Board of Supervisors - Special Meeting

Okay, I'm going to call this special meeting of the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors to order. Today is Tuesday, June 30th, 2026. The first item on our agenda this evening is for the county administrator to lead us in a moment of silence and pledge of allegiance. Angie.

Please rise as you're able for a moment of silence and then join me as I lead us in the pledge. Let us pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. Thank you, Angie. We're gonna start, before we move to the new business item this evening, I understand Angie Hill wants to say a few words, and then we're gonna ask Dr. Gimple, the superintendent of Montgomery County Public Schools, to come up and say a few words, and then we'll move to new business. Angie?

First, I wanted to clarify the circumstances that bring us here tonight. The situation is not related to state or federal budget issues. It's not related to the Christiansburg High School renovation or any other capital projects. The situation is not related to grant reimbursements that were expected before the close of the fiscal year. We're here because on Sunday, June 21st, I received an email from Montgomery County Public Schools staff requesting a meeting to, quote, discuss state adjustments to our current year-end budget based on the final ADM and some incoming revenues. The meeting was scheduled for Wednesday, June 24th. On the 24th, I met with county and MCPS budget and finance staff, and during that meeting, it became evident that MCPS would exceed its legal spending authority when payroll and other year-end expenditures were processed. At that time, we estimated the overage to be approximately $4.1 million, although the full scope of the situation was not yet clear. County staff immediately began working with MCPS staff to mitigate impact with one overriding priority, ensuring that all MCPS teachers and staff would receive their June 30th payroll on time. The Code of Virginia prohibits the school board from expending funds in excess of its appropriate budget. In addition, the Board of Supervisors must advertise and hold a public hearing before amending the budget when appropriating additional funds that exceed 1% of the total budget. For the current fiscal year, that threshold is just over $3.9 million. County staff asked MCPS staff whether any expenditures could be deferred to July 1st without affecting employee payroll. Reducing the immediate funding need below the public hearing threshold would allow us to address this situation while remaining in compliance with the requirements of the Code of Virginia. County finance staff assisted MCPS staff in identifying which obligations had to be paid before the end of the fiscal year and which could be deferred until July 1. Throughout this process, our focus remained on two objectives. ensuring that MCPS employees were paid on time and maintaining compliance with state law. Dr. Gumpel and I have worked very closely throughout this process and I appreciate that. I also want to thank the county's finance and budget staff who have worked diligently since June 24th, including throughout the weekend, to address this issue. Their efforts came during an already demanding fiscal year-end period, and I'm grateful for their professionalism and commitment. Thank you.

Thank you, Angie. Dr. Gimple? Welcome. Thanks for being here.

Thank you.

You turned it off, I think.

Geez. There you go. Tell me how seasoned I am at coming to this side of the dais. Well, Chair DeMott and Vice Chair Fijikowski, Administrator Hill and the rest of your board, the first thing I want to do is just apologize to you for you even having to show up here tonight. It's absolutely unnecessary, uncalled for, and we made a mistake. We can account for every dollar that We're talking about here. We didn't lose money. Nobody ran off with $4 million or $3.5 million or whatever it's going to be in the final ask. And it ends up being about 1.5% of our overall $138 million budget that you kindly appropriated to us. But we violated a state statute by not coming to you in a timely fashion to allow you to meet like this and appropriate money that would cover us through the end of the year. It's not that unusual at the end of a month for, you know, we'd have an overage or to have a, you know, a deficit, but we do the responsible thing. And because it's the end of the year, we had to come to you at an early date may and say, we think we might be in a deficit at the end of the year. And we failed to do that. And that is 100% on us. Um, I apologize again for you to be here. I'm embarrassed to stand in front of you and even speak about this. Um, but take full ownership over it. You all have supported our schools. Um, we have unbelievable buildings. We have, you know, everything we need to do what we need to do as a successful school system because of your support. I've worked hard to get to know many of you, and I know that this is a setback in your trust of. Not only me, but of our, of our school system. And I can tell you going forward that I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again. And that you're fully aware of all the things that are going on as terms of our budget in our school system. I've asked a gentleman by the name of Craig Meadows to come and do a full audit. Um, of our finance system. I believe everybody here knows who that is and has high respect for that gentleman. I also know of him from some of the work he's done in Stafford when I was in Spotsylvania. Uh, that'll begin immediately as soon as he, as soon as he can start. Um, I've begun recruiting people for two committees that. I had originally come in here in February talking about putting into place. I had not had a red flag in my finance department up to this point that would have told me that that was a thing I needed to jump on right away and get these committees started for oversight. I see that this is necessary and we will have that in place before the start of school. We'll also have an open checkbook ledger online so that anybody, transparency, can see online where our expenditures are from day one of the school year. Of course, we have a liaison meeting that takes place Every month, you know between myself and and Angie Hill and we'll make sure we have a budget line item for that so that you're updated every month with exactly where we stand according to the budget and amongst many internal controls But again, you know I apologize I you know There's no excuse and all I can tell you is that it will never happen again and Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, so we will move next to new business. The only item on our agenda for new business this evening is a general fund appropriation and transfer to school operating fund. The total dollar amount, the final overage dollar amount is $3,516,770. We'll start by taking a motion and a second and then we'll open this up to discussion. Is there a motion? So moved.

Second.

Okay. And so we'll start with discussion. Angie, I believe you have a slide or several slides. I just have two.

Okay.

I wanted to just briefly go over these numbers so that you can see them and how they play out. It will make a little bit more sense as we go through that. The expenditures that were appropriated were $158.4 million, and the actual expenditures as of end of day today were 161.96. That leaves an overage of $3.5 million, as you said. And then I know the board had asked questions about this throughout the day, so I wanted to provide this. Our finance staff is working right now because they're closing out the year and posting all the revenue through today, so these are definitely very current numbers. The revenue that was appropriated was the same as the expenditures. The final amount was $158,444,524, and the schools collected $160.9 million. So they have 2.463 revenue in excess of what had been appropriated as of today. And all of that came either Monday or today. And then as I showed on the previous slide, the expenditures in excess of the appropriation is about $3.5 million. There's language in the appropriation that you're gonna discuss about how that will be repaid to the county. The $2.46 million typically would be considered maybe carryover that might come back to the Board of Supervisors for a request for reappropriation. instead that will go to offset 3.5 and then the amount that will recover through the july revenue that was um from grants that will be received in july will be just over a million dollars the amount of the appropriation as you said chair de motz is 3 million 516 770 because that's the amount of expenditures that exceed the appropriation okay thank you very much um

So let's go ahead and start with some questions. Let's start first just with questions on the numbers to make sure that everybody is clear in understanding the numbers that Angie just presented. And I'm just kind of looking for like a yes, we're good on the numbers or there's questions about the numbers. Okay, so it seems like everybody understands the numbers, so we'll move on to just questions in general. And I will start with Supervisor Graske. Do you have any questions? You were looking right at me, so you get to start.

Shame on me. Well, I guess I'll just start with saying, Dr. Gimple, I appreciate you coming up here and assuming accountability for this situation you know I know you came into the school system at the beginning of the year but you know this I think as you articulated very well you know this is something that we we probably could have foreseen a little bit sooner in the process right and and that just saves a lot of lot of this right now um so in in in terms of of questions i guess i'll just start with and and i presume that with uh the engagement of mr meadows we'll get a full accounting of you know what areas you know we over where the overspending occurred and at one what point maybe during the year should we have had started to get a grasp of what's going on um in the school system

Okay. And so let's move to Supervisor Biggs. Did you have any questions or anything that you'd like to say?

There you go. I don't have a real question at this point, I guess. I want to thank Dr. Gimbel for coming and for his sincere words tonight. I think that it would be good to have mr. Meadows come in because I was really struggling with Wondering how it happened when I looked at the financial report at the end of May and it said that ninety seven point seven percent of the budget had been spent and you still had another month and so I was like, ooh, you know, and so I think that I trying to find exactly what happened and why it happened would be really important. And then again, as you have said, how to prevent it from happening again. And those were basically my concerns from the beginning. And of course we wanna do everything we can to make sure that Montgomery County Public School staff is paid. That is so critical for all that they do. So that would be all I have right at this moment. I'm not I'm not clear about this whole grant thing. I'm not sure why grants didn't come in on time. I don't know what grants are involved. That would be one thing that I would like to find out about. Like what grants were they, when were they supposed to have come in and was there a reason that that didn't happen? So thank you.

And I'll ask just as a follow-up to that, Dr. Gimple, I think that's kind of some of the work that you're expecting from Mr. Meadows? Yes, okay, thank you. You might come to the mic.

Um, the grants data we have ready right now for you, if you, you know, we can certainly provide that and it's not unusual for grants to be repaid. Some of them are two and three year long grants. And so, but you have to forecast for when those will be received and that should be, you know, that's part of, part of managing, managing your, your, your budget. Right. And being able to see when that's going to happen. And if we felt like it was going to be late and it wasn't going to be able to balance, then we should have come to you and said, you know, we need you guys to appropriate some more money until this additional revenue would come in from these grants. That's where the failure came.

Thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

Supervisor King, did you have anything that you wanted to add? Okay.

Yeah, I have a few questions, if you would, please.

You can probably just stay up. Okay. Best I can, yeah.

Understand you had some purchase orders that you got rid of to help free up some cash some money What were they and how do you expect to pay for them in the future?

I'm gonna have Angie plan come up who a little more hands-on with exactly what's going on with those purchase orders I

Good evening. For purchase orders, towards the end of the year, what remains in open purchase orders are what we call blanket purchase orders, and those are for operational expenses to certain vendors. Those may be for facilities. It would be to Lowe's, your hardware stores, things of that nature. And so those are created at the beginning of the year at a set dollar amount, and they purchase on them throughout the year. In February, we do an essential cutoff of spending with the remainder of expenditures just to be those that are operationally necessary. Those remain open to get them through to closer to the end, but it's routine for us to close out those purchase orders at the end. So there are not purchases sitting that are waiting to be paid against those blankets. Those have been taken care of. It's a routine process for us to close out those peers at the end of the year.

Okay, thank you and Can you list the grants Montgomery County Public Schools spent but did not have appropriation that makes up the four million dollars?

Sue currently our outstanding And when I say outstanding, they are in process. We have expended, we have expenditures against these grants and we are at different phases of the process of asking for reimbursement. The majority of the grants that we receive, you spend it first and then you request the reimbursement after you prove that you've paid for those. One of our largest ones is the Go Tech grant. It's one of our newer grants and that's a program at Christiansburg Middle School. It's a vocational program where students can go and see potential vocational careers. It's a really neat system. It's something new for Christiansburg Middle School. So we have received two reimbursements against that, but there is an outstanding balance of approximately $389,000 at this time. And those are in process. We are actually the fiscal agent for several school systems for that grant. Our title grants, that's Title I, Title II, and Title III. We have approximately somewhere closer to $400,000 that are in process. We have the reimbursements in, and those were put in throughout june however unfortunately we didn't see any of those here at the end of the june but we know that those will be processed probably here in the next day or two we also have a perkins grant that's a vocational grant and that provides vocational equipment to our school system that's approximately twelve thousand dollars we have a special education grant that's a federal federal funded grant um and that um that's around $10,000 that we were waiting on for that. We also have an advancing computer science education grant. That is a state grant and it is provided generally end of May, you have until June 30th to expend it and then you request the reimbursement and that's where that is in that process. And then we have our school improvement grants and that is a grant that is established by the VDOE to give some extra resources to schools and for learning services for students, and that's at approximately 201,000. The outstanding balance is just over a million dollars for these that are, and as I said, they're all in a different phase of this process of being reimbursed.

Supervisor King, can I interrupt for just one second? What was the advancing computer science education grant amount? I'm sorry if I didn't give that. That's over $17,000. Thank you. Sorry, Supervisor King. And we have this list. We'd be happy to provide this too.

And just one more thing, I'm not trying to tell you how you do business, but maybe each month when you read out the bills and then the board votes to pay them, maybe if you could have something on there that said, this is the percentage we already spent.

That's a great idea.

That way everybody would see the percentage. Yes, absolutely. And you know where you're at.

Absolutely. And if I could just take a moment, I want to give my sincere apologies, number one, for you all being here this evening. It was an oversight in my area, and we are... We are putting a lot of measures in place so that this doesn't happen again. I can assure you I won't be standing back up here to do this again. We're going to make this right. But I appreciate Ms. Hill and her staff. As you said, they work diligently. That's exactly what I would say. They have been so extremely helpful. Every single one of them called and offered guidance, and we couldn't do it without them. So we greatly appreciate that. I also want to apologize to Dr. Gimple. He's new. He's been here for a short couple of months, and this is, I'm certain, one of the hardest things he's had to do so far, and we do apologize for that, and also to our school board members. Our school board members are here, and we did not communicate this in a timely fashion to them. Had we done that, if we went to Dr. Gimple and to them much earlier in this process,

while we we might have still been standing here it would have been to request this way before the june 30th period um so i do i do apologize for that thank you thank you miss bland uh supervisor kids so i'll put it like this and and because i've asked a lot of difficult questions for the school board i've been through the budget i know we've been back and forth but i I think supporting education means expecting the sound financial management portion and accountability with that. So asking difficult questions and supporting, I don't think are inconsistent within what we're asking is to take care of taxpayer dollars and to make sure that we're transparent about it. So my question is more about process because I know there are systems in place. And I don't, I'm not trying to get into specifics. I'm just trying to, cause I talked to several school board members and they're like, there are certain things in place, you know, and I'm like, okay, guys, I trust you. I just, I just don't know. So. Were the existing budget monitoring systems fully utilized throughout the fiscal year? Because I know there's a system where you go expenditures versus the appropriation, and it's supposed to project forward. So walk me through that a little bit, please. Sure.

So we do utilize munis for those projections There are budgetary controls in place and you can set them up many different ways You can set that up more stringent. You can set them up in multiple fashions we do have a Budget control in place that if the overall budget in one particular area is exceeded then there is a notification regarding that So, you know, each month we're projecting based on reports out of our financial system and where we were. And in late April to early May, we realized it was going to be very close. And we continued to monitor that. And then into May, when we received our recalculated state budget based on our student average daily membership. We realized that that was going to take away from our calculated and budgeted state funding to a great degree. And we were hoping at a June point to do an appropriation. Although we would have been short, that was definitely something that we should have done. We should have requested a supplemental appropriation. because although we would still be standing here, it would be for a lesser amount and that was an error on our part. But the biggest piece of that was communication. It was a breakdown. So in late April to early May, that's when we needed to reach out to Dr. Gimple and have those conversations and then communicate that with our school board so that we can make decisions and get that to you as a board to be having this discussion.

So follow up question to that one. And there's a message that I always say when I'm on this board, it's like hope should never be used as a planning consideration. It's what I taught my lieutenants as you move forward. Um, anytime we start with, we hope to accomplish this. It's it really gets me a little worried. So, but I understand. So you said you felt it was a breakdown in communications, um, So would you say a breakdown in communications, a breakdown in financial control portions, or a combination of both?

And I would say that's a combination of both. The financial system has a lot of useful tools for forecasting. However, I think there There's software out there that can provide a more robust look at that. We also want to take the opportunity, Trevor Bennett and I would like to come and meet with Mark McGruder and his team and see how they do the forecasting. We're on the same financial system, so I think that would be very beneficial to us. I'm not sure if they use an additional software, if they use MUNIS or what they're using, but we would love to take a look at that. There are some other school districts that have some forecasting software that can tie into the MUNIS program as well. So that's something we're definitely interested in, something that we are going to do moving forward for sure.

So last follow-up to that one, and I apologize. So based on this situation, how this unfolded, would you recommend that there be a threshold of, would you say, Threshold formal threshold notification to both boards. If there was something would trigger something would trigger and then would alert both boards and make sure that we knew well in advance. So we never got to this point.

Absolutely. Okay. You will know exactly where we stand throughout the year. Okay.

That's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you. Supervisor Curran. All right, thank you for being here, Dr. Kimball and all the board members that are here and the staff. Being on the other side for eight years, this actually disappointed me, saddened me. I felt the pain because I know neither boards would like to go through something like that. But, you know, I'm factual. Usually happens what happens. Now the question is how we can resolve it. Obviously our personnel are personnel as well, so they need to be paid. So there's no question about that. And I'm happy that Mr. Meadows will be looking into the books. And I would like to hear from him or some sort of report when time comes and when he's ready. and we really have to see how it happened to understand. We should understand, you should all understand, and the board should understand so that it's a lesson to learn so it won't happen again. It was a big surprise. I've been in the county for 26 years. I've been involved with the school system 26 years, and I don't think I ever was in this situation, but when I got my first traffic ticket, officer, I forget his name, he was a school resource officer of Blacksburg Middle School, I said, you know, so, careful. I have kids. I'm involved with the schools. You know, I don't know how I did that. I was going uphill and I was speeding uphill and you know, I never got a ticket. And I mean, his buddy was in the window. He's a tall, tall resource officer. I can't remember his name now, but he said, ma'am, there's always the first one. And I said, you know, but since then I never got a ticket. So it's, you gotta, you gotta learn the lesson and, you know, keep going. That's, that's, uh, that's what I'm trying to say. And, um, yeah, it's hard to, hard to, um, understand, but, uh, again, we are moving forward and thank you for being here. Vice chair Fijikowski.

I think I had my question answered by Supervisor King, but I'm just kind of curious, how you all gonna make up for that? Because it's gonna be around a million dollars, give or take. Are you gonna spread that evenly across the budget or are you gonna pick things out?

Sure, sure. So the $1 million will be received with these revenues. They would have been expected in this previous fiscal year, so we would not be expecting them towards the budget for the 27 school year.

Okay, so... The one million that when it comes in whenever, July or whenever, plus the 2.4 of possible carryover. Is that what we're talking about? Right. That makes our 3.5. Okay. I got it. Thank you.

And I'll add just a little bit. I do want to say thank you both for being here and for being so transparent in kind of the ownership of this situation. I think that that really matters to moving to resolution. I've heard, I've talked to a lot of people in the past several days, including a lot of people out in the room, And one thing that has been asked numerous times is what happened? And I think we're still in the process of getting the answer to what happened. And then the next thing is, so once we determine what happened, we need kind of an after incident action plan on how we prevent this in the future. I think you've taken a really, really good step in contacting the Berkeley group to arrange for Craig Meadows to come in. I do think that I can speak for our board when I say that he has the trust of this board. We're familiar with him, our staff is familiar with him, and so I think that that was a really good step to bring somebody in that can help us get to the what and the how and get out on the other side of this with hopefully great relationships with each other and a whole lot of communication between staff and the elected bodies. Supervisor Biggs.

Just two other things for consideration like when you're explaining how it happened and you were talking about the grants and I think that all added up to what a million but you were really what, $4 million over, whatever. Are you going to explain where the rest of that money, what the problem is there?

Sure. I think as part of the presentation that Ms. Hill provided, there's approximately 2.4, 2.5 million

million in excess just an unappropriated revenues that would make up the difference between those excuse me I have allergies I think that they I think what she meant was could you provide a list of those other grants that make up that difference that didn't get appropriated

Where the additional 2.4, where that came from? I'm so sorry. I did not understand that question. So those are primarily in our federal grants area. And the Medicaid area and the special education grants, those are the highest additional revenues that are sitting there at the moment. And that is based on the increased student services over the year. and the school can bill Medicaid for a portion of those services, and so that's why we see, based on more services, there are more revenues that are tied to that. So that's where the majority of that additional money is at.

Okay, and the other thing, on the purchase orders, did you say that you canceled them, or how is that gonna work then, how are you gonna work that out to pay them, or how is that gonna work?

So we did close them out. So these are blanket purchase orders. It is at a set dollar amount and allows these individual departments to purchase as they need to at a certain level. And so that level, the amount is within their budget. And we start closing them out prior to, if they're not making any more purchases to a company, we go ahead and close them out. The ones that were remaining, the majority of those were blanket purchase orders. and there were no additional supplies being requested, so there are no invoices against those particular orders.

Okay, thank you.

So I think that Vice Chair Fitchkowski spoke about the funds that won't be asked for to roll over into the next year, the 2.4. Also, typically purchase order balances would roll into the next year as well, right? So there will be none of those?

That is correct.

Okay. Okay.

Okay, Supervisors, are there any more questions or anything else to add? Supervisor Grasky?

Sorry, and I think we're dancing around this, not intentionally, I think we're, but it just kind of popped into my head. In the opening of the meeting you know we talked about that we did identify some expenses that could be pushed to July to the new fiscal year. So those are still expenses incurred in the 26 25 26 school year that are going to be paid for with 26 27 funds. And so I guess in that that Do we know what the magnitude of those expenses are? Is that going to hit against next year's budget? I'm just kind of starting to...

It's just over $600,000.

Okay.

604, I think. Is that right, Angie? I think the total was $610,000.

Just for school operating, though? Yes, for school operating. Yes, ma'am.

Okay. And so that 610,000 then will be expended against next year's budget. And so we're going to potentially have to either find some, some other funds or, or manage around that, those numbers.

Yes, sir. And those are, um, those are insurance, um, um, expenses. And so they go into the self funded insurance account. Yes.

Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you.

Okay. Do we have any other questions? I want to sincerely thank both of you for being here, but I also want to make sure to specifically thank Montgomery County staff as they were closing out the end of the year. I know that this was kind of an unexpected challenge that took quite a bit of time through the weekend. I know also for Montgomery County public school staff, there was quite a bit of work through the weekend.

So I just want to- And don't forget Jen, Jen Harris.

you're correct yes and jen harris our com our public information officer has been um doing a lot of communication on behalf of the county so thank you as well um but thank you for being here is everybody ready for the vote okay all right you guys can have a seat thank you all right so we have a motion and a second madam clerk if you'll call the roll please

Mr. Kitts?

Aye.

Mr. King? Aye. Mr. Fitchikowski? Aye. Ms. Biggs? Aye. Mr. Grafsky? Aye. Ms. Caron? Aye. Chair DeMonts? Aye. Seven ayes.

Thank you. That is the end of our agenda for this evening. There is no other business before the board tonight, so this meeting is adjourned.