Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

meeting of the King George County Board of Supervisors. Call to order this meeting of the King George County Board of Directors of the Service Authority. Please join us in the invocation led by Miss Kathy Bender and followed by the pledge of allegiance. Please Lauren, help us guide us to make the right choices for the citizens of our community and for the rateayers of the service authority and all of us to have a very civil and good conversation and help to find the solutions for what the county has in store. Amen.

One nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all.

All right. Thank you everyone. Do we have any amendments to the agenda? Mr. Mr. chairman. So, so you know, looking at our audience, I I know we have quite a contingency here for um I'm trying to find the the specific item. It is for uh 04-11 under board of supervisors. Um was wondering if you may want to move that up earlier on the agenda for the board of supervisors. Yeah, we had talked about the possibility of moving that right before the uh public hearing. Um can I get a motion on that or do we just need consensus? So move

properly um properly seconded. Any discussion? All in favor?

I any opposed? Chair. Motion carries. All right. So we'll move the uh Got it. All right. Any other um amendments before we move on? Okay. Seeing none, we'll open the floor to public comment. Comment will be limited to three minutes per person. In order to afford everyone an opportunity to speak, please provide your full name and your district when submitting your public comments so they can be properly included in the public record. First up, we've got uh Miss Terry Morgan. Hello. Like to thank the board of supervisors. I'm pleased to be back in person again after a few months of just watching online and things. So, it's nice to be here rather than online. I aim to be very concise with my comments to ensure clarity and prevent misunderstanding or misquotations. Strongly believe in the second amendment and fully support the stance that this board in this county has taken on that multiple occasions. However, I mentioned a couple months ago and I want to reinforce his statement. However, I found it quite concerning that during the April 10th meeting with Mr. Sheriff Giles was a question from Supervisor Strauss about our collaboration with federal agencies. The sheriff's response was, I quote, "It was not a good look for me in my office," which I believe was not only unprofessional, but also potentially dangerous to our citizens. I call for clarity in the immediate response in the reference to this as our citizens genuinely need to be safe and we ask or are we asking them to be at risk and be the next headline news due to the preventable tragedies we have to to due to preventable tragedies. We have a duty to do everything possible working closely with federal agencies such as DHS and I. Our deputy needs our deputies need to be properly trained and protect our citizens. Working in coordination with state officials to provo to avoid problems and ensure community safety is one of the responsibilities not only the sheriff's department but every citizen

in King George. I respectfully ask this board take the steps necessary to address the comments made and to acknowledge where we stand as a county in regards to the cooperation before, during, and after detaining of any illegal immigrant in our county. So citizens are not statistics after the fact and so that we as citizens can feel that we're being looked after in a good way. So that someone can feel comfortable and I don't have to look at look at my neighbor and be scared. I don't want to look at my neighbor and be scared and I don't want to look at my neighbor and see the next picture on the news headline. I feel that that the least the citizens of King George can ask. And I don't really I don't really care if it looks bad on a person and I don't really care if it looks bad on an individual group. What I care about is my family, my kids, your family, your kids, and this community being safe before an incident, during an incident, and after an incident. And the way to ensure that is by having the correct correspondence between agencies. And I'd like to stand on that just as we stood wholeheartedly on the Second Amendment.

All right. Thank you, ma'am. Next up, we have uh Pastor James Shaw.

James Shaw. James Monroe, District columnist for the Northern Next Sentinel, citizenjournalist kgdia. Speaking in part in my capacity as an EDA member. So, what new hat do we have that bears a question mark? After stumbling into a study and related article that reveals the benefits of using questions over statements and trying to bring consensus, I asked myself self, how can I illustrate the creative use of questions in an under threeinut presentation like this? While statements have their place in times past, challenge yourself and ask yourself what deepreaching and creative results can come through the use of very creative questions. Do you know that statements can be factchecked, but questions are seemingly and magically immune? The mere use of a well-worded question can instead open the floodgates of creativity to answer questions like how can we do this better, faster, cheaper. And with our budget presentation this evening, one certainly uh can note that uh uh Mr. Smolnik and and ask him how many questions did you ask during this process to bring about the many solutions to complex budget challenges. The future of our county is partly in your hands as you consider asking a question like, "How can I draw out latent creativity that lies just below the surface that awaits the wakening

action of just the right question?" So, will God continue to bless the King George Renaissance as we ask better questions? Is this the end? I was successful in only using questions there until that. Thank you, sir. All right, that's all the people that have pre-signed up. Do we have anybody in the audience who would like to make public comment tonight? Mr. D, do you have anybody online? Nope. All right, thank you'all. Does anybody receive any correspondence? Seeing none, I'll close public comment at this time and we'll move on to uh reports from the board members and it would help if I actually call on somebody, Mr. Robot.

Hey, thank you, Mr. Sins. Uh so I'll keep it short, but uh um I know I did get some uh feedback. Mr. Hamilton here took uh took some cub scouts out uh a couple weeks ago to uh gave them a presentation at the um county building here and then uh took them down to one of the water plants over here at the uh public elementary school. Um I know the scouts were were thankful and excited. Uh, I know I took my son over there uh with me after uh after soccer, so I missed the first half, but I was able to to attend the second half with him. And a couple of the parents after the fact were very appreciative of uh what Mr. Hamilton had done. And uh the scouts definitely enjoyed it. So that was that was uh well put on by Mr. Hamilton and I just want to thank you for that. That was good. Um, so I would encourage anybody else in the community, other uh especially young uh groups like the Cub Scouts or Girl Scouts or any other uh group that uh has an interest in that to approach the service authority, call us or Mr. H Mr. Hamilton himself and uh we can schedule something accordingly. Other than that, that's all I got, sir. Thank you

very much.

Yes. I have to I have to tell you funny on that, Lee, because Mr. Hamilton uh told me one thing he learned from that too is not to schedule the water plant tour with eight-year-olds next to a playground because they get a little distracted because there's a playground there. But I do appreciate it because it is good to have that community engagement. Maybe some of the other groups in the county and the middle school and high school students can see what a water plant is and and maybe a you know pump station or something like that. Uh well, I'll keep my report very short. I've talked to a lot of people about reassessments in the budget over the last couple weeks, some issues with VOTE and and not issues. Why isn't my road not on the list? And questions that we always get. And then I got to attend the Go Virginia Summit yesterday. uh some good speakers and we had our couple other meetings like healthy generations and other things that I serve on including the Eastern Virginia groundwater meeting and we're waiting for the governor to sign the groundwater report that um in the mapping they showed is King George has a couple more critical cells mostly in the Sealston area but that report is not they gave us a little preview and a teaser of what this report will be but it has not been released yet because it needs the governor's signature first and it's been sitting there for a while so hopefully it'll come out soon and we can have some discussions about uh what's in that report. And that's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am. I think it was a couple of weeks of budget discussions uh with people in the community, a couple re couple of business owners reached out and and uh we talk through uh what things we're doing to make sure we end up with a balanced budget. Um, also had some contact with one of the communities we worked with over the the winter storm, Sedway Crossing, and the road transfer to VOTE, which we're going to hear a little bit about on the agenda later tonight for me. All right. Thanks very much,

Mr. Thank you, sir. Um, first I'd like to nominate uh Carolyn Tedar to the Rapanic uh area community services board to fill one of our vacant positions we have there. Second. Motion properly seconded. Any discussion? See none. All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries.

Thanks, sir. I attended uh part of the go Virginia economic development forum and I felt that there was a a welcome push uh to not only increase the opportunities for cyber AI uh the medical field training certification but also towards the CNC machinist and welding types of training um and certifications uh for the community. our EDA members were present and they made a good showing and I hope that some of the occupational fields uh that were being looked at by the district 6 EDA will also be considered by our school board. Um we can take some of that information back to them. U I haven't had a chance to do that. I know you haven't or probably nobody has yet. I'm looking to Mr. Smoldy uh and his his team there. But uh but hope that we can do that. So everybody knows that we're in the budget season and we're going to talk about it tonight. We've been talking about it. We had our budget work session uh two Fridays ago and uh I've been approached a number of times regarding the budget process yesterday. Happened to be at the polls and uh it was convenient to people. I was convenient uh leave there for people to ask and talk to. Um but people are asking about what's going to happen with the assessments and what's going to happen about the the taxes and the taxes rates. We get approached and asked and spoke at a number of meetings about taxes, keeping taxes low, don't raise our taxes and such. And uh I've had several discussions with the county administrator, Mr. Smolding. Um, and you may remember during the budget meeting, I asked him to provide us a report articulating why the county's budget increases every year. Um, I did this for several reasons.

One, I feel it's important that we articulate in plain language to our citizens these financial details as it's their money. I want to know so understand and can ensure that when I'm making decisions I'm not supporting frivolous or unnecessary spending. And it's important that those spending our citizens money know we are watching and paying attention. It's one thing to get large spreadsheets in such fine print we can't read it. I've been using this a lot. Then we're told, "Sir, we provided you that to you, and I can't deny it because I don't know what I got." It's easier to ask for data and information that's consumable by our citizens. And and that's not that's not a hit on our finance department or the team. It's a lot of data that they go through and we get the spreadsheets and you guys have access to them on the links that you get. um with the board. It's just a lot of it's a it's a lot of data and it's a lot of information. So, what I was asking for and have asked for is to get that information in a way that that it is consumable. Um so, I want to thank Mr. Smolick um and his staff for working to provide that information I asked for during tonight's report. I think you're going to provide tonight. Um I've I've met with him. I've met with the staff. I've talked to them uh about it in the past and recently and today and um I know that Mr. Smalling was just wrapping the report up within the last couple hours and uh and he's he's done and provided what I asked for. And I know that that's

stressful on you trying to do it the day of of the meeting. um and it's stressful on you and the staff and I appreciate that and I appreciate what you guys go through to provide that to us and really to the citizens. U and I hope that it it answers a lot of those questions for people tonight. Um Miss Morgan, thank you uh for speaking tonight and uh for paying attention during during the meetings. So I appreciate that. Um, so we'll we'll I think the only person that really can speak to that in more detail is the sheriff himself. So I have spoke to him and he he you know he broke it down for me why he did that. Um but he's the one that needs to do that, not not me speaking for him. Uh Pastor Shaw, there's a there's a a book and it's called It Doesn't Hurt to Ask. Um, and it's it's it's kind of a good book. Um, but I believe that it doesn't hurt to ask. So, it's good comments I think you provided tonight. Uh, so this is going to take a little bit of time, I guess. But I know that my questioning and the things that sometimes that I say, it makes people uncomfortable. And I do not do that to be mean-spirited. I'm not a mean-spirited person. I don't do it for that. I ask those questions because I feel it's my job. Um, I'm not doing it to be mean, although some people may want to paint the picture rather than facing the facts or being willing to consider other options, especially if those options aren't easy or place them in a position where they have to make tough choices rather than place their tough decisions on someone else to deal with, such as the supervisors. In business, there are a lot of tough

decisions. As a business owner, you want to pay your employees as much as they want. You want to provide 100% benefits, 4 day work weeks, 30-day vacations, 11 paid holidays, remote work, etc. But that's not realistic in most businesses. Why? Because in business, we have to be competitive. If our competitors offer similar quality products or services for less, people will buy from some from someone else. They'll buy from them. So, we're driven to provide the best products and services at the best price. We must continually work to become more efficient. I feel here at the county and in a lot of government, people don't experience that. In business, there is only so much money. If an employee wants more, they may feel they deserve more and and maybe they do. Quite often they do. But as a business owner, you only have two ways of getting money. you either make it, meaning you charge more for it, or you borrow it. um in in business if one of my program managers comes to me asking more money and and says that you know he's got employees and want more money then there's only one of certain ways to get it and I need to take it from somebody else from another program which means I'm taking it from those employees or say no to avoid increasing cost remember that I can only increase cost so far without pricing us out of business. If I go back to our customers and say, you know, I need to charge you more than we agreed to because that's not than we agreed to in the contract or in the agreement. That's not going to go over too well. In fact, the government will provide us

a negative evaluation. A lot a lot of our work is government work and business is called failure to perform. We fail to perform if we have to charge more money than what we agreed to. But here in the county, the staff, school superintendent, constitution officers, they take last year's budget, add the desired step increases, pay increases, benefit costs, etc., and hand it over to the board to approve. Nobody says to them, "Well, we're not going to ask our citizens to pay more. Figure it out." Instead, they get more. The budgets keep increasing. As supervisors, we get inundated with fear. Fear of losing our employees to surrounding counties. So, people are scared in increasing taxes to deal with the fear. I would argue it's not our job to ensure employees reach their salary goals. Sometimes employees need to change jobs to increase their income. In so doing, opportunities are created for new employees. The citizens shouldn't be required to provide the good ship lollipop for county employees when they themselves have to work harder, change jobs, get second jobs, or have dual income households, etc. to provide this that safety net and salary assurance for county employees. I'm sure there are people that don't like hearing it, but it's reality or it should be. As in any business, there are positions that are more valuable to the county than others. I've spoken at length with Mr. Smold, a couple of the directors and constitutional officers recently and in the past.

And I'm confident as a county we could address manpower differently. And I I've got some bullets here. One of them is to institute merit increases across the board. Okay? Everybody doesn't get a raise. The people that perform and perform higher, they get more of a raise for just doing your job. If you don't do your job, you'll get the opportunity to get another one. Our firefighters, our deputies, and teachers are a different challenge. We compete against counties with more funding. We have taken action to offset that with approving the data centers, but that's still a few years off, and we have to act and and do things in the interim. So that doesn't mean that all employees aren't valuable either. I think I hope I've addressed that that we reward those that that are overachievers um by giving them the raises and the bonuses. And Mr. Small, you're the one who knows who the overachievers are and who if if there aren't overachievers, who the lackluster employees are. And maybe we don't have any. I don't know. Um, I mentioned the firefighters, the deputies, the teachers because you guys have heard if you listen to the the but the meeting and you guys have heard uh the chief, the uh sheriff and the superintendent all make their case for why and how we lose employees to surrounding counties. Um, I've heard different opinions on that from residents, but the challenges that we face there with the surrounding counties is they have more money and they have a bigger budget and they have uh some of them have data centers already and they have

other sources of income. So, we have the challenge until we have that revenue coming in from the data centers. We have a challenge to close the gap or how bad we're willing to what pain factor we're willing to go to because we don't want to lose our employees that are valued employees and with training we have here. Um and the people who are in control of those departments are the ones who are able to make the decisions on that. But in interim we have we have a gap to close as best we can. um our other employees and we have some awesome employees. Uh Mr. Smik is coming on board is definitely, you know, we've seen some huge uh improvements in some areas in the county and we're grateful for that and we want to take care of them. So, um without going in any further detail there, you know, I'll just kind of close it out at that, but thank you, sir.

Thank you very much. I won't take a lot of time. We got a lot on the agenda tonight. Just want to say thank you to everyone coming out. Good to see familiar faces and good to see people and be involved in their county. I appreciate it.

All right. Thank you, sir. I won't go through all the engagements like I normally do. I just say that uh probably the one that I enjoyed the most this week was I got to spend um have a cup of coffee with one of our residents at Starbucks over Sunday after church. and she's got a neat concept of uh how we might be able to save some money for the school system. So hopefully we'll uh um I'll talk with uh my counterpart Miss Davis and and and our boards and Mr. Smallnik and and Dr. Boyd and maybe we'll hear more about this in the future, but it seems like a a doable concept. I do have a few nominations that I want to make. Uh the first one I I have somebody in mind for the tourism advisory committee, but you see me texting back and forth. I I was delinquent in getting her what that entails. So, I'm not going to bring that up until I got confirmation that she's comfortable doing it. But, I would like to um I've had an open spot on the planning commission for a few weeks now. And uh I got confirmation from Mr. Mark Jennings that he's interested in filling that. So, I'd like to nominate Mark Jennings to fill my um atlarge open seat on the planning commission.

Second. Properly set. Go ahead. I do have discussion. So, does that mean that we're going back to a 10 member board? I just want that confirmed because but then you would have two appointees. I think everybody has two appointees at this point except for me. Correct. But I thought we were going to maybe that was my bad. Uh pair it down by attrition, but obviously with your appointment that's not pairing them down.

We've kicked it around, but we never came up with a final decision. And it's been brought up in the past that um um we we leave seats empty and I I didn't want to leave the seat empty. I've never had issue with it being a 10 member board. I I think having diversity of thought is uh is not a bad thing. They only meet once a month. Their their meetings are shorter than ours and I have yet to hear them having a problem getting a uh um a quorum. So I have no issue with it. But sometimes bigger boards can be cumbersome because there's a lot of opinions. You can always vote no.

I mean, I have nothing against Mark Jennings. I think he would be very good, but I I do have it to make to approving that and then we have stuck to the 10 member board. Yeah. Any other discussion? I have no issue with moving it back to the 10 member board. I I I concur with Kathy. I just keep it smaller. I only have one on there now myself. Okay. Any other discussion? All right. All All those in favor? I. All oppose. Nay.

Chair votes. I motion carries. Thank you. All right. And so also wanted to bring it before the board. Uh we've done this in the past uh where we did a proclamation for an Eagle Scout. Um this is actually the younger sister of of one that we did uh last year. And I was wondering um would the consensus be okay to work with Jackie and uh have another proclamation done in honor of uh Sydney Land. She what was her Eagle Scout project? Just for curiosity. I have to find that out. I can't remember. Just for curiosity. They do some cool projects. I was just wondering. Yeah, I'll bring that to the next meeting.

A lot of work goes into that. I would definitely support that. Yeah. Okay. So, good consensus. All right. Are you good handling that? Awesome. Thank you, ma'am. Uh, in the last topic and then I'll shut up and move on. Uh, the May 19th meeting, uh, we've talked about this around this for a few weeks now. We're gonna need to move that because that's the night of high school graduation at King George and I know a lot of folks won't attend that. So, I don't want to um make them have to choose between coming and seeing our silly faces and uh watching their children walk across the stage. So, can I have a motion or do we want to discuss it before we did a motion?

I'd prefer Monday just to get it out of the way. And there's no uh there's no school board meeting that night because they're they've got all their stuff knocked out ahead of time for the graduation the following night. Give me one second. I just got to check the where's GWRC's meeting. Oh, that's a good point. I don't mind moving it. I just would skip that meeting if I if I had to. Hang on. I'll find out for you because it's I'm going to find it quicker than I was. Okay. So, FAMPO is Monday, May 18th, but not GWRC.

And I would make a motion to move the May was it May 19th meeting to May 18th. All right. Second. Motion properly second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? I post motion carries. All right. We'll move on to the consent agenda at this time. Make a motion to accept the consent agenda as presented. Second. Motion properly seconded. Any discussion? See none by roll call. Miss Bender. I. Mr. Davis. I. M. Mets. I. Chair. Motion carries. And we'll shift it over to the board of directors.

Did you want to do is there any constitutional officers? Oh, sorry. Somehow skipped that one. Sorry about that. Constitutional officers. Say no. And you're going to speak to us anyway? Yep. Awesome. All right. Now then, okay. All right. Can I Well, now we'll open the board of directors meeting and can I have a motion on the consent agenda? Move that we approve the consent agenda as presented. Do I have a second? Second. We have a motion properly second. And any discussion? All right. Mr. Robotham. I. Mr. Davis. Mr. Solins. I. Mr. Mets. I.

Chair votes. I motion passes. Next up, we have no public hearing and our presentation in Bowden. I think Mr. Hamilton will give a brief summary. Um the uh the staff is is down at the Virginia Rural Water I think it's water or rural water convention down in Rowan Oak. So they are not able to be here. So I think Mr. Hamilton was going to give a brief summary. Mr. Hamilton.

Good evening folks. Um just two things I pulled from the report I wanted to highlight. Otherwise, everything is basically operating as it should be with respect to the water treatment plants and the wastewater plants. Um, if you read the report that that Inboden submits monthly, there makes there's a note in there about a well failing in the Canterbury system. I actually had an inquiry about it this evening. Uh, I just want to point out there are two wells in Canterbury. Uh, the well itself did not fail. the pump burned up and we're actually I'm going to cover this in my brief report in a few minutes, but we're about to be opening up the interconnection between the Canterbury system and the circle system and the courthouse system. So, it will all become one system and therefore we will not need a second well in Canterbury. So, we elected to not spend the money. We probably be 15 or $20,000 to replace that well pump and in a month or two we wouldn't need the well anymore. My intention would be to abandon the plant in Canterbury. it's old and decrepit. Um, not worth putting any money in. So, if that came up, I just wanted to let people know that. Um, otherwise, everything's fine with the water systems. We haven't had any positive bacteria samples. Um, on the wastewater side of things, there was a note about an exceedence on our monthly limits for nitrogen at the Perkins Corner plant. I also want to point out that that plant is about to come out of service um as we wrapping up this project with Ace Environmental upgrading the Hopyard plant and transferring over um different pump stations that have been pumping to Perkins. Uh we will be decommissioning the Perkins plant probably within the next 90 days. So um not overly concerned about that uh exceedence. So that's really all I have with respect to the invoting report.

Thank you. Does anybody have any questions about the report? Right. Next up, we'll go to the recommendation to approve the Zante proposal for the service authority rate study in the amount of $84,500 for funds to be appropriated from the capital project fund 303. Mr. Hamilton.

Yeah. I just wanted to make one comment um after coordination or a better coordination with the finance office about how we should uh move forward with this if we were going to move forward with this. We had originally talked about taking the funds from the capital project fund. In fact, um, Miss Cobb recommended earlier this week that we go ahead and pull the money from the operating budget. It does appear that we've got enough money in the operating budget to go ahead and and uh fund this project. I also want to point out that even if we were to approve it tonight and start, we will not manage to complete the project and spend the $84,000 before the end of the fiscal year. So my recommendation would be that we go ahead approve it, move forward. We'll pay for half of it out of this year's budget and put half of it in the fiscal year 2027 budget operating budget, not the capital project budget.

Does anybody have any questions upon reading over the study? No. All right. Do I have a motion? Make a motion to approve the Stantech proposal for the King George County Service Authority rate study in the amount of $84,500 with the funds to be appropriated from the capital project fund 303 or the operating budget. Do I have a second? Second. We have a motion properly seconded. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Oh, nope. This is a roll call vote. Mr. Robotham. I Mr. Davis. Mr. Song. Hi, Mr. Mack.

I chair votes I. Motion carries. Uh, next up is the consider revisions to the service authority board of directors meeting schedule. Mr. Hamilton, did you want to take that or or I could take it. This is really not an initiative that I generated. I'm happy to facilitate

to do whichever you prefer. So um I guess just to formalize so the folks I mean I I know that Mr. Smolick and uh Miss Fish have talked about starting in July 1st as a transition because that would be the new fiscal year. Is that am I correct Mr. Small and Mr. Hamilton? Uh so would you switch over to once a month the second meeting of the month because that's when Emboden usually has their report. Is that good with everyone? So it' be the third Tuesday. third Tuesday, but the second meeting of the month. What time?

So that's the question. Five or 5:30. Would five be okay for him? Five would not be 5:30. That would push back the board meeting. I mean, we could we could make the service authority portion be under an hour. We could give it that length and move it along. Most likely would be less than an hour. I just think we're going to get right back into why we switched to be to begin with. I think we're going to be running long and running to the board of supervisors meeting and people be coming in and out. I just think it's um I'm just kind of curious to why it has to be stuck on the same day week standalone meeting. Why does why does it have to be on the same day?

I mean, you don't have to follow tradition, but it's always been on the same day for years since the service authority was created. and and and I know that a lot of people come for the board of supervisor meeting, but the service authority is just as vital. It it helps drive economics for the, you know, development, everything in the community. And I don't want the service authority number one to be treated as a as second to the supervisor. It has just as much as important and just has vital stuff that has to be discussed. But I understand your nish, but that's another day that all of us have to to give up in our busy lives to come to a meeting and our staff, including those that come in film, have to be here and we have to pay them to do so. So, I know I could keep it to under an hour and as we move and and Mr. Hamilton uh is here a little longer, we get this uh bakedown and and figure out the the plan of attack for the meetings and the agenda, I think it can be 100% in uh under an hour. I I think even 30 minutes depending on the topic.

So I don't think anybody's questioning the importance of the meeting. I think it's really more a matter of uh um you know bringing the staff in for an extra day, you know, after hours. I I could go either way, but I just don't want you to feel like we think that uh it's less important.

But where I was saying the staff and I'll get to you next, Mr. Mets. Um, if we have them come in another day, that's another day when we're bringing in the staff. And a lot of folks don't realize that the the service authority gets a lot of free services from the county that they don't pay for, which is a way that the, you know, the rateayers actually get support from the citizens and the taxpayers of King George because we get financial services, we get sometimes some maintenance, we get a lot of services county for free. So, you know, make sure we also don't overt tax people and and don't add extra charges to the bill or whatever. Have people who come in on off days. So, Mr. Mets, go ahead.

I I was just going to s if we start at 5:30 and we can hold it to an hour. I think that's about what we're doing now, right? and and we're kind of used to this as long as the the board chairs continue to work well together, you know, so that like when that rate study comes out, the public meeting for that doesn't overlap with another big public meeting that we've got on the board of supervisors. Um I think we're well operating board and if we find that it's not working, we can always adjust on the fly. But I like your point about efficiency this year of all years. I think we do need to be very efficient with our resources and time um staff time in particular. I kind of like the idea of third Tuesday 5:30 if we find that it's starting to push us really late, we'll adjust somewhere during the year.

And one other thing for a big like the when the rate study discussion comes up, we could have that on a separate night because we know a lot of people would come out about that. Mr. Small, did you have a I did have a question. I guess so if if we're going to try to hold it to one hour, would that be a hard start time? I'm thinking for when we notify the public for a board of supervisor start time. Will that be 6:30 on that same night? Thank you for bringing that up because then I would I would suggest that maybe put out or six o'clock given up time. I know 6:30 we I don't know what what do you guys think? I'm going to take your feedback on that. Lee, you haven't said anything so far.

So, I'll say if we change the agenda to where the service authority fully goes first, then yes. I mean, as we can see, we spent a half hour here with opening remarks for members of the board. The service authority has been going for seven, eight minutes at this point, and we're halfway done the agenda. Think we can get through the service authority piece. It's just we need to either move all of it to the left and the board starts at six. Therefore, if we only go a half hour, you got a half hour gap everybody's sitting around. Um, otherwise keep it as it is and uh we do our best to keep going out.

I feel if all we're doing is taking it from the middle and just putting at the front understand and changing the times of vote really I don't understand why we would do that

as opposed to we can just do it once a month and keep it where it is I mean all we're doing is going back to the way it was before where search 30 started at 5:30 and then 6:30 the board supervis started change that for a reason that seems changing it back and then on the other night are all the board meetings going to be at 6:30 or they're going to be 5:30 and then people just say I'm confused what day it start 5:30 or 6:30 so you got to get consistent with the board of supervisor meetings starting and what time it is you can't be flopping on that changing back and forth so either goes to 6:30 and stays there for both nights start to that one early, you just keep it the way it is. I mean, it's to me it's one or the other. But so when you say keep us the way it is with the way it is set up today, I

mean, all we're doing is taking it from the middle and just putting that at the beginning is the way I see it. We can always just say we're going to do it once a month and keep it where it is. Keep the meetings always consistent starting at 5:30 as opposed to moving it around. If you My dad calls me all the time, say if they're for me tonight, if he call me say, "What time is it now?" No, I get that. I thought you meant on a separate night. So, yeah. Yeah. If we're not a separate night, so keep it the way it is. I would keep the time to save it the way it is. So, what is the consensus? What do you think? I don't think we need to have a motion on this or do we need to have a motion on this? Probably do because it needs to be the bylaws. Correct. I don't think it is. The bylaws say that you have to meet once a month. Okay.

Having just reviewed the bylaws and Well, just to make it official, would somebody make a motion? I again I don't think you need to take action tonight if we're not going to start on this till July anyway. Right. None of my business. But well, how about this? Let me hear the consensus. We move it to next week. You can get the legal verbiage and that for how to do so to make sure or we make a vote tonight. So what do you would the board like to do, Mr. Mint? I I think I I definitely concur with in my mind it's effectively removing the service authority from the agenda on the first two days. No. Yeah, I agree with that. All right, everybody fine with that way is and and I'll just check with Mr. Stewart to make

is that effective July 1 or effective tonight? Just ask July one. Okay. Gives everybody time to prepare and then I'll just make sure for Mr. Stewart that we don't have to actually vote on it in a public meeting. So, all right. All right. Thank you guys. So, next up would be approve the changes to the service authority board of directors revised by law bylaws. Mr. Hamilton,

sorry, I'm struggling with this mic. Um, these changes were actually very minor. They were basically just housekeeping issues. There was um a motion made and passed by you folks, I believe, three meetings ago to allow remote participation in the event of an illness or something like that. and we didn't actually change the bylaws. I I believe your motion was at the time to basically adopt the same wording that was included in the board of supervisors bylaws. So that change was incorporated into what I sent you. And then also I believe there was a typo that said that the fiscal year ran from July 1st to June 13th rather than June 30th. And I don't know what happens in the other two weeks. Certainly not vacation. Um, so we just corrected that and then changed the date the bottom when potentially the new bylaws would be adopted. So, um, that's really the only comment I have with respect to that. It's pretty pretty simple. There's no philosophical or operational change.

Do we have any discussion or any questions or do we have a motion to adopt this? Make a motion to approve the proposed changes to the King George County Service Authority Board of Directors bylaws. Second. Second. Properly seconded. This one has one. Any further discussion? All those in favor say I. I.

Chair votes I. Motion carries. Has a little delay when you click the button, so I have to remember that. All right. Next up is you know that we um had two properties that the service authority does not need to use anymore. One was in Fairview Beach which we did sell to a resident and then there was a property right next to the HOA and the uh Presidential Lakes clubhouse that we inherited when we inherited the Presidential Lake system and that is unneeded. We cleaned off some water tanks on it and so we have actually received a bid on that property so that we can get rid off of our hands and it'll be somebody else's problem from now on. So, um I am going to take a discussion item. We don't have to make a vote on this tonight. We can or we can vote to accept the bid and all the bid was sealed and but it has been uh distributed to the board members. Is there any discussion on this or a motion?

Are you allowed to disclose the dollar amount? Yes, the dollar amount. Well, I don't think it's on here. Mr. Hamilton. Yeah, I believe the bid was $5,275. And just to be consistent with last time, I won't name the bidder. Um, but I apologize for the late addition to the agenda, uh, I had tried to work a week in there to review them, but since there was only one bid, there wasn't any necessity to review it. You said 5,200.

$5,275, I believe, was the bid. And I would suggest you go ahead and accept it. We're never going to recover our investment there. Madame Chair, I'd like to make a motion to approve the the um the seal bid for the surplus property in Py Lake for $5,275. Second. Have a motion properly seconded. Any further discussion? I'll take it by roll call. Vote. Mr. Robotham. I. Mr. Davis. I. Mr. Sullen. I. Mr. Mets. Hi.

Chair votes I. Motion carries. It's also hard to look down because everybody's view isn't the greatest greatest there. Sir. All right. The next up is consider changes to the ser and these are all discussion items. Consider changes to the service authority regulations to remove the reference to debt fee and insert reference to base rate. Mr. Hamilton.

Yes. As you know, I I believe I've mentioned a number of times over the past six or eight months the number of inquiries we get about the term debt fee uh which is included on the bills. I've never seen another water wastewater utility use that term. Um, in fact, it's what I would consider to be a base rate. Uh, last fall I sent you folks a uh EPA definition of what base rate meant. And basically, I'm recommending that you change the reference to debt fee to the word base rate in the this is actually in the service authority regulations, which is a 90page document that is available on our website. Um, but there is no reference in those regulations to the fee actually being tied to debt. Uh, there is no calculation based on debt service. And I think it's an unfair and unrealistic and not transparent term to call it a debt fee. It creates a lot of bad feeling. And I, you know, I'm certainly not asking you to take action tonight if you don't feel comfortable on that, but I should strongly consider it. Uh, I can't tell you how often I overhear conversations with um people who are calling in and inquiring from the billing staff about that. Um, I've had a number of conversations with folks about that. Again, the fee itself is not tied to the actual debt service of the service authority, which of course is going to be part of what's reviewed by Stantech. So, it's conceivable that you might want to wait until that report is completed, but I know they were here two weeks ago, and I believe that both uh the gentleman from Stantech and the gentleman from Davenport Financial agreed that it really wasn't the appropriate term. So, that that's short and sweet my position.

Do I have any questions or discussion? Madam Chair, go ahead, Mr. D. I'd like to make a motion sir story regulations to remove reference to debt and insert reference to base rate as per section 30 general rate pop. Do I have a second? Second. Have a motion properly seconded. Any further discussion? Is there any I'm for moving forward with this, but is there any hidden stuff that we need to know like uh no public hearing, no transparency, no issues or anything crazy like that? We're we're not changing fees, we're just changing wording. Is anybody gonna get upset over that. I don't that

I I looked at that and of course I wish Senator Stewart Stewart was here but I believe that what I read in the regulations was that the board of directors had the authority to change them that that will okay of course if that's not correct I mean I think you should consult with county attorney but and you had said that the the rate has nothing to do with the debt anyhow. Is that correct? the debt fee that is referred to in the regulations, there is no language in there that defines how it is calculated. It's simply called a debt fee. So I like I said, it's not as if it's a multiplier or a percentage of or some other mathematical calculation related to debt.

I appreciate you bringing this up. I think this actually helps with transparency because as we've discussed, there's a lot debt is in that fee, but so is a lot of other things, too. So I think as we go forward and open up that transparency a little bit more this this should the beginning of it

and this was changed I think I tracked it back to 2008 no real reason they just thought it was the right thing to do but it has caused a lot of angst that one reference I had asked on the new bill when we do the rate study is that on the bill it breaks out every every bimonthly how much towards your fee went to pay off the debt or how the debt is being paid down just to show people that the debt is being paid down. It's just there's a lot more that go into this like buying chemicals, paying the staff, all those things that actually operate a service authority. People don't realize there's a lot of costs that go into that. You know, repairs, all maintenance.

If you don't mind, I'm just going to read this one paragraph for the record. This is from the EPA's website and it defines basically what a quote base rate is. It says, "Many utilities use a combination of a fixed fee, i.e. base and a variable fee based on volume for their water rate structure. Fixed charges generally include the price the customer pays as a base charge to help cover costs for maintaining existing infrastructure. Repaying loans and bonds used to build the infrastructure. Variable charges are the price the customer pays per volume of water used reflects the cost of providing water such as the cost for chemical treatment to provide safe water and energy to move and deliver the water. I think that's a fair definition.

Do we have any other questions before I take the vote? All right, Mr. Robotham. Hi, Mr. Davis. Hi, Mr. Solen. Hi, Mr. Mets. Hi, Chair B. Motion carries. Next up is uh Mr. Hamilton had the upcoming renewal of the contract agreement with Emboden Environmental Services.

Yeah, really I just wanted to bring this to your attention and in fact their contract their current contract expires at the end of April. Um I'm still in the process of reviewing it. It's a very lengthy contract and of course we're going to recommend renewing it. They've submitted a revised or renew contract. Um but there are some things that I need to review with respect to um fees and charges particularly since we're going to have some infrastructure i.e. one less wastewater plant couple of water treatment plants that will no longer require their service. Um so I need to make some evaluation of that and have a conversation with the owners and in voting about the fee structure. Um I also will probably recommend that we include a clause that either has an automatic renewal. this means the party gives notice to terminate or some type of automatically going to a month-to-month type contract. So, want to bring this to your attention. Um, I will send it to you folks um once I've been through it with comments and further in the future and voting is not going to stop working on just want to make you folks aware of that.

Does anybody have any questions? This is just to bring it to the attention for further questions. So, they're not going to stop working at the end of April. Um, sir, that's good. Usually with uh with a contractor that comes with either increased cost burden or do we have the authority to actually pay them without a contract? We do. Okay. Wish you hadn't asked that question because I wasn't anticipating it. Can you repeat that once with the mic on just so the public can hear?

Yes. while you're in um you're negotiating. Thank you. Any other questions on that? All right. Without that being said, uh Mr. Hamilton, you're up with your general manager's report.

It's going to be extremely brief. First, I'd like to thank you all for the unanimous motion to get rid of the words. Um the next bill is going to go out in the middle of May, and I will make sure that that is changed. If it's if it if there's no objection from Senator Stewart, um I know that will resolve a lot of inquiries. I'm sure it will create some new ones. Um, but just to circle back to your conversation about the the monthly meetings, um, in order to limit the amount of time you hear from me, um, effective two weeks from today or at the next meeting, I will be providing you all a written report every two weeks or the Monday before each meeting um, to hopefully just give you the details and I'll make it publicly available as well. And then I'll try to keep my comments to a bare minimum. Um, so I've just got a couple quick things here. One is you folks have already mentioned the Cub Scout group that we hosted on the 8th of April. There were about nine scouts and their parents. Uh it was a pleasure to meet with them. It's always a pleasure to teach youngsters about about water and wastewater and pollution and things like that. I think it was wellreceived and I'm willing to do that for any group. I don't care if they're adults, children, your customers or not. I don't care if you live in the county, frankly, as long as my bosses don't have a problem. I'm happy to do an educational program like that at any time. Um, secondarily, we did receive a permit or I'm sorry, a not notice of intent to issue uh a permit for the combined uh courthouse water system, which is the permit we need to operate the courthouse system as it's interconnected to both the circle system, the uh now I forgot the name of it, the Canberry system and the hopyard system. I believe that permit, if there are no complaints or questions during the public comment period, will be issued within the next 60 days, which will allow us to again operate this as one system and then begin to eliminate some of the older small well and treatment facilities that are just out ofd and substandard. And rather than spending money maintaining them and doing tests because we're using the

wells, we could eliminate that.

And Mr. Hamilton, the other thing it does is reset that clock to push to an alternative water source. Correct. Um, second, you know, following that, uh, we did get that, like I said, we got that notice last week. I expect to have the final permit within the next 60 days. Um, as the chair mentioned, we both attended a meeting of the Eastern Virginia groundwater advisory council down in Richmond about two weeks ago. Uh, one fact I took away from that which I found fascinating is that 35% of the groundwater usage in the state of Virginia can be attested directly to the paper mills. And that is going to be a conversation I'm going to be discussing with the regulators as they push us to consider an alternative water source. Um, last but not least, I just want to point out that today is Earth Day. I spent the morning with about 60 kindergarters doing another educational program. It was not here in King George County, but it was a pleasure. Uh, do something nice for the Earth today. Remember that water doesn't divide us. It It unites us. And that's all I have.

Right. Did anybody have any questions for Mr. Hamilton?

All right. Well, and now we will have our secondary 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 comment so that it can be properly recorded in the public record. Would anybody here like to come up and speak for the for the service authority only? Is there anybody online? No. Did anybody receive any correspondence? Right. With that being said, do I have a motion for adjournment? I make a motion that we adjourn the board of directors to Tuesday, May 5th, 2026 at 5:30 p.m. in the board room of the River Cone Building located at 10459 Courthouse Drive, King George, Virginia. Even though I believe that the AC works here and doesn't work over here, we should be somewhere else. All right. Do I have a second?

I reluctantly second. Uh motion properly second. Any discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Chair votes eye. Motion carries. The service authority board of directors meeting has concluded. Mr. Solins. Thank you, ma'am. All right. I'd like to call up Miss Renee Parker and then Miss Klet Jordan. We're going to do uh as we mentioned earlier, we're rearranging the schedule a little bit and we're going to hit item 04-11. Visualize and rise and the Ralph Bunch Alumni Association. Mr. Solins, hold on one second. Mr. robot made a very choice that we probably need to move make a motion before we have to reconvene the service authority to make a motion to move the service authority meeting to May 18th.

Okay. Is that Sorry about that. Mr. Robothton just tapped me on the shoulder and reminded me. No, that's a good call. So, what do you need us to do? Uh, we reconvene the service authority board of directors and I would entertain a motion to change the board meeting on May 19th. reverse. No, no. This would move the the one that we're moving for graduation. All right. So, I make a motion that we move the board of directors board of directors meeting to Tuesday, I'm sorry, Monday, May the 18th at 5:30 at the Rep building. Right. Second. We have a second. Any further discussion? All those in favor say I.

Chair votes I. Motion carries. Thank you, Miss Parker, for taking that time out. Miss Jordan, the dad to fix that. So, I will uh move the uh close the board of directors and move it back to Mr. Salt. All right, Lady Smack is yours. Thank you. Okay, we're young. We make it happen. Okay. All right. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the board uh for adding us to the agenda tonight. We greatly appreciate it. Uh we are here with the Representative Shannon Toiver from the Visualize and Rise Foundation. My name is Renee Parker. I'm vice president of the RBAA along with Claudia Jordan. She's our president of Ralph Bunch Alumni Association. And what we'd like to do tonight is kind of give an update to some members of the board who are more familiar uh with the efforts of the last few years and then maybe educate newer board members on what's been going on the last two years with this effort. We have next slide, please. So, not to just go through and read the slides. I'm not going to do that. I know you have the presentation, but I wanted to point out that the identification of Ralph Bunch High School by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources and the National Park Service is what allowed for the $500,000 grant to be applied for and awarded to put the new roof on the building. Um, you're all, I'm sure, aware that this is a state and national landmark. Um, and was uh his was historically significant back in the day for two civil actions. I'm not going to get into the whole history of all of it. I know you have that and I know you have the WY Wilson report, so I don't want to rehash all of that, but I just want to point out that in the background statements here, um, the Ralph Punch Advisory Committee did, um, form in 2021, got together with various members of the community to form that committee. And about two years into that, it became apparent that the real effort from that point on was raising funds. We have anou at the county, as you're aware. Rough Bunch Alumni Association has an MOU. Visualize and Rise has anou. And there were stipulations for us at least to raise $250,000 by the end of 2026. You'll see as we go through uh the slides that we're respectfully requesting that we extend that until the end of 2029. And we'll explain why that timeline is important. Um, so the last bullet just mentions that the three entities, the

Ralph Funch Alumni Association, Visualize and Rise, and the county are continuing to work with government agencies, foundations, and donors to obtain additional funding. It, you know, we knew from the very beginning that we were not asking the county, it's your building, you own the building, we know that you own the building. Um, you're aware of the historical significance of the building, but from the very beginning, we wanted to do what we could to help to help with the revitalization, to help with the restoration, focusing focusing on the museum. A lot of the funds that we raise right now are dedicated to the museum so that donors know exactly what they're donating toward. Next slide, please. Um, I mentioned that it was a historical landmark with uh civil rights significance at the state and national level. Now, to go into what you're facing now with this building, and I I didn't mention this at the beginning, but I want to go back and thank you for putting it back on the CIP. It is on the CIP again, and it's crucial that it's on the CIP because of applying for grants. So, one of the first things they look for when you're applying for grants is what kind of backing they're getting from the county. And if it's not on the CIP, there's no reason for them to go any further. If it's not something that the county is backing and not something the county feels is important, then a lot of the people that are holding the money for those grants have a concern over sharing the money. So, thank you for putting it back on the CIP. That is very, very important. Um, our goal of course is to transform it into a thriving multi-use facility. in the WY Wilson report that you have and are taking some of the information from WY Wilson and including it here. We've listed the priorities where there's a museum gallery, there are STEM programs, the gymnasium there. Many of the board members I know have taken a tour of the school. The focus on the gymnasium was to restore it um to its former glory and use that with the stage that's in it for theater, for basketball games, for anything that Parks and Rec wants to rent it out for. Um, so the gymnasium would be a big focus in the building, an

event venue, obviously, coaching and mentoring the youth of King George and surrounding counties, visualize and rise. We'll talk about that a little bit more when they come up. And then after school and workforce development program, and that included things like adult education, um, after school activities, obviously there's a commercial kitchen. So, what we've tried to make people understand is that there are organizations that would be there as tenants. Possibly the historical society would put the King George Museum in there as a tenant. Um, the Virginia Co-op Extension Office might be a tenant. So, you wouldn't pay rent for various organizations in the county. You would save money by having them occupy space in the building, but they would all be tenants. Next slide, please. And I mentioned that because of one of the bullets that's coming up. So, obviously, the the surrounding property and the high school itself is owned by the county. We mention here how much uh square footage the school has. We mentioned how much acreage there's involved there. We mentioned theou and partnerships that we have. Um and then the two last bullets are important because um the bottom one particularly any building improvements and this is in the business plan. So there is a current business plan. I know that I think all of you've gotten the business plan um and it was updated in 2022 that any business improvements will become the property of King George County. Equipment, furnishings, displays, interpretive signs not permanently affixed to the walls would be under the ownership of the tenants. So, even as early as that, we mentioned the possibility of tenants and and how that would work with the county. Next slide, please. This is directly from the WY Wilson updated assessment. And these numbers, obviously, they're 2022 numbers, so they're outdated. Uh, but this gives you an idea of what uh came through the original assessment and then the 2022 assessment update of what's necessary. We've thrown around 8 million to$10 million for the last several years. That's been our goal. Um I think that's what you have on the CIP is a total of $10 million. Um that I don't I'm not sure, you know, without a new

assessment, and we'll get to that in the upcoming next steps, um what these what these figures truly are. Next slide, please. Wy Wilson's own action items were obviously the hazardous material survey. This is why we can't go into the building and do anything to it. Now, we can't open even a piece of the building uh to maximize opportunities for grant applications. If just a piece of the building was open to the public, we would have many, many more opportunities for grant applications, and we just don't have that right now. Installation of recommended right turn lane off of Route 301. Obviously, these are VOTE issues. And then a site design um and permits, grading and storm water, installation of paying subbase, paving subbase, I'm sorry, and new well and septic drain field. So those are all overarching basic things that came out of the WY Wilson assessment for action items. Next slide. Potential use for floor floor plan. It's really difficult to see that um in this room um but it basically just mentions um space for venues, space for the gymnasium, space for classrooms, museum space, different rooms for museum space. You'll get a better image of that in uh in your slides in your uh presentation. Next slide, please. So challenges, the mold and potential hazardous materials that are present, the drainage failures causing erosion and infiltration, dated cost information. These are all things that are challenges right now. This didn't come out of their assessment. These are things that we know are are um challenges today. Limited grant opportunity due to the building being closed to the public. So one of the things we talked about a couple of board of supervisor meetings ago was a mitigation for the last bullet might be to rehab and open the foyer and gym first. So, that obviously depends on the first bullet, the mold and potential hazard materials present, what's determined with an asbestous and mold inspection. Um, and if it's even feasible to open up a piece of the

building, but that really would go a long way to open up just that piece to get people to the building to let parks and wreck um, manage that part of the building, book that part of the building and so on and have kiosk, if you will, in the foyer area kind of indicating what's coming. Next slide, please. So, next steps is again, oops, let me go back one please. Next steps would be um our request to extend theus with RBAA and visualize and rise until the end of 2029. Conduct a detailed structural and environmental study. Define the scope of repairs versus replacement options. Refine the cost estimates of course and evaluate short short-term and long-term use strategy. Um and that's just really um related to the possibility of opening the foyer in the gym. And next slide. But what I want to do now,

could you say why why that's important to open up the foyer in the gym? Yeah. Just

because of the grant application. So, right. So, Lisa Hull is somebody that we work with very closely um for the from Northern Tourism. She is a grant guru. So, we've worked extensively with her and and I can't tell you how many times she told me that if we could just open a piece of the building to the public, there would be so many more grant opportunities than we have right now. Um and that that's usually one of the very first things on the application. Um, so that's not not necessarily an easy thing to do because of the asbestous and the mold. We recognize that. Uh, but if that's a uh a lesser expensive and and avenue and it's possible by sectioning off inspections and uh asbestous and mold um repairs, then that would be very helpful to move forward in the future.

Other questions? One of the questions and I brought it up to I think to you, Miss Parker and to Miss Jordan, is that we don't know with that mold and remediation if it you have to do the whole building at one time or you have to just do one space. That's where I was going to go. Right. With the age of the building, um I doubt that it's an issue, but do you know does it have centralized HAC the way this is? Because if if it's No, if it did and there there's mold in part of it, there's going to be mold in all of it. No, it never did have it. Okay. So that may not be an issue. Any questions down here?

I'll just start with I love the idea of getting some movement, right? I think you and I chatted that whole if you could just open part of it problem becomes some some key pieces that were in that study, right? What do you do for restaurants? Um I was just pulling up real quick and I'm sorry Mr. Hamilton left, but the vendor may know. Um you're not far from the circle, right? Water system. I don't think that helps us on sewer. But, you know, as I look at your vision for this building, I'm not sure a well and a and a drain field really meets that need, right? Um, have you had any conversations with how far you are from interconnecting water and

No, I mean, we were actually talking about that recently, wondering if there was a possibility of the Eden Drive. Um, I mean, it's right there across the street from the intersection of 301 and Eden. So, I'm not sure how the city water is is is uh I'm not sure how that's connected there, but it's closer there. But, we knew that the um the 301 um three intersection um was was a possibility. So, no, we've not gotten that far. But before we get any further, what I wanted to do was bring up Shannon Toiver, who is the executive director for Visualize and Rise, and um let her do the same update um from the last several years of what her organization has done. Mr. Solins, I'll complete that that question. There is that that would be a conversation we have to have because one of the problems with using the Eden drive is you have to get Viva Dot permission to go under the road most likely and and I know with the easements for the ARPA project correct Mr. Beal that might be an issue to go under the road to bring the water line.

Is it pretty routine? So that would be a conversation with it. Sounds like it's not. It's not. I was wrong. That's all right. It's great to have the VOTE representative here. So, that might be something that might want to reach out to Mr. Reach out to Mr. Hamilton.

Sorry, M shorter. It's okay. Hi. Thank you, Renee, for the introduction. Like she said, I'm Shannon Toiver. Now, Tom, um I am the executive director for the Visualize and Rise Foundation. So, thank you for the opportunity. Um, I did just want to um in addition to what Renee has presented, uh, she did a great job of recapping, but um, we have been working um, coinciding with the Ralph Funge Alumni Association, uh, to make sure that we're proceeding with, you know, in involving the community with this project. So, just wanted to give you a couple updates on how we've been doing that. Um, one, we did the MLK Day of Service. We received a mini grant from Serve Virginia that allowed us to go into the auxiliary building, which you will see um, some photos of that in the book that I presented. And thank you, Mr. Davis, for taking this off my hands. Um, we went in and cleaned out the building. We had 26 volunteers come out with between Visualize and Rise and Ralph Bunch Alumni Association where we cleaned that building out. Um, we too are looking at a phased approach. Uh, we presented that to the board back in October uh to to do along the lines of what Renee mentioned, trying to get a portion open first so that we can start to generate some revenue coming into the building. if we can get the auxiliary building open in conjunction with maybe the gym top portion of the building uh to be able to host some events there and things like that, you know, we in thinking that might be a good idea to uh have some additional income coming in for the facility to help us move forward with the project. So, we did the day of service um for MLK day. Uh we have obtained some quotes to get the roof fixed for the auxiliary building. As Renee mentioned, the roof has already been uh corrected on the main part of the building, which has been a great um uh milestone that we've been able to meet. So, the reputable uh vendors that we've gotten roof replacement quotes from uh we'll pursue next to see which one uh of course will meet, what we can what we can do with the county as far as uh getting that done. Uh you'll see in your books for section three of the binder, there's some conceptual designs that we had created by a company out of

Fredericksburg. It gives you an idea of what the space will look like. Um, so Renee mentioned in her presentation of what we would like to do with the space. Um, so the bottom level the Visualize and Rise Foundation would like to utilize. There will be a tech center um that will house computers. There's a lot of flex space. Uh, so basically it's going to be a space for students to come for after school programs. Uh, we want to have a conceptual kitchen in there to be able to teach students how to prepare meals uh with things that they have in their kitchen. you know, the eating healthy has become a challenge, not just financially, um, but just learning how to just not go grab something fast food. Uh, so we have several resources within our foundation where, um, people will come and teach students how to cook. We are going to have like burners lined up. Um, the kitchen will also be available for things like uh, folks that use the farmers market that need that type of kitchen to prepare their meals. So, it'll be available for them to rent out. Uh that was one of the things that we put in our business plan as a use for the building. In addition, there will be um conference room availability in the bottom space of the building. A podcast room. Uh everyone probably knows in here that podcast and broadcasting and green screens and YouTube is definitely a thing that we're in now. Uh most kids are going to school to learn how to do things like that. So that's one of the areas that you'll see in the book that we are hoping to put in the building to teach children um and all all ages to be honest, but we focus on youth in our envi in our organization to show them how to use green screens and uh do production and broadcasting. Uh the other item that we have completed is um we participated in the King George Fall Festival. We have our annual celebrity golf tournament. We also do an annual gayla here at the rec center in King George. All of these events allow us to raise awareness and generate additional support. Uh if you follow our social media sites, uh Visualize and Rise on Facebook and Instagram, you'll see we have a great following of people that

are in support of this project and people that are ready and willing to uh provide monetary donations as well as other support things like furniture, computer equipment. Um we have teachers that have come on board and are willing to help us create curriculums for the afterchool tutoring programs. So, a lot of momentum behind the pro behind the program and behind the project. And like Renee said, uh we are requesting uh as the executive director respectfully requesting that theou get extended uh to the end of 2029 so that we can uh ensure this project is uh brought to life. So, thank you for your time. Thank you very much.

And last but certainly not least, um I'm introducing uh President Claudet Jordan um with some final remarks. Hi there. Good evening everyone. Can you hear me? I won't go long. Um, I want to say that whenever I show up, Sheriff Dallas always is around to keep me in order. That's his job. But on a more somber note, uh, Senator Warner lost his daughter yesterday. So, condolences from the RAW Alumni Associates Warner. We truly are grateful for the engagement and um the attention your board has shown to this project. Um and you know we take very seriously uh our relationship and we're very proud of the memorandum of understanding uh we signed it demonstrated your commitment as well as our commitment to renovating to the renovation rather of the historic Ralph school. RA bunch members have worked for decades to try to get some traction for this project. And to date, well, after signing, we got even more busy and continue to work tirelessly to raise funds for this project. And to date, we have approximately $140,000 toward the goal of the MOU. So, we're still striving We do respectfully ask that it be extended for 20 uh 29 for a couple of reasons. Number one, there's funds in the CIP for that date and also that would be the 80th anniversary of the opening of Ralph Bunch High School. Uh many of you have supported our

fundraisers over the years. I'm looking at some winners right here. Um, and so we appreciate you participating and and supporting our mission of vision. Our intent is to remain relentless and continue the hard work to raise funds through grants and events and donations so that ultimately the citizens of King George and the visitors to King George will endure all that the restored and renovated historic Ralph Bunch High School will offer back in 2021 for my good Republican friend, Republican Congressman W uh Rob Whitman spoke the Ralph Bunch story into the congressional record. That's big history for King George. We have an opportunity now to finish it. we have a chance to move beyond what happened in the segregation and the beginning of Ralph Bunch to the new light. Let it be the portal to something for the future that everyone again in Virginia and the nation can look up to. And so we're we're trying to pull together uh roundt discussions with all the interested parties, especially those who have a a a some kind of a connection to King George, Congressman Vinman, Senator Stewart, Tim Kaine, Senator Kaine, the new governor's office, Gilbert Bland, who is the president CEO of the Urban League of Hampton Roads. out lifetime member US retired uh ambassador Pamela Bridgewwater Xavier

Richards who's with the pink the mayor Washington Foundation and the board of supervisors and dean bushwise organization uh go Eagles to come together with resources and plans so that we can move this to the new future of King George and the Ralph uh high school building. It put us on the map for one reason. It can keep us on the map for another. So, thank you again for all you do. Thank you, ma'am. Thank y'all. Any questions?

No. Thank you'all for coming out. Actually, I want to thank your members for uh joining us tonight, too. Um nice to see y'all out here tonight. I think you should pass the offering, please, before you leave. But that that was a good message. And Shannon, congratulations. I guess it's just

All right. And now we'll move to our public hearing. So, the King George County Board of Supervisors will now hold a public hearing that has been properly advertised to receive public input regarding item 04-09. Proposed amendment to the meals tax ordinance. Proposed amendment to the King George County Code Chapter 14 taxation article 8 meals tax including but not limited to revisions of definition tax rate administration enforcement provisions and exemptions related to the county's meals tax ordinance. And I'll hand it over to Miss Pucket for the staff report. Good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. I have a presentation for meals tax kind of just tell you a little bit about it. Um, and I believe you all have hard copies in front of you. So, first I'd like to start with the impact to our community um, regarding taxes. for real estate. This is something that affects all residents. A home is a necessity. So when you increase tax on that, it affects all property owners. Personal property, however, other residents are able to choose the vehicle that they purchase and the cost of it. meals tax. They the residents are also able to choose to eat out. So that is a tax that does not affect all residents. Dakota Virginia 58.1 um next slide I'm sorry 58.1-3833 food and beverage tax uh states any county is hereby

authorized to levy a tax on food and beverages sold for human consumption by a restaurant such as the term is defined in 35.1-1 not to exceed 6% of the amount charged for food and beverages. Currently, our rate is 4%. The proposed rate is 6%. Next slide, please. So, I have here the meal tax growth growth over a six-year period. Um, 2022 through 25 I have the in the green it was actual tax on 4% and you can see the figures there. And then in the orange is the predicted tax if it's at 6%. So I I won't read all of those. Next slide, please. Surrounding localities, um, West Morland has 5%. Caroline County has 4%, Freredicksburg City 6% and Spennsylvania County has 6%. Currently, next slide, please. So, for our county ordinance, section 14-173 will tell you what is taxable as far as meals tax goes. And I'm not going to read all of those. They're right in the ordinance for you to view. Next slide. What is exempt? Um, the same thing. I'm not going to read all of that, but in King George County Ordinance 14-184 will tell you the things that are exempt from meals tax. Next slide, please, small business owners. So, a question is, will this affect small business owners in a negative manner? And the

answer is no. This is this change does not affect the business owner's daily business operations. Code of Virginia 58.1-3833 count county food and beverage tax states all food and beverage tax collections and all meals tax collections shall be deemed to be held in a trust for the county city or tax imposing the applicable tax. The wrongful and fraudulent use of sex such collections other than remittance of the same as provided by law shall constitute embezzlement pursuant to 18.2-111. The meals tax due date is the 20th of the month um following the month of which the taxes are collected. For example, if the business is conducted in King George on 422 2026, the remittance would be due by 520 2026. Next slide. If late, will there be a late penalty? The answer is yes. Late penalties will occur after the due date. The minimum late penalty is $2. 1 to 30 days is a 10% penalty. 31 to 60 is a 20% penalty. and over 60 days late is a 25% penalty. Next slide, please. Where to pay? You're always welcome to come into the Commissioner Revenue Office in the Riverbome building, 10459 Courthouse Drive, Sweet 101, and pay in person. Um, drop it in the night drop in there. Or you can now go online and make payments um by going to the King George County website under the government tab. Search for the treasur and constitutional offices. Select e

treasurer and then in that um screen payment options is highlighted in blue pay meals tax and locking tax link and that will help you there. And that concludes my presentation. Thank you. When did that online come in play? When did that start? That started a couple months ago, I want to say. Okay. Finally got everything.

I'd also like to bring up something as a small business owner and just talking to small business owners. People sometimes talk about how small businesses close within the first couple of years and we make them like they're not important sometimes. But, you know, I'd like to think of what is King George doing to make sure small businesses work and thrive. There are some counties around us that um during like a restaurant during the first say three years or the operation some might be up to five where they relieve them of meals tax in order to get their feet under them. They're going to some of them are find out new cost how things are going to what things are going to cost and trying to run a business and sometimes meal taxes hurt people. I would like this to look at I know Tapahanic did that and you saw all all the restaurants that came in Tapahanic and there's a lot of them up there now the past however many years came because that as a board there they said we're going to give restaurant businesses relief for the first certain amount of years so they get the feet under and then we I mean we're ready to and the business has been open for a month we're ready to charge them late fees you know what I mean we're just you know we're ready to charge them late fees and we're going to they're going to pay it and I think it's just ridiculous being totally honest with you that um we're doing more to kind of support them and help them get going. So I don't see any issue with some of the things you're saying. Those are things like stren bring the attention of the board. There's something that we look at in the future even now even for a small window of time so they can get going with their business so every small business doesn't close in a couple years.

Yeah, I agree with you on that. That's something even back when I was running I was saying I would like to look into something like that because we've got big data centers coming in you know or you know trying to come in and they get massive tax discounts and above all they don't need it compared to the rest you know compared to the small businesses. So I do like that concept. Sorry I jumped in there. Y'all got comments questions? That would have to be the will of the board to change the ordinance there. We we are just enforcers of the ordinance that you guys Yeah, I understand. Um and we've got what we've got tonight to discuss and vote on, but uh that's something that is definitely worth uh pursuing.

I I was say I would definitely be supportive of a work session. I I love the idea of incentivizing those businesses that we want to see come in here, more restaurants. I think healthcare is probably another area I'd like to take a look at. Mr. share. Well, tonight we are talking meals tax, not just small businesses in general. No, no, I appreciate it. I went down that path, too. I'm just trying to bring myself and the rest of us back.

I would agree with that. But, you know, for the meal tax, I know I'm probably the one person who kind of locally was not for raising it because especially in times like this, we raise a lot of taxes just so we don't raise real estate taxes. But, it does affect people. Some people go go out to eat. I mean, that might their only choice because they have more than one job. Some people call it a regressive tax. And I know there are some Northern Virginia localities that are actually eliminating their meal of tax. So I don't know. I'm I'm kind of on the fence about it because by raising it, it does affect everybody, even King George residents. I don't think I know you think of all the people that pass through, but there is a lot of folks maybe have one or two jobs and can't I mean that that's their situation, but it does hit them too. So I look at that also.

So any more questions from Miss Bucket before we move to public comment? Thank you, ma'am. You got a question for her or conversation? I do. How How are you going to And I've asked this before um been a couple years, but collecting the tax from food trucks. We have them report.

Okay. Um how does that work? It works the same as the brick and mortar buildings. Um they fill out the remittance form and tell us their gross receipts and they pay for accordingly. Okay. From the food trucks that are from outside the county, it's the same. They they pay on what they what business they do in King George. Okay. But Thank you.

Sh brought up Mr. Shaw brought up a good point because this came up a lot during COVID. I got lots of calls about vendors and are they paying the right taxes and I know some food trucks set up outside of businesses. So, how do we make sure that every food truck that's set up pays the appropriate tax like Well, if you have a concern about one in particular, then you can always bring it to our attention and make sure that we are assessing. Well, I have none. I just I have that from citizens. So, that's why I wanted to know what our mechanism was to make sure every food truck that's set up does pay their taxes whether they have a license in Tors or outside of

Yes. While we can't give details about them, we can certainly let you know if they're compliant, if we're assessing them. All right. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. All right. I'll open the the floor for public comment. On completion of public comment, I'll bring the matter back to the board for consideration. Public comment is limited to three minutes for speaker to ensure everyone has an opportunity to speak. Please state your name and address before your uh comment. Is there anybody who would like to make public comment at this time? Go ahead. Now, do you want it just about the food and meals tax or do you want it about anything? Just the meals tax. Okay. There'll be another one at the close of the meeting.

Okay. I'm I'm going to I'm going to piggyback on you all on the food because we own a food truck. We never did business in King George because it was during the time frame where King George wasn't allowing food trucks to to set up. It's really an honor system. How they have to do is the health department has to license them and then then upon lensure then they pay their taxes. So there is a honor system which needs to be addressed. But the other thing you all might want to consider too is the food is the tent and things at the fair. I know everybody would hate to say something about that, but I'm the bearer of bad news, I guess, because we were taxed when we went to the fair and bought things, but I don't know that the revenue office was going to each tent, you know, or if they even thought about that. However, based on our experiences through the agricultural festival and through Stafford when we would set up fairs, even Richmond County that we set up, their revenues office would have to come. Sorry, Regina. They would literally come every night and collect the taxes at the end of the night and we had to show our receipts and everything that night to pay the taxes to the county. So, you know, it is regulated if you can get the people to help you out to regulate it and the staff to help you out. It is a profitable venture to get those taxes.

All right. Anyone else? Mr. D, you have anybody online? Nope. Okay. Anybody get any public uh I'm sorry any correspondence? No. All right. I'll close public comment at this time and I will close the public hearing and bring it back before the board. I got it in the right order. Yeah, that was my sixth attempt. Jackie practically made it aviator proof. Thank you. All right. Any comments or questions? Do we have any motion or movement? You can make a motion that we push it back to just trying I don't have a problem making a motion. I'm just trying to figure out what it is. I make a motion that uh we increase the county tax from 4% to 6%.

Or make an ordinance to amend the article 8 mills tax chapter 14 of Queen George County 2 which increases it from 4% to 6%. Did that cover it all or is it it easier just to move that we recommend adoption of ordinance 0-09-26 as presented? I think that's the cleaner way to because the ordinance does spell out exactly what you're doing. So, okay, it six and one half doesn't, but that's that's a a clear way to say 09-26 as presented.

Hang on. We've got a motion on the floor there. Okay, I'll restate it. I moved recommended adoption of ordinance zero tag 09 t 26 as presented. Second properly seconded. All right. Any further discussion? Actually, yeah. Further discussion? I I'd like to say something, please.

Because yesterday I had a couple people ask about this. One lady in particular uh approached me and said that you know she didn't support it. So we we spoke about it and once that um I explained that the 2% is essentially two cents on the dollar. So you know if you spend $10 you just increase 20%. But it it's largely impacted by residents. it it's like a attacks on people that don't live here. Um, yeah, it impacts the people that live here, but whenever people that live here, and there's a lot of them, go into Fredd and you go to Central Park or wherever and you eat or you do something, you're paying their taxes. But whenever we have over 60% of the people that work on base that do not live in King George that come here, um, they they get a discount on the taxes. So it allows us to be able to take advantage of the people that are passing through going to from Maryland driving 301 and people that are work the county but don't live here. So it increases our revenue from those people that we would otherwise be losing allies. So but the taxes it just brings us to where what you pay at Freddy'sburg or stop. Thank you. Go ahead. Just to add to that, you I I think I was in the same boat. I I was not supportive of this when I first heard about it. We were went through several discussions, but um as I got to looking at the data, you know, 18,000 trips a day on the weekend across the bridge in the summer, right? And we talked a lot a couple weeks ago about how do we capitalize on that? This starts to move that ball and offloading it from the residents to to some of those that are we're getting

more tourism. good, right? How do we capitalize off of that? It's a small change. Um, it's not a it's about a million dollars affected through the budget total. Um, but it helps get us there. So, and it wasn't on the chart, but I think Colonial Beach is also successful. Now, we're consistent with

I felt ahead that after I explained that then she said, "Oh, yeah, she is off. She is far." Hold that. She's like, "Oh, yeah, I am part." There's one other thing if we do because I'm still still waffling of which way to go in this and I understand both sides but one of the things if we do do this I would also like to look at the the hotel tax also if we're going to do one and try to capitalize on out of towners we need to look at the the hotel and lodging

I agree and did did we already sorry make a motion to get rid of the early. We've not addressed that. Is that in there?

So, so no, that that will be another section of state code that will require public hearing. The only thing before you the red line is change from 4 to 6%. Should the that's one action tonight, that's 0-0926. If we move forward with this in my budget presentation, I am recommending getting rid of the 3% sellers discount. If the board gives me the nod for that, that will be another amendment that Miss Pucket will need to bring back to you guys to change her section of the taxation local code. Just for sake of the the public, can you explain a little more detail on what you're talking about with that discount? We have the motion on first.

That's fair. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. All right. Any other discussion before we take a vote? All right. Miss Bender, I'm gonna say nay. Mr. Mr. Smith. Yay. Mr. Shout. I. Mr. Davis. I abstain. Fair enough. Uh, chair votes eye. Motion carries. All right. Just to be clear, I abstain because I own a restaurant in the county. Yep.

Appreciate that clarification. Uh, before we move on, did you want to go ahead and hit the 3% thing that we're talking about? Yes, sir. I can talk about that. So, so right now the way it's set up in in state code, we checked this with Senator Stewart, state code, and I don't know the exact uh section for meals tax does not have a specific we're going to call it a sellers discount. That's how it's it's phrased here locally. However, there are provisions in the state code that talks about the general collection of taxes by the governing body. And that section of state code does allow governing body to give a discount. So right now the way it happens is if if the meals tax are paid on time or early there is a 3% sellers discount given to that vendor. So money is is collected at the time of sale held in trust and the the the home the business gets to keep that money instead of remitting it to the county. So looking at this there's no 3% discount for residents for the personal property tax. There's no 3% for paying on time for your real estate tax. So, you know, why? I guess the question is, and my recommendation is to remove this. You know, we have we're having our citizens essentially subsidized businesses, many of the big heavy hitters who are collecting this tax don't don't live here. So, I don't I don't think it's uh you know, the responsibility of the citizens uh to to you know, to to pass along or to allow those businesses who are many of whom are out of state to keep those funds. So I would recommend getting rid of that. And the question is, is there a dollar impact on that? So projections for FY27, you'll see at 2,770,000 for meals tax collection. You take 3% of that, that's 80831. Not everybody's going to pay on time. So I made initial projections around $75,000. Um, so so that would require another public hearing should the board go along

with my recommendation. and Miss Pucket would bring that uh at at a future date for the board. Thank you.

All right, we'll move along to the presentation section of the meeting now and we will invite Mr. David Bill from VOTE to come on up and talk about the SSYP. Good evening. It's good to be with you all. Get close to the mic here. Um I just I'll just start um as as a proud hokey. Whenever I wear this tie, I have one fear. And that fear was realized twice when I came to this meeting when Mr. Dons and Mr. Davis asked me if I was supporting or have some affiliation with the school in Charlottesville. And uh I do not have an affiliation with I thought you were an Auburn fan with that blue and orange

in uh in Charlottesville. Uh this week is actually National Work Zone Awareness Week and uh today is Go Orange Day. Uh so we wear orange to promote safety of VOTE crews. Um to remind the community to respect work zones and uh to remember those who have lost their lives while on duty and to champion our campaign this year which is safe actions save lives. Um so we want to ditch the phones and work zones and uh slow down in work zones. And that is why you might think I was supporting a school in Charlottesville today, but I'm wearing orange for National Work Zone Awareness Week. Go Hokei. All right. So, secondary six-year plan. U we do this presentation annually. It's required by code. Um it's a it's a plan for the secondary routes, which are all the routes numbered 600 and above. It is six years. Um so fiscal years 27 through 32. Um and this is a draft. Uh these are estimated allocations and they did actually go up from last year's presentation a little bit. Um these are estimated allocations from two different um fund sources. Uh one is tele. Um those are uh rightway usage fees that utility companies pay uh to use the rightway to install the utilities. um we refer to them as tel fees. Uh the board has uh more discretion with tel fees as to what is done as far as improvements um than the district grant for unpaved roads. Uh those funds can only be spent on um existing statemaintained gravel roads um and you can you can make improvements to those gravel roads. And typically that's part of the rural

rustic program where we go in and hard surface um the existing statemaintained gravel roads that you prioritize. And we have a few of those roads that we're in the middle of working on right now that are already in your plan and we'll talk about them uh tonight. Uh the next slide. So that that first um the first line there is Fox's Way. Fox's Way was actually a rural addition um that we used uh telephies for uh to resurface. That's the uh culde-sac there at the high school. Um that work um has been advertised and awarded and will happen with the resurfacing of Route Three um this summer. Uh the second project there is a Bald Eagle Drive. We started construction on that last fall and uh the weather got cold before we were able to do the resurfacing. Um so we uh plan to do that uh during the month of May. Um if you recall we broke Bald Eagle into two phases just due to the length so we didn't have to wait to accumulate the entirety of the funding. Uh we were able to deliver the first phase uh last year and this year. uh the second phase that funding um is completed in fiscal year 28 and uh so we'll start that um after July 1 of of 27. Uh so those are those are the projects that are in the plan right now. We have um the top two there will be uh completed this summer and and bald eagle phase two uh would be done next summer once that funding is realized. Uh the next slide is where we park all the funds in the outer years until you prioritize another project. Um so the top line there is where we put the teley fees. Um that's the countywide

engineering and survey and there's $355,544 that is not allocated. And then in the future unpaved road funds, uh there's $337,77 that's not allocated. Um if we use u both of those amounts for the real rustic program, um kind of back of the napkin estimate, uh you have enough funding to prioritize about a mile and a quarter of of gravel roads to hard surface. Um one change this year uh the te the tel fees in the past have been allowed to be used for rural addition and um central office clarified uh that the existing regulations do not allow that. Um so we've been advised um not to add rural editions with tele. You can use local funds for um rural additions. You can also you can also apply for revenue sharing which is a 50% uh local match 50% state match.

That's the case. What can telephase be? What can they be used for? Anything locally or just you can you can buy rightway if there was an intersection where you had a sight distance issue and you needed to buy right away. So you could cut trees. Uh you could do that. Uh you could uh build a turn lane. Um you could pave a shoulder. Um you could make any improvement you wanted on the secondary that benefit the secondary system, the existing uh secondary system. You can make any improvement you wanted.

Thank you. All right. The next uh slide is uh just a little bit about the real rustic program. It has to be an unpaved road already in the state system. It can't carry more than 1500 vehicles per day, which none of yours do. It does have to be designated as a priority line item in the secondary six-year plan. Uh should be predominantly local traffic. Um the drainage improvement should only be minor. The next slide is your list of um existing state maintained gravel roads. The ones that are blocked out in yellow um all have more than 50 vehicles per day. And until that list is exhausted, all of the uh unpaid road funds need to be spent on a road on that list. The tel fees, if there's one a lower volume uh road, the tele could be spent on that, but the run unpaid road funds have to be spent on roads with more than 50 trips per day. Um this presentation um is really just to get you thinking about it. I'm going to ask you to authorize a public hearing for May 18th. Um, and at that time, I would ask you to adopt um the adopt the secondary six-year plan with whatever changes you decide to make or whatever additions you try you decide to make. Um, so if you don't know what you want to do tonight, um, you got a month to think about it and then get public comment um, next month.

All right. Does that give us enough time to advertise it? Okay, very good. And V dot will do the advertising for you. Oh, okay. Great. Just to um I have a quick question if I could. Fairly certain to know the answer to this, but I want to make sure I'm not just talking out my you know what. Um I've had a couple different people at different times ask me, hey, why can't we get um better paving processes in our neighborhoods instead of chip and tar? And I I keep telling them the county doesn't do that. You guys do. And it's based on the volume of traffic through there. we're not going to change the paving based on the fact that, you know, kids are riding their bikes on it and it's wearing out the rubber, blah blah blah. Um, is that fairly accurate statement?

Yeah. I mean, typically we maintain the road as it is. Yeah. Um, so if it's a if it's a what we call plant mix. If it came out of the back of a pa like a curb and gutter section subdivision, uh, we maintain that as plant mix. Um, with one exception, we have a preventive maintenance treatment uh, uh, called a cape seal. Um, and I I'll talk about that uh too. We do do some cape seal in some uh curb and gutter subdivisions that just put the new surface on. It sets up initially it's a little bit rougher than plant mix, but after traffic gets on, it sets up pretty nice and most people can't tell the difference. Okay. We just have one gentleman that wants his neighborhood paved kind of like 301. I'm like, "Sorry, that's just gonna happen."

Yeah. For perspective, I mean, my numbers are are old. I could get the current numbers, but it it's about $250,000, probably closer to $300,000 a lane mile for plant mix asphalt. And we can do surface treatment like we do on the on the uh on the secondary routes on the 600 routes. We can do that for probably closer to $60,000 a lane mile. Um so if you switch to plant mix, you do a whole lot less. Okay. So it's it's just balancing the you know most bang for the buck, right? Any other questions? Go ahead.

This is not exactly on this, but um I wanted to bring up two concerns. I'm still getting people calling me about the uh thinking that VOTE or the county owns the road in front of the uh hardware store. So, uh I saw that pop up again. Yeah. So, I I didn't know know if you wanted to make a comment. I know I've spoken about it before after talking to you that you don't own it, but a lot of people think you do own it. Well, we own it, but we we don't maintain it as a as a public road. Um, so the the intersection there at 301 and um three uh three or 205 3 and 205.

They've been redesigned over the years and there's excess rightway between the main lines of 205 and the entrance to the shopping center and hardware store and gun store. and they have a longer driveway across the rightway than most businesses. Um 7-Eleven on the other side also has a longer driveway across the rightway than most businesses or or most residents. Um but the maintenance of the driveway to those businesses is the burden of the property owner.

Okay. Thank you for clarifying that in public. And then the last is, and I get complaints about this from my own husband, is uh those that work on the basin have to come up at when the base like 3 to 4 or 3 to 5 that turn on to Windsor Drive and how it backs up and if there's any way to alleviate because it can it sometimes causes traffic concerns for those going straight on 301 because it backs up and those of you that work on the base probably understand it backs up and then people make bad choices and almost cause accidents and my husband complains about that every couple days almost getting hit by No, buddy. You know what I'm talking about. That's the 301 southbound. Well, it'll be north. Yeah. Right where the fire station is going to be.

But going turn on to you're coming up the hill and then you're turning left on the W drive. Southbound, but you're going uphill. So mentally your brain thinks it's going north. Yeah. Right. So I just wanted to bring that to the attention because I I don't just hear obviously from my husband. I hear from other folks that it is becoming quite dangerous stacking up there at that time, but probably 3 to 5. Would you say that, Mr. Song? Mr. M. Yeah, it's it's 218 past 301 going east. It's where you're coming up the hill on 301 southbound turning east on

the left turn lane pop out to go a little bit too short. We just rettimed all the signals from from there up to Owens on 301 and I can see what adjustments were made there. Um, you know, but in reality it's it's just too many cars and not enough turn lane. Um, that's what I was asking. Is there any way even for a smart scale project to have maybe have that lane extend? That's where I was headed. Um, it would screen into smart scale, but the board would have to prioritize that as one of their applications and and want to move forward with doing some intersection improvement there. All right. Thank you very much.

I was kind of wondering if we could use those telecommunications funds for that turn lane extension. That's a primary route. So, these are secondary secondary. Yeah, that's primary. Sometimes you can use the tele if it benefits the secondary. a turn lane onto um you know a secondary route but that's 218 and and three that'd be a 600 number primary primary

one more thing on that could that be used when we have to redesign the for the fire station there could that be incorporated into that because I don't know if there's any improvements that have to be made for when the fire station opens there just a thought I was just throwing out there I I guess it could be we Typically that would be a burden of the county under okay permit with your entrance improvements or whatever infrastructure improvements and I know I I know we're final A and E is almost done and I preliminary site planning is done so we'll really learn during the site plan phase of what will need to be done as VI reviews that site plan. Well, thank you. I was just throwing out a question as Pastor Shaw said earlier.

All right. All right. Real quick. So I see y'all just removed the tree. Was that Oh, Washington Mill 616. Right. So, I've had several constituents reach out to me, um, mothers who are concerned and worried. One of those mothers tipped the scale for me because she's been worrying about me since the day I was born. And that when you come down that turn right there, right where that tree is, that big tree about this big that's leaning towards the road. You know which one I'm talking about? I haven't driven it. If you come down Washington Mill like you're going towards 218 Windsor and you come down, you go down the real sharp turn, it goes like this. There's a tree about this big that's been leaning like this for a couple years. Okay.

I don't know if it's going anywhere, but if it ever does go down, especially in the evening, someone coming that way, they're done. We have arburish on staff that I can send out to assess it. Yeah, it's right across from that gray house right there on the turn, but it's just on the right side. a big tree just leaning just like this. It's been like that for a couple years. Probably seen it. The second one that I was talking about, I guess I can go back to you on that, Mr. Small because I'm going to after talking about this, I'm going to get calls from people is kitchen point and what we're looking to do at Kitchen Point because I know we talked about last year and we're like, well, this is the year we're going to take care of it. So, I just want to see if there's anything that we're at on that.

So, so I provide the board and and I've got this is not part of the six-year secondary plan. These are so what what what Mr. Davis is referring to is Kitchen Point and this goes into a a segment of road in Kitchen's no kitchen drive is in Kitchens Point. I think that's the way it works. Yeah, Kitchens Drive the right hand side homes weren't built. So that segment of the road was not accepted into the VOTE system. Homes have since been built and need to be accepted. So that's one. And I I don't want to hijack, you know, Mr. Beals here. Uh but I but I do I do want to clarify this and and you all have a a summary and then I get this to the public but Mr. Mets also has Sedick and Alberta court that have come up and as I've I've stated to the board, let me look at this so we can do a comprehensive review of any and all streets and Mr. Beal, Miss Luke and I have been working and you know we kind of finalized this list. There's 11 in total either need to come in or out of the system. Um so so this is a it's a I want to do a comprehensive review of this but my understanding is the tea fees cannot be it's not it's you cannot use telet fees to to upgrade Kitchen's point so there will be some cost and then the county will have to bear those costs. Now if it's a 100% cost or if it's a 5050 match through the revenue sharing program that is to be decided. Um, but the the the summary that I have and and we can make readily available for the public is a summary of of those 11 roads. Some of them being bus loops and neither need to come in or out. Overlook one way or the other, but I I I think we've come up with an exhaustive list. Not saying this, you know, there may not be one more that popped up, but just through some of the conversations that you all have brought to me, conversations with VOTE, I believe uh those 11 are the the ones that need to have some action on them.

Yeah. The only thing with that that one, I'm not going to say I brought it up. It's been every year. It's a It's been that way since 1998 that we know about and we it was just on the list of yes, we're going to take care of that next year. So, I I don't want it to get I I expect Mr. Metsy just came up, but this has been last year that this particular road has been up. I am jumping a lot on you on that one. I'm sorry. But, you know, this is something that I've looked at my constituents and said, "Yes, that hearing from my county that this is something that we're going to take care of next year." So, this is going to I don't want to reig on that to them. I I want to be able to and I think the board would need to allocate once that punch is done, whatever that cost is determined, the board would have to allocate funds from somewhere uh to to pay for those improvements to get them into the state system

and that could be added to the secondary six-year plan with local funds and then VOTC could do the work for you and then so we would essentially be the county contractor which would probably be cost beneficial to the county. I think the last that was like $40,000 to get this road up to par in order for you guys to take it over. I think is where it was when it was done. So, I don't know. Anyway, I just want to I just want to keep it out there on the list because I told people based on what I got back that that road was going to get taken care of and so here we are a year later and and I'm hearing it's going to get added to a list and that and that has to do with the telepies to do it. So, I get it. I just want to make sure it stays on the list somewhere. Thank you, Mr. Sh. Do you have any questions? Okay, cool. Nope.

You have 30 seconds. Well, so since we brought up Fedric in and uh Alberta, that's a little bit different than Kitchen's point, right? The funding was already expended for that. All the resources to surveys, signage, uh whatnot. I I just would like to know if we have a timeline horizon like I I know you've working like 11 projects but some of these are more ready to go than others into the system. So, I guess I would like to ask what the next steps are and and if there's some idea of timeline for steps.

Okay, the we're just either waiting from the county for their fees when when roads come into the system. They're fees and there's a shity and uh you need to pay the fee and the shity or request the fee to be waved. Um, so we're waiting for one of those two things to happen and then we can process the acceptance paperwork. And that's also there's another road out there on the list in that same situation we found out and the bus loop. I know that one's just about done too. So yeah. So so there are some that are no cost to the county. It's a matter of paperwork.

So we think that's going to I guess rather than me pinging you every week on do we have an updated status like when would you like for me to ping you like a month from now or two months? you and I you can call me every day if you'd like Mr. M. I want to be respectful of your resources sir. So so you know on you know the letter is is like I said we knew about this but I said I want to do a comprehensive I do not want to peacemail the entire approach. So now that we have a comprehensive thing I think I get and the budget is hopefully behind me I I think we can you know move this right to the top within the month. Thank you sir. Thank you very much. I just need you all to Did you authorize a public hearing for next month? Yes. Well, actually,

I'll make a motion to authorize a public hearing for May 18th for the VOTE secondary six-year road plan. Second. Thank you. Properly seconded. All in favor? I I I motion carries.

Just have one more minute. I just like to hit on the resurfacing schedule, the Cape Seal routes. Um, Fitzu Lane, King Georgia on the PTOIC, Claydale, and Roundhill Estates are all receiving the Cape Seal treatment. And just honestly, we always get a lot of complaints on the on the process. It's a two-step process, a little messy. Uh the first the first part is uh surface treatment and that that goes down with liquid asphalt and uh gravel and it's rolled in and then it's allowed to cure for a few weeks and then they come back and do a slurry on top of that that kind of fills in all the uh the rough parts and makes it rot a lot nicer and makes it look a lot nicer and they sweep it up sweep up all the gravel. So there's a little it's like getting your house painted or your or your uh wood floors refinished. they got to sand it and make a make a mess, but it's going to look better when it's done. Um, but we always get all those residents that live on those routes have had, uh, notifications mailed to them. Um, but I just always like to hit that. Um, the 301 projects, um, the University DriveR cut, um, that goes to AD in June and, uh, the median U-turn at 3 and 301, uh, goes to AD this fall. Um, but those are just a highlight. Last thing, um just a just a thank you um to all of our local partners, sheriff's office, emergency services. Um you know, it was a rough winter. Um and it it it was the worst one that I've had since uh since I've been in the Northern Neck. Um but all those guys help us and a lot of times we don't hear about it. They might get a tree up for us. I know the sheriff's office helped us with um blue lights for our Brian operation um or just making notifications where we need to go, what we need to do or uh you know helping us clean up from an accident or whatever. Um so those are resources that you allocate in your budget and

whatever. Um but it it it uh doesn't go unnoticed the partnership there and I appreciate um we appreciate that. That's all I had. Thank you all.

Thank you sir. Appreciate you. All right. While y'all out, we did have a motion to uh go ahead and approve the public hearing for May 18th for this. So, just wanted to keep you up to speed. All right, we'll move on to item 04-12, fiscal year 27, balance budget presentation from Mr. Smallic. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. Matt Full with your county administrator. Um, I'm here for the FY27 operating budget calendar year 2026 tax rate presentation. I've got a lot of slides. I'm handing them out to the public here and just wanted to to let the public know if you know that this information is is online. we we've linked it to uh this board meeting agenda and you know I'm always happy to answer any questions and I appreciate the feedback that I've gotten from the board and before I begin over to my left shoulder here uh Miss Cobb and Miss Dillard uh I can't thank them enough and then we also had Mr. Connley on my budget review team. So it's it's truly a team effort to get where we're at. So you guys have seen some of these slides, you know, presented on April 7. We had a an all day work session. You've seen some more slides and this is the the balance budget presentation. I'm going to go through it. Uh you've all got the hard copy in front of you. Feel free to, you know, chime in whenever I go along and ask any um pertinent questions. So, next slide, sir. So, where we at? We've been beginning this uh really since uh early November. Once this budget gets

approved, uh, FY26 or 27, we get a couple months off and we start the whole process all over again. So, I just want the public to know this is really what we've we've we've done. And I'll highlight that November 17 date actually in this particular room where um we we sat we brought all the department heads in front of the board of supervisor to talk about their needs for the FY27 to eliminate surprises or you know get get initial guidance from the board of supervisors for uh as they prepare the budget for submitt. So here we are April 22nd 2026 I've got a balanced budget. Uh next slide. So here revenues uh balanced budget for FY27 proposed $143,922 360143922360. It should be noted that this does not include the King George Service Authority budget as this is separate. Mr. Hamilton will be presenting this in the near future and one penny on the real estate tax rates equivalent to a little over $517,000. Next slide. So, what's different from last year? I already talked about the November 17th uh work session we had. Uh we all know that this was a reassessment year increased 20 a little over 20% in assessments. And I know uh the commissioner revenues office is is still accepting applications. If if somebody does have a question on their assessment, you know, definitely urge them. I know the board members have been encouraging the citizens to to file that appeal um do and have their the due process heard out for the particular property. So the equalized tax rate uh f 56 cents the board of supervisors at the um the work session decided to advertise at 68 cents. Now the way this works I want to remind the board and remind the public once a tax rate is set you can

adopt that or anything lower but you cannot go higher. So uh by um advertising at 68 cents it gives the board uh supervisor some some flexibility. The meals tax we we and I when I typed this up I wasn't sure what was going to happen with a public hearing. So, uh, we we did increase the, uh, the meals tax, and this is built in with a July 1st date. Um, July 1 of 2026, the new meals tax would be implemented. Uh, and also, as I, as I discussed, proposing to eliminate the 3% sellers discount. Uh, and the big thing we had is, you know, for our schools, fire, rescue, and for sheriff's department, the Motorola maintenance contract. This was a a big chunk, a little over a million dollars that we did not have last year that we had to to account for in the FY27 budget. Next slide, please. A lot of numbers here. Uh expenditures by functional area. This totals up to the entire budget. You look at schools and and I want to, you know, I want to note that this is local and state fund. So, we're not spending $72 million of local King George tax money on our schools. This is this is the general fund. This is everything we get from state federal government that breaks down public safety all the way down to uh the law enforcement grant. These are all the different uh the funds that we have that are broken out in the expenditure uh tab that the public has and that you have. Next slide. So what are our local sources of revenue? you'll see general property taxes uh the lion share and this you know amounting to right under $50 million in my balanced uh budget goes down to uh recovered cost $128,42. So this is how local sources of funding are made up um to to account for for the general fund. Next slide please.

So some Yes sir. Yes sir. I Yes sir. um either before well it's already been posted but if we update this um when we come back to vote for it can we make sure we add the state and federal to that line so that it agrees with the chart right before it apples to apples

so some major uh adjustments in revenue projections um so last couple years and I've got the numbers here in front of me the uh this year big difference in the revenue line item there is not a dime being borrowed from or a transfer from fund balance. The current fiscal year we're in uh 3,69,344 was borrowed. The year before that fiscal year 25 2,551,913 and FY241 $1,87350. If we did if if there was no tax rate increase, we would have to borrow almost $5.2 million to make up that difference. So what you're seeing is a compounding effect 1.8 now all of a sudden we're at $5.2 million that is as I as I stated in previous board meetings that is not sustainable that's not what fund balance is meant for so with this particular year I put zero in the line item for uh the transfer from the fund balance another additional challenge so I had a question from I think it was Mr. Straoud and very good question earlier today and I want to you know enlighten the board and the public You know, Mr. Smoke, how do you come up with these revenue projections? So, what we do, we looked at uh the last couple of years of of actual collections and then my budget team sits around, we go line by line and I said, you know, Miss Cobb, we're we're we're we're nine months into uh FY26 right now, meaning we should be uh threequarters away with our collections. What have we collected to date? we get the number and you think about the you know the the economy you think about all these things and revenue projections are just that they're projections this is you know my best guess this will be the board's best guess of what we will be collecting it's not perfect um but I I would much rather as I said before I'm I'm more of

a fiscal conservative I would much rather say at the end of the year taxpayers we return some money to you rather than coming to the board of supervisors next March and saying Hey board, I'm out of money. I need some more money for these next three months of of the fiscal year. So, it's nothing I take, you know, it's a it's a it's a tough decision to make and you all can, you know, you can look at these and, you know, make your, you know, suggested changes, but based on what the trend data and what we're seeing with actual collections for this year, that's how I derived those numbers. So, one thing uh one line item that came up to uh as we're going through the budget was the personal property proration. So, this is a newer tax. So, there's there's there's not a lot. Well, proration is is newer to the county, meaning that if if a smaller household buys a vehicle in September, I would pay taxes on it whenever it's registered in Virginia, I would pay taxes on it from September through the end of the year. Now, with prorations, there are also abatements. So, if you sell a vehicle, you get you don't and and you pay your tax in advance. You get some money back. So, looking at the line item for FY26, we had 500,000. So, as we're d uh doing the FY27 budget, Miss Cobb, how much have we collected so far? Answer was zero. Well, that that that can't make it doesn't make sense. Why why is it zero? So, you know, and I'm I've had some conversations and we've got some representatives from the treasur's office and the commissioner revenue here. when it was set up, there was a specific GL code that proration money was supposed to go to aside from the standard personal property line item. When I learned there was nothing in there, I said, "Okay." I said, "34 of that money of collection should be in the the general account, the the personal property line item." And we looked at that. It wasn't there. So, we're like, "Well, where's this money? You know, where is it at? How is it being accounted for?" now is it just you know we're not collecting as much but

then Miss Pucket today at uh I think about 11 right before noon she says Matt you know here's the here's the the line items we are making money here it's it's really here's here's the uh proration less the abatements we last year we made $221,000 if if my mind if memory serves me two years ago was 470,000 right now it's kind of hard to tell where we're at with prorations because it's lumped into the general personal property. So, I don't have a good feel on that. Yes, sir. Wasn't that separated?

It It was. And I'm I'll let the Commissioner revenue and the treasur's office explain why it's not separated. It was Yes. My understanding when it was established, it was supposed to be separated and as a specific revenue line item. And I if if you want to hear from either of those, is now the appropriate time or later, your call. I'm fine with now. I like here today as well.

Good evening. So the reason it was the reason it was not separated into its own line item is it would have also needed its own code to go along with it which then would not have fallen within the personal property um guidelines for the bills to pull them all correctly. So there could be delinquency on these supplement bills that is not pulled within the regular personal property billing. So it it was just a big struggle to be able to keep it all as part of personal property yet separate. And I have uh contacted other localities. They do not separated either. They keep it as all part of the personal property line item

but it was collected. I mean it's in the fund. We just don't know how to differentiate right now between the the the full pay period versus the prrated period. There are queries that we can run between our two offices that show us the exact numbers. It's just within that one GL. It wasn't possible to show that and still have it as part of the personal property.

There you go. So with that um you know making making my projections you know Mr. Small how much are we projected to make? I don't know that that's that's a it's a tough answer but I need to be realistic. So you know with that and looking at the the collection so far I'm I'm not certain that we're going to make $500,000. I don't know what we're going to make. So, I put in $0. So, right here, uh, major adjustments. That's another that's $4.1 million swing right there. So, these are some of the challenges I'm setting you guys up to. This is this is the big picture of of what we face with when we're balancing a budget. Next slide. So, proposed tax rate. My balance budget that's before you tonight shows a real estate tax rate of 66 cents is actually per 10,000. I apologize for that. So, I want to be very clear to the public. You know, people look at 68 cents. Right now, we're going to 66 cents. This is not a twocent tax reduction. This is actually an increase because remember that equalized rate is 56 cents. So, that that that 10-cent increase, that's why I said if if we had a $5 million deficit, it would be borrowing $5.2 million from general fund. If we don't borrow anything from general fund, it's it's it's coming at a 10-centent tax rate increase. The other increase which you just approved was a 2% increase to the the meals tax. Next slide, please.

Mr. Smalling, I do have a quick question because the public need to know why is there a difference between the mobile home rate and the real estate rate? Is that a Miss Pocket question? So, so I I just heard mobile homes are So, so mobile homes should be at 66 also. Okay. So, mobile homes should be at 66 also. Thank you. Thank you.

Next slide. So, how do we compare with our our surrounding localities? Uh I've I've pulled a few of them here with King George highlighted. So, you look at Spennsylvania and King George. Both are in reassessment years. Spennsylvania County, they're uh time-wise, they're a little ahead of us. I know the county administrator recommended a 9-cent increase. They settled on a 5-cent increase. So, our 68 cent was actually be a 10-cent increase, which if it puts us at 66, it puts us somewhere between Richmond County and West Morland County. Um, you know, Prince William County, there was an article a couple days ago, they've got their data centers up and running for years. They actually reduced their tax rate and they cite in the article is due to the the data center revenue. they were able to reduce it for their for their citizens. Um, Stafford County, I know Mr. Ashton, he's putting a a 6 cent, I believe he re I think it was a maybe a 9 cent is what he recommended. Board is sounds like they're settling on a a 6-centent increase. Caroline 6 increase and the city of Fredericksburg a 5-cent increase. Next slide. So, you've seen this slide before and I and I I did change the top number. Mr. Sins wanted me to change it. So, this is where we would stand at a 66 cent tax rate increase over um the last nine fiscal years. Couple things I wanted to to mention here. If you look at FY22, there was a 3cent tax increase. This was set aside. This was specifically for the new courthouse for uh judicial law enforcement and for citizens. And then FY23, there was an equalized tax rate. board of supervisors at that time kept it the same 64 equalized rate was 64 they kept it no tax rate increase then you saw a 4centent tax rate increase going into the FY24 budget so so imagine

this take away my my my top row there so for the seven fiscal years between FY19 and FY26 the tax rate to support county and school operations less the courthouse has increased by four pennies So, and you look at the trend of the real estate taxes, it's it's going up into the left even with a even with a 10-centent tax rate increase. So, think about that. Really, we've only seen a 4-cent tax rate increase over the last nine fiscal years to support the county's operations and the school's operations. All right, next slide. So, what does my FY27 budget include? It includes the step increases for the sheriff's office employees, step increase for fire rescue emergency services employees, uh certification pay for fire rescue services. It includes a comprehensive plan update which the the board we we we discussed at the uh the most recent work session. That's back in there. A 2% cola for county library and social services employees. And I want to talk about that. 5% cola for school employees plus a step nine decompression. So, I believe Dr. Boyd uh talked about the the step 9 decompression that happened 08 to maybe 2010. We've got one additional full-time county staff employee in January of 2027. This was the grant writer. I know we had some, you know, a lot of discussion about the grant writer. I was able to to fit that in come January 1. And then funding for eight non-Mandated outside agencies. So with this the the S step increase for you know sheriff's office, fire, rescue, the the the school employees, those are all higher right now. The the county employees, the library and social services, they are getting at 2% cola. So they're the on the lowest end of any of the other employees who work for King George County.

And the inflation rate for last year is 3.2 3.3 I believe. And you'll see that in my next slide kind of where again this is a draft. This is my budget, but I've got some recommendations for you. Miss Bender, you asked me to provide you some scenarios. Yeah, I do have another question though ma'am on the uh the schools. Do we have any feeling of what I mean and I know it's chaotic right now in the state legislature, but what they're proposing?

We we don't know. Um so the the way it works, my understanding, you know, talking to Dr. void is if the school if the state gives 3% and then the county only gives 2%. We're losing money. We're the the state's not giving that that 3%. So, we need to at least match what the state does. But those numbers are all over the the plate right now. We've talked about this uh you know over the last couple of weeks. I don't know when we're going to have an approved state budget. Um you know, so likely, as I said from the onset, we're probably going to have to approve this budget and come back and amend it. That's that's you know that's the beauty. But King George County is not in a unique position. This is every locality in the Commonwealth of Virginia right now waiting on that state budget.

And I talked to Delegate Kent yesterday at the Go Virginia Summit and she said she was optimistic that it was going to but she's not seeing it for at least maybe into June not knowing. So I know we have to do a lot before then we might have to come back.

Okay, next slide please. So, these are the the list of positions that were requested. 21 in total uh by by the county. Uh, as I stated, I'm looking at to hire one come January 1 of 2027. That's the the grant writer. As I've noted before, there's also one uh transfer. It's an internal transfer from administration to finance. This was a an individual who I I saw had the potential to grow. We moved that individual over there and they're they're flourishing. So that will that internal transfer will need to be approved by the board of supervisors as part of the budget and it is my recommendation to transfer that one. Next slide. Going back if I could. Yes sir. The grant writer.

Yes sir. With the money that's available on the table that person pretty much pays for themselves when that's right. When the money starts flowing. That's an easy ROI. And I was I was thinking about should the board approve this. I I've already been thinking about you know how what are some of the interview questions we're going to ask? And that's going to be very upfront and honest. You know, you you need to to prove your worth and it's going to be very easy to tell if if you're carrying your weight for what you're getting paid in salary and benefits. Gotcha. Did I talk to you about the one who's maybe interested? Okay. I don't know where I've not spoken to her yet. I've only talked to her mom and we'll put that job out for it'll be open to the public and for all candidates. Perfect.

Okay. So outside agencies, I've done something a little bit different this year. I went ahead and and made some recommendations to the board of supervisors. Now, last year was my first year and a little bit different. I think it was a we'll wipe the slate clean and then the board will have a discussion of what you guys would like to uh fund. And I've looked at these and I I I don't take cutting outside agencies. It's a hard decision to make. and you look at the the cross-section of of what I'm recommending, domestic violence, food bank, another food bank, mental health, sexual assault, homeless shelter, workforce development, and legal aid. I, you know, that's that's my recommendation of of outside agencies to uh to to fund and they weren't funded at their full request. Um, you know, we we had to look at this and really had to tighten down the the numbers, but the the ones that are highlighted are my recommendations along with a dollar amount. And this is up for discussion with the board. I just wanted to put something in front of you. So, um, Mr. Sols, you have a question, sir?

No, I just want to bring something up that we've talked about before. There was discussion in the past of let's take the funding away from Fredericksburg Regional Food Bank and put it all into um, Love Thy Neighbor. And uh I had a chance to actually tour and visit Fredericksburg um regional food bank last year and you can think of them as a kind of a warehouse or a clearing house distribution center of food. So whatever we're giving to them does come back to our own food bank. So it's still an investment in love thy neighbor if you will.

Thank you for that good point. Next slide Mr. D. So talked about the the 2% cola for county social services and library staff. You know, I've said, you know, my my employees are my my greatest asset. I know Mr. Stra made some comments earlier and, you know, very good comments, you know, were made and try to think about, you know, retaining your workforce. But there there there comes a point in time also where somebody's going to grow. And as I like I tell them, I'm going to kick you out of the nest because I I know you have a potential. I want to see you here. But if there's an opportunity somewhere else, look, I'm I'm here to help grow the employees. And that may not be here at King George County. So I I did build in a 2% cola across the board for county social services and library staff. And then I went with my finance team. I said, you know, what would it take for to to get that number up? Again, you know, give you guys some options. So, looking at and this could be a cola merit option, but if you do a merit option, you have to budget for the full amount. So, so if the board says, "Matt, I want to see a a 1% cola and a 3% merit," we still have to budget for 4%. Not everybody's going to get that, but we need to budget for worst case scenario. So, if if there's an additional 1% in some form or fashion, that would be another 317. I'm sorry, that's $767,000. There's an extra six there. 1.5% which would get us up to a 3.5% total just above inflation. These three bands would cost $476,650. An additional two 635 533. Mr. Shout, sir. Now, I know that you explained this to me earlier, but I I'm I'm still so

um on the merit. You had to you said that the example you gave if you gave 1% cola and 3% merit, you have to budget for all 4%. So, it would seem reasonable to me that we could budget for the that that it would have to be the full 3% because you're not going to get all 3%. In other words, the budget is going to be whatever that 3% is. Let's say it's 600,000 and we say, "No, you know what? You get half that for merit. Let's say it it that comes to 300,000." Well, that's all there is. There's 300,000 for merit. And then you have to figure out who the people are that gets the merit. If if that's the way the board, you know, I mean, speak with finance. It's it's you know B uh budget for the worst case scenario. If the board says Matt you know in our approved budget you're only getting another $300,000 to be distributed to merit then it you know then not everybody's going to get it. And then if that's what it is that's what it is. I'm just saying from a you know a county you know from a budgeting standpoint to get to a balanced budget recommend the fullest amount. But if if the if it's the will of the board, this is your guys' budget. You know, I'm I'm I'm officially turning it over to to the board of supervisors. You know, you get to make those decisions and the tweaks now how you want to see it. But yeah, I'm a little confused. I guess some of us are used to having a pool. So I I think of this as us giving you the budget or the merit of 317,000 and change. how you distribute that pool. Some some employees could get 2%. Some employees could get 0% on that merit. At the end of the day, you're going to be held to spend staying under that $317,000

in that budget line. That's right. Myself and my department heads. Right. That That's the way I've always thought about that one. That is not a That's not a cap. That's not a 1% cap. It's a 1% amount dollar value that's put into a pool for you to allocate. We're The way we think of it on the base is I give you a jar of peanut butter. You decide whether you want to spread it evenly across everybody and everybody gets a tiny little bit or the people that are really performing, they get, you know, a decent serving of the peanut butter. But at the end of the day, your jar is empty. That's all you're getting.

Okay. Julie noted. Thank you. All right. Next slide, please. So, as we do with uh the uh the tax rates, also like to look at where our our competitors are at. So, really, you teachers go, and I know we we had a discussion earlier about, you know, teachers, firefighters, and and sheriff's office. You know, they they typically go to the the the counties with bigger budgets. Well, you know, in a local government, I'm losing people to the schools. Schools pay more and I'm losing people to other local governments. I'm not losing anybody to base. I'm not really lo I lost a couple to private sector, but I want to show you what the proposed colas are for the region. Again, 3.3% um inflation. So, Stafford, they're above water. They're they're they're proposing four. Spotsy, let's jump down to them. They're 2.7 cola with a potential 2% merit. So those employees, if they perform, will be above water. They're over that that rate of inflation. West Morland, City of Fredericksburg, they're right at three. And then Caroline County is at two. Next slide. So I talked to Dr. Boyd. I know we I've had some discussions with board members. You know, right now in the budget, it's a 5% across the board cola for all school employees. the school. There's there's over 700 employees with a school and 270 at the county. So they're they're the lion share uh of of the employees here. Uh so 5% across the board cola with a step 9 decompression is built into that balance budget that I've presented. So question I asked Dr. Boyd I said I said sir I said give me some options. So the second bullet point down there is a 5% cola and the removal of the decompression. That would saveund almost $57,000.

Again, some options for you all to consider. A 4% COLA with the removal of decompression would save 638,000 and some change. A 3% COLA with a removal of decompression 1.1 million. I do want to mention that you know these are absent of additional state fund. These numbers could change based on the state numbers, but this is what we're working on right now. The these are again the options that I want want to put in front of the board of supervisors. Next slide, please. So, this slide you've seen before. This is the these are the total taxable assets of the county. So, what you'll see here, you'll notice on this chart, the the trend line is the red dash line. And you'll not the the the years of reassessment are very very apparent. FY1 19 through 22 you see the organic growth and then there was a reassessment jumped it up up to 3.9 billion four years of organic growth now we're up to $5.1 billion worth of taxable assets next slide so we've had some good discussions on this uh the historic county budgets going back to FY19 and you can see how they've grown over the years and it's it's grown to almost $144 million in my proposed budget from uh just under 82 million back in FY19. Again, this is the overall budget with state, federal, this is the the entire everything, the whole kitten kaboodleoodle here. Next slide. And we talked about the general fund really what the the board of supervisors, you know, what you all have some control over. And I I broke this down a little bit further on the upcoming slides. Um great question by Mr. Straoud. why has this increased over these years? You know, what what can we what can we tell the public? Why has this increased? So, I'm going to go through those uh fiscal year by fiscal year and and kind of explain some of the

the major factors of why we've seen this increase. And again while I we we talk about this remember in this time period taxes have gone up for general operations four pennies from fiscal 19 to 26 not the entire way but from 44 million862535 up to 82,512,000. So the next few slides are going to break down the the jumps. Um next slide sir. So we're going to call FY19 as my baseline budget. That's the first year I use. So really what what you're seeing here is the total budget on the top and then the general fund budget and the next line down and some of the key drivers. And I'm not going to go through and read all these for you all, but you'll you'll see some of these that that continually come up every year of why this budget has increased. It's just not people going out and and buying more more things for for this um you know for their office. It's things like health insurance increases, uh new positions. I mean, look here. There were there are 11 new positions here. Uh salary increases, supplements, and then you've got your increased cost for maintenance contracts, utilities, equipment, and other fixed expenditures. You'll see that bullet point at the end of every one. We know uh you know in inflation and and I know I had um Miss Bender in my office. We were talking about the inflation, you know, the rates of inflation and I I I don't have that particular slide here, but it's going up. You know, things are getting more expensive. Um so the county is a consumer as well. So, so this is our baseline budget. Next slide, please. So, what I've done is from FY19 to FY20 top uh top left total budget and general fund. And then the next this is a new the changes. So, this was a 4.24% overall increase from FY20 in in FY20 from FY19. Schools 56% of the budget. Again, this is the overall budget. And then and

really what the general fund did that was a 3.2% 2% increase from 19 to 20. What did what drove it? Health insurance. Um local school funding. You you you'll see that. Uh this is the first year we funded our convenience centers, the public safety step plan, uh new building lease. Um so this is for the public. These are this is why the budget has increased. And I think this answers Mr. Straoud's question and this is this is great information to share. Next slide. So now we're moving into FY21, a 2.5 uh7% overall increase in the general fund. This year only increased by 1%. But you see health insurance, a new deputy county attorney, some board of salary increases for the you guys for the amount of hours you guys put into a job on an annual basis. I want the public to know this is I mean it probably works out to under a dollar an hour for what you guys make. So thank you for your service. But this this was an increase and we included it. Um and then

I'd also like to point out that was before I think all of us were on the board. We did not vote ourselves a race. Right. Right.

So next slide. So 22 you see 11.31 overall increase percentage-wise. General fund went up by 17.53% this year. And this was a this was an anomaly where actually healthcare went down by 4%. I think there's one other year where it actually went down. We're not seeing that. But why did why this 11.3% increase? You and and I really, you know, applaud uh my finance staff for for pulling these numbers, digging through the budget and finding these high ticket items that that led to these increases. Um I'm not going to read through all them again, but eight new positions across the departments. So, you know, there was an increase that year, but you think the years forward, I think the last couple years there were 18 new positions. So those are additional costs you carry year after year with salary and benefits.

So on that slide, what is the revenue stabilization fund? I'm going to let Miss Cobb answer this one. So that's actually a fund that the um board borrowed from years ago to balance the budget. And when you do that, you have a certain number of years that you have to put that money back. And so that's what that was. Do you know when they borrowed the money?

It was during COVID if I if I'm not mistaken. I think Miss Bender, you probably can speak to that. Dr. Young was the one that actually I'd have to budget look in my records to recollect that because I remember it but not enough to speak on it now but there was a lot of stuff we did during COVID that was different in a different road map I would say. Thank you.

Yes sir. Uh next slide please. So now we're in FY23 11.25% 25% overall increase. Schools at 54% of the overall budget. General fund here increased by 13.67%. I think this is the second year here where we actually saw healthcare decrease. But you look at, you know, why did it go up? An extra $3.1 million to the schools that particular uh fiscal year. Merit increases. Um CIP allocation. Here's another six new positions. Now um next slide. FY24 slowing down a little bit at 6.48% overall increase, but the general fund went up uh 8.59%. Another 3.17 to the schools. Cola increase. Health insurance went up 9%. So, so this adds up. It's painting the picture of why this increase has occurred. Next slide, please. FY27 14.2% overall increase. general fund went up 16 almost 17%. A big thing this is I know Mr. Rousavi was here. This is the first year that he did the budget and the the landfill debt to the general fund. This was never included in the general fund. It should have been. Mr. Rousavi identified it as this needs to go in the into the general fund. So that was a $10 million increase right there. So I I I think this year there was about a $15 million increase year-over-year. 10 million of that was bringing in the landfill debt to the general fund at the at the advice of Mr. Rasabi, you know, and you see again school funding increase 822. I'm not going to go through each of these, but um next slide. FY26, okay, down to 4.42% uh overall increase. General fund went up four over 4%. Health insurance, another school

funding, $1.2 2 million there, some regional funding increases, and then lastly getting us to FY27. You see a 3.95% overall increase. I want to note that this is the smallest increase in the overall budget since FY21. So, um, you got to go back a number of years before the we we see this increase. General fund went up 4.81%. key drivers um you know Motorola contract healthcare I went over these school funding increase of 1.8 8 million built in the 2% salary increases. Rapahhanic Regional Jail. So, I sit on the board to set their budget as do the other CAOs of the localities who who utilize the the jail and their their capital improvement plan. It's uh there's a balloon payment that rotates amongst the localities. This year was our year. Um and so that's why we saw a dramatic increase in the Rapahhanic Regional Jail contribution. They've got analog cameras that are 20 20 25 years old. Um just some some outdated equipment up there at the jail. So unfortunately this is King George's uh year for the CIP balloon payment which is why why you saw that. So that I think outlines to the board and to the public, you know, why that number has been increasing over the years. Again, it's it's not people just buying frivolous things. It's, you know, in increased contribution to the schools, healthc care increases, new employees, um, debt service. Mr. Mes, it looks like you have a question, sir.

I just wanted you to explain the title. 9.9. It's really 10 million debt in general fund is that that is our interest in debt service payments, right? That Yeah, that is correct. Yeah, I think I look this is our highest year. Yeah. And it actually starts tailing off a little bit after this, but Right. I can understand why that becomes a big contributor. Mr. Smold I just looked up because it was bothering me because I didn't remember. Uh it's actually on our website uh revenue stabilization fund policy and I remember that was set up during Mr. Mr. Young's time. So if anybody wants to state or Mr. Strat, it's on the website. Two more slides. Right. A a couple more. Not not many more.

No, I'm not trying to hurry. I just don't want you to be done yet because part that I want to talk about is coming up.

Yeah, that's right. You know, Mr. Solen said Mr. Mark, there's one thing I want to see. I said I want to see the glide path, the glide slope for the unassigned fund balance over the years. So, at the end of every year, money that's not spent obviously goes back to the unassigned fund balance. King George uh when we closed out FY25 whenever Mr. Gross Nickel was here, he made a presentation a month or so ago. We're sitting on $48 million on a signed fund balance. Very, very healthy amount of money. And I know some of the board of supervisors and rightfully so, you know, why is our fund balance growing so high, but we need to raise, you know, taxes on our citizens? Why are you recommending, you know, a 10-centent tax rate increase if if we got the fund balance here? Well, fund balance again, you know, per your policy, it's not used for uh it's to be used for non-recurring funds, economic development projects, um C uh major CIP projects. And what I've done is um Davenport, our financial advisors, we we met with them as I think it was last Thursday was our most recent meeting. We've been talking to them throughout the entire budget process. And my direction for Davenport was I want you to come back to our board of supervisors probably that first meeting in June. I want you to talk about this $48 million in unassigned fund balance. You know what what is that use best used for? Do we have any notes that are sitting at 5 and a half% to pay down some debt? you know, what is the what does the the new CTE building look like? Once we roll over some extra funds from courthouse or or the the preschool, maybe some leftovers from the fire station, what can we roll into that CTE building? What's the delta? Is it more advantageous to you to put another 10 million down on that and only borrow 5 million based on the interest rates? Another thing I I I passed them and they'll come back to you with we need to start looking at we looked at this the the the CIP your your your outlook on major capital investments had a good talk with with Chief Moody and then I

passed this along to Davenport at a meeting last Tuesday. When you come back to my board let's talk about some of our major capital projects. Uh heavy rescue. We're going to talk about heavy rescue just for a second here because that's what I brought up to Davenport and they'll come to you. Heavy rescue. I mean, this is anytime there's an accident, this is the vehicle that goes out on scene. You got the extraction equipment. It is used all the time. We have one of them. Life expectancy, I want to say 20 25 years. I think we're about 17 18 years into that. Uh, put a new head on it uh on the on the engine, had some tires below, some damage. We had a hydraulic le or an air pressure uh leak in in that vehicle. It's it's starting to show its age. That's a four-year lead time. So, I know we've, you know, we've got, and I don't want you to focus on this, the data center money that could be coming in, but if if we wait till the data center money comes in and we place an order for a truck, now maybe it's 2 and a half million and it's a 5-year lead time. What do we do for all the accidents that are occurring on if we don't have a heavy rescue? So, that's one thing that I've asked uh Kyle to look at with Davenport is are there any one-time expenditures with long lead times like this we could utilize some of this money for? because if you drop $2 million in the CIP, that's that's the lion share of an annual CIP that that you all approve and that's that's a that's a mighty big hit. So this is, you know, a lot of money to be sitting on. It is all invested right now. So we are earning interest on it, but again to the board's point, you know, what's the best use of this money? Davenport will be coming back to you all. Then the next slide, I think is my last slide, Mr. Songs. So you uh you requested you know how much has been returned to the unassigned general fund balance year overyear. So going back using my same uh starting FY19 we've closed out 25. I I can't predict 26 yet but this is the the total dollar amount that has been returned to that fund that has yielded the 48. This is how that $48 million has grown over

time. So with fiscal year 25 4.17ish was returned. Does that include the 3.7 million from the school?

Gotcha. Never mind. Wrong year. Wrong year. That's last year. Okay.

Yeah, I got it. Thank y'all. Where I'm going is each one of these years that the amount of money that we took out of the general fund to balance it is Yeah. I mean, when when you're throwing stuff out there and you're getting even more back, it's either Jesus math, and I'm not trying to be sacriiggious, but it's either Jesus math or smart investing, or we're overt taxing people, and we want to increase taxes again. Or we can borrow 5.2 2 million from the general fund. But that's that's against your policy and it's that that's the the compounding problem that there's going to come a year when you know if this increases you borrow 52 and you spend everything then then your fund balance just decrease by 5.2 million. It's this is a decision. This is a this is something that we've seen building over the years.

No, I understand and I'm not saying I want to pull 5.2 million out of the general fund. Um, I just want to make dang sure that we're being really smart with the uh the the money that we're we're taking from our citizens, right? And if we we bump up the general fund that much every year. You know, earlier in the conversation, you talked about um you know, giving you know, giving money back to this to the citizens. It's not. The general fund is going up and up and and we're talking about increasing taxes.

That That's correct. So, you know, this board will need to make a a fundamental decision. And do you do you raise taxes the full 10 cents as as I recommended? Is there are there any additional cuts? You know, we sat through went line by line in each department two Fridays ago.

And and then I cut a million that night and we cut more that day. Where else do we cut or is there a balance? Is it, you know, a 5 cent tax rate and borrow two and a half million from fund balance? It's, you know, th those are the decisions, you know, you all are going to have to make and I'm happy to guide you, provide any advice that you have, any questions that you have. But that's where we're at. This is, you know, it's it's like I said, it's a compounding issue and if it's in my opinion as a county administrator, if it's not addressed, it's just going to grow into the future and get worse.

How much how much do we have budgeted for CIP this year? We approved the CIP was for um um I'm we're going to get an exact number for you. That was approved at the first meeting in April. April 7, I believe. I'm I'm we're going to get the exact number. I'm I'm fine with big round numbers. 4 million. She likes to be exact. So, we could I understand we don't want to take money out of the general fund for ongoing pay raises and stuff like that, but we could take some of this $4 million and put it toward that CIP and that comes out of the expenses.

So, so, so I'm going to tell you, you know what what I've So, King George, the budget set up a little bit differently and I'm learning it. other localities I've worked at, you go back two years, what was returned in the CIP. So that $4.175 million that was returned in C uh FY25, that funds your FY27. So so you know exactly, you know, what that what that amount is. King George is set up a little bit differently. I'm not saying we change change course, but that is traditionally in my 20 plus years of local government, how it's worked. you know, money returned from two years ago establishes your CIP for the following year or two, you know, two years down the road. Good question.

I'd just like to follow up on that a little bit. Um I think my mind went where yours is. Like if we're on a glide slope to return 4 mil this year, if if our average is matched the last two years, we would be on a path to return four mil. Mhm. And our CIP is four and we not state or would we go through an approval process to instead of returning it to the general fund use that to pay this year's CIP? I think to your point you would need to do million instead of five. Exactly. Right. So do that. Then we have a deficit of 1 million instead of five.

Then we're trying to close taxes but it's a much lower increase.

Right. Again, I I I I respect that that is a one-year fix, right? It doesn't fix sort of your structural budgetary salaries, routine equipment, routine maintenance. Um, but the other thing I wanted to make sure you said and that the policy does allow us to also use that to recall bonds, pay off some of our higher interest bond offerings, right? that that is yes you can use it for that and that's what Davenport will be looking at what the best use of that $48 million will be policy question I think we have a policy says we have to keep 15% of

is it local revenues part of the budget or 15% of the total budget which would also include those revenues from state and federal sources it is the total it is the total budget the total so 15% of you know $25 million I guess. So there there's there are excess funds above and beyond our policy and the policy states funds in excess in this case 28 million could be used by the board for CIP paying down debt economic development project.

I brought up that this year is our highest debt service year um on the across our bond portfolio. Um, that's the other thing I I I'm I'm anxious to hear Davenport's opinion on that because paying that down reduces that year afterear debt service that we have to pay and that would help us in the budget as well,

right? And and as a reminder, you know, the board is, you know, pushing forward for a new CTE building also. So, we may be able to pay down some higher interest loans, some debt, but we're also going to incur more debt whenever that CTE structure gets built. So, something to think about as that project moves forward. I do have a couple questions, especially on this side. Is the FY23 or 22 that big jump, is any of that related to COVID, meaning that we got ARPA funds coming back in that makes it so high? I don't think ARPA funds were. No, I don't think ARPA funds weren't included. No. And then I was always told and always under the impression that our CIP is mostly funded by the landfill revenue.

I know that all goes in the general fund, but right, that was the pitch all my time. And the revenue from the the landfill, we're at what 6.7 million right now. Is that that that pays down our debt? Yes. So that's why Yeah. What the the response was whenever Mr. Rasavi moved the debt to the general fund, there was not enough revenue from the landfill, I think it's 6.7 million to cover that $10 million worth of debt. So there there are some internal transfers that need to occur to cover our debt. Okay. Thank you. I think that was that my last slide?

Oh, schedule. Schedule. That's right. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Fish. So board had at the um the work session you you gave the authorization to authorize a public hearing at the tax rate of 68 cents. So that will occur on May 5. I talked to a couple of you. Initially I was going to have the public hearing for the FY27 operating budget on that same night, but in order to meet state deadlines, I would have to put a specific number in my balance budget three days ago. and I didn't want to pin you guys into a specific number, though I knew I was going to present this balance budget with with a tax rate increase. So, I did I wanted to give you all some flexibility. So, what we did, we we pushed this out by two weeks. The but the May five number, that's that's important for commissioner revenue and for the treasur's office. Once those tax rates are set, they can start working on the on on the bills. Um I believe uh Mr. Jones is already June 5, but I believe he's extending that uh till June 12. So that that's when they can really get turned loose and there's some internal work that needs to go on in both of those offices before the the the bills hit the the streets and we want to give taxpayers ample time to pay those. So it really doesn't push back the the mailing uh or or you know people receiving their tax bills because that that May 5 days is critical. So if we do a May 18 public hearing uh June 2nd uh you would approve the operating budget and tax rates and appropriate funds for the FY27 budget. Again, this is based. We don't know what the state's going to do right now. So, as I said from day one, we're probably going to have to approve a budget and come back and and likely amend it. So, that's where we stand right now. Any any questions, directions from the board? So, we really our next and really deadline would be that that public hearing on May 18th where we have to advertise a specific dollar amount and

by key functional area how that money is spent. Yes sir. So on the unassigned fund balance over the years, so that shows how much money is invested. But how much money does the county have that isn't invested? That's a question for the treasur. I I believe they keep about three million on hand. Um I believe that's the correct amount but everything else is invested either in a sweep account uh or through I know there's 10 million in AIM accounts uh PFM manages and there's the other portfolio that PFM manages but of that 47 million I believe only 3 million is not invested. I can't speak on behalf of the treasur but I believe that is correct.

Okay. So because with that um per our financial policy, a review of all investments and investment um results is supposed to be presented to you uh finance and uh the treasur on a quarterly basis. Are you getting that now? I get the PFM and I know I've sent those to the board when whenever I do get them. Quarterly? Yeah. Yes, they're quarterly. They are they are quarterly. Sweep accounts, I have not I I do not get those. I know I I request those, but those do not come to me on a quarterly basis. PFM come to me because the the two gentlemen who were before you attempted, but they send it right to me.

The treasur is responsible for the policy and and and meeting that. So, I know Mr. Jones isn't here and you're here, but um the county ministry is supposed to be provided that provided that as well as finance. But um what I where I'm leading up to is there a way that we can get a one slide at our next meeting that shows where all the citizens money is. How much if one of my citizens asked one of my constituents said how much money does it do we have? There's one slide that shows and I understand that changes daily just point in time you can say the you know for the day you make the slide one mayor whenever it is that says here's how much money we have today if I went home and asked my wife how much money do I have I expect her to be able to tell me that's basically the same thing how much money do I have do we have in the county can we get a slide and maybe make it a report that we get is that something you guys would like to see how much money very much I mean Okay, Miss Puit, I'm going to rely on you to take that back to the treasur and that that's something that I will need for for the next meeting. And if you guys would like to see that on a monthly basis.

Yes, a monthly basis. Okay. Absolutely. Thank you, sir. Okay. Thank you, ma'am. That makes sense what we're asking for. Just a snapshot in time. We we get that it changes every day. Okay, go ahead. I'm sorry. I was just going to say for the for the sake of anybody at home watching, I just want to make sure what she stated was wasn't, you know, on the

Yeah, we're just looking, you know, big kind of big picture how much money you have. It's got all um that was one of my questions. Yeah, that's the only question this meeting I think for this particular brief. All right. Anybody else? All right. Thanks a bunch. Thank you, ma'am.

I I did want to let the board know if we want to if you go uh my very last slide if right there if we want to hold to this date and having a public hearing for the May 18th, we need to know from the board what dollar amount that is. So, you know, I presented the balance budget. You know, what are your thoughts on that? further changes that need to be made because we do need to advertise this. If not, that pushes it out another two weeks. So, what you're asking is about the tax rate. Well, the tax rate's already taken care of, but for the balance, whenever we advertise that for I'm sorry, for the budget, we need Oh, the full dollar amount.

The full We have to advertise the full dollar amount. And one of those first slides where I had expenditures, it was probably Keep going. Um, keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Right there. That's where we have to advertise. So, so per state code, we have to advertise this. So, we will need a finite dollar amount from the board and to authorize a public hearing. If it doesn't occur tonight, we're going to get bumped back two more weeks. Just just let No pressure, but I just need to know direction so that we can meet deadlines and will the board. No pressure, but tell me tonight. No, no, you can you could say tell me in two weeks and it just bumps everything by two weeks. And that's fine. Well, I but I just I just we we need some direction from the board.

I actually have a question. I'd like to go back to the slide that says what does the budget include? Oh, there you go. So, the dollar amount that's I guess it's the 140. Hold on. It was on one of the slides. 143922 360. That Yes, ma'am. That's where this that that includes that that's everything you see on the slide there includes that. That is correct. So, I want to bring up about the county employees cola. Okay,

because I'm going to be honest. Cost of living is 3.3 and and we're only giving 2%. That is a problem for me. We should at least give the inflationary rate even if it's just 3%. Cuz everybody else is getting especially the schools. There's there's that would be yeah 1% would be 317. I'm just putting it out there. I just So that would be that's the correct thing to do. Over half a penny.

I I know that. I'm just putting it out there. I mean I might be voted down. I'm just making a point because everybody's bills has gone up. Gas rent maybe. That's why I wanted to give you guys some options here. We also talked about the merit increase.

The merit increase. We talked about not giving the full 5% co for the the schools. We looked at 3% option, 4% option, and some other stuff. So I mean I I just I'm looking at that and you know being on the board a while I remember times that we didn't and and we had a lot of employees leave. We had rumblings. just looking at the inflationary numbers as I even went back further after our discussion to look at the price of inflation over the last 10 years and and and costs go up. It just letting people have the cost of inflation even if it's just it's 3%. Most of the time with the schools like 3% that whole 5% US not including

no no that's there there's state funds that come in um so I wish Jen was here from the schools to better explain this but you know there there's there's SOQ positions that are we get state money and then there are the position every you know we have to fund 100% because they're not SOP. That's right. Fewer state funed positions and they'll give they will give us 3% raise for those but that's a a relatively small fraction of the total number of teachers that we have and and staff no school in the state some of our top board funded positions at the county.

Yeah. Very no school in the state only hires that many teachers because you would have massively oversized classrooms. Yes, that's the 10,000 foot left. Yeah. People don't realize that a lot of it gets put back on the locality because a lot of those positions aren't funded with S&P funds. So, you know, I've got, you know, the board wants to leave it as is. You know, I've got some options for increases for then again, it's social services, county, and school at 2%. Fire, rescue's at 3%. Sheriff, are you at is that plan? 3%. 3% for the sheriffs and 5% for the school. What is the impact if we push this back two weeks other than the fact that we push it back two weeks and

you know I I I don't think it's going to I don't think it's going to impact us. The big thing is the tax rate to get those to get those taxes out uh the the tax bills out. Um started earlier for the last few years than it than it has been in the past. I mean has that been a problem? I I don't think it's the driver behind what was so late for the last few years has been waiting to find out what the state's going to do for the schools, right? Well, here we are again. Yeah. So, I mean, are I don't I don't think do we really need to hurry up and wait and just hope that we guess right or should we push it back a couple weeks and talk amongst ourselves and get it straightened out?

You know, it's the will of the board. If if you want me to wait two weeks, we can wait two weeks. But I just want to let you I will need clear direction. So whenever I put my present, you and I have an agenda meeting on Monday, I will need very specific direction from the consensus of the board, not just one member of what needs to be done to the budget. Yep. And that's going to be tough to do. You know, we we have to think about how we're going to communicate that and get maybe you as the chairman need to to work with your board members. Yep. So I I will need three of the five to say this is what we need in the budget. M Mr. Chair.

Yes, sir. So, I would ask the board the members like what what questions do you have like why can't what is it that would keep anybody up here from making a decision tonight? Can you tell I just curious what that is? Easy 3% for the county employee. That's your only issue. Yes. Okay. And you understand the ripples on the water that that that's going to cause? What do you mean the ripples on the water? More tax increases, right? But you know, I'm even going to throw out there why why can't I'm not arguing with make sure you understand.

Oh, I understand. But why can't that 1% it's $317,000, right? Why could that not be taken from the general fund and that would not cause any increase because it's not a onetime thing. It's an ongoing subscription, if you will. But we I got you. But we've done it in the past. Yeah. It's still not right. I mean, I'm not saying it's not right, but I also think it's not right to only give 2% to one small faction over everybody else is getting 3% or more. That's also not a good look either. Are you asking for the number on am I ready to raise? That's not

So then I need to hear what that needs to be. The budget is yours now. what that needs to be and where those cuts are coming from. If you want a 5% I need to cut $2.5 million out of this budget.

Now, when the schools came, they didn't really talk about any cut, did they? You know, the schools uh so initially the schools when they first came in had a $3.8 million increase. We we refunded or gave them back right at $2 million. So, their their request at 18. Yes, it's the lowest request, but we put some money that was left over ahead. So, I I you know, make that clear. Now, the schools, one thing they did not do this year that, you know, this is only my second year doing the budget, but there were no new positions at the school where I had 21 requests at the county. The school did not request any. I wanted to ask that because I had a question from a constituent about that.

Okay. you know, and then some things to think about, you know, in order to to think about and you know, all all the teachers aren't going to like this, but when you look at go to another slide. I was just, you know, doing some math. I keep going down. Okay, hang on. There we go. So, it's, you know, 100 Well, is it is it 156 if you remove decompression? That's anticipated savings. These numbers, that's why there's an asterics here. We we just don't know what those are without a state number. And then the the one additional 1% cost is let me let me pull that up here. So So we don't I don't want to get everybody dizzy on the on the slides. Uh additional 1% would be 317,000. So So you're you're you're not even halfway home there. um you know four I mean you could you could play with these numbers but if you wanted to do another you know 1% it's either take the teachers down to 4% cola remove decompression that'll save you six you know 638 you put 317 of that towards the county social services and um and the library and and you're you're still you know 300,000 to the good without rate, you know, and then keeping at a 10 cent tax rate.

How about the health care stuff that we kicked in on? How does that change? The and that that's built into the budget. That was my April 7th and I can I can pull it up, but that was in my April 7th presentation. The cost to the county, I want to say the schools, their increase, they were 22%. I I think that was a number around $860,000 increase. The county, and I don't have my my my April 7th presentation on hand. from a laptop, but that it was I believe it was still several hundred,000.

So, you hopefully you see where I'm going with that. We we kicking in another almost a million dollars for healthcare increases and then we're still being asked to kick in another 5%. Um earlier in the week, I got to go speak with an organization and um some of the people were kind of by rate that I quote don't s support teachers. I absolutely support teachers, but there's 27,000 other people in the county in addition to those teachers. And we have we have got to think about them, too. And and I told them like every time we start talking about raising taxes, I still go back to that meeting for the last time we raised taxes. And yes, that was what three years ago. Um the lady that came up here, she's crying and and she's like, "You're you're taxing me off my farm. We represent them, too." And so that's why we're nitning the heck out of this. And so yes, we kicked in almost a million dollars for healthcare increases. Do we really have to go a full 5%.

And that that's something, you know, for the board to consider. That's that's why I want to provide you these numbers with some different options. the number that we raise um whatever it is is that saying if we do that 3% cola that the state's going to match it 3% yes the some of it yes some of the

but again these are the preliminary numbers from Jen of what the county the local money would be saved There's not a lot of local definitely not in the private sector people who cover so much of health insurance. No, you King George. We are. I mean, when you look at when you look at a salary and that salary sheet says $55,000 and then you look at health benefits, it says $33,000.

Well, that's FICA. That's that's everything. just not health. You got to look at total compensation. You have to look at total. Again, you look at the to the worst case scenario, you have to budget for that. That's right. It is interesting. We don't advertise positions based on total compensation. We advertise positions based on that.

So, I do think if we keep repeating the same thing over and over expecting this to get better, it's never going to happen. Right? So, let's talk about healthcare. I think I do the math. It's about one and a half million. We're kicking in for the healthcare increase across all thousand employees, schools plus plus uh staff and county. Like we don't we're not even offering a high deductible healthcare plan. That would save us funds and it would save the employees some funds. So we do some things throughout the year that set us up for this budget. Too late to go fix we negotiated healthcare rates back in like February. So I think as we come into the next this budget season, I hope every department head is looking for opportunities because we have got to choose to stop doing some things, offer some new opportunities that might be better off for everybody in the long run that reooking at the policies we offer with health care. Keep the ones we've got, but throw in another option there that might save some people, you know, both in their paychecks and would save the county some money on the back end, too. I I don't think I had an issue necessarily with 143. I like kind of with Miss Ender. I I I think whether it's 2% cola and a 1% merit budget that you work with, right? So then some people could earn more than 3%. Putting that in the budget, I think, would be a good idea. or a 3% cola and match it up with tough decision.

You're done, right? So, what's the will of the board?

I I I just wanted to know what what's keeping people from making decision tonight. And I think well I don't know I know where some people's are. I know where uh Kathy is for sure. And um you know I I like the idea of of reducing the school to increase the employee the county employees to level get the county employees to three and then at the school let let Dr. boy figure out the winners and losers. He's got higher performers and he's got, you know, some teachers they get more than the ones some of them don't. He needs to figure that out. I don't know, you know, what his processes are there um for that. I don't I I just don't know. Um, I think they're based on the position and years of service or something, but uh um you know, but you know, I I would like him have more discretion on that or at least, you know, somebody have more discretion on that. Um but um you know kind of crossleing that you know I support I'm not sure who said that when you said it or Bill said it I guess how how prescriptive do we have to be with sorry out of court how prescriptive do we have to be with the schools would you say was a $315,000 challenge honestly That's our HBAC in the boardroom. Um, say that in just because it's not working at the moment. Um, but would it be possible to work with the school board to find that money and allow them to do the 5% that they wanted to do if they can find that 315 somewhere else?

You know, the the school board will make their recommendations. It's ultimately the board of supervisors. You know, I you know, who control the purse strengths? you know, these are the recommendations that the school board put forward. You know, Mr. Dr. Boyd put it to them. They, you know, approved a budget. It comes to me and then I get to kind of hash it out and present it to you and then the board ultimately has the final say. So, it's really not the doesn't have to go back to the school board. Yeah. Sorry, I didn't really mean go back. I just meant, you know, can we give them a challenge of 315,000?

Yeah. I I I see this more as it be a directive. look, here's what you're getting instead of, you know, go back and then there, you know, that's just going to add to the time that you have the authority to say this is what you're getting. Um, and and to make it work. So, we technically could take $317,000 out of their budget to compensate. They would just have to work with that.

But I like I like uh Mr. Matt's idea of the 2% cola and then uh Mr. Smolnik having a 1% the other 1% being available to him used for merit. I like him having the ability to have money merit money for those employees that are the overachievers that are put in the extra effort and extra hours and that do that. So that's what I would support. Not to point out the obvious, but this whole thing is under presentation. It's not an action item tonight anymore.

Well, it is it what's an action is that he needs some guidance because if we don't, you know, we don't have to do it tonight, but the longer we kick the can, we will be up against the wall eventually. So that's a question earlier. How much slackown do you have? Mr. Chair, if I can suggest, you can hold a special meeting next week and still be on track for the 18th or come to conclusion. I cannot be at a special meeting next week period. Right.

Advertise a big number. We can always scale back. But again, you have to advertise by, you know, the schools are at 72 million and some odd. We have to advertise by by category. By category. That is correct.

So if you do make a change between, you know, taking some from the schools, added to the county, we'll need to know because that's going to change the general administration and and all the different parts of of the county budget. And I make a motion that we take that other 1% from the school budget that it goes into uh the remaining county's budget and it that that money is the 1% merit uh for the county. You understand what I was trying to say there? And then that would allow them to move forward with a final the final approved budget amount that we could approve because nobody else nobody has an issue with anything else at this point. Um, we have an issue with the tax rate. You made a motion, right? We need to second it or not. Can I do I have a second? I'll second so we can keep the conversation going. So, go ahead discussion.

I'll make a point. I I go back I do like the idea of the merit increase, but for me it's going back to we're increasing all these numbers up here for everybody else except for our county staff. And I think we still should 3% for everyone to cost a living. I like the idea of merit. I really do. I just I can't look at those numbers and the schools get five, other folks get four, and our county employees get two. Are you saying take the school down from five to 3% increase and take that addition? Oh, no. Okay. What are you asking for? Let me just see if I heard this correctly. Um, so the school was 72 million and then change that included our share and the state share estimated um that that would get reduced by the $317,000. Do you need anything more specific than that? We didn't talk in hard numbers though. We talked in percentages.

Right. Right. And then then you have to talk about the decompression. 1% of the school budget is way more than 1% of the county employee budget. Right. So you you know you've got not only the cola but the decompression issue at the school. Do you want to keep that? Do you want the numbers that I presented show the decompression going away? So that's so de you know 5% cola with um removal of decompression saves you 156. If you drop decompression and 1% cola now you're at 638594.

Can you explain decompression again? So the way I understand this, whenever the the great recession hit back in 2008, there was a period of years that the school held their salaries the same. So those those employees who were hired right as the the great recession hit didn't have a salary increase for, you know, four or five years or whatever like that. And then they hired somebody when they released that, they hired somebody right on their heels. So you you'd have somebody there who are now in step nine. I think it's years 9 10 and I'm don't please don't quote me but there's there's there's eight maybe 8 through 11 next year it's going to be 9 through 12 and and it moves up through the school system with your years and and that would separate you know separate that that group who had their um the salary the same for a number of years I

so basically you're hiring new people that's right that's right and it's fixing that yeah so I guess my question was Why does it need to come out of that budget line? Right? I'm looking at the schools, the one that was presented a couple weeks ago at the budget work session, and um you know, there's an 11% increase in administration, 15% increase in transportation, operations and maintenance, 19% increase. Um due to some weirdness, facilities is all over the place, but it's increased, right? like good let's take 3517 out of operations and maintenance and move on about our day a challenge

that that would work I just you know if that's what the board wants to do that's one item to discuss where that comes out of not knowing the road you know actually a pretty good increase from last year so um you know I those were just the ones that stuck out at me as opposed to and that leaves it within the school board, they can still do the 5% cola. They'll revisit as they get their final state budgets anyway. Um, we've given them they can do that, but we've challenged them in a different budget law.

And Mr. Mets, over the years, and I'm going to throw this out there whenever we talk about this always first just throw out cut the teachers and it's a a good drama moment. And so I agree with that. there's other areas cuz I always say admin is sometimes bloated especially in colleges and school systems that there's other wares that they can find to get that money than going at the teachers raises Mr. Just moment you said in your budget you had taken the decompression out.

That is correct. In my balance budget that the decompression step say step nine has been fixed with a 5% cola across the board. This line right here is correct. Yes. That that that is what is built into my $144 million budget. So right now the budget includes the 5% cola and the step 9 deep compression. That's correct. Okay.

So I've got some some you can also uh reduce the school transfer amount by 31767 to a and this this is the local money that the board transfers to the school. You can reduce it down to it was 27,821 315 and the schools can redo their budget. I think that's mean what Mr. Mets was getting at. So that's how it, you know, is typically done. So the schools have requested 28 million and some change. You can just reduce that by the extra the extra 1% and let them figure it out. That's what we're trying to say. And that and that money becomes the merit money. Okay.

The merit money summarizing meaning that we're not telling the school where it comes from. We're just telling them that it's it's been reduced by that amount. And then that amount goes into Mr. Smish's line to use for the 1% merit. So I still don't agree with the merit part. I still throw out the 3%. And then I also would like to make a statement we do that basic, you know, we were the people who control the money that I don't want to see him here saying I'm going to cut the teachers. There's other places I'm sure in the budget that could be found in including maybe in our budget.

Well, that that goes goes back to the long diet tribe that I gave in the beginning about supervisors making decisions. They have to look the employees in the eye and figure out, you know, how they're going to solve that to to take care of the the people and not lay that at our feet. So I think now the challenge is figuring out to approve the budget is what the tax increase is going to be. It's whether people like Bill pointed out is that's going to be the next issue. You approve the budget the way it is right now. That that includes the Right. Correct. It's like I talked about at our budget meeting, you know, the the equation. On one side, we got the cost 140x million. On the other side, we've got the revenues. That's the assessment times the rate. figure out what that is. Um, and you brought up a good point. You know, we're talking about this as if we're just accepting the assessments as is and nobody's going to appeal and everything's going to go hunky dory um going forward. I I don't What's the trend on how that works?

Yeah. And how many do we know how many people have uh f We have till May five. Fourth. Fourth. Thank you. May 4th. How many Miss Pucket, do you know how many we have who have filed an appeal to the board of equalization? Do you remember where it was a couple days ago? Okay. I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I was just trying to think of, you know, how big is that number of the thousands of properties? Is it one half of one quarter of 1% or is it 15% of the population has appealed? About

100 people. Definitely 100 people. Definitely. Definitely 100 people. Like the tough is we haven't even talked about whether or not we accept the assessment, have we? I mean, are we accepting them the way they are? Well, that's what we're talking about right now. Well, we're talking about a budget. We're But we're specifically not talking about the assessments. I mean, you took us down a tangent to talk about the assessments. Yeah, but we're not Yeah, we're not talking about the assessments. We're just talking about are we cool with what the aftermath of it

without really talking about? We talked at length about the assessments during the last meeting um about you know people talked about um some people thought that they were fair. I think uh Mr. Mets said he thought his was fair.

You know he he's one to pick up the burden of everybody else. Uh but no there there I mean there are those people that feel like okay there they don't really have an issue with it and then there are people that have a really major issue with it and um I had one of my comments as a closing comment very important that people that have an issue with the assessments that they challenge the assessment that they they submit and they do something with it. Um because I you know for the people that have a problem with I'm like challenge it, challenge it, challenge it. Don't just complain about it. You have to challenge it because if you don't then yeah you are going to live with it. Um you know and you have to challenge it and but for those people that do it's not um I I think where I'm at with the assessment is I don't agree with with the assessments. I don't agree with those percentages. I don't agree with but I also don't agree that something shouldn't be done. We one we we have to have an assessment have to be reassessed state requirement. The assessment was done. So we don't have to accept the assessments as they were. The challenge is though is that some of them are bad. I mean I' I've got properties. Some of them okay I'm okay with. Uh but the ones that I'm not okay with, we submitted letters uh to the county challenging that. So there is a process for the people that don't agree with it. There is a process. The only other thing and I don't know this I think we spoke about it is if if to try to mitigate large properties or something like that, you know, the ones that you had referenced

uh Sully. Um, which yeah, I'm cool with that, but how do you do that? I don't know. Um, and there are there are processes in place with a exemptions and things and uh ease conservation easements and things like that also that provide some relief. Mr. Chair, we did have a motion and we've gone on a long tangent discussion. Did we have a vote? We have not had a vote yet. So, I hear there have been 15 applications filed for the board of equalization to date. Five. That's good. Wow.

Does that include the people that reached out to them directly, the company, because they were also being emailed directly or that just the people that came to you? So, so, so the first step is to for the property owners to meet with the assessor to sit down oneonone and and you know they the the assessor would explain the rationale. If those individuals were not satisfied with that, their next step would be to file with the board of legalization. So, that went from 700 people down to 15 to date. And then I believe if they still not with the board of equalization, they can file to circuit court, I believe. So, that there's there's there's two official steps. Board of Equalization Circuit Court and the first informally sitting down with the assessor. So of the 700 plus who sat down with assessor 15 have filed an appeal

and there's about week and a half left the deadline. Okay. All right. So anyway, back to what we were saying. Yes, there is a motion on the floor. You might want to resummarize it. To resummize it. Hope you wrote that thing down. It's the

you got it. So, so I'm not I'm trying to help you out. So, please don't. So it would be to reduce the school transfer amount by $317,767 to a total of 27,821315. Um and which would allow the border the the school board to figure out their allocation of the amount transferred by the board of supervisors. Correct. And then that amount would go into to to 1% merit 1% merit. Correct.

Okay. for the county social services elaborate staff. Yes. All right. So, I'm not going to ask for further discussion because God knows where that'll go. All right. We'll do a roll call vote. Miss Bender. I have to say based on my comments from previous then nay. All right. Mr. Sh. I Mr. Med. Hi. Mr. Davis. Yes. On that and chair both eye. Motion carries.

We we will do the the slide with the expenditures um with the uh I forget what the title of that slide was. Here it is. Expenditures by functional area. So we will reduce that school by the 317 and some some change and I'll put it into the appropriate line item uh where that that that should go because it will be distributed amongst several of these. Yeah, we may just want to put it in the administration organization. We can put organizational development one line item so we don't have to go through and tweak all of them and that will give me the discretion to to divvy that up at 1%. All right. I was going to say basically the summary here is if we don't do the 66%. There would have to be further cuts from what's in this packet.

Basically there would be additional cuts or the board could borrow against your general fund. Your general fund. Okay. I just wanted clarification on that.

That is correct. And if there are cuts, I mean, we we I've gone through that, like I said, a million last week and a half ago by myself. There were additional cuts. I I would look for some direction of if it's another, you know, couple million, where do I cut that from? Where do you want to see it cut from? So, have we talked about I mean, I know we've talked about it, but what's the consensus on the three, four, or 5% raise for the teachers?

No, we just said we take 318,000 out. That's I think that's all part of I think the 317,000 was from the general transfer, right? You know that you know how the school board is going to you know divy that out. That's yeah that's for them to figure out. Okay, but we have not specifically addressed the pay increase.

I mean I'm going to say what I said at the at the budget work session. I know for a fact there's about 20 some teachers that are leaving because Stafford is opening a high school and I think two elementary schools and they're giving them $20,000 more. I'm not saying we can match that, but those are the realities. And I think there's another couple other school systems that pay more and they're in down the northern neck and you know I'm concerned several of us have kids that are in the schools and and do we you I don't know. I I see us bleeding some teachers especially because of the Stafford situation. If we don't give some kind of increase that is at least above the the cost of living. Well, I I had two teachers yesterday tell me that teachers weren't leaving for that reason.

Well, there's yes and no. I've heard I've heard from both and I've heard from lots of teachers over the years and and I've heard some of it is they have issues inside, you know, different reason, culture, whatever. But then there are some literally they're leaving for just because of the salary. They can make more and and they could get a bigger retirement if they just go up to Stafford and get $20,000 more.

Well, the thing about this is, and again, I don't know how that I don't know how that system works, how that system works, but what it would really be cool is if the people who are running the school um can figure out and say, "Okay, you know what? these are the teachers that we really want to keep. So, we're going to increase their pay to keep them and the ones that maybe aren't performing as well, then let them make the move.

No, that's fair. It's just how do we also attract them because not everybody's going into that profession anymore and then we lose a lot of people. They go and they work for whatever reason they leave and they go to the base those math teachers and that and then the kids kind of get shorted on the math teacher end. So, how are how are Saffron and Spotsy compensating people for their healthcare insurance? We I don't I don't know that answer right off the top of my head. I mean, that number is dang near a percentage point right off the top. That's something maybe we could reach out to the other localities to find out how they cover their health insurance. So, I personally I'm Oh, I'm just going to stop. Go ahead. I weren't hearing anything.

Nope. I I didn't get enough sleep last night to finish that thought. So I think if I recall correctly when Dr. Boyd was here, he did have a chart that kind of mapped out and the one that really bothered me is the starting salary one with and he mapped it with the six surrounding localities and and so five surrounding localities and he mapped I think first and then a couple of other increments on the on the pay band and um we're getting down around fifth or sixth on those charts and that that bothers me a lot when we're behind particularly It's not just Stafford, you know, when we're starting to be behind Spoty and Caroline and and then you look at the other surrounding counties in West Morland and we have to be we don't have to be at the top, but we can't be at the bottom either, right? And so that 5% as he pitched from what I recall in that chart, that 5% keeps us sort of in the middle. Um, and again there's just a lot coming together all in one year.

But again, I go back to the same thing, total compensation. What we may be, you know, at the bottom on just the base salary, but if you look at the total package, where do we stand? And we never talk about that. And that's a butt ton of money. For sure. be honest, I don't even know if in the overall scheme of things even the teachers realize that, you know, that that that's all part of that package. It's everybody always just thinks about salary, but they don't think about those benefits that are also on top of that might be public education. opinion.

Well, you know, I had a number of people yesterday, um, three that I remember that they homeschool and they're like, you know what, my tax is going to pay for the schools and I homeschool. So, you know, we have I somebody yesterday said that King George is like way up there, like number five county in the state of number of homeschooled kids. Like, we're really high. So, you know, it's like, okay, we got we're competing with other schools, you know, for teacher pay, but we have the highest number of homeschool kids. I mean, somewhere there's seems to be an imbalance there. Um, you know, I I don't know. I don't have the answers. I'm just saying that we have people that we represent that that may feel it's a little unfair that they're paying that. And then, you know, we're taking more money out of their pocket, you know, whenever they're It just doesn't seem right. These kids are grown up here. And if you don't give them a trade or something, then you'll be paying something else for them if they don't stay straight. You know what I mean? If they're getting into trouble and stuff, then you get a whole another bill picking up for those people when they get 18.

They go to school to stay out of trouble. Yeah. Some do. something. Yeah. Then they get in trouble enough they don't get to go to school, then they want to go back. They go to the Marine Corps. Yeah. You know, and over the years they've asked homeschool why you're not in the school system. Part of it is the education that and and a lot of them is that there's no religion in the schools. And so they homeschool because they want God in the classroom.

Right? So we've gone down another tangent. the teacher starting pay our stuff is is close to it it I was when I look at it's always the gap you know and then so one school might pop up now whe it's 20,000 more or something like that but it's been we've been our starting pay has been right on close to everybody else it's just been the gap of people that have been there 8 n 10 years that was what we were and we closed a little bit that last year we paid towards that I thought it was like a can't remember it's two or 3% of what we did last year on it to close that gap down. But as far as starting teachers pay, I mean, ours is comparable or as the starting pay, it's the add years after where we fall behind.

I believe you are you're correct, Mr. Davis. Starting pay is comparable, but that as they go on, you know, down the down the years, that's when we drop, I want to say like eight out of nine at a certain um at a certain time. But that's also why merit based raises or bonuses are so important because about that time we started to figure out who is really teaching our kids well and who's just fogging a mirror.

I just did What do you want to do? I mean, the 3% cola is assuming also the state's going to match 6%. No, it's not like that. It's it's it's not a matching. They'll assume a portion of that for the SOQ teachers, but we pay the difference, but it'll still be a flat 3% if we go that rate. It doesn't stack.

So, here's the other question. If we if we say three and the state comes back and said we're doing five, where do we get the money from? You because we're going to have to because we don't know what the state is doing. I mean, heck, they could even go six. You never know. you know, we just don't know. I think we got to kind of get an idea what the state's going to do. I I just maybe besides Mr. I don't know if who else is ready to make a pull the trigger on that today. I think it's something we need to talk about over the next week or so and amongst ourselves

and all the counties are grappling with this. Nobody knows. So, can we get a motion to push this for two weeks? Is that what you're suggesting?

No, there's no presentation. I mean, sorry, it's present. There's no act. Yeah, you're right. Well, so um I think one of the the slides and the importance of the brief tonight because I I've been I've been uh having these conversations with Mr. Molly kind of probably wearing him out on trying to get to this in my own brain, but is the tax rate one, the assessments, that's one thing. And but the tax rate we get, you know, nobody wants, don't raise my taxes, don't raise my taxes, don't raise my taxes. Nobody wants to increase taxes. But there's one slide I'm looking at the the one that shows over the years that it that one right you know that right there to me is a pretty important slide and you know um nobody wants their taxes to increase but that's an important slide because it shows that even So it's 10%. What is there? What is overall? It's a 4% um how did you say there for the seven fiscal years the tax rate to support the county school operations less the courthouse has increased by 4 cent. So in seven years we only had a 4 cent increase. And and I'm not you know it'd be great to have a decrease. And I think that we would not we wouldn't be facing this right now if we had more income.

That's the problem. We don't have the income though. The county doesn't have the income and and we have nowhere to draw the money from other than increasing taxes. In the future we we will. Today we don't. in the future may be able to have a tax decrease like Prince William just did. Um that is why we made some of the tough decisions we made, you know, in the in the last year with with the data centers. It may not be popular, but that's what's bringing a revenue in. and the revenue is not here yet. But once that happens, then these type of decisions aren't uh you know the people sitting here in the future won't be dealing with this uh shouldn't have to deal with they'll be dealing with challenges, but not this one. Uh but today, you know, it it's a it's just a bad place to be in. Unfortunately, it's going to be several years before those

it is before those revenues start coming in. Miss Bender will be in her 15th term, I think, by that point. Yeah, but she won't be able to she won't have any sand anyway because she didn't vote for the data show. Hey, now let's not get nasty. Oh, I'm sorry. Nasty.

You can't spend money you don't have. All right. But, you know, so that that's that's where whether we decide tonight or not, um, we're going to have to have that. We're going to have to get we're going to have to get to something. So, you know, unfortunately, that's the responsibility that rests on our shoulders. So, how about this? I I think it's safe to say we're probably not going to decide this tonight, but he brings up a really good point that that means that for the next week or so, um there's going to be a lot of one-on-one phone calls and stuff like that. to kick that off. Are y'all comfortable walking down the line and and giving me the big rocks as you see them on what uh what we need to work on over the next week so that we can at least um kind of target this and make make conversations go quicker and smoother. All right, what are your big rocks?

Thinking here. What do you mean by big rocks though? the uh the things that you would consider non-negotiable and the things that you um would be willing to cut or um maybe you're fine with a 10 a 10- cent tax 10 cent tax increase. What What are the big things that you consider adjustable or just leave it as is? I would have to think, but I want to make sure that the the cost of living is given to the employees. But the to further that I would have to relook and give that answer because I wasn't prepared to No, that's fair that question. That's a big question with no no prep time. Right. All right.

Safe to say everybody wants to think about this a little bit. Well, I would say that anybody that makes any suggestion has to provide a solution. So if if I if I want to cut the budget, then I'm going to have to provide it doesn't have to be the one that that is the final solution. But if I'm going to cut it, then I need if I'm going to say, you know what, I don't want to I don't want to support that tax increase, then I need to be able to identify where that funding would come from. No, was we shouldn't be

going back to your opening statement which was well spoken. Your whole thing was the department heads come and drop this on our lap and we have to figure it out. Why are we not asking them to make some of these hard decisions, but now you're saying we can't push back unless we have a solution of our own. No, I'm not saying that either.

Okay. I'm not saying we can't push back, but I'm saying that if if I'm going to look and say, you know what, I I'm not going to do that or I don't want to support this, then I need to be able to say, okay, here's what I'm willing to give up or here's what I here's where I recommend it come from. In other words, in other words, what I'm trying to say is that I don't want to have to solve your problem just like I don't want to make you have to solve my problem. If I'm going to I want to submit, you know, but we have we that also that that doesn't mean you can't go back to the county. That doesn't mean that that you know that may fall back on it may not fall on it'll fall back on Matt's shoulders, but he's had to go back to whatever department it is too and say, "Hey, all the departments have came in and briefed us." And then I think they've squeezed a few things out from beyond that. But and I think we all feel strongly about certain things too. And that's that's what I'm trying to get at. What are the things that we each feel strongly about? So that when I'm start talking because again for sake of public's understanding, if if more than two of us talk at the quorum and it's an illegal meeting, I'm going to be spending the next several days calling Miss Bender and then Mr. Mr. today individually going back and forth trying to polish this turd, if you will, and uh figure out what we're going to do with it. So, I'm trying to get the uh the big ticket items that that each one of us holds dear. You want the cost of living, the 3% increase for county employees. Got it. But what are the other things that folks, you know, hold dear that you want us to uh really try to include in this or exclude if it were? Well, I have a I have a question, too. Now, we have right at $10 million of debt service and this we touched on this

earlier, right? That's due. So, if you took 3 million of it, um because we said you Mr. just more brief that he's got Davenport providing recommendations, but when are they coming? You know, I was thinking that first meeting in June, do we need them here sooner? Because I asked them, I said, "How soon are you guys ready?" They said, "We need a couple more weeks." Um, we can see if we can get them here the the May 18th meeting.

Yeah. With this hearing schedule, we need them here sooner than later. Otherwise, I mean, we will have already made a bunch of decisions that we're well locked into, you know. I I think they're But I I think they're discussion will revolve around the $48 million of unallocated fund balance. That's that's where I think Ken's coming from. Maybe paying some of the debt off with the fund balance. Yeah. Use the fund balance to pay that part of that $10 million that's hanging out there because we that it's our debt anyway. It's a countyy's debt. use your county money to pay the debt, pay that debt bill, which frees up the rest of the budget. What I would do,

so it' be like prepaying your debt. I mean, these are these are long-term bonds we've borrowed combination adding up to $10 million. So, it' be making the making the annual payments from the general fund is what is that correct, Ken? that I get from it is you're suggesting to take from unassigned fund balance, right? To take some of the debt that's on the ledger in this budget and take it out of the general fund to reduce the tax increase. Is that correct?

Correct. The the tax increase based on that $10 million worth of additional debt. To put it in perspective, for for the three of us, well, you two, you've been here longer, but just for the two and a half yearsish that we've been here, the general fund has increased $15 million. That's a huge chunk of change that we could put toward paying off some of these debts and and reduce the overall ask.

Yeah. Then that's going to be a question for DAB import. Um, you know, because what I'm hearing is that would just you're going to take money from the unassigned fund balance, not to pay off debt, but just simply use it as your debt payment for this fiscal year is what I'm hearing. I'm talking can you do that? Is it the best use? Are you paying I'm just saying are you paying on loans that are at 2 and a half%. You know, versus you could go ahead and and take care of a 5 and a half% loan in its entirety. You could, but we're being presented to right now. We're being told we have $10 million to pay this year.

You're not telling me the interest rate. You're not telling me I'm not getting those choices. All I'm going to All I'm getting is a you got to pay $10 million. Yeah. Those are Yeah, that that's those are from previous, you know, whenever that money was borrowed. I'm looking across the room to make sure I'm saying this right. When that money was borrowed, we knew what our debt payment was going to be for the next 20 years.

Okay. But we owe $10 million this year. We got to pay, right? I mean, I got to pay I got to pay my truck note. I can't say, "Well, you know what? I'm not going to pay that one. I'm going to pay the car note instead." You're telling me I have $10 million of debt to pay and I've got $10 million sitting in the account. Okay, that's going up. So, just pay that. And that's I mean, we owe the $10 million. It's not negotiable. Thinking ahead, what do we do next year then? Are we going to owe the 10 million next year? It's going to be I think it drops a little bit, but it's it's going to be comparable. Yeah,

that that would be kind of what I'm expecting to hear Davenport say. I think we we're carrying about $115 million total debt. Um what they sent me last summer was um this year, this fiscal year, 6.5 million in principal, 3.7 million in interest. So I think some of these it's a a whole handful of debt offerings that we've offered and there I know that there's a couple that are above 4% right so if we took that 15 million and just retired some 4.2 It's not going to save us $10 million in the budget, but it might save us, you know, a million, but it's a million every year for the next however many years that that debt is due, right? So, it it I like that plan, right? I think that's better use of that fund. I think in the short term though, I'm not sure that fixes the $144 million budget any. I would also be interested in hearing Oh, okay. So from Davenport's perspective, would it be smart to use the the excess um matter of fact, you could even do your plan with the two years? I've been sitting here thinking about this since you mentioned the the CIP. Can we take that four million from two years ago and completely fund this year's CIP from from the unallocated general fund and use that to help balance the budget and then get in this pattern of okay good whatever we're returning to the general fund pays our CIP for the year. It ties our hands a little bit, right? I mean, but I mean, we could change this policy as we move forward to make it work for our county situation, especially as we find new revenue sources,

right? Yeah. And I'm not allevating pay the entire amount from there either. I was saying that, but I'm just saying that I'm being told I have this debt that I've got to pay. Clearly, if if it doesn't make sense, you know, in there, if you look at them individually and one's one and a half percent or 2%, well, yeah, that we're better off letting that one say and pay the higher interest ones. I've said that over the years. I've been saying that, you know, if we're making more money on it, then we need to make more money on it than what we're paying. But somewhere in there, you know, I think there's the ability to do that. So, two things. one were coming up on 10 o'clock. Yeah, I knew I had to be coming eventually because we finished at like 9 9:30 for the last several weeks, but it's about time to go late. But uh anyway, so we're coming up on 10 o'clock. The other thing is um how soon can we get board in here? Because I mean

I'm on the phone with them at 8 o'clock tomorrow morning. I'm sure they're they're probably watching us right now. So I'll call you at 8:15 tomorrow morning. Call me at 810. I'll be done in five minutes. All right. I'll give you time to go potty. All right. I I'll talk to you tomorrow morning then. Yeah. I'm I'm in meetings tomorrow, but that's that's one I can take. Okay. All right. Um can we have a motion about the time? I make a motion to extend the meeting till 10:45. Second. Any discussion? All in favor?

I chair both eye. We are extended till 10:45. All right, we will move on to the next item. Was it? All right. Item 0403 or sorry 0413 EOP emergency operation plan. Captain L. Welcome sir.

I think your mic turned off.

Can you hear me now? Okay. Thank you. Sorry. Good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. I'm here to speak to you tonight about the 2026 King George emergency operations plan update. The recommended action is adopt the 2026 King George County Emergency Operations Plan update as amended. Uh background, the code of Virginia requires each locality update and read their EOP every four years. EOP outlines a county's response to disasters and large scale emergencies. That's our playbook. Parts of the EOP uh were reviewed by the Virginia Department of Emergency Management. The current EOP expires in May. The 2026 draft incorporates best practices and lessons learned from past EOC activations, trainings, and exercises. A summary of the big changes in the 2026 EOP. It identified the community engagement director as EOCC public information officer. Identified the emergency support functions that the state, federal, and state agencies or private sector companies have overall responsibility for. updated charts, maps, and figures, and other minor edits to reflect changes in the county government structure and emergency management operations. I'm happy to answer any questions that you have.

Any questions? Do these changes incur any cost to the county? No, sir. Do we take on any risk, added risk because of this or responsibility? No, it's just a reflection of how we've been operating. Please, Mr. Chair, I make a motion that we adopt the 2026 King George County emergency operation update as presented. Second motion properly seconded. Any further discussion? All in favor?

I oppose. Chai. Motion carries. Thank you. Sorry for making you sit through all that for that. No problem. All right. Next up, another action item 04-14, nomination, Northern Virginia Emergency Response System, Inverse Region Five Advisory Board. Howdy, Chief, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. Uh, good evening to you. Uh, this item is to uh to appoint Captain Matthew Russell to the uh Northern Virginia Emergency Response uh System Region 5 Advisory Committee. I have full faith and confidence that Captain Matthew Russell uh will uh represent our county and our department well. Um as you know uh there's a little bit of background this uh new inverse region 5 has merged in in the uh with the Rapahhanic EMS council. So happy to answer any questions. I did provide a copy of uh his resume and he's been with our department for seven years now. So,

I'll make a motion to nominate uh Mr. What was his name? I'm sorry, I was reading my paper. Matthew Russell to the Northern Virginia Response Region 5 Advisory Committee for an unexpired second. Probably second. Any discussion? All those in favor say I. I. I. Any oppose? No. Chair votes I. Motion carries. Thank you, Chief. And sorry again for making you sit through all that. Okay. And I've been informed that we do need to go back to the budget one more time.

So, I want I'm looking for clear guidance from the board. You know, I've got the 1% the reducing the school transfer. We're coming back on May five. God bless you. So, I proposed a 10 cent real estate tax. I know we have I already emailed uh Davenport. I'm calling you guys 8 o'clock tomorrow morning to see if we can uh you do what Mr. Strad is is, you know, is asking for the debt service. Is there any feeling guidance from the board on on the tax rate? I mean, I I kind of need to know, you know, where you guys stand. So, I I know Mr. S was going to be reaching out to you, but that's the case. I mean, I put some major cuts on the table at that work session. None of them were I mean, we kept the comp plan, we put the comp plan back in. Raises weren't adjusted for anybody. C pay is still in there. Step plan for fire rescue. Convenience centers are still open seven days a week. I mean, where do we if if if the board is going to say, you know, Matt, I I only want a 5-cent tax rate increase. Then we're going to need to cut $2.5 million out of the budget. We've already been line by line from every department. Where do I start looking? What will the board accept? Will the board accept convenience centers open three days a week and no raises for sheriff or sir pay? I mean I I don't know you know what kind of guidance you know what's the appetite for the board for my proposed 10 cent uh tax rate increase.

So for me personally I can vote for the 10% increase after we offset all the other options and I don't feel like we've done that. We've talked about uh taking some of the general fund to pay for pay down the CIP portion of the budget. That that's that's a chunk. We've talked about paying the debt service this time with it. We've talked about paying off some of the the smaller loans. Um I I feel like Davenport may have some options, some ideas for us. And and I feel like we're we're premature and and like Bill said earlier, you know, are we sure we're comfortable with with the assessments? I I feel like we're pulling the trigger before we actually

I don't mean to rush you guys. I just if there was specific guidance that you had for me. Yep. And and this again, this goes back to what I was asking earlier. What are the the big things with you guys? For me, it's making sure we've looked at these different options and we we've ruled them out. Hey, what about this? Nope. Won't work. what about you know so kind of kin solutions earlier you know hey come if you got a problem come with an idea or a solution to back it up to fix it and and once we've looked through those and if it's still 10 cents it's 10 cents but I don't feel like we're giving everything the due diligence it needs

Mr. Mr. Chair, I'd also add I I I told you at the budget work session about my neighbor who doesn't really complain about a lot, but he wanted to know if you're going to increase my taxes, what are you giving me for it? So, being able to explain exactly what you're getting for the taxes you're playing paying, you're not helping. So, is there anything else that was not on my slide that can help answer that question? What you're getting with FY27 budget? How many anything else I can provide you to help your answer those questions for your constituents? How many Powerball tickets can we buy with what's in the general fund right now? I'm kidding. Please take

So So I guess is is there anything else that you know what are you getting for the FY27 budget that I haven't already presented? Well, I guess it's a breakdown of what their tax dollars give them. I I I'm trying to be very simplistic. like you have I I don't know how to describe it right now, but it's like what exactly do you get for it? Like I get fire and rescue. I get teachers that teach kids that maybe are in fire rescue. I'm I'm just trying to quickly come up with an answer. But that's what I'm looking for. What What do they get for their dollar? What's their bang for their buck?

Some of it's easy to explain. You know, we've talked about it. You know, we're recruiting strong teachers. We're retra we're retaining strong teachers. We're we're recruiting deputies. We're recruiting firemen and emergency rescue people and and retaining, you know, this the strong performers and and the people that are doing well. We're giving them the the equipment that they need. But again though, I these are kind of a broad brush thing. I would like something a little bit more specific to be able to to share. Again, going back to have we exhausted the various options. Yeah, we increase our taxes a little bit, but by doing that, we've also paid down some of this debt so that you know when the when the uh other revenues like the the data center starts kicking in, hey, we can actually start really reducing taxes at that point as opposed to just leaving them level. I feel I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, I feel pretty comfortable that if somebody wants to know where tax dollars are going, I feel pretty comfortable now that I've been armed with the information I need to address that. Um, but as a part of that slide, the key drivers that 9.99 million debt in the general fund, that's where I think if we can reduce the taxes from instead of going 10% to 5% to trade off $2.5 million. I can trade $2.5 million out of the the unassigned general fund for somewhere this 9.99 million general of the general fund, then that means it's only a 5% increase versus a 10%. That's not the solid guidance you were looking for, is it?

Oh, it helps me. You know, again, then what next year? You know, do we borrow, you know, we've been borrowing money from the general fund to balance the budget? Now, we're borrowing money from the general fund to balance the budget. That's not borrowing money. That's Yeah, that's what I was going to say. So, so, so I use the word borrowing. It's not borrowing. They've been put think of it as as all through the year you've been putting money in a savings account. So, you pay Okay. and you're taking that money from a savings account to buy your new truck or pay down your new truck or you know so that the note ain't as high. Think of it that way. Okay, it's still it's still the citizens money, right?

And rather than them them having it, you know, sitting there in an account if it keeps them from having to, you know, instead of taking their kids to get ice cream on Sunday because they don't have the money because they're paying higher taxes, well, now they take the kids to get ice cream and they took money out of their general fund account to be able to do that. I mean that's

I understand I got it now. Yep. I I will definitely have that conversation with Davenport tomorrow. It's a good suggestion. I I'll run it by them and get feedback sooner rather than later from from Davport. I'll just say it now. I hope the public's listening. All right. All the details are here. Your staff came and briefed all of us at the budget work session and I'll be honest, the cuts that we could make easily were pennies. I think it wasund maybe 200k out of $144 million budget. The whole 144 is not ours, right? What's the our revenue part of that is $70 million and change, right? Minus state and federal contribution, right? So out of okay $80 million budget, we found like 200k. So it when we have this public session on the the first meeting in May where we talk about the 60 cent the the tax rate come with solutions. What service do we not provide going forward? If you want something less, we will try to find I like this idea talking with, you know, can we do something with the the un unallocated general fund, but that's a one-year fix long-term. What's in there that they think we don't need? Do you understand what he was asking with that? You know that

I would add one thing in there because you've mentioned convenience centers and I know spotsy looked at this is what would be the revenue if we cut one or two days from from the convenience center. Well, I asked that when um and I'm not looking for the weekend days. I'm looking during the week and what would be the best days because weekend days would get killed for that because that's when people go. But I'm looking like days. No doubt we'll pro any any days on it. But yes, that those are those ideas. I I I mean that entire budget for that that code, you know, was million bucks. So

that takes stuff that takes something away from the citizens. Like are there places that can be cut that isn't taking something away from them? Because I mean we're going to be hit with stuff throughout the year. something like, "Okay, what do we do with, you know, this building? What do you do with that building?" I mean, there's, you know, things that are going to come up and there's things that there's money that's going to come in that, you know, like Matt said, he's conser he was conservative in in the budget. Um, so he's going to have a little leeway as things as things pop up. But if you use that, if you're not conservative, then then you're just in an L-shaped ambush if it doesn't work out. Oh, you don't know what that is?

I know exactly what that is. I was looking around the room to see the confused faces. Said it's a military term. I'll look it up later. Uh, nobody lives through it. The bad guys do. All right. You ready to do your board report, your county administrator report? So, yeah. Mr. Dimes, would you pull up the uh the state the the document that I sent you entitled I think was state roads, state secondary roads. And if you generate more questions, we're going to start cutting your salary one 1% for every minute you go past 10 o'clock.

I believe it's just a word document. Can I say something while he's pulling that up? Um, I have a note because I wanted to request a meeting um with possibly with Mr. Gina and if she will, Miss Morgan to address the means of ensuring we are accurately collecting the taxes and the food trucks because you had experience with it and maybe we have a meeting to discuss that.

All right, board. So, so what I've got here, this I touched on a little bit with Mr. Beal when he was at the podium. and I didn't want to hijack his presentation. As you're aware, uh when Snow Creek happened, um the two roads in Sed Crossing, Cedric Court and Alberta Court came to our attention of they should have been in the state system. They weren't. Um I know I'm repeating myself, but I said, "Let me let me look at these. Let's do a comprehensive review." So, we we've we've gone through and and what you have in front of you, what's on the slide here is is a master list of all the roads. And I just wanted to to bring some of these to your attention. Some of them come at no cost to the county that some of them are just paperwork. Others there's going to be some funds that you know we need to think about how they're going to be funded to make sure that these roads and I'm not pointing blame. It is what it is. They're not in the state system. They should have been. Um so we how are we going to fix this? So the the first couple we looking at are the are the bus loops. These are the easy ones. Uh the first of all just demo the old middle school uh route 9213. It can be abandoned. Um, no cost to the county. We just need an abandonment resolution. That's an easy deal. Next one, uh, school board building off St. Anthony. I did have a talk with Dr. Boyd earlier this morning. Head Start will be vacating that building. So, in the fall, they were they're moving them to the elementaryaries. So, that's another bus route loop that that can be abandoned. And really, the VOTE's responsibility is really snow removal. They're not concerned about they're not going to come in and do an inspection. You've got cracked asphalt, come in, mill, and repave it. They're just really responsible to is it traversible and can we plow snow on it. Uh Sealston Elementary, it is not in the state system, nor is King George Elementary. Talking to Mr. Beal, he says, "Matt, we're not going to hold you guys feet to the fire on this. As long as they're in decent condition, we can get the vehicles in, we're good. But they need to be added in so VA could justify plowing them uh in the in the event of a winter storm." A kitchen drive. I know, you know, here's the one Mr. Dave has

been talking about um up up in his neck of the woods. So just the north part of the road needs to be brought into the system. It does require VOTE to look at a potential punch list. Kelly drove out there today, you know, and then the picture that I've seen it is it is, you know, crackling or I'm not sure what the the correct word is for for that. So there there will be a cost to the county here and and Mr. Beal brought up some some alternative ways to pay for this. Um so and then uh we'll have to and I'm just I just go through this. I'm not going to read this word for word. You all can see it. Sedick court, Alberta court. This is just a paperwork issue. I'm I'm not concerned about these. The county would not have to spend any money to get these into the system. Uh Lynx Drive, I believe, Mr. Solins, this is one where a constituent came up to you uh to ask about that. Um and so the inspection is required. There will be a cost. Um and then uh send the resolution. So Lynx Drive could cost us some money. Melody Lane. This is this is an interesting one. Um route number is already posted on the site, but it's not in the state system. So I don't not sure how that had

was that the one that was in my is in mine. I think it is because there was one that came up during the snow that there's root number out there, but VOTE didn't come down. That may be the one. I forget.

I think that's the one. So, um, very similar to Sedick in Alberta court, just a a letter to VOTE and the the the acceptance package was already sent to VOTE by King George County. And then, you know, Mr. Be said, I think this is one where VOTE may have dropped it. So, that's going to be an easy one. Um, Melan to get into the system. And then lastly, we've got Grover Drive, Francis Folsome. So, both need to be come in. Again, route numbers are posted out there, but they're not in. So, usually whenever somebody calls our office, you know, during during the winter storm, my road's not plowed. One of my first questions is, is there a black and white route number sign? If they say yes and they live on Grover Drive, well, that's the confusion. There's there's a route number. So, to the general public, you would it would appear that these are in the safe system. However, they're not. I have a question on Grover Drive because I used to live on Francis Folsam and Grover Drive is basically just goes to Wendy Moore's dentist's office and then dead ends because there possibly could be a development there. So, how does that go for whether the development comes in or not? Does that include the whole thing or is that on the develop? I'm just asking because that's a unique

No, that's that's a good question. I think you have to look at it as it stands today, you know, with, you know, yes, we have talked of potential development there, but as it stands today, you know, they're they're not in the system officially. So, so it would just go to where her where that realtor signed it. Okay.

Yeah. So, I just wanted to make the board aware of this. You know, this is the comprehensive list. Obviously, a lot larger than the two that we first thought, but I I think this is I mean, this is the time to clean them up and get them right. So, you know, Mr. Beal will be back. Uh you guys authorized a public hearing at the next meeting. If you have any other questions on these, you know, look at them, shoot them my way. Um you know, because there will be some funding that will be required to bring these into the into the state system. That's right. You guys have heard me talk a lot tonight. U that's really the big thing that I wanted to talk about under my county administrator's report, unless you have any specific questions. But, you know, I'm going to say it again. You know, the budget is a it's a it's an evolving document. you know, it's been evolving since we first sent these out back in November of of 25. And you know, the the feedback that I've gotten from from the board is invaluable. So, so thank you for the guidance that you've given me. And you know, if if I'm asking the questions as I'm trying to think three steps ahead, okay, what's the next question? How do we get here? How do we stay on on track? But, you know, really appreciate the input of of all the uh you know, all my department heads and uh from the board and we're going to get there. And uh you know, my next call and I work on this 8 o'clock tomorrow. You can call me at 8:15. I have an answer for you, Mr. Sean. Okay, that was good. If there's nothing else, that's the end of my report, sir. Awesome. Thank you, sir. All right. At this time, we will open up the floor for secondary public comment to address the meeting items only. Comments will be limited to three minutes per person in order to afford everyone an opportunity to speak. Please provide your full name and district when submitting your public comment so that it can be properly recorded and included in the public record. Anyone? Anyone come up? Longest game of checkers ever, huh?

Right. Um, all right. I'll make it quick. I appreciate everything the board's examined tonight and everything that's been carefully control to control the spending. I also want to thank all the divisions for all their efforts and their cutting costs which ultimately was done on the 7th and the 10th of April. However, to keep the taxes low, something else has to be done. I will say it was quite difficult to print off the 173 pages for the CIP report on my printer at home though I did so but not all the pages are set up for home computers and printers so some of the pages didn't print properly. However, I'm concerned about the many items that were approached here and were cut immediately. It seemed like a lot of the items it was like no big deal like oh yeah well we don't need you know that $18,000 vehicle we can we can mark that off or a maintenance vehicle we can mark that off. When I see changes in a business like that, then I'm saying, you know, what it seems like is this more of a a wish list than a true list of what is needed. Um, I like I said, I noticed how easily they were cut off and clearly indicated that they were not truly an essential item, but rather they were a desired Christmas list. So, I feel like that's something that can be can be addressed. Um I believe the divisions have overlooked some of the distinctions between a prudent budget and a wish list. And if you ran your household like this, you wouldn't last very long. So oper, you know, if you if you bought a new vehicle, you want to keep that vehicle up. That way you don't have to buy a new vehicle every three years. You can stretch it out every seven. That's just the points I wanted to make on that points that I wanted to make with u Mr. um Mets and um Mr. Shroud. I'd love to meet with you. You know, I've mentioned before meeting with you, so it'd be great to meet with you. My husband actually was the owner and operator of that particular business, so he would have more information, and I'm sure he'd be more than happy to to give that to you. When it comes to the teachers and things, my husband did uh retire from King George. He's a teacher for 30 years. So, I do have some, you know, between us some insight on that. He was a math teacher. The merit base, I understand that, but there is some

clauses that you have to look into that based on your hiring statuses when you were hired and things like that. the decompression. Um, uh, I I'm not really sure what all that was because when my husband was hired was in 2008 and I never remember his salary being stifled. I'm sure it is true, but I'll say from a teacher wife's perspective, my husband's desire was to be a teacher. You know, he taught at a Christian school. His first salary was a whopping $10,000 a year. You know, he moved to Fredericksburg Christian. We got a whopping 18,000 a year. We thought we were making bank on that one. and we almost doubled our salary. When you're a teacher, you're you're teaching kids because you love them and that's what you're you're born to do. And so that's what he's always done and that's what he retired from loving to do. Um if you want when we meet, I can give you definitely different areas that I think you know if you want to say things that you can lower costs, I have definite ideas. I'm anti-solar. I'm anti battery and I'm I'm anti- battery which you already know. But I'm sure there's other things in the budget that I'm sure I can come up with ways that you can make money here and companies that you can contact.

Right. Thank you, ma'am. Anybody else? All right. Anybody online? Nope. Excellent. Anybody else? Do I have any correspondence? No. All right. Do we have a motion? I'll make a motion we adjourn the board of supervisors to May 5th at 5:30 in the boardroom of the River Building located at 10459 Courthouse Drive, King George. Second. Any discussion? Thought we said we're going to do it here. All in favor? I. All right. Any oppose? Chair. We are adjourned.