was. And we have to negotiate the budget at the end of this month. So I would anticipate and plan for probably 3%. And I think you're safe in budgeting. And then you'll get the state-supported share of that. How much they share of those state-supported positions, which I guess Matt has factored in.

So jumping on what you said, so if they say 3% and we say 5%, we would have to cover everybody for the 2% because the state would not kick in the other 2%, correct?

You know, I want to be respectful here, but... What we have to come to you guys for is a bottom line amount of money. What the school board then decides is how that money is going to be shaken out.

Right. I get that. But these are all numbers. And being respectful, the citizens, they come to us because we're the ones who have the pot of money and they ask us the questions. So I have to ask the questions that people ask us.

And so I would answer it this way. We have the 1.5, it was 1.8. At the last Board of Supervisors meeting, it was cut by $317,000. It's $1.5 million. That is the smallest number that has come to you for a local government in probably the last decade, if not more. And the reason it's the smallest number is because we, and when I say we, I mean the school board office staff and the school board, delivered to you guys with the relationship we have established, a budget that has no fluff. We have absorbed so many costs, no new positions, everything I've already mentioned, so that we gave you this small number in an effort of solving a problem that we know we're having, which is teacher retention.

appreciate the answer but i have to ask the questions because i know i get that ask those questions i understand so that whole raise five percent is 1.5 million dollars yes sir all right yeah

Thanks for being here, Dr. Boyd. I wish you had brought the chart that you presented to the school board where you laid out year one, year 10, year 20 across. I pulled down the numbers and did a little math. And we're all working on budgets, so every county has a proposed school increase in it. I think we're running fourth on starting salary for year one teachers, right? um kind of right in that middle but if you look at what's been proposed by our surrounding counties it's three four two point seven three you know so three kind of keeps a status quo maybe but you go to year 10 and we're a hundred dollars away from time for last right so for years the school teaching salaries have been sort of capped at status quo It seems like it's time to rip this Band-Aid off and get us up to about fourth place out of the seven counties, us plus the six surrounding counties. If I did that math right, I think this 5% puts us solidly in about fourth place across the board. It's really funny. Stafford's below on first year, but way above on 10th year. I don't know how that happened. I love this idea about the merit. I mean, I think it requires some... deep thought about how you score that what metrics you want to use because in merit that means not everybody gets it and some people get double right because that's how merit works so i would absolutely want you to come back next year with a plan on incorporation of merit in into this pay scale um but for this year i i don't i agree with the five percent because i don't want to be last

Thank you. And that's exactly how we're feeling. And you were right on the numbers. I appreciate that.

Just for reference, the Fredericksburg 10-year plan came up as, I think, 7% increase. There's not equal COLA on every pay band.

Are they paying for the majority of their health insurance, though? There's a whole other bid there, too, that I guarantee they're not.

It breaks down in different places.

Someone's making $60,000 a year, plus their benefits is almost like another $25,000, $30,000 or something like that. So you're looking at, yeah, okay.

We should look at that going forward, too. I think we have the same problem in the county budget. But you don't advertise fully burdened health care numbers. You publish salary numbers.

We hire teachers, though, every year. There's new teachers, but they come in new. We staff out the school, and they do learn once they get here what they get. in addition to.

So, you know, go ahead. I was gonna say, Mr Small, Nick and I have both talked about health care. I think on the school division side, we're going to certainly explore options next year in terms of what that looks like. We shared the cost this year, but I've certainly taken to heart what we've discussed last time in terms of health care, and it's something that we're going to explore moving forward into the next budget year. Get those numbers.

And I'll be a time filler here. I get it. We advertise salaries. I got that. But we have got to take credit for the other stuff because it ain't free.

Absolutely.

So yes, sir. So we pulled together, we meaning my HR and my finance team. As of April 30th, what we did, we went through every department and we looked at the gross salary, plus the FICA, plus health benefits, plus retirement, plus workers comp to come up with a total salaries plus fringe benefits. So, and I wanna let you know that just because somebody is not on insurance this year, doesn't mean they're not gonna be on the family plan next year. So this is as this is a snapshot in time as of April 30. And the total salaries plus all those fringe benefits that I just mentioned for county employees $27,603,583. Is that is that what you're asking for? And we've got it broke down by right down to this employee in this department is on the single plan. Here's what it costs the county. You know, every single employee is broken out in that spreadsheet.

I'm really looking more for a breakdown of what's the actual salary versus what are those additional benefits on top of it.

So salaries, gross salaries, $18,465,000. So what are you, nine something, nine million in benefits? Now that's FICA, that's workers' comp. So the benefits alone, health benefits, $4,730,653. That's for the entire county?

That's for the entire county. Less the school.

Less the school. That is correct.

Now, what is it for the school?

We didn't run those numbers.

That's fair, but do you see where I'm going? We have to account for that, too.

Absolutely. No, that's, you know, and we've talked about this, the the percentage that the county picks up is, is is very healthy. And that is a benefit, you know, and that and that's something that is and I agree with some of the board members, that's an overlooked benefit that that these employees have, you're coming from another locality where you're paying $1,000 a month for health insurance for your family, you come here, you pay 500. Well, that's a nice $6,000 raise right out of the gate on day one.

Well,

ahead on the health care so um when did employees start doing open enrollment so we've roman is we voted on this back in may 1 through may 15. so we're in it right now okay thank you yes sir all right any other questions oh yeah hit it show uh

I have a question. Mr. Bender, did you see any anomalies in the budget in there in what we're looking at?

Wait a minute, which?

Any things that jumped out at you, anomalies? You've been here longer than anybody up here as far as the budgeting process and where we're at. Anything that we are missing?

Not, not. I haven't looked. I bet, to be honest, I haven't looked at it in the last week, but I did not see anything except for what we covered.

Okay, thank you. So, I had asked, I sent a file over. Thank you, Mr. Sullivan, for sending it to the county, and thank the staff for putting that together. Because I know that was, what was it, like, I tried sending it, and it didn't go out. So you didn't get it until probably Friday, I think.

Saturday evening, yes.

So, yeah. but it's helpful. And I did it for a few reasons because I'm having some issues putting things together in my brain. I did a long dissertation during the last board meeting. So I won't go over that again. The challenges that I have personally is looking at the world from a business perspective and the way that I have to deal with things compared to the way that the county government and employees look at things. And I had, I'm not going to bring a name up, but I had a senior county employee, they're not here tonight, that tell me, but you always get more money. You can always get more money. We don't need to cut because you can always get more money. meaning that we just go to the taxpayer and ask more money. And I'm like, I can't believe I'm hearing this right now. So the thing is, is that our citizens, you know, whenever we approve the budget, whenever we don't, everything that we do, we're reaching into the citizens' pockets. So we're taking from one, maybe many, to give to others. And that's why I have a real problem because whenever you guys look at cuts, it's not the same as the way that we have cuts. For me, if I have a contract, that contracts are five years. If the cost of living goes up, okay, the government doesn't care. I mean, they don't go and say, oh, you know what? Yeah, cost of living went up 5%. We're going to give you 5% more than you bid. They don't do that. I have to figure that out. I have some employees may leave. I have to rehire. I have to retrain. That's what we call business. And if people say, well, you know what? Then if you don't like it, you shouldn't be in business. No, those are the challenges that I have to be smarter. I have to be innovative. That's the challenge that I have is figuring that out. And counties, you have different challenges, but that's not one of them. One of them would be say, you know what, this year, you're going to get the same budget you had last year, figure it out. Then you'd have to figure those things out. Without coming to us and saying, well, you know what, we're not cut this, we're not cut that, we're not cut that. No, no, no, you need to figure it out. But it's You know, it's not, well, we're going to push off buying that ambulance until next year. We're going to push off buying that new squad car or the command vehicle or whatever. Whenever I was looking at one of the things tonight, and it was in Mr. Rose's brief, and it was really enlightening for me anyway, because the county paid over $10 million to the 911 emergency services. We took out a loan for that. over $10 million, right? Almost $11 million. And that was before our time. But then we get hit with a million dollars a year maintenance contract, right? Which we approved. Cause you're like, you kind of like screwed, you drove it off the lot. Now what do you do? Okay. And I thought to myself, whoever missed that in that contract, did they get like a letter of reprimand? Did anybody lose their job? Was their salary renegotiated? Did any of that happen? Because we're all going to get renegotiated whenever we run for election. So, I mean, you guys can wait us out. You stay there long enough, we're going to go away. Somebody else is going to come in, yada, yada. We don't have that luxury. But where's the accountability on the other side of the fence? I don't know. Do you guys, I don't know if you guys know if something happened in there or not. I don't know. So this all makes me, I'm just trying to, you know, mull through this. So that's the reason I asked the questions. And so for the people who's watching benefit, you know, what I had asked was, you know, what some things would impact some things would have if the County, um, If we reduced the salary in the county by 10%, okay, what would that do? Now, as Mr. Smolnyk mentioned, he did not, we didn't get it from the school. That would be interesting to get, but he didn't get it. And then I don't know, I just don't know how responsive those guys would be able to do that anyway. I just don't know, maybe they could. But I did come in with a late request. But I wanted to have the information. so that because i've talked to like i said i had people in my office today um you know and but asking these questions and and they're frustrated and i understand that so it's understanding and i'm not advocating a 10 reduction that is not the case but it's what does it look like what does it look like um and That's a reduction of $2,760,000. That would be the savings, if you will. That's a cut. 10% cut in salaries across the board. That's a cut. That's what a cut looks like, $2,760,000. But 5%. Okay, $1,380,179. You know, I've experienced these things in business. I've experienced where I've had to get my employees and say, you know what, here's what's happening and here's what's going on. If you have to take another job, I understand. No hard feelings that, you know, call me. You use me as a reference, okay, because I'll help you every way I can. And I've had to have those conversations. They're not pleasant. Okay, they're gut wrenching. Some people get out of this business simply because of that. So they're very difficult, but that's what it looks like. Back to what Shelly's question earlier on the benefits, because I really, I do think that there's an area that we should look at. On the salary side, now those were big pictures. Again, I'm not advocating that. What I would advocate, and I'd still advocate, is the merit-based. Is Dr. Boyd still here? I actually had some comments related to you and I got off that, tracked that, but it's to that. But it's a merit-based system. So the county doesn't hire an employee. This is just Ken Stroud talking here. We don't hire an employee, pick a job, $40,000 a year. With any guarantee or requirement that we as a county change that over time from a 40,000-year job to an 80,000-year job. And that's what we're doing. Whenever you give raises over the year, that 40,000-year job, entry-level job, becomes what?

well i believe there are some positions within your fire rescue you in your offer there's the three percent step program that was implemented a couple years ago and then and uh the sheriff's office also have a step program so that is there there are a couple segments of local government that that is built in and known on day one okay there are okay so there are some positions that do include that and and that happens in industry as well you know you put in an offer letter

six months you know or you may have 60 days or six months you know period and you know at that time you get an increase through everything works out stuff like that happens right but my point being is you know and i'm not going to call any positions because i want to but if if there's a position an entry-level position let's call it that and it's 40 000 a year then why should that position be you know, in 10 years, a $60,000 a year position or a $70,000. If we say, you know what, no, it's a $40,000 a year job. So if that person needs to make more money, what they should be doing is looking to increase their education and then go to another job where that requires that. But we shouldn't say, oh, you know what, this person not have a college degree, so we're going to increase the requirement of college degree so we can pay them more. if it doesn't require a college degree. What I'm saying is that that's a holistic approach to human resources and staffing and looking at, okay, what is that position? How can we hire somebody at $40,000 to do this job? Or can we hire somebody at $80,000? So things like that. And I say that back to the merit-based because it's your job. On a merit-based system, you're the one that figures out. As a county administrator, you know what? This is a valued employee. I need to pay them more because they're worth it. I need to keep Ms. Cobb because I guarantee you, she earns her money and she's money to the county. So I need to reward her more. And some of these other people that, you know, I'm not saying they're not good. but you know what about the bang for the buck things like that that's that's your job i'm not far across the board races that you're the one that sits across the table your division managers you know the the school superintendent um that merit-based system performance reviews what are the performance reviews you're talking about the student you know uh how they how they perform it's like okay well that's a factor but how about peer reviews what do the other teachers think What about attendance? What about how long it takes them to get their papers graded and turned in? There are other ways to evaluate performance that allows you as the superintendent to say, you know what, this teacher is the one that I want.

There are standards that we evaluate every year. So I mean, that could certainly be something that we could use. I mean, I'm not opposed to the model at all. I think it's something that we could certainly do. It's just this evening, sitting here on the doorstep of the budget for FY27, I don't have a whole plan laid out for merit-based pay for instructional staff. I do know it's been something explored in many other places, but to your point, every year we evaluate, we do performance reviews for teachers that have eight standards, one of which the eighth standard being student performance, but there's professionalism, there's instructional knowledge.

I mean, you know, how professional they look, how they present themselves, there's things. So, you know, my point being is that we approve the money. Okay? Once you guys get it, then that's how you deal with it. Whether you decide, whenever you're looking the employees in the eye, and you say, you know what, I'm sorry, the board didn't approve it. Nope, that's not the case. It's not the case. We approved it. Whether they don't get the raise is because you approve it or you don't approve it. If one person gets 3% or they all get 3%, if this person's an overachiever, this person's a janitor and they don't show up to work, they're found sleeping at their desk or whatever it is, and you still give them the same raise as the other people, then it ain't our fault that the good people didn't get paid more. That's on you guys. And that's my point, is that whenever we approve the budget, it's not that everybody gets 3%. No, some people can get 8%. I don't have a problem with that. You got an overachiever? Give them 30%. But some people may only get half a percent or they may get no percent. Like Mr. Davis said, they just, you know what? You did your job. You showed up. Good. That's the way it should work. Yes, sir.

You know, I've been thinking a lot about this since the April 22nd meeting. This is something in my previous years at other localities I've had an issue with. You know, I was an individual working 60 hours a week, and somebody gets written up four times in the same year, and we both get 3% raise. So, board, I'm okay with...

you know right now it's a two percent cola and one percent merit i'm a-okay flipping that one percent cola and two percent merit or zero and three music to my ears and then i i miss you can take care you need to know who your performers are and who they are and you take care of them because they're valuable to the county okay that they're valuable to the county and me just me talking i want to empower you to take care of the overachievers and then deal with the rest um so so i'm gonna ask

Go ahead. I'm going to have you go ahead with the questions, but let's stick to the action, which is the budget. Well, I mean, I think that impacts the budget. It does, but not tonight.

I thought we were supposed to shut the rate tonight.

Yes, that is one of the goals at the conclusion of this meeting is to set the tax rate.

Yes, I agree with that. But the merit-based thing isn't going to change anything tonight, I don't think. This is the conversation that needs to be had.

Well, if you decrease the budget, which still allows him to provide the raises, it's just... you know he has to determine where it goes okay fair enough versus us but one of the things i noticed in here okay is that um and i had got with ms cobb thank you man for clarifying that so right now human resources reports on the staff that um the yearly cost of benefits and this excludes the school um is three million eight hundred fifty three thousand thirty five dollars okay so the current budget is eight hundred and seventy seven thousand six hundred dollars more now here's why the budget has that because they're anticipating hiring to full staff so they're budgeted if we're 100 staffed to be able to pay for those but those Benefits. But we, again, we don't even know what benefits they're gonna choose, right? We don't know if they're single employees or married couples, okay? In an interview, you can't ask whether you're married or you're single or not. But we have the county, we pay 86.75% of the benefits for the county employees, okay? That's pretty high. We have, I have the breakdown, I don't have it up, but we pay 93% for the single employees. We pay 82% for the larger families, and then like 86% for spouse and one, or employee and spouse, I think it is. We really, I think we really need to visit the benefit side. But I also think that, you know, I mean, that $877,000, I know it is proven to plan for it, but it's also reasonable to expect that we're probably not going to spend all that. so and i don't know if it was planned all of them are at the 93 or the 80 you know stuff the other thing that i would that i have i would offer and this is one of the reasons that i did this because i believe that there are employees that their spouse works that we have county employees Teachers want their spouse works. And their spouse's job offers health benefits. So what they do is instead of using their spouse's benefits, they're using the county's benefits. And we are carrying that burden. Now, the rest of the employees don't have the opportunity to do that. I mean, the rest of the citizens don't have the opportunity to do that. But that's a huge burden that our citizens are carrying so that our county employees can offer benefits to their spouse who also has benefits to their job. So Mr. Metz was telling me about, you know, he's got some experience in other areas where if the spouse has health insurance, then they're encouraged to use our health insurance before they use the county insurance. Or that this is decremented or something like that, okay? And you know, now how does this affect our budget right now? I don't know. I don't know the mechanics of that. But I feel as though the county shouldn't be carrying the burden that we carry. If the citizens, if their only job, I mean, a great benefit to being a teacher is that, you know what, they have a spouse who's a government employee working for the government, or maybe they're not. Maybe they're just a contractor, but they're making really good money, but their company's plan is nowhere near as good as the county's because, you know what, they can't compete with the taxpayer. Now they're using the county's insurance. We need to come up with another way of doing that because I don't want to fund those health insurance plans. I don't want to use everybody else because the other citizens in the county that are paying the taxes, right now we're advocating increasing the taxes on them and they have the same challenges that everybody else does, even worse, because they don't have those luxuries. Um, now, to the the assessments, because this the budget that's being presented requires us to approve the assessments is written. We know there's challenges there. If we don't approve them as written, it's gonna have a negative impact on whatever budget we approve. Okay, because of the money. Um, The does Mr. small, he's conservative, he decreased some of his conservativeness in this latest proposal, you decrease some of that, because but but there's there's some conservative stuff in there, like 877,000. I just pointed pointed out, okay, I don't even know if you'd figured out or not. And and there's some there's some other, there's some other areas. I know you guys want me to get done because it's hot in here. But There's some challenges with the assessments. I have challenges with it because I believe there are avenues for people to take, and I don't think that people are taking those avenues. They're taking advantage of it. And I had somebody today that said, you know, they don't look at the internet. They didn't know about it. I said, you need to sign up for the notifications. The King George alert. They need to sign up for that because you dismissed the vote. There's one large property owner and his land is currently in agriculture. It's been, he doesn't, he's got it, you know, somebody farming it and he's paying full taxes on it. He doesn't even have it in land use. And I'm like, dude, what are you thinking? He's like, I didn't know there was a land use. I'm like, but I'm going to recommend we take a five minute break.

Sure. Back in five.

fine they have Oh, she was one of the down.

So we're starting now. I'm good. Thank you, sir.

Almost lost it.

All right, show head.

Honey, Matt ready to start. I really

Matt, y'all ready to start? First to Matt. Come in, Matt. Y'all ready to start? All right.

So the Mr. Rose made a comment earlier tonight about not using the you suggested not using the unassigned funds in that we may we may want to use them for some projects this coming year and such. So my thought is that if you don't have the money, you're not going to approve the projects. You may plan the project. So far, we may have said, yeah, we're going to do it. But if we look around and say, you know what? There's no money. That's the same thing you do at your house. We're going to put in a pool. You know what? It didn't get the raise. Well, we're not going to have the pool. So we need to keep that. Whenever we're looking at what we do with that unassigned funds, it's like, OK, do we use it? How do we use that? That's what we decide. And it doesn't have to spend. We don't have to use it on these other projects. You may say, you know what? We're going to have to kick the can on that. I just put that out there. So with that, I'm gonna try to kind of sum up where I'm at. I know you guys want me to do that. And what we're being asked to do tonight is approve the assessments as as they are. I um, I can do that. The thing is, is they need to change. So between now and the time they're approved, there are some of them that need to change. The gentleman that's here tonight, you know, looking at his briefly, is that it needs to change. And I think that, you know, and it may be too late, but there needs to be a better way of doing an assessment. Something like if the property and the home is well kept, then good, 100%. If it's got, you know, minimal issues, no more than three issues that you know, then it's 80%. And if it's got more than three issues, then it's 50%. You know, understanding that mean if you run into these people who are retired older people some of them they live in great places and they maintain it well some of them don't because of the health impacts because of budget whatever and the current assessments aren't taking that into place or in in there and i think that they should do that um the other thing not penalize them and put them in a worse position The other thing is, is that the assessments, they used a common, it appears to be a common, you know, amount for vacant land based on some, the way things should sold and what the, but there are some nuances in there they didn't take into place. Accessibility. I don't want to mention anybody's names, but there are some properties that they assessed at a high dollar value as if they were being sold to developers or that they could be a higher price. They can't be because they can't be accessed. So there's some things like that. So that's why I say I have a problem with approving that, knowing these things need to be fixed, and I don't know how they're going to be fixed. The tax rate, I support that we move the $2.5 million to get that down. The budget is... know what we have to you know i i don't know i'd like to hear some of you guys say how you feel about the budget do you guys want to just take the way it is do you want or what you want to do um with that i i've been one just been talking about it so but i want to know what some other what your guys what do you want to do do you want to prove it at that or do you want to decrease it somewhere be specific enough so that we can make the decision tonight um you know and i can articulate where I'm at. And I'll do that. I'll just be done with it. The I would take if we're going to approve the previous the last meeting amounts. I would take Mr. small and a couple in the 1% with a 2% merit base, I would take him up on that. But the amount still stays the same. Okay. But If we're going to approve that, then I would take more money from the unassigned budget to make up that deficit. And here's why I would do it. I voted. I'm the one for the data center that's in my district. I didn't do that because I love data centers. I didn't do it because, you know, for any reason other than that, I see budget deficits in our future And I don't want the burden going on the citizens that I want business to pick up that burden. And the data center is the best way of doing that. That is why I supported that. Okay. And I've lost friends and definitely lost popularity in doing that. I can tell you, but that's why I did it. So now to jack up the taxes and still give them a data center and the higher land assessments is wrong. So I believe that we need a projection. We need to take the approved data centers. When we see that money coming into the county, put it in a spreadsheet. When we think that that money will come in, property taxes, you know, everything that has been proffered, when that's coming in, and we need a 5-, 10-, 15-year plan of how that money would be used by the citizens to benefit the citizens, okay? And that would include, so right now, if it's coming from unassigned funds balance, that'll be made up. We can put that money back in a few years to keep from putting a burden on them today. Or if your taxes go up, then you know what? There's gonna be a big tax reduction. As the money comes in, taxes go down. And I'll tell you what, you know, rarely do people wanna do that. So the money that's in the unassigned funds that that's the citizens money. It's not yours. It's not mine. It's the citizens. So I would say spend some of their money. And yet the rest of it is, you know, the whenever the money I like what has happened. Mr Smallish work with the department heads. They're not just trying to spend money at the end of the year. I hate that. That's a good thing. We need a way to reward them for that, but at the same time, not put that money back into the budget again, okay? Because they need to be rewarded for being more innovative and not spending money. We need to reward them for doing things like the fire chief did with the fuel depot. It came in way under budget. Whenever the bids came in over double the budget and they ended up doing the work for, you know, over $50,000 under budget. That's what we need. And we need to reward that type of performance and people doing that, not just saying, okay, well, you didn't spend it. So we're going to give it to you again next year. So that right there would bring the budget down. where that deficit we're trying to make up. It's there. Instead, don't approve it. And you know what? Throughout the year, if we run into a problem, we deal with it then. And take it from the unassigned budget at that time if we need to. But in the meantime, let people, you know what? You got a budget. And yeah, right now you may be running short. Actually, you're not short. Your budget says that you're $877,000 short in benefits that you don't even know you're going to need yet. So why in the world am I going to take money out of the taxpayer's pocket for money that we don't know we're going to need? I don't want to do that. Wait until we need it. All right, I'm done. Last comment.

Yeah, I just want to clarify because I wasn't here earlier when my neighbor came and visited and brought forth his particular challenge is when he's come and spoke at my house several times about this one issue. And one of the things that I tell everyone who contacts me was to here's the process. You might not have known about it, but I'm going to tell you the process. So please go and do these processes. And he's done the process. And unfortunately, the person we picked as the assessor didn't get back to him. And there's several other residents that they haven't gotten back to. But the point of the matter is a process.

And sometimes people don't like that they're not getting the answer they want.

For that particular property, it's a one-story, I have a two-story. For some reason, assessments, one-story is valued as a higher than two-story. There's all these different factors that go into assessments. So there's a process in place. I know there is bad assessments out there, especially on some of the land values, especially the land that is near either where proposed solar projects are or data centers. They've jacked up the costs. I don't know how we fix that, but we're coming to the witching hour of our budget. And I don't know, these are all great questions, all great things to look at in the future, but we need to make a decision because the witching hour is here and Cinderella is going to be Cinderella and the lady who cleans the houses soon, not the lady at the ball. So we need to make some decision today.

What's your decision?

I thought you had a comment. You're killing me, bro.

All right. I was curious, Kathy, what's your decision?

You seem to be asking me a lot of questions tonight. What's your decision?

I told you. I just briefed where I would do. I would take a $2.5 million and I would move that over. And then I would take the remaining money. Some of the stuff that's in here is still a little bit, I think, a little bit important. So I could just pick a number out of there. But the rest of whatever's approved would come from the unfunded balance. That's what I would do.

dude and now i'd like to hear the rest of my thoughts because it seems to all the time i'm always asked first so i'd like to be last this time no so you're done too do i have a motion i was going to make a motion thank you i'll make a motion we approve option three but use the full two and a half million as recommended by davenport to make it a 60 cent tax rate i thought it was 50.

So Mr. Stroud, I want to ask some clarification. So the $2.5 million transferred over from the bond proceeds and you want the remainder transferred over from unassigned fund balance to yield a proposed tax rate of what?

$0.60 or $100 value. What does that come to? Is that point 3.4? So here's how I did the math on this, right? You said one cent is roughly 517,000. If I add 517 to 1.780462, I'm less than 2.5 mil. I remember just about this. I'm recommending $0.60 per $100 per my motion.

Do you know if that's a 3%? He just was backing out with that increase. How many would that come to?

So that is your 2% COLA, 1% merit. It funds the schools at the amount we agreed to at the last meeting.

So we're getting out of order. We've got a motion on the floor. Do we have a second?

I'll second it for further discussion.

Now we'll get further discussion.

I do want to say one thing. If it is a 4% increase, that is kind of in line with every other locality, Stafford, Spotsy, Caroline. Brian, can I clarify? You were saying option 3 with the 2.5, and that would be the 60% tax rate. 60 cents, not 60%. 60 cents.

it equates to a yes four percent yes four percent i just wanted to clarify where it says 1780462 change that to 2.5 i just wanted to clarify four cents not four percent four cents four cents it's tiring it's hot all right any further discussion i will do a roll call vote sir so there are a couple

so we held the public hearing on the tax rate so i believe it'd be prudent to approve the tax rate first and then what i'm hearing is the board is looking for a 60 cent real estate tax rate moving forward for fy27 that would take care of those two for the two the first things up there

Let me amend my motion. Make a motion that we move forward with a $0.60 per $100 tax rate. For real estate. For real estate.

And mobile homes. And mobile homes, yes. And I will second that.

Can we proceed on this with a motion already on the floor and properly seconded? Okay, sounds good. All right, properly seconded. Ms. Bender. Aye. Mr. Stroud. Aye. nay mr metz aye mr davis nay chair votes nay motion fails all right so what do you want to make it when she would deal the proposal

gosh i guess anything further down we we need to do some figuring because that's going to affect the total budget amount and it's also going to affect um hold on the transfer from the uh unassigned fund balance sorry it's getting late you lost me say that again We were going by options. That one was rejected. So that would mean the other two options no one really wants. So we have to figure out another option, which is going to have different figures with it. It's going to have a different tax rate.

That wasn't the option. That was a tax rate that we're... Yeah, we did. It was just a tax rate. She's referring to the options in her brief.

Yeah.

I understand that, but... Track that out and just adjust the tax rate.

He amended his motion.

Did these...

These options in this brief have basically 1.5 transferred or the bonds are 1.7. None of them have the full 2.5.

Negative. No, sir. Yeah, that's how you get the 60.

Yeah.

That was exactly my first motion was to change the 1.7 to 2.5 and that would justify a 60 cent tax rate.

Okay, that took care of 2.5, but it still increased the tax rate. It still increased the tax rate. From the 56. That's why.

Yeah, because we haven't increased the tax rate in three years. And we're now living with the outcome of that. We're in a hole. And yeah, there may be things that we could... tell Mr. Smallnick to plan for not everybody taking health care, plan for not filling all of the billets in the county. But we don't have that data today. And that's a pretty poor plan, right? We want to fill all those billets in the county. We're in open enrollment for health care. We've already told people how much they're going to pay out of their paycheck for the health care plan that they chose. The time to act on a lot of these questions that you brought up was like three and four months ago. So I don't give us your plan.

I gave you my plan. I'll repeat my plan. The two point five million comes over. OK, then the. um remainder there's some parts of it like there's 877 000 i don't think we should fund the i don't think we myself could approve funding for um benefits and things for people that don't exist now here's what i'm here's what i'm saying with that you said it was a poor plan It's not a poor plan to not pay for it or not understand it. What I'm saying is I don't want to take it out of the taxpayers. I don't want to take it out of the citizens' pocket to do that. If those jobs, if we do end up hiring the people and we do have to do that, then take it from the unassigned funds balance. That's my point. I'm not, because once I increase your tax rate, it's coming out of citizens, whether, you know, it's out of their pocket. So take it out of the money they already have in the bank. If they come to reality, if we need it, then use that money to fund it. That's my point.

Just to make sure I understand you properly, that $800 and some odd thousand dollars, that is coming from unfilled benefits. for unfilled billets. So why budget this right now? Wait till we've actually filled those. And if we fill them, pull that out of the general fund one time only. The next year, we'll put that into the budget.

Absolutely. Yeah. And that's just the benefits. Look at the salaries. If you pull those salaries out, that number would come way down. If it's going to come down $877,000 on benefits, the salary should be more than the benefits. So that should be a ton of money sitting there. Right now, we're being asked to fund that. You know, you're going to take it out of the taxpayer's pocket, and I say don't do it.

I'm trying to get Mr. Smallnick to how he's going to present the budget. So how many billets are you going to cut to get the extra funds? I'm not cutting any. So then how is he to budget for that staff?

If the money is needed, if they're hired, it's funded from the unassigned funds.

So now you're using savings account to fund ongoing expenses for every year going forward. I mean, that's poor. What we just heard from Davenport is that's one, it's against our policy, but that is also not good financial sense. Even let's just start with 887. So that's what one cent is 517,000. So that's another little more than a penny. So we're at 59 cents. Okay.

So one, I didn't say that I wouldn't add any taxes. I didn't say that. What I said is that I wouldn't increase the tax citizens taxes to pay for people that don't exist. Because you're asking me to increase the people's taxes to pay for people that don't exist. I'm saying that if they do get hired, if the billets are filled, because people are always coming and going, that exists. So at the end of the year, from now until the next year, there's going to be some money that was set to pay somebody that really didn't exist. That's the money I don't want to take out of people's pocket. I'd say you take that out of the savings account. That's what I'm saying. And that's not something to say, well, that's not a budget. That's not a plan. I'm telling you, that's reality. Because you know what? Never is 100% of the people going to be hired in the county. It's not going to happen. There's always going to be that.

So if we move $2.5 million over from the bond proceeds, that gives us down to about $2.5, give or take. We take the $880,000 out for the benefits for people that don't yet exist. And the salaries. Hang on. What if we take half those salaries out? Instead of zeroing the budget for unfunded people, because if for some bizarre reason we do end up hiring all these people, that could be very impactful to the general fund. But if we take half that,

we would need to know that finite what the job is what the salary is based on fico workers comp i mean does the delta and the different salaries for the different billets is pretty large right right all right and how many are there that's my other question one two i'm trying to think in chief where's chief chief's full staff got i know we got one community development we've got i think sheriff giles had two or three but he cut them all you know i mean this is going to be i can't answer this on the fly the number of specific jobs that are open what the salary is and have the have my finance team calculate fika workers comp this is a i mean i apologize but it's something i can't do no it's a hard question i get it on the fly i get it

So here's the thing. If the money, my point is there's money in the unassigned budget. Take that money. You're moving it to the general fund. It's going to be in a general fund. That doesn't mean you have to spend it. It means that if you hire somebody, you spend it. If you don't hire the person, you didn't spend it. That's all I'm saying. I'm just saying don't take it out of the taxpayer's pocket to put in a general fund and then say, oops, we didn't spend it. That's what I'm saying.

Because when we came in, just for example, the library was on track. Almost every year is like $200,000, $250,000 that they'd over budget. More than that one year. And so just like this kind of stuff, we look back and this stuff was happening all the time. So money's being budgeted. It's not being spent. Sometimes it comes back. Sometimes it didn't. so he's making well i think what mr shroud is saying he's making a way for that money to be available should those jobs positions get filled but there's no sense playing it for some there's plenty of times we put out bills or whatever for people to get hired and we don't fill them right it happens every year there's positions we look for we don't hire them i'm sure mr boyd suffers with some of the same stuff you put out stuff that you don't hire

I understand what he's saying. I'm sorry. I thought you were done. I'm going to put us on pause for a second. We're coming up on 10 o'clock. We're going to need a motion to extend.

I'll make a motion to extend the meeting until 11 o'clock.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. Motion carried. We're extended to 11 o'clock.

I have one other thing to add to this whole discussion. So the unassigned fund balance is going up every year, about $4 to $5 million. So all we're doing is moving some money in case we need it for people that may get hired. If we don't, it stays there. But the money we took out, we're still making that interest anyway. We're using the citizen's money smarter and not taking it out of their pocket. This problem should go away in the future.

with the the money that starts coming in from the decisions we made of the data centers have a motion i i do have one question before the motion i'm looking at the presentation that was just given to us on page eight it says board adopted financial policies prohibit the use of fund balance for operations so isn't the sours operations

That's my concern.

I mean, I'm looking right from the presentation we were given tonight, page 8.

So, from a legal standpoint, it could be considered operations, but you also had the Motorola contract and you had some other what could be capital expenditures in your budget that would be in the category that Mr. Rose presented as appropriate for you. So you have flexibility there if you choose to do that. And you're not violating anything other than a policy that was adopted in 2012. There are enough capital things in your budget that were on unanticipated expenses.

So that Motorola contract could be taken out of the budget and taken from the... And there are other things as well.

A maintenance contract is not capital. And I believe what Mr. Rowe said tonight, and I know he said whenever we met just a couple days ago when I got this information. So I just want you all to be aware, and I believe he did say this, the credit agencies will look at borrowing money from your unassigned fund balance for operations. So if we continue to do that, it could, I'm not saying it will, I just want you all to be aware that what Mr. Rose stated that it could impact our AA plus bond rating.

why i think we have really good ideas of capital improvements that would fit in about what we have available in the unassigned fund balance right as we go forward with the votec building cost of capital is very high right now it it sure seems to me like it'd be a wise move to take that out of savings as opposed to new bond offerings so i think we have things to use that money for just not If there are capital expenses this year, that would probably be a good one. That Motorola thing is every year, right? So that sounds like operations to me. It is.

And I don't disagree with that. But even if you approve the vocational building tonight, and there's already a loan for that, right? We already borrowed money for a new elementary school. Right. Okay. Pre-K. Pre-K. Right. Okay. So, but even if the money for that was set aside, you wouldn't be able to spend that by this time next year. You may be able to spend some of it, but you just, you wouldn't, you couldn't obligate it all between now and next year. So, the thought is there is not wrong. So, You know, the thing is, is what, you know, what I'm proposing is for me to hear, I get static in my ear when I get close to this thing. And it's hard, it's difficult not having the math, like what the salaries is. So it's, it's like a rough order of magnitude. And we, I proposed, we used the 2.5 million and then, you know, I don't want to, um, say we're going to pay for all the village right now that we're going to take it out of taxpayers pockets to do that. So and I also know that the assessments, there's gonna be some challenges there. I hope that a lot of people's assessments get corrected, and there's gonna be some degradation, if you will, from the assessed values. Um, so And I have no control over that. I just hope that people do something. So with that, I would suggest a $2.5 million and a $0.02 tax increase. And then the remainder, as needed, once they do the math, because they need to do the math, then the remainder come from the unassigned fund balance as needed.

So do you have a motion? No. 56 is equalizer rate is 56. That would be a 58 cents.

58 cents. Yes.

Say again.

Okay, so it would be 58 cents.

is what I'm proposing. So my motion would be that we move the $2.5 million over from the bond. No. You can't say the rate first.

It's a separate motion. We need to approve the tax rate first. I think Senator Stewart would agree with me. We need to have a motion focusing on the tax rate.

So then my motion would be a $0.02 tax increase to $0.58. Okay.

Correct. 58 cents tax rate. Just clarifying, your motion is to approve a 58 cents tax rate. Yes, sir.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All right.

If we have 58, how are we making up the delta? That's my problem.

That's where it comes from the unassigned fund balance.

It's a $5 million delta with no tax increase. We're taking $2.5 million. Well, eventually we will get around to taking $2.5 million from the bond proceeds to knock that down to about $2.5 million. And then... The 2% will make up a portion of that $2.5 million, and then there's a portion of that where we take the $800,000, $877,000 in benefits. Right, and so the budget would come down to meet that.

No, I got it, but for me, I'm just saying, I don't have the data here to show me how many positions aren't filled, and that's... I know you keep saying the $800,000 number, but that's where I'm confused. I'm just not seeing it as clearly. We're counting on positions that aren't filled.

Remind us how much is a penny worth?

$517,330.

Okay, so two pennies, there's a million right off the top and change. Plus 2.5 million, there's 3.5 million, 880,887. So now we're down to about a million dollars, right?

But where's the 800 coming from?

From the benefits for these positions that were... That are not hired yet.

But that's where I'm asking, what are the positions that aren't hired?

Are they not hired yet or somebody switches from like the single to the family?

That's why I don't have clarification. So I cannot vote for that factor.

I can help clarify that. I think I understand what Mr. Stroud is saying. There's always sort of a gray area as to people who are hired or may not be here and the benefits. So he's saying whatever that ends up being, that would come out of your unassigned fund balance. The balance that you have trying to limit how much is that's dipped into so you would have the money to cover it it wouldn't be that you wouldn't hire people if you do find the people you'll have the money you'll take it out of that balance to cover it no i i got that it's just

For me, how many, can we be assured we have $800,000 of that?

I'm very confused about this $887,000. So you compared Mr. Smallnick's estimate for FY27 with what was actually expended on benefits this year.

Yeah, this data is of April.

April 30. So the new rates haven't started yet. So we had a 15.6% or 15.3% increase in our rates. Are you sure that 887 isn't the rate increase?

No, yes. The difference is, and I ask, that's why I clarified to Ms. Cobb, because in... So this is HR data. That's actual. Right. This is budget.

That's right. So this is actual FY26 health insurance rates. Right. We're picking up. So we're not picking up the full share. We're sharing the expenses. But our total dollar is going to go up 15.6% or 15.3%. based on because we we negotiated a new health care contract for FY 27. And it was horrible. I mean, we're paying way higher rates this year than we were. So that's not a real 887. But my figure, it's like if if nothing changes, staff wise, at least almost $500,000 of that is just simply the health care increase in premiums. right? You have to account for inflation. So this is the budget inflates 2 to 3% every year. Oddly, it's tracking right with inflation for this year. So we're not Davenport a couple of months ago presented. We're not seeing any inflation in business revenue for the county through our business taxes. We're stuck But really, the only lever we've got is this real estate rate. It's horrible. I hope we fix this going forward in the future.

Mr. Chairman, I'm looking back at my April 7. This was my first presentation. Additional areas of expense. County's portion of health care premium increase, $836,749. Is that not included in the budget?

It's included in the budget. It is. Okay. So we don't need to do accounting then?

No, but you're saying we can take it out. We can't. That's a fixed expense.

That's what we paid in 2026.

No, that's what we're anticipating to be paying in 2027 with the 15.3% health care increase that we received.

That's for people we actually have on hand.

That is correct.

So these people that don't exist yet, there's no way this adds up to 877. Got it.

so um i understand i have to use calculator a lot but if this funds if that dollar figure is for billets that aren't filled And the 800-something thousand increase is already in the budget. This isn't taking it out. And again, I didn't take anything out of what I said. All I said is I'm not taking it out of the citizen's pocket. I'm taking it out of the checking account. And really, no, you're taking out an investment account and moving it into the checking account. It's still in... bank account so finance saw that has access to it so if the person's hired then you got the money to pay them but if they're not hired the money stays in the account and it's still the is still there that's what i said i understand what you're saying but his point is the number you came up with 877 that's too high the whole budget for the entire county is 833 000. If it's too high, and this is out of the data, this is live data out of the HR system. How can it be too high?

Did I misspeak? No, you're right. 836,749 is a projected increase for all the county workers for FY27. Those are actual people that are on the payroll. That's the 15.3% increase.

Yes. Okay, but that's in the budget already. That's a part of the $143 million.

What I'm saying, though, is you're saying $877,000 for people that we haven't hired yet. There's no way that number is right unless we're going to double our entire county staff.

Right? Not double, but if there were additional positions being added. And the only position we had is one part, one in January one.

So the 837, whatever you said, is that that's for increasing employees? That's just the increase. That's the increase. Got it. Okay. So we're kind of doing apples and oranges here and it's not adding up very well. Yeah.

The increase is covered in the budget. Yep. Okay. Um, the and it's also covered in the data that was provided because the data in here, the salaries and such are this is the budgeted billets.

so the file that you guys got that's the budgeted bill it's not what's actually filled correct budgeted bill it's as of april 30 without any sort of cola the new budget builds in three three percent on top of that salary not for everybody but um because there's some like border supervisors you guys have a line in this that makes up that salary total the three percent is for county workers library and social services So the salary number that you have in the printout that HR compiled for you, that's fiscal year 26 numbers. Fiscal year 27, 3% on top of that.

Okay. So the data isn't going to be Whenever you're dealing with large numbers like this, it's not going to be, well, at this point, this is not going to be precise. It could be. I mean, I could go sit up with Mrs. Cobb and probably get there. But you're talking about large amounts. So it's the mechanism. And if that money currently isn't being used, that's all it is. So if the monthly... health cost right now is $274,380. Well, this still is an annual, doesn't it? So if the annual, now that's what I was a dollar figure using. It's commensurate. There's still a big deficit in people that aren't hired that is still there. Whether it's The increases were covered in the budget. But what the budget doesn't do is the budget doesn't take out for the unfilled billets. That's my point. That's all I'm trying to say is that we don't take the money to pay for the unfilled billets out of the taxpayer pocket. We take it out of the unfunded balance. That's what I'm saying. And that's only the difference between anything over the 2% and whatever tax assessments do get approved and after the $2.5 million. That's the motion that's on the floor and was seconded. At 58% or 58 cents, sorry. So we have a motion on the floor for 58 cents. That's been seconded.

That was too convoluted of a motion. So go for the roll call vote. And I say nay because that motion was convoluted.

You want to restate your motion? The initial motion was that the tax rate is .58 cents.

That's fine, but you're pulling numbers out of everywhere. And so I'm just saying nay.

All right. Ms. Bender votes nay. Mr. Stroud? Aye. Mr. Metz?

It's yay or nay? I think that was a lot of... Mythical math. I vote nay.

I vote aye.

You vote aye? All right.

I vote aye. Motion carries. Make a motion that at our next meeting, we come back and revise the financial policy to approve what was just asked. didn't fully hear that motion with the fan here oh i make a motion that at our next meeting we revisit the financial policy to allow the use of the unassigned fund balance for ongoing operations that's second i've got a motion on the floor motion seconded any discussion i have discussion let's go for it um we had already discussed that

the other side fund balance can pay for things that aren't, that are not really operations like maintenance costs and such.

We have the, what you're saying is we have the wiggle room where we can move other stuff around so that we're not. It's all done in finance.

Yeah.

Yep.

I don't know that. You're making a great supposition there.

No, the county attorney actually told us that.

No, I think Matt needs to explain how much money we have that are one-time non-recurring expenses that we can use that fund balance against because you can't use it to pay health care and salaries. And there's no law against it. No, there's policy against it. I'm asking if we're going to do this to change the policy.

And there's I've talked to financial advisor. Put it on the record, please. That's exactly what that money for to keep taxes low. Not everyone agrees, Mr. That I'm not disagreeing with you.

I'm saying our policy needs to change to reflect what you just said. You just want to clean it up, right? If if that's what we're asking the county administrator to do, I think we need to adjust policy. All right.

We'll do a roll call voter in that one, because Ms. Bender? I'll say aye.

All right. Mr. Stroud? I'll say aye because it does need to be updated.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. All right. Motion carries.

Is that it?

Nope. We've still got to vote on the budget.

Oh, yeah. Wait a sec.

My wife just texted me and said she bought me dinner.

right do we have a motion which one is our motion selling what's that which one hang on is it the personal property tax rate no we so so work working with finance

58 cent tax rate increase, $2.5 million transfer from bond proceeds, 832,517 transfer fund unassigned general fund fund balance, yielding a total FY27 operating budget, $146,683,998. Again, $146,683,998. so we overshot over a million bucks because that transfer remember i should yeah that's the bottom right remember i showed you why this number so we over yeah i got you we overshot by some dollars but not a lot yeah because we have to transfer that money needs to come in the capital out of capital into general fund right go to the next one

And you said 146 and how much?

683-998.

So yeah, just overshot a little bit, but not bad. You can decrease the money coming from unassigned fund balance. Or it could decrease. Yeah.

You said just decrease the amount of money coming out of the unassigned fund balance.

don't increase the budget we're not saying increase the budget amount okay just decrease the amount from the general fund unassigned fund balance right understood so that will be i i guess we're you know is that the number that's on the screen we'll need to have this an official motion but that is the budget that you all want for fy27 so you need a motion on the amount correct That is correct. And Mr. Stewart, so whenever we advertise this, we have the dollar amount and then the amount by category, schools, legislation. Yes, so those amounts may be changing from what I've had presented in my April 22nd. Obviously, they're going to change. My dollar amount's changed. Can we approve a dollar amount, what's on the screen, and the specified amount for each category as determined by the finance department and the county administrator for public hearing notice?

So if I understand things correctly, you're using those numbers, but instead of a $0.05 tax increase, you're doing a $0.02 tax increase and making up the other $0.03 out of the fund balance.

Making up the other from... Bond revenues? No, it's bond revenues. All 2.5 million of bond revenues in...

The bond revenues, the other 5 cents that you didn't do. So you were originally looking at a 10 cents tax increase. The bond revenues covers the first 5 cents. And they did a 2 cent tax increase. And the other 3 cents is covered by the fund balance, is what I understood. So your numbers don't change. It's just where it's coming from.

The overall, okay, okay.

Unless I misunderstood, but I think that that's what he was saying, and that's with the tax rate passed, I think that's how it works out. I think that's an accurate summary.

Because the CIP number is going to go up because that extra $800,000 has to go through the CIP and it changes the CIP, correct?

Yes, okay. The balance.

you understand the the overall budget is going to increase due to the accounting that i described early on in my presentation the general fund will not change the 86 million dollars or whatever we have yeah yeah if if we can just i think we have i think we understand it but just put that in a slide so people can in a future meeting so people understand that even though the budget is more it's an accounting it's just accounting we will have that during the public hearing and during the public hearing i'm going to go through my full-blown presentation uh you know for the for the public hearing and i think this is my third third presentation i'll combine all the pertinent slides for that all right do we need a motion on this so yes we will need a motion for um let me just let me just double check make sure we got everything here hang on all right well we got pptra first um i don't i don't think it matters um what order we do them in um i know pptra resolution is on that so long as there's going to be no changes to to anything on that i think we can approve the the budget amount levita do you want This budget amount that I read, $146,683,998. $146,683,998 for fiscal year 27. So I will make a motion that we approve the annual budget for fiscal year 26-27 of $146,683,998.

93,998. Sorry, I wrote it down real fast.

Okay.

And that was 146683998. Thank you. I wrote it real fast. Couldn't read my own handwriting.

All right. Do we have a second? Motion properly seconded for the love, please. Do we have any further discussion? None heard. Very well. Mr. Stroud. Aye. spender mr metz hi mr davis aye chair votes aye motion carries all right i'm gonna be right i was about to say what's next but i guess that's up to me now okay item zero five zero seven route 218 safety improvement project application smart scale round seven mr chair don't we have to set the personal property tax rate is it 325

I just want to, is it 325?

Can we bring that back up?

Because I'll make the motion.

We can probably make a motion to leave everything. I mean, if you want, you can probably make a motion to leave everything else unchanged.

It's on the agenda.

Yeah, I'll just make a motion to leave the personal property tax rate as the same.

Okay.

Or 325?

Okay. So there's a series of tax rates you have to set that are laid out in your agenda on page three. So the real estate we've already determined, if you look at on page three of your agenda, and this is what I read earlier, during the public hearing that was continued.

Then I got it. So I will... We already did the real estate, so I will make a motion to accept a tangible personal property rate at $3.25 per $100 of assessed valuation based on 100% of market value. The machinery and tools tax at $2.50 per $100 of assessed valuation based on 100% of the market value rate. And the mobile home tax of $0.58 per $100 assessed valuation based on 100% of the market value.

Second. Motion properly seconded. Any further discussion? Ms. Bender? Aye. Mr. Stroud? Aye. Mr. Metz?

Is this where I would ask my question? So, not for this year. I've asked Mr. Smolnick and I'll probably copy you, but I've also got a question out to our county attorney.

The discussion is over. It's a yay or nay. Well,

yay all right mr davis okay chair votes high now would you like to well so the personal property tax relief resolution 11-26 sets the reimbursement rate from the county from the state to the values of the vehicles we do a hundred percent um discount up to a thousand dollar vehicle and then it's 24 from that point to 20 000. um i've asked if it's legal for us to look at taking that 24% and reallocating it to every vehicle less than say $4,800 or $4,500. It's the same dollar amount we would get reimbursed from the state every year. So it looks like it's up to us how we set that that reimbursement rate. But that would really help a lot of residents in the county that are struggling with and have old vehicles. but it requires some more research and it's not ready for tonight. So we'll have a conversation later this year. Okay, cool.

Is that something that needs to be addressed tonight though? No, I got, I'm getting conflicting reports from the two of you.

The PPTRA. Yeah, we're not ready. Yeah, the PPTRA still needs, yes. the change we can wait till next year the the the 24 yes that's probably should have been i'm just looking at the agenda here oh it's i think it's later on don't yeah okay i know you're good yeah zero five zero eight okay but we do need to set this correct

Yeah, it's the next item after me.

Come on.

Good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the board. We'll take a little transportation commercial in the midst of all your finance. I do have a presentation if Mr. Dines finds it. There we go. Each year, each round of the SmartScale program with VDOT, the locality must endorse a resolution of support for the projects that they submit. As we discussed earlier in this fiscal year, I don't remember when I was here last. There we go. The Route 218 safety improvements were a project pipeline project. Department of Rail and Public Transportation, the Office of Intermodal Planning and Infrastructure, and Virginia Department of Transportation got together. They started, this is the third round of project pipeline studies to help localities get a project from concept to application. This is the one, this is the first one we've ever had in King George County. So in 218, we are looking at doing some site-dealing clearance and shoulder improvements. We have submitted this as a pre-application with an estimated cost over the cost estimated 9.6 million dollars in fy 26 dollars um our full application is due august 1st um so we need to get this resolution and then gwrc will also pass a resolution of support just to go through it we would do site just we'll do site distance clearing at bloomsbury we did look at two stages for each of these initially the ultimate cost was higher uh there we talked about adding a turn lane here um the cost benefit cost benefit was not conducive for a smart scale so we're going with the site distance clearing is what we've put into the proposal curve one is that first curve as you're coming down um i have it all here near Warman Drive, or just past Warman Drive, that one, again, site distance clearing, there was a proposal to realign some of that curve. Again, the benefit ratio is not there for the cost. The curve that we are proposing to realign is at Vertical Ridge Road. That is the spot where we have had a fatality in the last five years. We also had four out of the five motorcycle accidents that were in the study period were at that. It's really compared to it that's where the majority of the expense for the project would be but it is a very necessary thing there's but not as there's not as much cost as some of the other curves um the ford for this site discreetly at curve three the idea of redesigning that one was actually 10 million dollars by itself because of the property and right away that we would need to acquire um so that's where that one um fell off it just so we're here we'll just do site distance clearing We did have discussion. I'm trying to think it was this. I was on this one on quarter four, which is at Ford Lane. There's a couple of homes there. That one, there was discussion between VDOT and myself as we were doing our site visits of possibly not adding the green paved shoulder there. I expressed concern of that fact that it was not a high ticket item, but could very well keep somebody on the pavement and save a life one day. When we did find we sit down in the last planning meeting, they There was agreement to keep that in the project. And then, again, site distance clearing at the end of the corridor, which is at Lambs Creek Church Road. So tonight, the resolution of support was in your bracket. It has been approved, asked to form by the county attorney. And so I'm hoping you can take action tonight to approve that in support of our Smart Scale project. And then I'll be back with more information on other VDOT projects in a little bit.

Can you show me curb one again? I think I totaled a Jeep there one time when a guy fell asleep and came around on the wrong side of the road.

I mean, we all know 218, if you don't know it or if for some reason you're tired or inexperienced, there's a lot of potential for trouble. And that's what some of us will hopefully avoid. The state recognized it as a need and came to us with the study and said we want to do this study because we want to get a good, solid improvement project and make the road safer.

People don't realize this.

A guy was traveling left to right, fell asleep, drifted into my lane. There was no time to respond at all.

and what people don't realize you have to have these studies to put in any project application and right now we have a very old study of 301 that's kind of worthless to me yes it's 10 years old yeah and and in terms for us i mean obviously uh we have the rural transportation advisory committee with gwrc your representatives from myself and miss lucy tuttle from community development neither one of us trained as a transportation planner so we need all the help we can get when it comes to doing these these studies and these plans

right thank you we have a i'll make a motion to approve the route 218 safety improvement project application for smart scale second seven okay properly second any further discussion all in favor aye aye hey chris before you leave so there's

Behind Tabernacle Baptist Church, you got that road that comes back out and connects back out. It's like a loop. You turn right before the church, it loops back around and comes right back out on the highway. Okay. But there's one road that turns back and goes out to Millbank, just straight out to Millbank. There's a hill on that road that if you don't know it's there and you're going 55, you will get airborne. And I've done it. When I was a kid, we used to do it on purpose. But I'm letting you, if you don't know it's there, it will, your car will literally leave the ground going 50, 55 mile an hour. Same if you're on a motorcycle and you don't see it coming. I'm sorry, have you ever looked at that road?

We have not. I will take it back and do some, you know, I'll look at the crash data. I took OVDOT crash data class to try to learn a little bit more to how to develop that and then bring it up at our next R-TAC meeting. Yeah. Thanks, Mr. Beal. The great part about those meetings is Mr. Beal is there, and then typically Cassie Lord from the planning side of the district office is there as well. So it gets us face-to-face with VDOT all the time, once a quarter.

Thank you, buddy. Appreciate it.

You're welcome.

All right. Personal property tax relief resolution dash 11 dash 2026, item 0508.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So this is what we were discussing just before, Mr. Clark. This is to keep the same, remain the same as calendar 2025 for the Personal Property Tax Relief Act at a rate of 24%. So no changes this particular fiscal year. We will discuss, we'll put this on the docket to discuss next year. Should the board want, I would look for a motion to adopt resolution R-11-26 as presented. So moved.

Second. Probably second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes aye. Motion carries. All right. 0509, establishment of the date due for real estate and personal property taxes resolution 12-2026.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So in consultation with the treasurer to try to give our citizens a little bit more time to come on in and pay their bills, Mr. Jones is recommending that we change the due date from June 5, 2026 to June 12, 2026 for real estate and personal property taxes. So moved.

that would be should you want to do that that'd be adoption of resolution r-12-26 as presented so moved probably second any discussion do we need to do a roll call vote for this one and the previous one we'll go back and do the previous one in a second we'll clean this one up first all right mr stroud All right. Schmetz. All right. Spender. Mr. Davis. Aye. Chair votes aye. Motion carries. Now let's go back to the previous one if we could please. The personal property tax relief resolution 11-2026. Can we restate the motion?

I'll just make a motion for to approve the personal property tax relief resolution 11-206 as presented.

Very good. We have a second? Second. Mr. Stroud. all right mr metz all right miss bender hi mr davis hi chair votes i'm carries all right thank you for pointing that out discussion items 05-10 award of construction agreement for the demolition of botech building miss kimberly cook yes sir mr clark do we need did do you need a vote on your we did we did you voted aye you voted aye you put it on that too you're good hey you used up all your words tonight buddy okay and mine too can you pass the majority okay discussion items oh five ten award of construction agreement miss cook come on up all right good evening mr chair members of the board

I'm here to present the award of construction service agreement for the demolition of the vo-tech building. Quick summary of the information. Procurement issued IFB 0326206-1400 to solicit responses from qualified sources for a contractor to provide all work necessary for the demolition of the vo-tech building. A pre-bid meeting was held to familiarize contractors with the building and five bids were received. Of the five bids, the highest was $413,750.92 with a mean of $260,460.98 and $61,867 less than the second highest bid. Demolition services was found to be a responsible responsible better with the lowest bid price. Recommend an action staff recommends the Board of Supervisors authorized the county administrator to execute a construction services agreement with demolition services approved as a form by the county attorney at a fixed price of $139,929 with funding to be appropriated from the CIP fund balance.

What is that supposed to take place? Summertime?

Yes. So the kickoff meeting is going to be this Thursday to kind of familiarize demolition services with the building. We were hoping for approval on this tonight, so that way we could do the contract phase, get that approved, get it in signature, and then they would be able to start demolition during the summer and have it completed before school returns.

Thank you.

make a motion to award the construction agreement for the demolition of the vote tech building as presented i have a question hang on we need a second second second all right go ahead there's a part of that when we put it out for bid like the requirements in there and uh it's going to be after they demo it then uh what does it look like whenever we get done is it just they have to plan it it's level there's no you know the water containment erosion all that stuff is taken care of as a part of this my understanding is that it will be a clean side i mean whatever that what i'm what i'm asking is that After they get a demo on it, and then it rains, we have these big ruts. Nobody's coming in asking us for more money to come in there and fix something that is a part of this. Whenever we put this off our bid, we included that, that it's some verbiage that it's returned back to original state with planted, seeded, all that kind of stuff. You don't know.

I think Mr. Smallneck wants to- If I could chime in. So I know there's an erosion and sediment control plan that was done by a local engineer to include silt fence. And part of that is the stabilization until such time that the construction, the vote tech goes on, much like what went on over at the old middle school. Silt fence went up, prevent any sediment from leaving site, and the site has to be stabilized.

So that's what, it's all included as a part of this?

Yes. She said yes it is. I believe that was the same thing with the old middle school demolition.

It was the same company. Okay. I don't want to fail to ask something later. Dang, why didn't I ask that? All right.

Thank you. Mr. Smolnick, where are we on A&E services for the replacement building? The

The contract is on the street. The RFP is on the streets right now. Thank you. That's all I needed.

I'll say if it's the same construction firm, they did a really nice job with the middle school. They were good to work with.

Cool. All right. Ms. Binder. Aye. Mr. Schell. Aye. Ms. Metz. Aye. Mr. Davis. Aye. Chair votes aye. Motion carries. Thank you, ma'am. Go for it.

Okay. I am presenting the award of professional services agreement to ERP PC for comprehensive plan update. Summary of information procurement issued in RFP on January 16th to obtain proposals for the county's comprehensive plan update. Five proposals were received and evaluated by an evaluation committee comprised of staff from administration, community development, parks and recreation, and a member of the county's planning commission to determine which offers would be asked to present their plan for consideration. Evaluations were based on the following criteria. demonstrated relevant experience with actual development of comprehensive plans, qualifications of staff involved with this project, specific plans or methodology to be used in developing the comprehensive plan, offers references from other customers with requirements like those of King George County, timeline for completion, overall quality, and completeness of proposal. after an independent evaluation proposals three of the five offers were invited to present before the evaluation committee these firms were identified as the most qualified and responsive based on their strong technical expertise relevant experience with similar projects and demonstrated understanding of the project's scope and applicable regulatory requirements. Following the presentations, the evaluation committee determined that EPRPC was the most qualified firm and directed procurement to request a non-binding cost proposal. The cost proposal fee for all tasks is $219,852.99 with an additional optional village planning component priced at $20,000. Staff recommends the Board of Supervisors authorize the county administrator to execute a professional services agreement with EPRPC for the county's comprehensive plan update in the amount of $239,852.99 from Community Development's operating budget, subject of approval as to form by the county attorney.

Still moved.

Second. Motion properly seconded.

Any discussion? Mr. Chairman, if I may, I just want to bring it to your attention. With the final value in there, it was $20,000 for a village concept plan, a small area study plan. So we were, you know, I know there's been a lot of talk about this area, the courthouse. So we, you know, it was my recommendation to include that, and that is before you tonight. And this did, $300,000 was budgeted, so we're about 20% under budget on this one.

Okay.

My only question is for both this item and the previous item. I beat up Bryce for this, for bringing stuff in and wanting a vote on it that night. I beat up Bryce for bringing stuff in repeatedly and wanting a vote on it that night. Why are we breaking Robert's Rules of Order on these last two items?

So with the, first of all, the demolition of the middle school, I'm sorry, the VOTEC, We're trying to get that in so that occurs and every bit of dust is swept up before the first kid sets foot on that property for the fall school year. If the board wants to wait on this one, I'm fine with it. But the vote tech, the reason we requested is just due to the trying to get that done during the summer months. If the board wants to wait on this for two weeks, I'm okay with it. It's your call.

I'm fine with it. I just want to point out that I feel like we're getting sloppy on that. All right. Any other discussion? Ms. Bender?

Aye. Mr. Stroud? I would rather add in that village concept amount since it's under budget to begin with than just have them do it at the same time.

It was already included? It is included. Aye. Mr. Metz? Aye. Mr. Davis? Aye. Chair votes aye. Motion carries. Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you.

All right. I'm back for the same thing. You can go right to the same presentation if you didn't close it, Chris. Or you can click on there. so this to continue is just some informational updates because we've discussed some of these projects um and just to make sure the public and you all are aware of where we are we discussed the owens drive roundabout as a potential smart scale program vdot when they reviewed that that was the initial concept plan that they threw together when they reviewed the traffic counts it looks like it needs to be a two-lane traffic circle they were unable to produce that information produce that information you know everything we would need for an application in time for this pre-application deadline so we have to we are working with vdot now to rope to put this in with a full base traffic dog or an area study that will include both gates come all the way up to this intersection. We already have commitment from the base that they are interested from Mr. Lynch. It's been part of our attack discussions. And so that will be, we're just, we're waiting for more information from VDOT out of Richmond Central Office. But that'll roll all those things together and hopefully give us good planning for the future to be able to alleviate both base traffic, you know, traffic going east and west and north and south. Our transportation alternatives program, this project is getting ready to start. It's the middle school sidewalk. We started this back in 2022 or 2023. It was adopted by the Commonwealth Transportation Board in June of 2024. We've been working with the state. They will use state forces. The bridge crew will build the sidewalk. You really can't see it on the map very well. It is the light line. The very pretty cherry tree is going to disappear at the edge of the median there at the middle school. the the one right there in the little me yeah i we talked about taking it down over spring break and it was all flowering then so i didn't want to send anybody to take it down but we're going to take that down and then the sidewalk will go all the way to the intersection there will be there should be some also some upgrades to the lane any of the landing pads and crosswalks obviously we you know we draw all drive by there and there are times that students are there crossing they're walking down the side of the road in fact the day of the middle school's lifestyle fair I followed a teacher walking down to go to Sheetz to get her lunch. So it's definitely a safety need and will be taken care of this summer. The plan is to do it between school coming out. There's going to be a lot of action in that section of the world during the summer. And then Mr. Young, you know, you had the public hearing for the The Middle School Turn Lane Project just had that on here. I was in public hearings today, and he's been working on it right away. And the original hope was to do that this summer. I did not hear his presentation because I was at the CTE meeting. So that was everything I had to get you up to date on transportation.

Thank you. And there was some confusion after his presentation. We actually voted and passed that a while back. So tonight was just a public hearing to get that moving.