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I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the September meeting of the Finance Government Operations and Economic Development Committee. I am now calling the meeting to order. This room has a hearing loop. If you need hearing assistance, which are hearing aids to telecoil mode. If you need a headset, we have those available as well. Please see the clerk to request one. We have 13 items proposed for our consent agenda and they are item three contract awards during summer recess. Item four, contract contract renewal capital program, a project program management and reporting. Item 5 contract renewal, geotechnical engineering and soil sciences service. Item 6 contract renewal, on-call land surveying services. Item 7 contract renewal, site, civil and park design services. Item 8 contract renewal, traffic engineering and operation services. Item 9 contract renewal, operation, civil and park design services, item 8, contract renewal, traffic engineering and operation services, item 9, contract renewal, operation of the Loudoun County Homeless Services Center, item 10, contract renewal, off the lot, new and used vehicles through class 7, item 11, contract award for vehicles and motorcycles, item 12, award authority increase, design, build delivery of route 50 and trailhood drive around about. Item 13 proposed amendments to the codified ordinances of Loudoun County, chapter 860.06, exemption for farm animals, certain grains, agricultural products, farm machinery, farm implements and equipment. Item 14, consolidated animal, performance, annual performance and evaluation report for February, fiscal year 2324. Item 15, 24 to 25 certified developers for the rental housing acquisition and preservation are haphalone program. I move adoption of the consent agenda. Is there a second? Seconded by everybody. We'll give it to, I don't know supervisor Brisbane Any discussion on the consent agenda Seeing none I'll in favor say aye anyone oppose most carries five zero Okay information items first up is our monthly department of Economic Development Reports. Good evening everyone. Our item this week provides an update on Delus Airport while all air travel was greatly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Dulles has had a very nice comeback. They are projected to continue to uptrend through the rest of the decade. They are working on a series of ambitious infrastructure projects that are really just going to be transformative for the airports 6.99 billion capital construction program that includes the addition of a new 14-gate concourse more details in the item in your packet. The labor market appears to have shifted to a lower gear reinforcing concerns that businesses are hesitant to hire as interest rates continue to weigh on investment and the path of consumer demand remains uncertain. Employers added 142,000 jobs in August according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics that is weaker than was expected for the second straight month and the totals for June and July were raised downward. July is the most recent month for local unemployment data. The rate was 3.0 for Loudon compared to 2.7 for Virginia and 4.3 for the US. Job report released last week showed unemployment was 4.2% for the US and August down from 4.3, but otherwise the highest it's been since 2021. I wanted to go a little bit deeper inside the numbers and look at some of the disconnects in the market. In Loudoun County, newly posted open jobs totaled 30,980 in August. Active jobs currently open in the county, 16,621. In Northern Virginia, as of Friday, 100,000 active online postings in the NOVA EDA region. Top certification requirement for job listings other than a driver's license. Secret clearance required in 390 of Loudens open jobs, so pretty significant. There continues to be a lot of talk about the viability of office in the future given the high vacancy rates and the usage rates that are currently being experienced. I remain still very bullish on office at Metro in Loudon County as we take advantage of the housing market as we continue to look for opportunities and go after consolidations in those companies that are wanting to make a flight to quality and to mix use. Some people say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I came across a new survey which found 87% of companies that had been fully remote will return to the office by 2025. The report found 64% of those companies have already returned to the office. Additionally, 23% planned to implement a return to the office policy by the end of 2025. I think all of that is very good news for us. In response to the summer drought in Loudens Inclusion, the USDA primary disaster area list, the department worked with our partners and released the farmers assistance and relief measures fund or farm fund This initiative is providing $500 grants to farms who lost crop production paid for unnecessary or paid for necessary water during the shortage or otherwise struggle throughout the drought The grant aims to bridge the gap for up to 300 loud and farms until the assistance is available from the USDA later this year. The grant has been open for a week and applications have been very steady highlighting the need for this initiative and I want to thank you for your leadership in helping us get this out to the market. And finally I want you to save the date for the fall farm tour October 19 19th and 20th, this year features one of the largest number of farms participating we'd ever had. We have a lot of really cool things coming up. And if you need more details, go to loudandfarms.org. And we'll turn it over to Shavah. Thank you, John Lennon. Shavah, how are you? How are you? Continuing the theme of of commercial real estate, EDAC had a focus on educating the commission on the unique challenges for the market in this area. We convened a panel that offered different, but the complemented perspectives, including the developer with expertise in the office and retail, one in flex and one in economic development, being buddy. We used this information to educate the commission so that we can appropriately advise the county and the department on best practice and things to one take advantage of loud and unique position and the opportunity to build what the market needs in the future, which is other areas don't have the opportunity. And two, when we realize the dream he is talking about that we can appropriately support in the efforts that the county may have in commercial and office of the state. We are also in our season of recruiting. We put a call out for applicants to be on the commission. We have technically nine spots open for five of them or commissioners applying for a second term and then we've got four completely open spots We have been in the same place for the last three or four weeks. We have been in the same place for the last three or four weeks. We have been in the same place for the last three or four weeks. We have been in the same place for the last three or four weeks. We have been in the same place for the last three or four weeks. We have been in the same place for the last three or four weeks. We have been in the same place for the last three or four weeks. Each one of those candidates get a 30 minute interview with the commission. And then this Friday, we have another four day of interviews. And hopefully if we don't get any more applicants, we can get them all in by this Friday and we'll turn on their recommendations to the board for your approval. We appreciate the opportunity to have that process. We know what you need to the EDAC. But what we've recognized is that that process allows us to recommend a high quality of candidate and people that will feel the need and will not do the work that commission requires. Every year the quality of applicants gets better and stronger and this year is no different. We've got some amazing, amazing candidates. And also we learn a lot about what's missing in the county and areas that we need to focus on. One of the things that the EDAC is working on is we have a lot of interest, but we have limited opportunity. So we have the fine ways to keep these people that have self-selected their willingness to serve and gaze in the process. So that's bringing them on ad-docs, maybe having them on other meetings, but making sure that we stay connected with them because they may not be commissioners now, but they could be commissioners in the future. And they have value in a lot of different places outside of the EDAC. So when you find people that the within the serve, it's usually an idea to put them to work. That's my update for today, and I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you very much. Questions for either of these fine gentlemen. Chair Randall. Good evening, and thanks for being here. Mr. Ryder, the employment report, there's numbers this time, the federal number is very narrowly missed the mark. And it was the first time, and I've been following this very closely, that they have missed the mark. So you believe that one month of missing the mark is narrowly as it did, it's going to cause kind of a ripple, you're concerned about one this one month? Well, no, it's the second month in a row. And I think it's that combined with the fact that they really took about 800,000 jobs off the board when they revised the last year. So I don't think it gets a crisis. I just think that it's a product of the long inflation, the high interest rates, and the kind of stagnation that we've seen for. And do you think this would be assistive if when the feds meet and possibly go down by basis points? But I do think that it may go down less than we had originally anticipated because of that. So we'll see. I mean, I'm excited. Well, I think tomorrow's consumer index report will be great. I think that we're going to see another reduction in the inflation. And that should be enough to spur a fairly decent reduction. I'm betting on about 25 points. I guess points to them. We'll see how that goes. Let's talk after comparing notes. My next question is, I know that obviously I'm very supportive of all the draft relief we are doing. Do you know if that's improved and all I was under the impression that we did have a couple of significant rains? Are we still in the same drought condition we have been and before? Is that a question for somebody else possibly? No, we have had a couple of rains. Unfortunately, most of those rains because the ground was so dry. They just didn't absorb. They just ran off. And the problem is more with all of the losses that happened during the summer. Okay. Like, our farms instead of having their normal two harvests of A are only going to have one heart of A this year. So the damage is done already basically. All right. All right. Thank you. So the damage is done already basically. All right. Thank you. Thank you for everything you're doing. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Other questions? Seeing none. Thank you both for being here tonight. All right. Our second item is chapters 872 and 873 of the codified ordinance of Loudon County, reviewing of qualified income limits for real estate and personal property. Tax relief for the elderly and disabled, the commissioner works, welcome. Good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. I don't care too much for money money, can't buy me love. Oh boy, it's going to be a beable thing. Well, I love the be boy, it's going to be a deal tonight. Well, I love the deal, so it's okay. Well, buddy started it off. He started us off, right? So, what can I tell you? I've got Rob Drake here with me tonight. He's the deputy responsible for the tax relief program that we're talking about in the item. Board made an amendment to the ordinance back in 2021, asking us to bring information to them regarding changes in income assessed values and the CPI over time, in order to look at potentially adjusting the income and limits for qualifying for the tax relief program for the elderly and disabled. One of the items that's one of the issues that's contained in the item is relative to tax relief for personal property as well. We provided some information in there because it has not been changed in some time. The CPI over the period that we're having a discussion about from 2021 to 2024, changed by 13.4%. Assessments over that time, county wide, for real property, 1 up 32% overall, for the properties that are currently participating in the program, they went up 26%. So the values of those properties don't represent the population of properties in the county overall. The cost of the program for FY25 for real property tax relief is $9.9 million. And in Tax Year 2023, which is the last full year of relief for vehicles, it was about $205,000. If you were to adjust the real property qualifying income limits by the CPI for the range that's included on page 2. That bond with the range would go up to 55,000 from 49,000. And the top of the range would go up to 87,000, 318, about $10,000 if you were to make a change to that. One of the things that I always try to discuss with the board when their contemplating changes to the program is, unfortunately, there's no way to predict what the physical impact of those changes might be, well, no after the first year, who has made qualifications, not the qualifications. Obviously, there's no place that we can look to where all of the various qualifications intersect to come up with that number. Trying to think, is there anything else I feel needs to be added to it? If you were interested in making a change, we would bring to you an ordinance amendment with those income limits noted in the ordinance. And I'm Rob and I are happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you, Commissioner. So the last change was implemented in 2021. Correct. And so when I'm looking to try to figure out what that cost I would be looking at the difference between 2020 and 2021. It would tell you what that was for that particular year and the variation in the real property that's owned. So the assessed value of those properties as well. Right. The value is going to change year over year as well. Yeah. the value is going to change year over year as well. Yeah, but we have some people that didn't meet the qualifications for that particular year that were kicked out because they didn't fit into one of those ranges. I was just trying to figure out if there was any way to at least look at past history when we were trying to figure out if we make a change. We let now 13.4 is probably a bigger CPI jumped and we were adjusting for last time. I will assume. Probably a lot. Yes. So, that would capture a greater number of people out there probably. It could. Like I said, there's no way to predict. We don't have net worth information publicly available. And then would you still characterize this program as among the more generous in the Commonwealth? It is. Can you elaborate any more? Rob, you've got some information on what those qualifying limits for other localities might be. We didn't include a chart in here because it's a huge chart that talks about the limits for a variety of localities that we look at every year. So to get back to your previous comment, the last CPI adjustment was about 6.5% what we did in 2021. For example, if we take into consideration Falkier County, there are for 100% full exemption Maximum income is 72,000. Maximum net worth is 440,000. Prince William County, maximum income for the 100% full exemption Is a little over 76,000. Maximum net worth is 340,000. And then from there, there's other localities that go down quite a bit. So county, for example, would be 58,000 or max income that worth 486,000. We're at 77,440. Correct. That's now. So yeah, it might be helpful just to provide the board. At least, you know, we kind of use our comparators in order of Virginia for a lot of things. So it might be helpful just to have that. And do you know if any of them adjust for CPI? I do not believe that they do, but we can research that. Okay. So, Mr. Briscoll. Thank you. There were some holes in this item for me that maybe we can fill. So, we're not talking about the personal property tax, even though we haven't looked at that since 1998. That's included, and that's where right now we're talking about the real property tax relief. Okay. So, how did you, right now we're talking about the real property. Right. Relief. Okay. So how did you, how do we factor in the fact that the real property tax rate has been dropped by 17 cents since 2020? So some numbers that we were talking about last year indicated that, you know, the values of homes have gone up about 61%, and I can't remember what the start date was on that, but they've gone up 61%, but the tax bill that goes home to people has only gone up something like 23%. So with that, I guess, have we factored in number one the fact that we've dropped the tax rate and yeah I guess that's my biggest question. It shows in the foregone revenue it's reflected in that based on the qualifying properties because the foregone revenue is a reflection of the assessed value of the property and the tax rate. I don't know if that answers your question. Well, it doesn't really because I'm talking about from the owner's perspective have, I mean, I know we say the CPI, that's a consumer price index, right? That's a national index, correct? It's a consumer price index, right? That's a national index, correct? It's a state. It's a Washington DC. Okay, so the Washington DC CPI has gone up. So the assumption is that there's an increased burden on taxpayers. But in Loudon County we've dropped our tax rate 17 cents. So is that factored into our calculations? In other words, we're assuming, I feel like we're assuming that just because the regional CPI has gone up, that there was nothing that mitigated that from our end. Does that make sense? I can understand what you're saying. Yeah. We can provide an information item to the board, if that's where the board decides they wish to go. Information relative to the tax burden versus the assessed values, which is what the ordinance asked us to do. But yeah, I'm happy to do that. Okay, okay. I just don't feel like I've got the full picture. And then at the existing income brackets, how many people have received assistance in each of the income brackets? Like how many people are we talking about here? It's wonderful. I know it's a $9 million loss that were, that's the real loss from last year. So you said we can't project what the loss would be in the coming year. But how many people are using this program? For real property, it's around 2000. It's been fairly static for a number of years. About 2000 people. Okay. Parsles. Okay. And the assumption is that they are on a fixed income. Is that our assumption? We're not making that assumption. We are looking at household income on an annual basis. Okay. So they could, it could be a fixed income, could be a variable income, which is why we ask them for information each year. Plus your net worth can change at the end of the year based on value of stocks that you may own or the value of additional real estate or your car as an example. Okay. So somebody has to apply for this every year. Correct. And has to be evaluated every year whether they're going to get relief. Yes. And then, sorry, Chair, I just have one more question. I don't mean to hog all the time. But in each of these brackets, is it the same percentage of tax release relief you get in each of those brackets? Or is it sort of gradiated for lack of a better word? So if you're at 49,000 in that bracket, are you getting, say, a 60% tax release, whereas if really, whereas if in your 77,000, you're getting 40%, like does it move in that way? When the board may changes in 2021, they also added brackets to the program for various relief based on income ranges. Okay, okay, so it does change based. It does. Okay, okay, all right does change. Okay, okay. Yes. Okay, all right. I think that's all I have. Thank you. So, perhaps, Rumps that. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Wards, first thank you for being here. When would you need the board to take action to direct your office to change the levels? We would have to adopt an ordinance by the end of the calendar year. So by the end of December. All right. Because you've got your first time real property tax relief applications or do December 31st? Yes. All right. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. You're welcome. All right. Sue Resetterer is joining us. I know I was interested in this. Oh, sorry. Sorry, Mr. Saints. I came in with the light. Sorry. Do you have the numbers? If you don't know what you can give it to us later on? How many folks are in this program at say net? 80,000 70,000 In that range Account by the income ranges. Yeah Yeah, it's time I don't have that information. We haven't broken it out by the brackets, but it's definitely something that we can go back and get. Yeah, you can break it. Sure. But the brackets that we greatly appreciate just so we can see that the, not, it's not personal, sorry, it's by property or household. It's household income. Household income. Correct. Okay. Yeah, and you said earlier to this person's question, you said around about 2000, was that households persons or parcels? Parsels. So they're property. Yes. Okay, so not actual individuals. Correct. Okay, yeah, if they can do the breakdown by the net worth brackets, they'll be greatly appreciated. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay, now it's a bit of a buzzer, Turner. I thank Mr. Chairman. This one, I really had to think through this. So follow me through, please if you would, Mr. Worson, and tell me if I'm off track here. We established a net worth threshold for eligibility in the program, for the elderly and disabled to be exempt from real property tax and person property tax. So we use the threshold that we established whenever we established the program as an on-off switch. If you are above this on-off switch, then you're not eligible for the program, if you're below what you are eligible for the program as an on-off switch. If you are above this on-off switch, then you're not eligible for the program, as you're below it, you are eligible for the program. There is a tendency, at least it was for me, to think through, all right, if we tie it to CPI, then we are adjusting the amount of savings, the amount of law to the individual, the amount of loss to the county, but really we're just using the CPI to move that threshold. And if we think about, if we are zeroing out CPI, if we use CPI, then by definition, that threshold is constant over the range of however many years if we automatically adjust it for CPI. We're not actually, yes, we're based on the economic bond expanding the population. That's right, yeah, that's right. So the key thing was when you said it's roughly 2,000 people and it's been holding very static, that at least circumstantially suggests that in fact, that CPI adjustment is holding that threshold fairly steady. Now, the amount of savings for the individuals is probably going to vary tremendously based on property values, the amount of loss to the county is going to tremendously because of loss of values. But the threshold on-off switch, whether or not you can participate in that in program is going to hold constant if we zero it out based on CPI year in and year out. Okay, so then my question is this, is there a state code that prevents us from allowing this threshold to adjust by CPI automatically every year? You could do that in your local ordinance. So we can change the local ordinance to say eligibility for this program will change annually based on CPI. Yes. That's only change we're gonna make. Yes. That's the only change we're going to make. So if that's correct, then we should hold relatively constant of the number of people participating in this program. We might lose more money, we might make more money, or less money. But the number of eligible applicants should hold roughly steady if we do that on matter. Well, as the demographic changes, our population gets lower and the county grows, I would anticipate those numbers might change. You could eliminate the income and net worth criteria entirely and say if you're 65 or disabled, you can get a $500 tax discount or you can be 100% exempt. You have the authority to do that. Do you know what the basis was that we linked the participation threshold to CPI in the first place was? I think the board was concerned that it hadn't been reviewed in some time and hadn't been adjusted. OK. OK. Why? OK. Thank you very much. You're welcome. I have one other question which is, so I think the only concern I have with using CPI is that that is not reality for what income increases would be across the county. So I don't anticipate that you would have this, Mr. Reiser who is just here might have, what I know we've had this number before. What was the average income increase for a loud and resident over the last four years? I know, I'm not asking you to answer me on the spot. Right. I know the county has this number. We look it up on my, I can Google, no, I'm just giving. But when you come back, I think we do want you to probably come back to work on this. Sure. probably come back to work on this. Let's get that number because I don't support the automatic anyway because I feel like we need flexibility in case we have a really bad year. But the other sort of, I don't know what to call it, a flaw. But the other knit I have with that assumption is that CPI is the standard by which we should be judging when in reality if everyone else's income didn't go up by 13.4% over the last four years, then why should we raise this go up by 13.4% over the last four years, then why should we raise this income threshold by 13.4%? We should peg it to what the actual, you know, because as I always point out with this program, everyone else who's not eligible is subsidizing this. So this $10 million is not free. It's $10 million that other people are paying through their taxes to this. So I'm always sensitive about being fair in terms of how we kind of kind of parse that out. So with that being said, there's no motion here, but, or is there? No, there's not. But I think there is interest in having a discussion about adjusting this rate upward to account for some of the inflation at least. I don't know for me exactly what that number is yet. And again, I know several terms of terms that are not where I am. But I think is there a consensus at least to have you come back and produce an item that gives us some of those options? Absolutely. Would you like to come back to finance? Yeah, that was going to be my question, too. I think so, yeah. Mr. Chairman, for me, these moments are hard because I'm always aware that we have four colleagues who are not on finance, who might, I mean, Mr. Turner is here, not on finance. And this is an issue that I don't know that everyone wouldn't want to speak to. I actually, Mr. Chairman, we're either seated on an extra agenda, then just finance. Because I just otherwise, because out of finance it would be forwarded to a meeting and then we have to kind of explain it all over again anyway. Because all we would do is to- Yeah, I don't have a staff of any preference or- Do you have an issue with that? No, you can forward it with no recommendation to the full board and it can be discussed again. Yeah, that would be mine. That would be mine. All right, so I'll move that the Commissioner of Revenue returned to the full board supervisors supervisors with options to increase the income and revenue thresholds. And that would for the elderly tax relief program. And then I think, well, let me stop that. That could be the motion. Can we can we can we look at the first The second the first meeting in October is that too late? No, no, okay. I was gonna ask us too fast for all the stuff Too fast. Go ahead Aaron. Oh, he's got a ton of people they can help him out right? Okay, so mr. Chair this will this will come forward to the full board as an action item then I Think it could be it and well I Mean I don't know that it matters because I think I think The board can still make a motion I think the issue is if you call it an action item then and Mr. Words We'll be presenting information to the board. What the board does with that information then could be action. So the challenge we have with that is motions and the drafting of motions. And so if it comes as an information item, our preference would be for the board to give us guidance and then we come back with an action item. That's fine. So let's have this go as an information item first. On the fly. Yeah. Okay. So then this could be an information item to the full board. And then it could be placed on a subsequent board agenda with motions for action. If that's the preference. Mr. Chairman, that's fine. Mr. Warts, do you have any time frame you need to work with in for this item? No. with motions for action if that's the preference. Mr. Chairman, that's fine. Mr. Warts, do you have any time frame you need to work with in for this item? No, we should be able to make it to the first meeting. Okay, and then after that, if it goes to an action item, like that would be fine. Should be able to meet it by the end. Okay, thank you. about the personal property tax relief on vehicles. Those limits have been substantially lower for some time. It's possible that the board could choose to use the same limits for both programs. That would definitely ease administration. It would cost more money. Right now, it's about $205,000 in Forgon revenue last calendar year with an alternative tax rate that you set at 2, 10, I believe, from- So, for 50- I guess my comment on that would be we're working on a proposal for personal property tax rate as it is. I believe that that could supersede the need for this program completely, and we could potentially just abolish it if we're going in the direction that I think we might be going. And I can explain more when we get there, but, I don't know. We may be able to hit vehicles that are below a certain threshold for relief. And I would argue if you have a $60,000 vehicle, then you don't need this program in the first place. So, but if we are able to provide significant relief for those with less valuable vehicles, I think we probably don't even need this program. So I wouldn't change it at the moment. I would wait and see. I don't know Aaron or Tim, when is that coming to us? So the discussion on personal property I believe will be the October Finance Committee. So the next finance meeting. And I think, I don't know, we can talk offline where we are on that whole discussion we were having but If we want on that direction, I don't even think you need part Okay, I just want to bring it up if the board wants to have a discussion about those what those limits are That it might make sense to make them the same and sure it sure would ease administration. Got it. And this is a pro, the population that we're communicating, this program too, is elderly and we're disabled. So it's difficult to communicate. Well, it's personal property, not real. And those types of things. So yeah. Just thought. Yep. OK. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else? All right. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else? All right, thank you Moving on Item 16 nonprofit organizations request for property tax exemption by designation annually my favorit I knew you're gonna say that's Mr. Chairman. I'll give you a rundown of the situation here we had eight applicants this year. By the April 1 deadline, two I was able to grant an exemption by classification automatically. Six applications are being forwarded to the committee for finance, the finance committee for consideration, I'm sorry. Attachment one shows a summary, it's an overview summary of the applications, the organizations, and what the hypothetical foregone revenue would have been if they had been granted an exemption in 23 and 24 total overall would be about 90,000 dollars for this calendar year had these organizations that made application been granted that exemptions this year on the personal and real property that they were interested in getting an exemption on. These six organizations are B-Foundation Inc., Cornerstone's Inc., Northern Virginia Family Service, Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine, Willisford Conservancy, and Women Giving Back. A couple of those are repeat organizations that you may have seen in the past that we were not granted the exemption when they made application before. However, they are coming back again. And a couple of them also received grant funding, application before, however they are coming back again. And a couple of them also received grant funding, which is for nonprofits, which is noted on that attachment one. The B-Desh Foundation, Northern Virginia Family Service, and women giving back all received some form of nonprofit grant funding. One thing I'll bring to your attention as the discussion has had every year about how much this program costs. I was looking at the two organizations that comprised the majority of the exempt property in the county. 88% of all the revenue foregone is for two organizations that we have here in the county. One is HH000 while the other two organizations comprise $4.5 million. And I'm not sure if you've ever looked at that before I know a lot of discussion is had about the process and what it's costing the county and should we have a procedure but if you look at the attachment number four and you really look at some of those numbers I think you'll get an appreciation for the the help that it does provide some of these organizations. Thank you. Are you implying that the help is actually relatively minimal? I believe that the board can make that determination on its own. Yeah. I mean, so you said 570,000 over how many organizations? 47. So that's an average of about 12,000 per. Yeah, which is, we go through a lot of effort on this. We do. For a very small pay. That's correct. So annually we talk about, I talk about how we shouldn't do this and how we should just move it into the nonprofit grant program completely, except for maybe the existing organizations. So that's still where I am. into the nonprofit grant program completely, except for maybe the existing organization. So that's still where I am, but others usually wanna do it. I know we've had some of these discussions in the past about a few of these organizations, Willisford being one, probably would still argue that it's not, the grounds are not open to the public at all times. So that, to me, is a tough one. And then sometimes we have discussions about how much these organizations sort of contribute specifically to Loudon. Yes. Versus our just general trade associations or other associations that just happen to be here. And so, aside from my macro belief, I do think that we should be very careful on which ones be grant exemptions to make sure that there's a community, a true community benefit to these organizations. Chair random. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and you are very consistent with your—and honestly, I don't know if I have an issue with some of these moving toward the grant program for various reasons. I would agree with you on Willessort. I think if it's not open to the public, and I'm not sure I would believe that it's an exemption. And to your other point, Cornerstone is actually headquartered in Reston. And so numbers of how many people are being served in Loudoun County would be very helpful for me. It's hard for me because I know these nonprofits so well. I mean, I know almost, I walked in, almost every one of these nonprofits. And so I know the good work they do. But I still want to be careful. And so I do have some questions about Willis Fert and Cornerstone. Mr. Chairman, if I may ask Mr. Sainz a question, if that would be okay through the chair. Mr. Sainz, and Mr. Bricksman, you might know this too. The Bedech Foundation, they were at the one location and that did not work. It was my understanding that then they moved their location to Fairfax County also, but in their paperwork it says they're in Sterling. Did they just return their Sterling? Do we know about the Bedech Foundation? Did they just return their Sterling? This is, well, this is my first time hearing about them, so I'm- I don't know. Don't know. Okay. Well, Ms. Bricks, I thought you all, because we did a whole ribbon cutting for this organization. And they were actually located over. You know, remember we did the ribbon cutting, they were over by Bain Tree at that property over there. And then that didn't work out and they moved and it was my incentive They moved the fair facts and so again. I just want to make sure I Know who who's being served with these organizations, so Miss I don't know I don't know about cornerstone mr. Words do you have any information on numbers for cornerstone? Breaking, work down numbers on how many people are served in Loud and County? Sure, I handle the application that indicates that Loud and Residents, prize 40% of those served and Fairfax County residents comprise, comprise 40, 60%. Yeah, that for me would be, that for me would, okay. That for me makes me, so I can give my friend Jeff and Kay a call. That'd be quite honest. Thank you. Yes, Mr. Sains. Thank you. Chair, are you looking for a motion today or just? What's our timeframe here? It's by the end of the calendar year as well. So we don't need to do a motion today. Okay. We could ask questions and have them come back, which is usually what we end up doing. Yeah. Maybe I'll get like motivated in the next month to write up some alternative to this. No, we don't need our turn. It's not up here, I'm probably discussing organizations. No, you have to, Madam Chair's question. I'm not super familiar with B-dash. I just double-check the address and location familiar with there's one organization that is in this building that I've visited a few times, but I'm not 100% sure if it's the same organization that I need to do my do some more digging into B-. I'll be honest with you, I'm not prepared to do anything for Conor Stone. I'm definitely interested in possibly something for Northern Virginia Family Services. And women giving back, I would need more information and do some more homework on the society of imaging Informatics and medicine will is furred if somebody can correct me from wrong I believe that's just completely but what they're doing from my understanding is only for those within the H.A. of Willisford So if that is correct and I'm definitely not moving for would not be recommending for bill is further move forward At this time, so you know if we can bring this back great if not then I'm prepared at least make one motion to for women's giving back Definitely for for tonight. So thanks chairman of a may the B-Desh foundation Northern Virginia family service and women giving back all received county funding through the nonprofit grant funding programs. So you all have already considered the criteria for those organizations. I just want to bring that to your attention. And this is your benefit. But that's when they were here and then they moved. That's what that's why I'm having a concern. That's why that's why we can do some additional research. Oh, I can't do so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm happy concern. That's why we can do some additional research. Oh, I can too. So yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm happy to do that. Yeah. OK. So Rosa Brisbane. Thank you. So I am uncomfortable with B-Desh. I am also uncomfortable with cornerstones. Cornerstones is actually in Reston, right? So, but so how could we give them a tax abatement if they don't have property here? They must have something. Cornerstones has personal property here in the county. They do have a location in Laudm. Okay, do you know where? It's 22560 Glen Drive in Sterling. Okay. Let me back up a second. Which are the ones that we denied last year? I think the informatics we denied last year. That's correct. Any others? Willis furtis been denied in the past. Actually it's not denied they weren't forward. They weren't forward. Technically. Right. Okay. Okay. There are a couple other conservancies on here, however, on the list in attachment for. And actually this list is, there are some concerns for me on a number of these. But I can see why they might come back because we have old dominion land conservancy, we have archeology conservancy. So if we've done it before, I can understand why they would want us to do it again. But I also have a real issue with tax abatements or anything like that. Public funds for these sorts of organizations that there's not public access. Right. And so that would be my concern. Do we have the authority to require public access if we give a tax abatement? I do not believe that you could do that, but I believe that's probably a conversation with the county attorney's position. Yeah, okay, all right. You could rescind a tax exemption for an organization that's been granted it in the past by amending our local ordinance. Okay, that's kind of what I was getting at actually. But I'm happy for this to come back. I'm not ready to make a decision tonight. Thank you. Okay. Supervisor Amsterdam. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So cornerstones, schedule low of their Form 990 is extensive. They get into a lot of description but it does not appear to be jurisdiction specific. So they will say that they have said that they are successful in preventing evictions. But I can't find any information about how many evictions if any in Loudoun County they were successful in preventing. Do you all, are you likely even to get that information from what they submit? We can make an inquiry and include that in the item that goes to the board. Okay. Would you like? That would be helpful. I know they do have a connection to an affordable housing development in Leesburg. I just don't. So their name has never come up in conversations I have had, for example, with the new Virginia majority, which also tries to lobby the board to help prevent evictions. And so if cornerstone is an effective entity in preventing evictions, I personally would like to connect them with other entities that also attempt to do the same thing and see if they could coordinate and not be duplicative. But I just don't have a sense of whether they've had any success in Loudon County in preventing evictions. So if you could do me the big favor of inquiring that would be great. Be happy to. Thank you. Okay. So the conversation shall continue. Come back to October meeting and we can forward our recommendations at that talk. You would like me to come back to finance? Yes. Okay. Yes. Definitely. Looking forward to it. Oh, me too. Yes, okay Yes Definitely Looking forward to it. Oh me too. I'll get another Beatles lyrics. Yeah, some more Beatles lyrics for you Yeah, I'll think it's something catchy We can mix it up to yes, okay Thank you. I assume that the dinner is not here yet It's arriving right now. Amanda's setting it up. So do you all want to break for dinner now? Or do you want to do the next item and then break for dinner? Well, that's, I mean, either way we're going to break for dinner. It doesn't really matter because it's going to take the same amount of time. So we can do the next item then and then we'll break for there. Is that, is that good? All right. We'll do the next item. No, it's not. 16, 16 of the he doesn't care. That's awesome. Okay. So, this is the ARPA update. I think much anticipated child care needs assessment update and recommendations. All right. And even Chair Luterno and Chairman Gordres. What are you doing? So yes, we are here to respond to a board and direction to conduct a child care needs assessment to go on our community input to allocate $1 million. Joining me is Dr. Megan Cox from the Director Department of Finance and Procurement and then virtually we have Ms. Andrew Walters from Public Consulting Group who will provide a presentation on the study. Before we go into that presentation, I just want to make one item of clarification in the board item on page 8. The amount for the child reduction fee grant program is shown at 714,500. That amount should be 713,500. So just want to make that item. And it appears we are sharing our screen. We do have a presentation. But I'm not sure why it is not showing up. There it goes. All right. So with your permission weters, the coordinator with the public consulting group, who is leading the effort for the Child Care Needs Assessment as well as Child Care Incentives program that we are working on for the ARPA funding. So just a little bit of background, we did have to reissue the RFP. We tried to issue the RFP for child care needs assessment back in 2023. Excuse me, 2022 did not receive any bidders, so we reissued in 2023 and were found a very qualified public consulting group. And so their scope is really to identify the most significant challenges for families. That families are facing in regard to access and paying for childcare services. We also wanted to make sure that we had the most significant challenges for childcare providers as well so that it has both sides of the spectrum when looking at affordable and high quality care also in the scope of work for the public consulting group was identifying gaps in local coordination and services among early care and education providers and then some recommendations which we will be discussing later on and then we will also have staff recommendations. With that I will turn it supposed to be talking. There we go. Hi. Are you able to hear me? Yes. Oh perfect. Okay. Thank you. Good evening. and thank you for having us today to share the results of the child care needs assessment. Megan already went over the scope of work and what the intention was and the objectives for us. And so I'm unable to see the screen, but where I'm starting here is on the National Child Care Landscape. I just want to make sure that we're seeing the same presentation piece. So I think, I think it's, are we supposed to be seeing though the screen instead of your face? I believe so. Correct. Hello, everyone. Even though we like seeing your face very much, I think we're supposed to be seeing this. I think we're supposed to be seeing this. Okay, so can you, can we still hear you while we're looking at the screen though? Are you able to hear me? We can hear you but we're back to seeing you. So give us a second. I think there has to be a just one made on the computer that's driving here so that you can talk and we can see the screen at the same time. Are you able to hear me? Yes. Okay, it may be the video stream, so I will turn off the video until we get to the question portion. So we're starting here with the National Child Care Landscape. And so as part of this assessment, PCG conducted a national landscape analysis. And what we found is that families on average nationally are spending approximately 8 to 19% of their household income on childcare. And so the ideal amount in terms of a benchmark for affordability is 7%. So we see that even at the lowest end of that, families are paying a greater amount of than that 7%. So since the 90s until present, child care costs have increased about 263%, which is twice the rate of inflation, and low income families actually pay a disproportionate amount for their child care with it representing 35% of their annual income. With respect to the ability over half of Americans live in child care deserts and childcare deserts. There are a travel of definitions but the common consensus is that it's a census track with more than 50 children under the age of five that contains either no childcare providers or few options and that there are more than three times as many children as licensed child care slots in the area. Regarding quality about 10% of programs in the U.S. are considered high quality, and they're varying metrics for determining what quality is. That may be a quality rating and improvement system implemented by the state similar to VQV5. It may be national accreditation through NAEYC or some other proxy for quality. We also found that parents are less focused on quality and for concerned about affordability and convenience. We then looked at the Virginia land stage and this slide describes the cost related to infant care and on average it cost nearly 15,000 per year for families to have childcare for their infants. Representing 13% median income for a couple and 47% for a single parent. And although almost 157,000 infants and toddlers were eligible for a publicly funded care, as of last year, more than 90% of them lack the access. So as I mentioned, and I'm sure most of you know about the junior quality birth to five systems, the QV5, which measures quality for publicly funded programs who are serving children both to five. When the RFP was issued only 71 providers in the county who accept subsidy of the 71 providers, who accept subsidy only 23 were enrolled in the B2B5 practice year. That number has since increased. Next slide. So, another component of the needs assessment was a provider survey. And the provider survey was sent to 384 providers, and there were 100 respondents. And the presentation will just give a high level of some of the categories contained within the survey. So looking at enrollment and capacity, and providers reported that 99% of families, either they serve, live within the county. They share that their marketing efforts have not led to full enrollment. And that was, you know, well over half. And marketing efforts may look like social media marketing, posting in local newspapers, and other avenues to get the word out about the availability of child care. The median number of children served for infants is four, toddler, a toddler age group is 10 and 3K is 30. So we asked providers about staffing and their staffing patterns. What we have seen nationally is that there is a lot of turnover in programs and staffing shortages and the survey data is consistent with that. So 71% of providers share that they're experiencing staff and staff recruitment and retention challenges. About 70% experience turnover within the last year and 60% set compensation is the primary challenge that they faced when recruiting. Another, oh, yeah, we can advance. So then another piece that we looked at was funding and the true cost of care. And the true cost of care varies slightly from just like a market rate analysis. It looks at the cost of implementing quality programming and the whole cost of doing so. So providers were asked if the payments that they received from public funds cover true cost and nearly half said that it doesn't. We also asked providers about quality implementation. 36% were aware of the QB5. About a quarter were aware of recognized B5, which is the financial incentive to support staff retention. 19 of the providers did participate in the pilot, and of those participants, they said that the most helpful resource was actually incentives, so financial incentives, or program incentives, all by coaching. The primary challenges impacting a provider's ability to provide high quality care for the top three. As I talked about previously, the staffing shortages, they also noted low qualifications of job applicant and then just the overall cost of providing high quality services. We also conducted provider focus groups and one of the limitations of the study is the number of participants in focus groups, both for providers and for families. And so what we did for the provider focus groups is we sent out questionnaires and we were able to get responses and feedback there. So they share that affordability is the most important factor to families. That is consistent with what we saw with the national landscape analysis. They also share that childcare subsidy financial eligibility requirements often result in the exclusion of middle income families because of the thresholds for eligibility or income requirements. And then they also let us know that they want to achieve high quality, but that they lack the financial support to do so. So then moving on to the family survey. The family survey we received, I believe, and just want to make sure I have this right number here. 553 families responded to the survey. And so the survey was sent, and we asked families with children ages birth to five to respond. And we segmented the data here by Eastern and Western Loutin. And just looking at the marital status, there are more married couples in Western Loutin and just looking at the marital status. They're more married couples in Western Loutin. They're more families working full time in Western Loutin County as well. In terms of the makeup for the total number of respondents 67% have children 0 to 2 so that would be in that infant range that we talked about and then the lack of services there. 60% have children three to five years old and then broken down 61% in Eastern Mountain, have children enrolled in child care and then 65 in Western Mountain County, have children enrolled in child care. So for affordability, respondents, 45% of respondents in eastern loud and need assistance for assistance paying for child care, and as compared to 39% in western loud and across the county, about 71% are not familiar with the childcare subsidy and 92% have not been served by the subsidy at the time of the survey. So regarding accessibility and the hours that families prefer. It trends toward the typical hours, working hours of 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. so 71% prefer that time slot. There is a need though for drop in care or part time care at 16%. With respect to looking for child care and the difficulty associated with half, 61% that it's important. 32 are unsure if it's important and that might be around messaging about what quality means and aspects of quality and the benefits of quality, but 32% are unsure. And then even though families are, you know, they find that quality is important or it's important to them, just 14% are familiar with the current VQB5 system. So we also conducted a key informant interviews at three key informant interviews. And the main findings from that is that staff recruitment and retention challenges are really impeding high quality programming and the implementation of it. Wage increases to support staff retention may result in eligibility for government benefits. The QB5 may be too complicated to gain community buy-in. And also the number of families receiving subsidy doubled over the pandemic, and that is largely due to an influx of funding to support that during that period. And then most subsidy denials are a result of incomplete application, suggesting that technical assistance may be beneficial to family. And then lastly, we looked at different states, so we conducted a pair of state analysis looking at states that had recent changes to their quality rating and improvement system. One to see what the model looked like. But then also what incentives that they offered to increase adoption of the model. And so we looked at Washington DC capital quality model. And they offer educational materials and equipment vouchers. So participants can receive up to $250 educational materials and equipment vouchers over the course of their participation. In Arkansas, at the Better Beginnings program, they offer achievement bonuses for attainment of a rating between two and five. Their quality rating system ranges from one to five, so you have to at least be above the minimal threshold. And those bonuses range from $800 to $16,000. And that's contingent upon the number of children served in other factors. And then lastly, we looked at Michigan great start to quality and the incentives that they provide to their participants is really around professional development stipends, specifically for participating in the teach program in higher ed activities, but as funding becomes available, they do offer incentive like one time incentive. And so based on the childcare needs assessment stack, actually have two recommendations for the committee. The first is to allocate $286,000, $500 for childcare provider incentives to increase the quality of their programs or use for staff retention. Essentially this is an offering that can help support regardless of participation in VQB5 can support providers in increasing the number of materials or the providing staff with bonuses, et cetera. The second recommendation is to allocate the remaining funds which should be 713 500 to expand the Child Care Fear Reduction Grant Program in the following ways. First is to open the program up a bit more. One of the findings from the study is also bearing out in the program according to the administrators, which is the funds that are available may not be marketed as well as they could. So it could be that we are not reaching enough families in their languages and in their space where they need to, you know, be making decisions about their children's childcare. We also are going to be recommending that funding for part of this would be to provide a market rate adjustment for providers who accept subsidy. So subsidy with the Child Care Development Fund on an annual basis or biennial basis does not calculate to the actual cost of childcare. It is a percentage of the total true cost of childcare. So we would recommend that there is some adjustment for that 50% for families who or for childcare providers who have larger proportions of children who or families who receive subsidy payments. And then the last is for a consultant to support the evaluation of the program, to identify its outcomes and successes, to ensure that the ARPA funds were used appropriately, and we have some outcomes to report to the federal government. And with that, we'll take questions. Okay, let's do a round of questions. I guess I'll start. So one thing that was really interesting to me was that there seems to be a disconnect because we had providers reporting that they were having trouble feeling slots and then we had families reporting that there was a problem with availability of slots. So is there any kind of creative thinking we can do about how to better kind of marry these two disparate outcomes together. Yeah, I think there are several examples that we can pull from other states as well as looking at marketing more globally. We do not just in child care in general, there's not a unified effort for a program or group of programs to market in the right areas. So for instance, social media or Google ad buys, things that could actually increase the number of viewers. Often it is one organization or company trying to market their services rather than something that pulls everything to you. Have we ever thought about having any kind of clearing house or I mean it's tricky for us but. Yes you can find providers on the Loudoun County website. Okay. However very few families reported actually accessing that site. Well they may not know that we even have that. Exactly. Because that might be we even have that. Exactly. That might be something we can do. Exactly. Yes. All right, one more question because I'm sure others have many. We recently heard from a provider who really had concerns about the level of state subsidy that was provided, particularly for students that have disabilities. And I don't know, is there anything that we would do to help bridge that gap? They were saying like the delta between what it costs and what the state is providing means they're losing money on those students. Yes, that's a typical trend nationally is that the balance for subsidy is you either serve more families and they get less funding or you provide the adequate funding and serve less families. So what staff are recommending is that market rate adjustment so that if a family is receiving subsidy there can still be that makeup up to the 50% for the fee reduction. So that will take some of the burden off the family. I can look up the subsidy rate percentage for you and give that to you, but it is below 50% in the area. All right, so we have the risk. Thank you. And thank you very much for the very thorough report. I really appreciate it. And yeah, I've been waiting for it anxiously. So, Supervisor LaTerno identified exactly the kind of hole that I also identified here. For example, we do have the YMCA childcare facility in my district and I'm hearing that they don't have enough kids. They were maybe gonna go out of business a little while ago, but then we also have clear childcare deserts in the county and people not able to access childcare. I think that cost of course is the biggest issue, I'm sure. One thing I, and I know how difficult it is to get families to talk about this issue because I did attend a commission on Women and Girls session at the Cascades Library a couple of years ago. And not many people showed up. Well, they didn't show up because they're on the treadmill. They don't have time to come talk to us about this, especially not come to the light. We did get some good information from the couple people who showed up. But because I'm very interested in learning, who is relying on their family members, their parents, and those sorts of things. And it's just so difficult to get to that place. But this is a start. It's absolutely a start. And I can see this growing, and we'll learn more. One of my questions is about the previous ARPA funds, because I thought we used, I think it was about $250,000 to train up our providers to meet the state standards, but I feel like this report shows that we have providers who are not up to the state standards yet. And part of my question is do you have to be at that level to receive subsidies from us and or the state? That's a great question. So I would defer to family services for the comprehensive response to that question, but in terms of the VQB-5 program, the participation and actual receipt of incentives can be given once they enroll in the program. The 250,000 that you're referencing is actually related to publicly funded programs. So now we're looking at public and privately funded programs. So, QB5 is required for any publicly funded program. Right now it's not for private funded programs. I see. I see. Okay. And the second part of that question was if the private programs are not VQB5, then they cannot get, if they don't certify they can't get the state subsidies. That's correct. That is incorrect. That's incorrect. Okay. So they do not have to, they can enroll in subsidy as long as they plan to or are enrolling in VQB5. They do have to participate in VQB5 to receive subsidy payments. Wait, isn't that what I said? You have to be enrolled but you don't have to be certified. So there's a certification process that requires three levels for VQB5. Okay, so you have to enroll to the B. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. I got you. So you can receive the subsidy without having a rating yet. How many families participated in our fee reduction? I think we've put about a million dollars into the fee reduction program. Have we used all that money and how many families did we help? So at this point we have expended expanded about I would have to go back and check about 15% so about 150,000 which is the need for marketing. The program is slow going. Wow okay that's shocking. Wow okay. So one of the ideas I started to think about as I was reading through this is, and I think you guys discussed in here perhaps a staff resource. I'm wondering if we don't need somebody, and I don't know where they would sit, maybe department of family services, that is exclusively, I wanna say childcare is our, but that's not really the right term for it. But somebody who is basically the person in the county focused on this, focused on making sure people have the information they need, focused on making sure that we're getting to the communities that need the assistance, and focused on making sure that we get to the businesses that need the services. Because I think that is perhaps the biggest gap that we're identifying here aside from the, we know, like we knew before we did the study, right, that families are child care cost burdened. I'm glad that we now have the data and the more specific county data to show that. So we know that. So now it's kind of like time for the action. One thing that I would suggest as we move forward is to take a look at Franklin County, Ohio. Franklin County, Ohio has used something like 41 million in ARPA funds to set up a whole bunch of programs. And I think they would have great models for us as we move forward. And actually the commissioner from Franklin County and ICE co-sponsored putting this in the national platform at NACO this year. Childcare is now in our national platform. It's not just a resolution anymore at NACO. And so looking at what they've done specifically in Franklin County, care is now in our national platform. It's not just a resolution anymore at NACO. And so looking at what they've done specifically in Franklin County I think would really help us. I have a number of other questions but I do have an addition to this motion tonight. If my colleagues can see it's on the day is when it comes to motion time but I'm going to request that we send that we approve this and that we send it to the Budget discussion Because I don't want people to fall off a cliff once we start providing all the support. I want it to be in our base budget Chair I'm gonna stop now because I know other people have other questions, but I might need another room. Yeah Supervisor Saints. Thank you I'm going to stop now because I know other people have other questions, but I might need another round. Yep. Subo's of saints. Thank you. And thank you for the presentation. You're not to do it now, but at some point can we get a little bit more information regarding our marketing and our advertising for this program? Because yeah, it sounds like, obviously, it's a good program, but it sounds like we still need to do a better job of outreach to families, to the childcare facilities. So I don't know if we directly go sent to a mayor to all the childcare facilities or have you partnered with LCPS because they know who needs assistance. They have programs, we have programs and the likes. So I'd like to hear a little bit more because just the number you just gave us about how we only use 15% of a million dollars for, yeah, that's, so yeah, if we can get some more in-depth and see how we can do some more brainstorming to see how we can do some more marketing and outreach for this great need. We can provide. Then the only thing I'll say also is, you know, the way it's presented, some of the numbers obviously the numbers are, the numbers from the results of the respondents from the survey, but even still the number from the survey respondents are very minimum, a little number, but the way it's presented, you know, again, it's kind of this east west thing again. But numbers are numbers, but again, the respondents are very, very low, so I know the numbers that are being shown for east, or that's not accurate either. So, I guess it all kind of ties in together, so. But thank you for the work that's been going on so far. I'm sorry, Megan, did you have something to say? Oh, just that that was a limitation of the study. We did not have GIS, which is why it's only Eastern Western. It's not by election district or further disaggregation. Okay. Well, thank you for the work. Surprise room, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So if VQB5 is only for publicly funded programs, does that mean only for publicly operated programs? Or if the county had a subsidy program that went to private providers, would VQB5 cover that? So in the county, we receive state dollars for childcare subsidy through what's considered a mixed delivery system, which can be used in publicly funded. So for instance, our childcare centers in parks, recreation, community services, head start, et cetera, it can also be used in privately funded childcare to subsidize slots for low income households. So we already have that subsidy in place. This would be a supplement to that. That expands criteria to higher income levels and provides more of the navigation for those that would be seeking out subsidy and who have not either completed paperwork or been navigated through the system. Thank you. One of the things that I think is always challenging in government is sometimes we have to spend so much time and money monitoring. So then it doesn't go to the person who needs it. Is there any way, and would you argue against doing this? Is there any way to handle childcare subsidies the same way we have handled rental subsidies? So the rental subsidy goes to the landlord who then applies it to lower rents. Can the same system be used for childcare or do you think that would be a bad idea? I would want to discuss that more with family services given that they are the experts in the current childcare subsidy administration for the county. I think there are several implications on either side right now through the programming the provider actually does receive the subsidy payment directly, the same with the fee reduction program. So if a family has a childcare provider, that's where the funds go for the fee reduction program. So if a family has a child care provider, that's where the funds go for the fee reduction program. It's directly to the provider. Do you think that we are able to operate the child care system along those lines as efficiently as we can operate the rental assistance program. That's a challenging question given processes. I think we would want to do a little more exploration into the process evaluation, which is why we're setting aside some of the dollars for evaluation of the program so that we can have data to help support process improvements or, you know, defining the process further. Okay. I find my final question is our first term, I think it was Matt's second term or third term, but some of us, our first term on third term, but some of us are first term on the board. It seemed like we were getting an endless number of applications for in-home daycare providers. Did they, I know that the institutional daycare providers largely went out of business during the pandemic shutdowns is the same true about the in-home providers and has that sector recovered at all. We don't have great data on family-friendly care at this point because it is a relationship that is built with your cohort that lives and works and is related to you for the certified, voluntarily certified or registered family childcare providers. The DFS website lists 93 right now that are voluntarily registered. They don't have to be registered but they have volunteered to do so. So I anticipate that there are even further additional childcare providers out there that are in-home childcare. Thank you. I think we did make changes process wise to, yeah, that would result in that, but fair point. Chair Randall. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a lot of questions and I mean, you have to second round too. First of all, let me say this is really well done and really heartbreaking at the same time. I'm also going to say something and it's not a criticism. I just want to put it out in the table. I do not think most or one third or even I don't think any parent sees affordability being more important in quality. I think they see it as maybe not any other option. And so if I'm a parent and I know that this may not be quality but it's all I have, I'm gonna go with that. So I think we have to be really careful with how we talk and say parents are not concerned about quality because I don't believe that's a true statement to be honest. I think that's just a result of what is available to them to be honest. So I just want to be careful how we say that. I also, the thing I think we're missing talking about, even in the recommendations, is literally being able to get the child to the child care. And so we've talked about the fact that we have child care providers and more child care. And so we talked about the fact that we have child care providers and more child care providers allowed them we're talking about. Then we have spaces available but people are not taking advantage of them. We have been talked about how they get there again. If I'm a parent, if I have one car, if I'm trying to get my child to child care and then get to my two jobs, I might not be able to make it to the child care. And so as we're talking about how to use our funds and finances, there may be some discussion. We may want to have some discussion around transportation options for them to get to the child care that they are seeking. My first thought when I saw it broke down east to west is why are we break it this down east to west? But then your answer to Mr. Sains' questions kind of helped me because the other discussion we might want to have is if we find that this place, you know, this neighborhood, we have the child care in need and we're trying to do something. Maybe the goal is to partner with other organizations to put a child care, put the child care near and we're trying to do something. Maybe the goal is to partner with other organizations to put a child care, put the child care near the people, like literally meeting them where they're at. And so that may be a reason to, to, to, that's the losing I can actually see, to break it down kind of, you know, to, to electoral district or even for that matter, neighborhood. I don't quite know what you all mean when you say quality childcare, what that entails, and so if you can help me understand that, because quality for one person and quality for another person is very, very different. I'm not at all surprised that the compensation is probably the issue because people who want to take care of children, that's amazing human beings, but they still have to get paid enough. And so I love that one of the recommendations is money for compensation. Although I don't think any of that matters until we get the transportation options. And finally, I will say at this very moment, the child that can't, ladies are looking pretty good to me, I think right now they may be thinking they had something that they might have been a little correct about. I think that's all, but can you, if you can answer the what constitutes high quality child care, I'd appreciate that. So there are several definitions varying by state. For high quality childcare, essentially, it is an evidence-based curriculum and assessment that supports children's holistic, multi-domain development that supports their need for play and also supports their need for engagement, enrichment, and organizations, socializing, language modeling. And so, many of the five motor skills, large motor skills, all those types of things, okay. Okay, so domain learning. Yeah. And most, if not all, of the quality rating improvement systems in the nation are built on that same measure. Sure, sure. Do you have any thoughts about what to do about transportation and getting kids to the because the deserts, I mean I hear the desert issues but if we have spaces, how do we get them? Do you have any thoughts about what you do with that? I have some initial thoughts that I would like to flesh out a little further because I think anecdotally that is going to continue to be the issue. It's been the issue nationally with Head Start especially with wrap-around services from private child care so there are several needs for transportation but with those needs come a lot of risks. So we have to really investigate that carefully. Yeah, yeah. I wonder if there's a correlation between where you find childcare deserts and where you find food deserts, kind of some of the same places. This is heartbreaking and well done and really appreciated. So thank you very much. OK. Do you think we can get to a motion? OK. I think so. OK. I mean, if you need more time after the motion too, obviously there's a question. But let me go ahead and make the packet motion. Then I know you have at a amendment or a additional motion. Can I make them go? Sure, if you want to go ahead. Yeah, yeah. Well, I wanted to have the base motion on the table. And then I was just going to ask a question on your motion. So I didn't want to do them at the same time. That's all. It's in I further move. OK, then go ahead. That's fine. It's in I further move for you. Okay. Then go ahead. That's fine. Okay. I move that the finance government operations and economic development committee wrecked. Sorry. I move that the finance government operations and economic development committee recommend that the Board of Supervisors approve 1 million in America Rescue Plan Act funds to expand the child care fee reduction program for Loudoun County families with children, birth to pre-K and to provide incentives to childcare providers for quality and staff retention uses as described in this action item. I further move that the finance government operations and economic development committee recommend the Board of Supervisors to the Board of Supervisors that staff prepare a resource request for Board consideration as part of the FY 2026 budget process that would continue funding for the child care fee reduction program once the ARPA funds are fully spent. Okay, motion is made and seconded by surprise rescindes. Thank you. I did have two quick questions. I figured I could do them in the motion. Will these families that are accessing or do they, and this might be only because it's ARPA funds, but do they have to be US citizens to access the ARPA money? And secondly, we have this waiver question on the next item. Will families need to do waivers when they are accessing the fee reduction funds, which is problematic based on the next item? So to answer your first question, oh my gosh, I'm sorry, it just, I went blank. This citizenship, the question, blank. This is the question. No, there is no residency. Because we had that with the board documentation requirement. This is the second is because the funds are actually going to the provider. They are not touching the family. They're not considered income. It's not good. Okay. Well, again, I want to thank staff so much for this study. It's been a really interesting journey. And it's more dire than I initially thought because I was initially bringing national numbers and that we have childcare deserts and we're 3,700 seats short in Loudoun County. And it's a little bit more dire than I thought. So like I said earlier, I'm really glad that we have the data. And I'm glad that we're going to be following the progress of these folks once they get into this program. Sort of like a study and a pilot. My second part of this motion is to ensure that we consider a staff resource. And this would be to manage the technical assistance, to manage the publicity and the outreach, making sure that we're reaching out to all of the organizations that touch these families who are in need. And I think that we do have a strong nonprofit network that could help us with that. Women giving back, loud and hunger relief, those sorts of folks that could help us that touch these families on a regular basis. That could be very helpful. And as I said earlier, I think this is a good start. And I'll be interested in the conversation at the full board provided that my colleagues support the motion. Thank you. Chair Arano. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So I will support the motion. I believe that if this is one of these moments of society will pay for this in some way no matter what. You will be able to pay doing child care or you would pay on the other end when things are not going well. So that's not an issue. I think it is important to take care of our young people. I think a moral society takes care of our kids. But I'm not convinced that so Ms. Bricksvin just said we have 3,700 seats short. Do we, or is it that they can't access them? And so my only, I won't even call it hesitation, my only question is I would love to hear some of the things that you're kind of noodling around as far as transportation. Because if the issue is we can't get these children over here to the child care that's provided over here. That's a different issue than do we have enough seats, do we have enough child care slots. So those are two different things and I don't want to, this is a fairly specific motion. I don't want to fund the wrong thing. I want to fund getting people help and the child care that's needed, I want to fund that. But I don't want to fund the wrong thing. I want to fund getting people help. And the child care that's needed, I want to fund that. But I don't want to assume that we don't have the slots available just because people can't reach those slots. So I want to and will support the motion, but I really am interested in however you want to get the information to us. And whenever you've kind of neutered it through in your head, well, to find out what are your thoughts about, because maybe we can come back in the future and adjust the motion or adjust something, adjust funds to say, let's try to transport, and you're right, transporting little people this can be, you know, to a lot of issues with that too. But the other reason to make sure that you have, that you're, that we're doing, putting kids in slots that are available is because the child care providers actually need those kids too for their own survival. And so if you have slots that are not being needed, it's not helping the child care providers actually need those kids too for their own survival. And so if you have slots that are not being needed, it's not helping the child, it's not helping the child care providers, they have been anybody. And so I just want to focus on what the issues really are. And I'm not sure the first part of this motion, not the I further move, but the first part of this motion gets to the base need of how we move kids around But I will support it and and also look forward to having a further discussion on access to where Where those seats sit and loud in County and then if we have to come back and then and and do something different Then we can do that in the future. How's that sound reasonable? That's reasonable. Okay, Mr. Procpens, that sound reasonable? Okay, thank you very much. Thanks. So what's the deadline for expending these funds? December 31, 2026. Okay, so my only kind of question with the second part of the motion is at the rate we're going we're not going to kind of expense these funds Probably even within fiscal 26 so is there a way to kind of anticipate what the rate of expenditure is? Yes, we can anticipate the rate of expenditure we will have funds that need to go to the evaluator, and then also for marketing, which would likely go to a vendor or external party. So those will be portions of those funds, and we do actually pick up the costs when the ARPA funds are expended. But if that doesn't happen in FY26, we wouldn't need to appropriate funds. That's correct. Okay, so we can have that discussion when we get to the budget, but I don't know that we're going to get there. Now what you said about a staff resource, would that be something that ARPA would cover? So ARPA has no restrictions on staffing. And so that discussion can- Could be, okay, okay. Yeah, because that's a little different. I was thinking about this as more just a way to continue what we're doing or what we're sort of setting forth to do in their base motion after our funds are expended and not necessarily about a staff resource necessarily. I guess the word resource can be interpreted more than one way. But okay. You have a closing? I do not. I think we're good. Thank you. I'll appear the motion say aye. Anyone opposed? Motion carries 5-0. We're going to go ahead and take a break now. I will say the remaining items are probably pretty lengthy as well. I'm going to put to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. 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I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. So So super cold. What's my blanket? Next up is item 18, which is we're calling it rise, resident income stability enhancement economic mobility pilot program. There was a lot of excitement from staff to come to the table for this clearly. I share your enthusiasm. Hey, look who look up. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I was a home. Tell me this house. I would like the record to reflect that the board was ready before staff for once because I never had. Usually you guys are waiting around all night for us. We are here. All right. So, Kim, joining me is Dr. Cox. We're going to present the proposal for the rise, loud and economic mobility pilot, which was directed by the board to present, kind of like a plan to address residents whose income are at or below 30 30% area median income. So before we go into presentations by Ms. Cox, I just want to kind of give some key highlights. The plan was kind of a different approach. The staff really went out to the Commonwealth and talked to different counties like Allington, like Alexandria, like Fairfax, to get evidence, to get information about their guaranteed income pilots. Also, the accountant, Loudon, the staff, we took a different approach. If you look at the plan that was built as far as the plan of action in milestones, we tried to streamline the effort from an administration standpoint. So there's three key items that we'll address with you. It's the program administration. Then there's the empirical research, research and valuation that needs to be done, and then also the distribution of funds to the targeted population. So we're trying to take a different approach that pretty much we would try to bring one board, one program administrator, that would then bring in the other two pieces or factors for this pilot. And then next, through that timeline, we tried to make sure that there were checkpoints with the board We will come in after the research And get the boards approval For that level of effort and then we will also come into the board and then provide either info or actions Based on the results that we've we found so with that being said We'll go ahead and go through the presentation. All right, thank you, George. All right, so as Mr. Gropin mentioned, we were tasked with providing an economic mobility program pilot proposal as requested by supervisor Sains to look into the implementation of the Fairfax County model. We, as Mr. Groven said, took a different approach. We wanted to look at all models to identify, well, as many as we could, to identify what would work in Loudon County versus other models. And we also met with several vendors for each of the potential models that we were examining and asked a lot of questions of our neighboring jurisdictions. So we conducted the following activities. First we did attend the Community Foundations Philanthropy Summit, in which the United Way of the National Capital Area described the asset-limited income constrained employed population, that it is, in fact, even further evidence in some of our housing costs that families are struggling even more than they were several years ago. And the housing burden and cost burden in the county continues to grow. We met with Fairfax County offices of equity and also their Department of Family Services staff to discuss how they implemented, how they planned, in what ways they provided contracts, et cetera, is anything writable. So we were really just gathering information as much as we could. We met with Alexandria's recurring income for success and equity. Their arise program coordinator who offered a lot of lessons learned. We also met with the United Way of National Capital Region and then looked at several national models for guaranteed income that had similar jurisdictional sizes and make-ups to Loudon County. And then lastly, we did start participating in a learning community with the other Virginia guaranteed income pilots of Richmond, Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax. And those are monthly meetings. So as I mentioned, we gathered a lot of fact finding what statutory requirements may be necessary to be employed, the process of community engagement, how the program was funded, what evaluation models looked like and there are several. But really it's about lessons learned. Are they happy with their vendors? Are they, you know, looking at expanding the program, have they changed requirements and what ways have they provided additional feedback to the community and then also reporting out to the public. So we are calling the proposed economic mobility program Rise Loudon. The principles are really grounded in equity, specifically the county's equity resolution, that economic stability should be achievable for all residents. Economic stability should also be associated with increases in opportunity and increases for upward mobility in the community. We have four objectives for the pilot, specifically to look and identify barriers for low income residents in Loudon County, those who may be income constrained, also the objective of actually increasing the income for low income residents in the county for potentially a more equitable economic system, assessing how that increase would actually resonate or I look at outcomes for self-determination, financial stability, since of belonging social capital for participants in the program. So if they are receiving funds, what are we assessing in terms of the outcomes for the program. So if they are receiving funds, what are we assessing in terms of the outcomes for the program? And then lastly is to present the pilot performance results and the impact of the community evaluation to determine the next steps or the future of the program. We have several assumptions that are listed in the item that we wanted to make sure we're very clear from the beginning of the pilot. First, we want to make sure that the board is satisfied with the project plan and proposal. So the first is just to be passed by the board. We also want to make sure that the assumption that there are adequate resources for the both pilot of the funds distribution as well as a rigorous evaluation are adequate and adequate resources to actually complete the pilot. So we do have a very quick turnaround and there will be a lot of assumptions or various moving parts that we need to account for. We also assume that DFP will be the contract administrator and pilot lead for this, this effort so that we can maintain a singular point of contact with the vendor that would be chosen for the administration of the pilot and that all vendor costs are within budget. We do recognize that there are $2 million set aside from fund balance, so we wanna make sure that we are being good stewards of public dollars and making sure that all budgets remain under that amount. The next assumption is that we will be able to receive waivers from the Department of Social Services for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Medicaid, TANF and other benefit programs. And essentially what that means is that if a participant or a resident chooses to participate in the program by increasing their income they could be forfeiting their benefits. So we want to ensure that that does not happen. That there is some safety safeguards there. So we will be taking a note from Alexandria in that fact. Continuing on, we also have to assume that participants will respond to the evaluation research and the surveys because guaranteed income projects and pilots are benefits with no strings attached in terms of a monthly stipend, there cannot be any requirement for research. Which means we have to incentivize the participants to work to gather the research data. This is how other jurisdictions have done that, so we will actually have a set aside fund to make sure that participants are incentivized for providing evaluation data. The assumptions also include contract administration. We want to make sure that we have a pilot contract awarded by March 2025. And that is, it's an aggressive timeline and we can talk a little bit about that. But the pilot is, we've got a lot of lessons learned from other jurisdictions that really set us in a good position for moving this forward. We've identified that the population that may be eligible for this program is about 10 to 11% of the population in Loudon, according to the American Community Survey. Wow. And lastly, we are making the assumption that the majority of potential participants, the target population here, is assumption that the majority of potential participants, the target population here, is really using the majority, the vast majority of their funds on basic essentials, housing, utilities, clothing, childcare, et cetera. And so there's not enough left over for them to be financially stable. And so the intent of the program over time is to increase that feeling of financial stability and open opportunities. So those are all of the assumptions that we've provided to make this pilot successful. We also must adhere to Virginia code. We have 63.2-314 and then 802. We do have a county attorney's office opinion on this that we can go into as needed, but we do have a delegated authority in Loudon County, which allows us to, allows actually the county administrator to delegate authority from the local board to then a vendor to administer the program. So this is different from other counties in our area and so you know there are going to be differences in our model. We also, through the implementation plan, must include other community stakeholders because this is a community based project. We really want to make sure that nonprofit community, the business community, philanthropy and government are all convened as a part of this so that all the voices are heard. And that we really start off with a consensus around what the pilot will look like. And in an advisory capacity, have the community stakeholders really buy in and provide input to the process. So for the proposed timeline, we actually are looking at about 39 months instead of 36 months. So the planning could be six to nine months depending on the duration provided by this committee's recommendation as well as the board's recommendation. And so we've partitioned it into four phases, first is planning, second is implementation, which is the actual disbursement of the funds and evaluation data collected. The third is reporting, and then the fourth is bringing everything back to the board to provide recommendations on what a transition would be, whether we continue with the program, dissolve it, or expand. So that last would be the transition. As I mentioned, we are recommending a robust rigorous evaluation. These evaluation components will look at participants' social capital, as we'd mentioned in previous slides and we do have some potential outcomes listed here as well as in the proposal. So we are going to be looking at changes in the amount of debt changes in housing stability, change in the ability to actually save money or have less food insecurity, have basic needs met so that you can make choices as a participant for other items. And that an increased sense of belonging in the community would be a large part of this, the expansion of social networks and connections. So we are recommending that the Finance Committee, the Finance Government Operations Committee, recommend to the Board of Supervisors that you approve the pilot program as outlined in the proposal. And with that, we will take questions. All right questions let me start with Mr. Sain since this was said as BMI. Thank you thank you for the presentation Megan and George for all your work on this. Just a couple of quick questions. So I noticed you mentioned that you would like to see the Department of I guess procurement be the administrator or the lead on that is that correct? And I know that was that's correct. One question that Madam Chair was raising during the initial presentation of this when we first brought it forward. So, I think that's a very special presentation of this when we first brought it forward. So, can you give us a quick, quick, quick summary on why you feel that it needs to go through the recruitment finance office? So, very quickly, we are recommending that as the lead because DFS would be an advisory among other offices and departments in the organization, we would just be the convener. But there would be multiple departments and advisory capacities. Right. And from a program administration standpoint, we looked at ourselves as best suited. You know, like we stated in the briefing and like we stated in the board item, you know, Australian G based on lessons learned from looking at all the other counties is a different model that we think we can streamline linearly by bringing on board one contract vendor who would then subcontract or operate those other three parts. So from that standpoint, we figured there's efficiencies not only in workload but in functions as well. Okay, and you said that a DFS would be part of... Correct, so we have more, you know, we have DFS's partners. We also have package partners, OMB, equity office as well. That's for the OMB part of the team, IB, equity office. That's for the all-being part of the team, I guess you could say. OK. One thing that I'd definitely like to get more information on is the administrative fees or the cost to run the program, maybe it's our vendor or whoever might be. I think that's one thing that's kind of maybe still missing information or the outlier that's still not in there unless I missed it. I'll be coming on that. So when we first started out looking at the strategy of bringing on board one vendor, we looked at kind of like the ratio of what we would distribute as payments based off of our analysis, based off our lessons learned and gathering of information from other counties. And we wanted to make sure, in our initial analysis for example, we were as low as 250 in the 200 or 300 range and we wanted to make sure that in that, we were able to meet some level of standard to meet those basic need costs for families and the 500 to 750 range for equivalent for the 2 million. So we went back and looked at, just projected the cost based off of what we knew that the contractor would have to do. And so therefore, you know, we're figuring that we were still able to meet our need by probably leveraging the target population 200 range based on the level of funding that they provide it So we projected out you know probably a lower target market in order to at least be able to meet those basic needs On a monthly cost right so and glad to hear that you did reach out to other jurisdictions that That are doing similar Program so and you just said make sure I heard you're right. You said some of the other ones were at 100K to 200K for their fees administrative costs, I guess. Or if you don't know the exact number, they can get a little bit more information to give us back to them. That'll be greatly appreciated. Right. We'll have to put that back. I think we have a good timeline, obviously. We're going to be up and running a lot faster, but I think that which are presenting is realistic. For the most part of mine, I know there might be some delays, like just put it be honest, there might be some delays in going forward if it is approved to move forward by the board but I think there is a timeline listed is sufficient. Do you like the rise, the resident income stability enhancement title that was selected? Good job on that and again thank you for the work and getting us to this point thus far. So thank you. So, Mr. President. Thank you. So originally we were going to use ARPA funds for this, and that is what was kind of instigating the aggressive and the speed of the program. But now we're not using ARPA funds. So do we really have to go this fast and aggressively when we're not using the ARPA funds? So we do not have to go as fast. It would be based on board's direction. This is what we've put together related to an aggressive timeline, but also enough to make sure that we have a good administrator in place, an administrative vendor. Okay, yeah, that's just a little bit of a concern. I just wanna make sure we do it right. I'm fully supportive. I just wanna make sure we do it right. And then there was some mention in the item about the waivers for families who may be receiving other benefits. And this would definitely be considered income and might threaten some of those other benefits. So what is staff proposed as a solution to this? So staff proposed is that we submit request for waivers for each of the benefits that would be potentially removed from the participants. Alexandria has successfully received waivers for their participants, whereas Fairfax provides some financial counseling that says they may be able to or they may lose their benefits and then It's up to the participant to choose whether or not they want to participate. So we are requesting waivers and so we're fall as you say it's Alexandria that's doing that correct So we're following their model. We're not leaving it up to the recipient correct Correct. Okay, I like that better. Given the difficulties some people had just getting except to do our childcare subsidy program. So I do like that. The other thing I was going to suggest, and I can talk to my colleagues about this, but would it be possible? You may not know the answer to this question, and we can probably take it up with Mr. Freeman but could it be possible to ask our legislators to automatically provide waivers for people who are participating in guaranteed income programs? I think that's a Mr. Freeman question. Yeah, so I'll be bringing it up with our legislative folks, but I think that I know that wouldn't be a solution for our program, but it might be something to figure out for the future because as you mentioned, more counties are starting to do these sorts of programs. And the administrative burden to getting waivers for each individual person seems a little bit over the top. And then for the choosing of the 50 to 60 families, I guess we chose 50 to 60. It's manageable for a pilot. I think I'm okay with that, although I'll be interested to see how many come forward? What the indicators are of the need based on the number of folks that come forward? Same question as on the last item, what if they're undocumented? That is a very good question that we would need to provide some feedback to you at a little day. Okay, okay. We would need the county attorney's office to weigh in on that. Okay, I'm sure we'll have some kind of criteria. And I think because this is not ARPA money, we have a little bit more flexibility than we did with ARPA money. But that would be one of my concerns. You know, they have jobs, they pay taxes, and they should be able to participate in the programs that are supported by their own taxes that they pay when they work. So I'm fully supportive and I look forward, I look forward to the progress. Oh, one other thing on the evaluation, you said that, is that a federal law that any guaranteed income program, you can't require surveys or feedback, but somehow people are doing it because we have statistics to show that it works. Yes, so according to Virginia code, anything that has, it's Virginia code. It's Virginia code. anything that has... It's Virginia code. It's Virginia code. Anything that has a requirement, so for instance, a survey to complete would be considered a benefit program according to legal opinion. So what we are doing is incentivizing them with an extra $25, just for example, to participate in the research. But it's not a requirement of the receipt of funds. Okay, right, thank you very much. Chair and all. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So I will say you all have been doing some very heavy lifting over the past months with some very heavy items and I do appreciate it. I'm going to take you to the actual item, not the presentation. I'm going to take you to page six of the item. You may have explained this and if you did, I apologize. I'm going to ask you to do one more time explanation. I'm page six of the item. The second to the last paragraph actually says, staff recommends the bulk of the implementation be managed through a contract with an established nonprofit organization in the background of economic mobility programs. But first of all, I don't know if that exists. If that exists in Loudoun County, this is a fairly new discussion we're having kind of nationwide. So I'm not sure if that exists at all. But then when you drop down one paragraph, you talk about the governance and who can implement this program. So it seems to me like those two paragraphs are a little bit of a contradiction to one another. And I don't know how to read those two paragraphs that are right back to back. So I have that question. The second question I have, and I think George, you started, you answered it some, and some's going to ask you to flush it out a little bit. Am I correct that I heard you say that you all will come back to the board from time to time to give us an update on how things are going? And if that is the case, is that update coming from the recipients themselves? And so you're talking to them about, you know, once you start receiving this money, are you now working? Are you, is your, is your written al-Qaeda up? Are you taking classes? So, so when you say you're giving us feedback, is the feedback based in what's happening with the recipients, except with the recipients. And then thirdly, did I hear you say that 11% of loud and residents would be eligible? So are you saying that 11% of loud and residents are below, say that 30% AMI for loud and county are below? Those are my questions. Thank you. So I will start with the first question. Okay. Related to the stakeholders and governance sections. So the stakeholders and let me start with the governance section. The governance section according to the county attorney's office requires the board to grant funds to a local board, whether it be social services, which is what Fairfax has done with their social services and family services board. The board must grant the funds to the local board in order for it to be then distributed to a local board, CSB board, family services board, whatever. And then they actually go out and get the nonprofit organizations you're talking about. Yes, in 2011, according to the county attorney's office, there was a delegation of authority for our social services board to the county administrator. So the county administrator can delegate that authority for implementing the program to a qualified vendor. And do we think we believe that there's a qualified vendor who could it does say with a background economic mobility program that exists in Loudoun County? We know there are some in the region, not specifically with a loud and county address. But we do know there are some that are serving as an administrator for our neighboring jurisdictions. Can somebody tell me the reason, and maybe Mr. Hempstreet, if you can, that the governance is that we choose a local board, and the local board chooses the implementation group. And that's a lot of steps. That's a lot of separation from the actual board that is approving this. It's back to what it's said about. So it's good. This is an element of the traditional form of government. And so traditionally, the board would, as opposed to having staff do a number of these functions, the board would delegate or ask other bodies to do these functions. So up until 2011, similar to, well up until 2011, the board of supervisors did not have, for example, a department. They had a department of mental health, substance abuse, and developmental services. However, the authority to operate that was contained in the CSB. In 2011, and then also- Well, that was the CSB wasn't- For family services, the governance of many of those programs was delegated to a family services board. In 2011, the Board of Supervisors made the decision to bring that under the County Administrator so that you would give direction to me and then I would go ahead and implement the direction of the board. And so in doing that, that is when I'm not sure when the CSB was in that same time frame, those boards became advisory and the authority of those boards was transferred to me as reporting directly to the board of supervisors. And so there's a lot of language there, but essentially for this purpose, your social services board, you have said belongs to the county administrator that I hire a department director that then carries out the direction of the board of supervisors. So in this situation, because the code reads the way it reads, the code of Virginia reads the way it reads. The code of Virginia reads the way it reads with respect to the traditional form. You technically have to delegate the program to your social services board. It has to read that way, but what you really do it is just directing staff to go and do this. Are we directing, Mr. Chairman, may I follow up? Are we directing staff to go and do it? Are we directing staff to go and do it? Are we directing staff to go find the nonprofit that will do it? So what? So the board, we contract for stuff all the time. So in order to do the program, the board has two ways of doing this program. You could direct me to go and hire staff, and we could come back and create all the positions necessary to operate the program and then we would just manage that program directly through newly created staff positions. The other way of doing this which is what is being recommended by Mr. Govon and John Blank. I'm going to go ahead and to a vendor who can administer the program on our behalf. Okay. I understand this a lot of steps. Dr. Cox, my other question is by code, does that have to be DSS or can it be the CSB board? So by code, you're either way you're sending it to me and you're telling me as the county administrator, go ahead and contract for the service and make it happen. So what we're trying to say is even though there is specific language that is a message of the way the code works, the effectively what the board is doing is giving me direction as a county administrator to go out and have, go out and contract for the service to implement the program. Okay. Okay. I guess on the motion I may have another question or other questions. Oh, yeah, we have a question. Yeah, we have a question. We have a question. I'll just say I'm too long for you. You asked about the engagement with the target population. So within the plan we do have several checkpoints in the planning stage when we set up the evaluation criteria. That's an opportunity to engage, I'll talk, you know, to do surveys and outreach and so forth. And then we come to the board with an action to approve the target population, then to approve our strategy for the amount of funds to disperse as well. And then another checkpoint that we have is as we go to the process of implementation that Megan briefed in the second phase, that's when we also would engage the target population as far as collecting information and so forth, continuous surveys, continuous outreach if counseling is financial counseling or any other methodology for support. And the target population is literally the people who are receiving the funds. And then they do self-reporting on how they're doing now and what they're doing different if they're going to school or whatever they're doing. OK. OK. And then I had one last question. they're going to school or whatever they're doing. Okay. Okay. And then I had one last question. The third question was about the percentage of the population. Really? That sounds awfully high, though, mate. So it is 10.7% of the population in Loudoun County, according to the American Community Survey, has an income and annual income of under $49,999. And so those could be inclusive of individuals or households. Yes. Okay, thank you for that information. What happened on that format? That would also include people who have no income, right? That's correct. So if you're retired, you have no income. You could be a millionaire. In fact, I know some in Latin County who have no income. So I don't think we should interpret that statistic to be 10.2% would actually be eligible for the program. Right. You'd have to- We just said that that's the population. I know, but clearly clearly up here that- All right, so, okay. So if we wished could we place eligibility requirements such as someone is employed during the time that they are receiving the funding or could we require financial counseling as a practice or something like that. So we cannot require financial counseling that is one of the assumptions that we are making as a part of this. There have been some successful financial counseling opportunities in other jurisdictions. So why can't we require it though? Because then it would be a requirement of the funds and thus a benefit program. And it can't be a benefit program. It can't be a benefit program. It has to be a cash grant. Why can't it be a benefit program? Because according to code, then yes. That's the code section you cited. Yes. Continue though. So it's my understanding and we can ask for a formal opinion from the county attorney's office that when strings are attached to the funds, it no longer becomes a grant. It becomes a requirement or an entitlement to a program. So then my question about a work requirement would be the same. We can define the parameters of inclusion and exclusion criteria prior to selecting participants. And could we also, should we, if we chose to, require U.S. citizenship, if we chose to? If you chose to. Okay, we do have that ability though. Correct. Okay. Yeah, okay. That's probably it for questions. Wanna go to a motion, Mr. Staines? Yes, yes, yes, yes. All right, thank you for the questions and good discussion. I move that the finance government operations economic development committee recommend that the Board of Supervisors approve a grant of $2 million to the respective local board to fund the program and approve the Loudoun County Economic Mobility Pilot Plan rise as outlined in this item in the tax proposal. Second. Brisbane opening. Thank you. Again, I want to thank the staff for all their work on reaching out to other jurisdictions that are doing this, not just even in the region here, but other locations and doing research to help formulate and guide this program. I think that's thus far it's coming in order. Obviously, there's still some questions that need to be asked and I'm sure we will go down the process of putting up some more framework and guardrails as some of my colleagues just mentioned about requirements and what we can act for what we can't act for and etc. So look forward that conversation but I think this is a good step in the right direction to continue on this pathway and bring the rise program to fruition. So I want to thank you again for staff's work and look forward to getting more updates as time progresses. Thank you. Again, thank you, staff, I'm really proud that we're doing this. Happy to support the program. And when Alaska did this, it resulted in a 13% increase in part time work. And a 15% increase in entrepreneur ventures among recipients. In Stockton, California, recipients spent money on groceries, utility bills, credit card debt. They reported less anxiety and spending more time with family. In Canada, it improved mental health outcomes, including fewer hospitalizations and greater housing stability, as you mentioned before. The Washington Post reported in UBI pilots, it pulls people out of poverty, improves health outcomes, and makes it easier for people to find jobs and take care of their children. Nobel Prize winner, Abba Jit Benajir Benajee Benajee said that the distribution of unconditional cash in low-income countries had positive effects on income assets savings, borrowing, total expenditure, food expenditure, dietary diversity, school attendance, test scores, cognitive development, use of health facilities, labor force participation, child labor, migration, domestic violence, women's empowerment, marriage fertility, and the use of contraception among other things. A U Penn pilot found that more than 50% of the recipients said they could pay for a $400 emergency expense in cash compared with 25% before the program began. They also reported improvements in mental health as determined by a common test of psychology well-being. I'm really looking forward to the results of this and thank you to Supervisor Sains for bringing this up. This is an excellent idea and I can't wait to see the results. Thank you. Surprise rump step. Thank you very much Mr. Chair. When this was going to be paid out of ARPA funds I felt it was worth investigating. I do feel it was worth investigating. I do feel it was worth investigating. I'm not going to support it any longer though because 63% of Americans don't have $500 to handle an emergency. That's a huge percentage. And so those who are right above the 30% AMI rate on income are going to be seeing higher taxes to pay for this program now. And they are barely making more than the folks who would qualify. I would rather see us increase our contributions to food security, rental assistance, health services. All of those are areas that we already help fund, but to give someone money with which they can do anything they want, I think is problematic because many of our residents don't have that kind of income. And so I think this was a big-hearted effort by supervisor Sains, and I applaud him for it. But I think we already have in place the mechanisms to funnel money to folks in the areas that are critically important. And tonight we just pass supervisor Briskman's motion to try to provide more childcare funding. So if this were to increase contributions to loud and hunger relief or Dallas South Pantry or health works of Northern Virginia or the free clinic or backpack buddies or rental assistance, I would probably say yes, but it's no longer being paid for by ARPA funds. It now would be paid for, as I understand it, by all of our taxpayers, most of whom, or many of whom, are barely making more than the 30%. So I cannot support it. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Endom. Money going to our nonprofits is also taxpayer money. It's still taxpayer money. It's not like there's a different pot of money for that we put into our rental assistance and our nonprofits, it's still taxpayer money. So I'm not sure what the difference is there. This has been over the past since we, since Mr. Sains brought this. I've gotten a lot of people asking why I didn't support it before. And it's because I'll say it again, I cannot support something that I don't have time to research. And I didn't have time to research it when it came the last time. I've done a lot of research on this now, including talking to a very good friend of mine from Denver, because Colorado has done this program. So I call a high school friend of mine who's actually helped put this program in place. And I will say that some of the numbers, Ms. Bricks Bendjus, red, are, you don't get there as easy as just don't enough the money and then getting those numbers. It's just not that simple. She told me that there were a lot of people who needed just cell phones. If they wanted to have a job, they didn't have cell phones, they didn't buy the call them. So they're they're going to put some more money in for other things that they had not anticipated yet. And I think we need to realize that. I think if we're going to do this, we need to realize that there could be a lot of things we don't know. And to expect that, I think we're being a little too candy cutter glasses when we talk about this. And I think we have to be really realistic. But in the end, I'll go back to what I said before. Sometimes you pay for these things anyway at a taxpayer's money or not. You pay for them anyway. So whether it's money going through a nonprofits, whether it's somebody who needs emergency funds, whether it's somebody who could not feed their family and took other means to do that and then land it up and then across the way to the setting, either way you're paying for it. And so I'm willing to try this and see where we go. I'm not as convinced as my colleagues, but I'm willing to try this and see where we go. I'm not as convinced as my colleagues, but I'm willing to try it. I want us to be really willing to adjust it if we need to adjust it and move with the result as they come. I also think that there needs to be some statements about what can be in here and what can be, and what the money can be used for. I feel like if we do that, this should come with a lot of support, a lot of education, a lot of assistance, and help in other ways, but that may not be possible. So I am willing to, I'm willing to try it and see how it goes, but I do not, I do believe there's some kind of talking over issues that could come up and we may have to deal with those in the future. But I'm willing to try it and see where we go with this. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. I am not supportive of the program and continue to have concerns about it. The issue is not spending taxpayer dollars because we already do that extensively. We just talked about it tonight and other areas. To me, it's more about bank for the buck, value, scalability, and really trying to address the core needs that people have to, I think my clock needs to be running, to help lift them out of poverty. So, we're spending $2 million for 50 people in this case. The idea behind a pilot, ostensibly, is if it's successful, you want to be able to expand it. Well, let's just say that we don't know what the number is. We talked earlier that 10% could be inclusive a lot of people. But let's just say the number is just 5,000. Start doing the math. What if it's 10,000? What if it's 15,000? What are we going to do? Extend this to everybody who would meet that qualification at a cost of literally $10, $20, $30, $40, $50 million? I don't think it's feasible. So I'm not sure why we want to go down that road for something that ultimately probably couldn't really be implemented at a widespread level. It hasn't been, by the way, in most places, if you look at outside and the type of democracies we have anyway, they don't do this. So that's one element of concern. I think the self-selection element in this will create probably a survey field that is not necessarily going to be reflective of everybody who would ultimately get it. So I'm not sure how good the data is gonna be coming out of this, even if it's done using scientific methods and stuff and then the fact that we can't actually even require that level of research as part of this seems like a major limitation. Because at the end of this, we'll try to say, well, that's x and y outcomes, but we won't have everybody participating. We're the information being given to us, it's going to be self-selected. So it's really not, I mean, if you were conducting a scientific study here, this wouldn't pass muster, not even close. You know, this wouldn't pass journal review, any of this stuff wouldn't. So it's pretty dubious. It's pretty tenuous. I think it's a good idea, or at least a well-meaning idea. But an implementation does not make a lot of sense. And if the board does want to spend another $2 million in some of these areas, there's a lot more effective ways that we could do it. So I'm not going to support the program. Closing Mr. Stain? No, thank you. And appreciate everybody's comments on the matter. I think it's not one where it's do one thing and not do the other. I think we're doing all the above approach. Yes, we're giving directly to the non-profits. Yes, we are doing other programs like with the childcare assistance. We're looking at this program here, the RISE program here is another method of helping our much needed population here in Loudoun County. So I think it's doing we're doing the right thing. And if it's not a matter of, if this program will help or make a difference, but it's a matter of how, and how it would make a difference. And I think this is something that we should try. Again, it's a pilot right now. I don't think, why not? We've just plenty of other things we've tried before. Sometimes some things work. Sometimes things don't work But we don't know until you try. So I think this is something that we definitely Should try and do You know to Mr. Lerternel's point, you know, we ask we can do some obviously We're gonna still do some more homework and research. I ask questions to figure out Like I said earlier the guardrails and how we can Collect data from the participants because I think that is very key. Also on what we can and can't do, ask them when they participate to give us the data and also at the symptom, as I mentioned before, to help our vulnerable population because that is one point of it is to make sure they get services, get coach and get counseling, get the assistance that they need to help them to further their lives and their family lives. And I think sometimes that's what we're here for is a help folks. So I appreciate those who are going to be supportive of it. I still appreciate those. We're not going to be supportive of it. But we all have our different views and different avenues on how to get to a certain point and we all take different routes sometimes. So with that, I support the motion. I was at May the motion, but it will continue once I appreciate the support. Thank you. Okay. All in favor of the motion, May and by Mr. Stain? Say aye. Aye. Opposed? No. motion carries three two and will be forwarded to the board with a recommendation of approval. Okay, thank you very much. We are moving on to item 19 which is our 2025 Health Plant Update and Premium Review for the Countywide Group Health Plan. Good evening, committee members. Thank you for having us here this evening. About this time every year I come to you with the countywide health plan information as well staff recommendations for the next calendar year. Last year we presented much earlier in the year given some of the major changes we proposed but typically we're here in September of each year. We also typically address retirees at this time, but given the level of increase that they're realizing in 2025, we need a bit more time for that review and we'll be back here in October to talk to you about retirees. By way of background, I just want to remind the committee that the county operates a self-insured health plan, which means that the county is at risk for all the health related claims subject to an insured policy that takes on the risk for those claims that are incurred over $600,000 per claimant. And although we do fund the claims, we do pay a third party administrator to process the claims and engage all participants in care management. Our administrator is Signet Healthcare and 2025 will be the fifth year in a five year contract and then we have five one year renewal options under our belt should we choose to continue with signal. So I can run through some of the highlights of the experience of what we saw in 2023 or we can simply jump into the renewal and I can walk you through our one design recommendation and premium recommendations. That's the committee. Do you want the first option or the second option? I'm fine with not having. I have a question. Second option. As far as the renewal goes, we're looking at plant design changes and financials, of course. In terms of plant design changes, we're not looking to implement anything new. We had the one major network change last year and feels though our plans are lined with the market and offer our employees a variety of options depending upon their appetite for health premium risk. At the end of the day, this is insurance, so we offer employees a high level plan which costs more in premiums. We also offer lower level options where employees can essentially sell fund their health care through a high deductible plan and then save that money that they contribute towards a health savings account. So we have a variety of options. So staff is recommending one change in how the county manages risk. We purchase specific stop loss insurance to help the county mitigate the risk of high claimants incurring claims over $600,000, as I already mentioned. The county's health plan has grown over the years and it's time to increase this to 650,000. And 650,000 is in line with other health plan sponsors of our size. With regards to premiums, the renewal came in much better in a much better place than we had last year. You'll remember that we saw a 19.3% increase in medical premiums last year. We were able to get that down to 11.1% by changing the provider network and asking for some additional funding of $2 million from the board from the self insurance fund. This year our renewal comes in at 10.2%. And in reality it came in at about 7.2%, which is right around trend. Actually it's a little bit lower than trend, but we now have to account for that $2 million that we asked for last year, so that brings it back up from 7.2 up to 10.2. The positive thing about this is that we're not asking for additional funds this year. And so in plan year 2026 will be well positioned for that renewal. And as a side note, we are looking for a 7.9% increase on our combined dental and vision premiums. Keep in mind that from 2019 to 2023, we average about a 1.3% increase. And we remember last year when we talked about this, I kind of went into some of the rationale with medical inflation and the fact that we had such great utilization, there's four or five years that it's kind of caught up to us a little bit. So that is our recommendation for this evening. Hey, we'll do questions first. Chair Renner. Thank you. Can we talk just a little bit about mental health providers? I believe that many of the mental health, that most of these mental health providers are out of network in this plan, and out in county's plan. And the ones that are in network, very few are accepting new patients. And so, you know, mental health is health, I say that every time we have these conversations. And I always ask about it. And I'm always kind of told, well, it's allowed. But when you look close with the plan, the percentage of mental health providers that are out of network is much, much higher than providers for every other type of health. So is that just a condition of many mental health providers are taking cash because they're good bogged down with the insurance? What is that a condition now? Because I am not comfortable voting for a plan that doesn't have robust mental health care in network. Well I think the mental health market actually has come a long way over the past decade, especially with mental health parity and the fact that I think for so long providers were reluctant to engage networks because of all the hoops they had to jump through in terms of getting approvals. And we really don't see that today because now your mental health claims have to, if you put any restrictions on your mental health claimants in terms of care management, they have to be the same restrictions you put on all of your other conditions. I can tell you, I haven't heard that much from our employee population of not being able to find in network providers. I don't have the information with me. In network providers, you said in network providers. I don't have the information with me this evening, but I do have some data that talks to how these providers are reporting to signal that they are in fact accepting new patients. That'd be good to know because believe it or not, people are willing to talk about almost lots of other health issues. But you're going to find people a lot more hesitant to say, I can't find the mental health provider because the stigma is still there and it's still unfortunate. So I appreciate what you're saying that you haven't heard the complaints, but that doesn't mean that they're there. And so, I think this motion today is just to forward this on. Is that the motion today, Mr. Chairman, to forward this on to the food work? I have made a motion yet, but I will. That would be the motion. So between now and then, I mean, I vote for this today, that forwarded on to the full board, but between now and then I would like to have specifics and particulars about the mental health providers that are in network are not and the ones that are in network if we can find out where they're if they're accepting new patients and if there is actually parity in this plan. Sure. Thank you. There's definitely parity in this plan, but I can go ahead and secure that information. Some of the challenge with that information is that it is self-reported by the providers to signal us, or the only is good is what the providers are telling them, but I do have that information. Well, whether or not you're in network, that's not. That's not. You know that part. So, yeah. So yeah, so like I said I'll I'll both to move this on but I'll need that information later on Share point of clarification. Please With regard to that information are you specifically looking for psychiatrist or are you looking for psychologist or the entire gamut the tire gamut because psychiatrist Dole medication right that's what they mean you know they do but I'm looking for therapists I'm looking for counselors. I'm looking for the whole gambit of mental health services. That's possible. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I would just add to that question from Chair Randall or comment on it. This is a subject that I have a lot of passion and experience with. And I think a conversation with Dr. Farrell would be helpful our chair of our health commission Because there is absolutely a huge problem finding in network providers, but it is not a problem with our plan It's a provider problem We lack the number of providers in any plan that take insurance and because demand is so high, providers can fill out their patient bases without ever having to take insurance and get paid cash for it. And so the two of us have had some ongoing dialogue about what we can do about that specific in our county and I do have an idea that I might bring forward at some point. But I think if we were to look at that, I'm sure we do, there's, and I can tell you right now, I know there's several groups in the area that take insurance. It's hard to get those appointments, some of them do, but quite a few of them don't at all. Some of the biggest practices do not. And it's not our plan, that's, they literally won't even process on how to network claim for you. You have to do it yourself, which for somebody who has a mental health problem is the last thing they need to be worrying about. But unfortunately that's the case. So I have a lot to say on this. By all means, obviously, bring us back whatever information you have, but I think it's such a big issue that we may want to tackle differently than through the health plan. As far as the health plan discussion, so it's a large increase, again, 10.7. But that's an increase on what the employees are paying currently for their premiums. We did have a pretty large salary increase this year. What did we average, 7% on the total salary? So at least that will help offset a little bit of this increase. I guess you could look at it. Is that fair to say? I think that's a fair statement. And we can't keep taking money out of the general fund and trying to buy this down because we just have to bend and catch it up because it's self-insurance fund, right? That's quite a matter of fact. We have been able to do that for the past two years, but we've also had a surplus in that self insurance fund and that is no longer there. So it's not even, the money's not even there right now. Okay, unless anybody has questions, I'll go ahead and make the motion then. All right, I move to finance government operations. I can have a development committee recommend I recommend the Board of Supervisors approve the plan design changes recommended to the September 10th. 2024 finance government operations and Iconment Development Committee action item. I adopt the proposed premiums, this outline and attachment one to the item for plan year 2025. January 125 to December 31st, 25. I further move the finance government operations and Iconment Development Committee. I recommend the Board of Supervisors authorize the purchasing agent and the Department of Human Resources to take the necessary actions to implement the recommended plan changes and propose premiums in the county wide group health plan. Second. Which is made and seconded by Chair Randall. Is there any discussion on the motion? I do have. Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to follow up with what you said. You are correct and thank you for following that up. You are correct that my best friend is a provider and she does take insurance before a long time. She got to the place where she could take insurance because she did cash for such a long time. And she does take insurance now. Almost all the insurance in fact, but there is a lot of providers who take the insurance who are already tapped out as far as their case load. And this is not so much for you all, just to say in general, what happens with that is then people who are not able to pay for out of pocket, but still have the same needs because mental health is health, have those mental health needs get worse. The acuity goes higher, it gets exacerbated, and we see it in other ways. And so if there is any discussions on how we can address this issue, I think it's really important to address this issue right now because You know I'll say this again just as talking about it low assist stigma just as talking about it Especially talking about it from this day is low assist stigma So let's go in and have that conversation in the future of If you know, let's bring in let's bring in providers. Let's really have this really flesh. Let's be the county That leans into figuring out how to make sure parity is not just the worth that we use for the purpose of insurance forums, but parity is a, is a, is a, is very real and very real with people who might be the people who sit in that 10% that we talked about in the last item. So that wasn't so much for you, that's just for kind of loud and in general, that this is obviously had been an issue for me for a long time, but an issue that we have a whole group of people that even if they have a job and have an issue that cannot afford the mental health care, or cannot get to see a provider because providers are so tapped out already. So thank you for allowing me to say that, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. I'm sure. Okay, all in favor of the motion. Say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Motion carried, 5-0. Okay. Two left. Number 20, Loudoun County Fire and Rescue Pharmacy Program Implementation FY 2025, Mid-Year FTE Authority, Chief Johnson, Dr. Morgan, have been waiting patiently to tell us this bad news all night. I think we all kind of know already. I had a briefing and I know Chair Randall that certainly explained this at length. So. I have that you see the motion on. What's that? You see the motion? Yes, you have a fault. You have an additional motion. Yes. But Chief Johnson. Okay. Poor Megan. I was just going to turn it over to Chief Johnson to do the bulk of the item. But we're here to discuss the policy surrounding the pharmacy program and then the fiscal impact and FTE authority necessary toizing this. So you'll fully briefed on this. But I'll try and be brief in summary is a lot of moving parts to this. But and I have folks here from all staff to answer any questions may have. So really in kind of summary, for 40 plus years, we have maintained a relationship with our local hospital partners where we transport a patient, we utilize medications, we exchange it at the hospital, we turn in the expired medications or the used medications they give us a replacement medication. Really, it's that simple, that includes all of our narcotic medications. So there have been changes, which is why we're here. Changes in the enforcement of existing rules from both the Drug Enforcement Agency, the EA, the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal, and the Virginia Board of Pharmacy have caused hospitals to halt this EMS medication exchange program in November 27th. I'll point out that L.C.F.R., fire and rescue did not receive notification until May 8th from Inova, Centera, V.H.C., U.V.A., and labor later sometime that was communicated to us. HCA followed that after the main hospitals, HCA was a little bit behind. But basically, we received notification from all the hospital systems that they no longer will supply us these medication in the exchange policy. Immediately after learning this, we call John Freeman and all of our internal legislative folks And we established relationships and meetings with Senator Cain, Senator Warner, Senator Wexton's office And they have been great partners And we did that to advise them of the situation We really haven't seen any changes as a result of those meetings So they were very sympathetic to to learning about what we were doing and what we had to deal with. I can bore you with numerous letters that have been written by Virginia Fire and MS agencies, Virginia Fire Chiefs, operational medical directors from around the state that are all feeling the burden of this change. Basically, the change will require each independent agency or potentially one parent agency in each jurisdiction to form its own pharmacy. Inclusive ordering, receiving, storing, tracking, and local distribution to all EMS units of these medications. Obviously, this comes with a significant increase in administrative functions to maintain compliance with all aspects of program oversight, record keeping management and licensing and documentation. While we're here tonight to talk about some initial requirements that we're asking for and FTEs and monetary funds which are part of this, the build out of a full pharmacy with eight sites we're planning for is a multi-year process. So the item contains the first year cost for us and Kool-Eat Talks and Megan can speak to the financial cost. But the first year's startup cost not only include the personnel, but includes automatic drug dispensing machines, the cost of the medication, information technology and security needs, as well as track and trace software, which again all included in outlining in your item. So again to become compliant by November 27th, we have identified a main pharmacy and with seven satellite locations. The initial main pharmacy will be at a red rum drive in Ashburn at our new lease facility that we acquired just in June of 24 of this year and it's been in August of this year and in the process of building that out right now that will not be ready by November 27th so in that in term we have identified space at our headquarters at 801 Siklin that we fully intend to have ready by November 27th to build that initial pharmacy at our headquarters. The program requirements for pharmacies and any location is rigid, they have to be alarmed on the constant security or recorded visual monitoring. They must have automatic, we're choosing to use automatic drug dispensing machines, which require to support our inventory control, security, and accessible distribution to operational units. Human capital needs, obviously there's a redundant burden of management compliance and oversight required for this program, which compounds exponentially under the existing framework, in which each volunteer fire and EMMS agency maintains their own EMS license. To support that, we're looking to establish multiple locations and also we're recommending a merger of all the EMS oversight for medications and these pharmacies into one. That's a separate item going before our internal executive committee where instead of having eight different agencies with licensing for pharmacies, we're all going to fall into loud and county fire and rescue. So that is happening now in our governance structure. We talked about somebody in infrastructure needs with these automatic drug dispensing machines. They require, which required one performance. There needs to be DEA compliant software that will basically meet the cradle to create track requirements of these controlled medications. Each one must have county network, they must be connected to our county system to record and transmit the data, they must have a camera and alarm system at each of these sites. At the present time, we understand that the hospital systems intend to transfer ownership of all the medications in our possession over to us prior to November 27th. That will alleviate a little bit of an initial cost to us. And our initial modeling for the amount of medications that we use will identify about a $250,000 cost per year for these medications that we'll have to order from various suppliers. I know maybe one of your questions is can we recoup these medications from the cost of these medications from EMS building and the answer is no, it does not allow for specific individual building for medications, although we do receive EMS building monies for transporting of patients to and from to the hospitals. So with that and closing out, obviously we're preparing this item tonight to you for ask the FTE authority. We have established some project codes to track our costs that are associated with this. Once if and if and when this is approved for the FTEs, we will work very closely with HR to get these positions classified, the four positions. Some of these positions are new to the county, so it's going to require some classification. And there are jurisdictions ahead of us and behind us throughout the state. Some are already in the process, fairfax is already in the process of hiring the pharmacy positions right now. So there's some behind some ahead of us. We're working extensively with finance and purchasing to develop contracts for these ADDS machines, these drug dispensing machines and the software and they've been very helpful to us. Many of these machines require a 90 day lead time in order for us to even procure these equipment to come in. As you can imagine, many agencies to include county administration, OMB, finance and procurement, DHR, DIT, DTC, DGS are all involved in some way of helping of get this monumental task off the ground and implemented to be compliant before November 27th. Have Dr. Morgan here and certainly staff here to speak for the legislative part and certainly Dr. Morgan can speak to a lot more in depth on the federal and requirements that have made this change. But I just want to thank you. The last thing I ever want to do is come to you with the mid-year enhancement outside the budget process. But in this case, we really have no choice to but comply with the federal regulations and sure that our citizens get no decrease in service. And that is really the biggest fear. I think all of us have maintained is we want to maintain the safe, the great excellent service that we provide. And if we don't establish our own pharmacy, we would be forced to lessen our service, which I think many jurisdictions in some less fortunate areas around the state will be required to do or will be forced to do, I should say. So we here thank you for your continued support and we're all here to answer questions. Thank you. Chief Johnson, Dr. Morgan, Jonathan, Chief Williams, everybody who's been working on this. I do have a few questions. So did we look at, or is it even legal for us to contract out pharmacy services with an existing pharmacy provider and sort of use their operating ability? Dr. Morgan, we've talked about this so go ahead. Yes, it would be legal for the hospital pharmacy to continue doing business as well but they've chosen to stop. But the Virginia Board of Pharmacy loosened up some of the requirements for pharmacies in general to support EMS and various models around the state. Some places are looking at that, especially the ones who previously used sort of a whole box exchange model with the hospital, which is not what we did. There are pharmacies that do that for nursing homes, and they will expand that role into the EMS realm and some jurisdictions around the state. That has its downsides as well. We don't currently have any existing relationships sort of starting something up like that from scratch would be difficult. Obviously we're 24-7 operation and very few pharmacies even are open after 9 o'clock PM. So we would need to have mechanisms to support our 24-7 operations regardless. How much medicine can we carry at a given time? Are we talking about a single transport? It's gonna just use up our whole supply for one particular unit, or do we have five transports worth of any particular drug or something like that? So we look very carefully at the amount that we carry over the years, just because of space constraints and not wanting to have so much that it doesn't get used and gets expired. So we have a minimum amount that we keep on each ambulance to meet the needs most of the time. And then we have redundancy built in with additional apparatus, fire trucks, ambulances that carry back up drug kits. Putting numbers on it, we have, if I have it written down, we have 856 vials of controlled substance currently on our units in the county, and 3,308 vials of other medications, everything from epinephrine to blood pressure medicine. So, what I'm trying to get in on. I'm gonna feel for those. So how often are we gonna have to physically go to one of our pharmacy locations and restock? So we're hoping to design a system that minimizes out of service time for our lives. Yeah, that's where I was going with this because we're taking units out of service. The old model which worked well was they would use a medicine, exchange it at the point of use or transfer of care at the hospital and be back in service. So we're looking to almost replicate that with locations that are very close to our hospitals. So station 22 right next to a novel out in hospital for example is one of the sites that we're looking at having a point of redistribution. Okay. Eventually. Early on we know we're only going to be able to have so much prepared and ready and set up by November 27th because of the short time frame that we were given. So there may be a little more hassle or out of service time for our units at the outset. But we're looking at ways to mitigate that, increasing power levels of what we carry. Right. It's one of those ways. Okay. And then the macro sort of reason more in this. This is DEA, new guidelines that then the state is implementing. It's pretty complicated. It ended up really being driven mostly by FDA, with a desire of that agency to increase the tracking and tracing of medications throughout the supply chain. The big picture goal is if there's a problem, a recall, they want to be able to know that this medication went from this distributor to this pharmacy and maybe even to the end user patient if they had to trace it down. And so back in 2013, the FDA passed this drug supply chain securities act that planned to implement in, sorry, it was 2013, Plan to implement in 2023. They pushed it back another year because the hospitals and other pharmacies really weren't ready. So that's how we got to November of 2024. But from like a controlled substance perspective, like we go from having two basically in our county, two places, we had a couple of standalone ERs, so I don't know, four, five, whatever. Two, now those places still have drugs for their own patients. Now we have eight potentially other locations and countless more people who are gonna be touching it and having to pass through. Plus we may have to put more on all of our units that are out there all over the place. So under what plan it is, that a more secure way of our units that are out there all over the place. So under what plan it is, that a more secure way of tracking and controlling access. Maybe that's a rhetorical question. But yeah, no, I think you make a great point. I think one of the root causes was the DEA to speak about that organization. They're strictly concerned about the narcotics. Yeah. They really didn't like the model of medications sort of owned and controlled by a hospital being sort of loaned out to EMS agencies. They want the agency to have more of an ownership and responsibility model. So yet to be published, new DEA regs, which have been in draft form for six or seven years, are suggesting some changes along those lines. And I think that's part of what's driving this few different factors through other things. Thank you. And thank you for this download, which is interesting. I'll just leave it at that. I guess the question board pointed Mr. Freeman, but anybody can chime in. We reached out to our congressional delegation and what has their response been to this and I know we have a motion coming from the chair which is rightfully so to put it to our legislative packages. So can you give us any updates from them on this and what they plan on doing or? Absolutely. Good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the committee. So Dr. Morgan really articulated the update well. The federal delegation actually followed out with us yesterday. And what they noted was that they spoke with FDA, staffed it, and FDA pointed them back to the letters, essentially, that Chief Johnson spoke on earlier from the hospital, which basically recognized within the regulations a carve out for EMS agencies. However, that does not fix our issue. And so they noted that there's an exemption process by which we could apply to be exempt from certain portions of the regulations up until November 27th of 2026. However, that again does not fix our issue. Our issue is the hospital's interpretation that they cannot refill our drug kits due to the FDA and DEAs enforcement of the regulations preceding November 26th and starting on November 27th. As Dr. Morgan pointed out, the Drug Supply Chain Security Act passed in 2013, hospitals didn't have the technological infrastructure to adhere to the regulations. And so that allowed FDA and DEA to essentially come in and say, well, we'll delay the implementation. Well, now, and we've seen the federal government move relatively slow on a lot of things. This is a rare moment where they are moving very quickly. And we only have a few months to basically come into compliance with these regulations. And so the delegation has worked passionately with us over the summer on this issue. However, as Dr. Morgan also said, mid-August, the Board of Pharmacy here in Virginia adopted the regulations. And they put certain policies in place that were meant to relieve the burden of adhering to the regulation. And, you know, we also worked with NACO. We staff actually spoke with the Legislative Director of the Health Committee as well as the Legislative Director of the Public Safety Committee. And what they noted was that Virginia is in a very unique predicament and that it seems as though we are one of the only states in the United States that refills our drug kits in this manner with the hospitals and you know will we exchange the patient at the ER and then refill them at the hospital pharmacy and then go off to the next emergency which has worked well which is why we have maintained that system. However, we are now in a place where it seems as though we are in a waiting game with the FDA to hear back that federal delegation is waiting to hear back more as well as the VACO. They wrote a letter on August 23rd as I'm sure that you all received that communication to the FDA and DEA to essentially request them to take in consideration Virginia's unique predicament of this regulation and we are still waiting on the FDA and DEA to respond to that letter that they go wrote to the FDA and DEA. So that is the current legislative predic to that letter that they go wrote to the FDA. So that is the current legislative predicament that we are in right now. And we continue to push the FDA and DEA to take an account the predicament that Virginia is in. Thank you. I just wanted to point out too that there's not all doom and gloom in a sense that the Board of Pharmacy did help us with a few regulations. They have deregulated some of the medications that used to be controlled that are now less controlled. So there are some regulations that were helpful to us, moving forward. One thing I didn't mention, but one thing of a big benefit for Loudoun County, probably about four or five years ago, we enacted multi-factor authentication on our EMS units. So in other words, when our drugs are locked up on the unit or in a supply cabinet, for that matter, you have to swipe your ID card and enter a unique pin number for every day. Many jurisdictions do not have that. That was something we did about five years ago. If we did not have that, that would be a much higher cost for us to implement that level of security on our units. So we're thankful that we did that and had the foresight to implement that system many years ago. Okay, all right, thank you. We'll stay tuned and see how this plays out. Thank you. Chair Innell. I know. So Mr. Chairman, I often, I like and appreciate you for so many reasons, Mr. Chairman, but tonight, especially because you are at your base an incredibly logical person. So you keep asking these logical questions to an issue that is completely illogical and cannot possibly have an answer. So your response is making me laugh because I'm like, yeah, no, that's just, but I'm just not going to make any sense about how much you ask that question. I know. However, I do have a one way. Is any of this being covered out of any funds is not being put on counties and localities, the spincy machines and other things like that? I mean, I understand that I don't know that I like that some of the medications have been, you know, have been changing. I mean, what is considered, it controlled, has been lessons. I'm not sure I actually love that, to be honest. I'm not sure that's a good idea at all. So that's not the way we should be going. But as far as you know, how much, if any, of the fronted cost, are we going to have to pay? Now I get that we're going to get to have the medication supply that's already there. And I get that we have some things in place already because you all have been a great job of putting those things in place already. But am I right to assume that most of these costs that we have to bear, we have to bear and will not be paid by any other federal government and state government as well. Is that correct? I think your answer is 100%. Gallowown County is funding this change of this pharmacy. We are using, you know, Megan could speak further, but we are using some of our EMS building money that we do. So it's a great use of that money that we have and there's obviously, again, making it speak to that. But all of it is being funded through Latin County. Okay, Mr. Himstreet, the positions that have to be hired, I imagine persons who feel those positions right now are looking like they can just write their own checks, they can just make a right their own, they can do whatever they want to because they're going to be in so much demand. How long do you think it would take to get these people that we have to have these four positions on board? How long will that hiring process take, given the fact that literally all of Virginia is trying to hire people? So we're not convinced that all of Virginia's going to try to hire these people. I mean, one of the things we've said is outside of metropolitan areas like Northern Virginia, the capability to stand up the pharmacy operation is rather limited. So our understanding, and I'll defer to our chief on this is that the positions where hiring should be available in the local workforce. So we would anticipate pretty standard classification and hiring process, but to your point, Madam Chair, I think we're looking at six to eight months. Oh, okay. That's a little bit. Pretty traditional type of hiring process for brand new positions. Okay. But I would say if you're not in a metropolitan area after November 27th, don't get a car accident. Yeah. Mr. Freeman, as of right now, do we know outside of major metropolitan areas and areas that maybe have their own health departments, which for Northern Virginia, I think is it's a fair effects loud in in Prince William. I don't believe Alexandria and Onnitham do have their own health departments. I could be wrong about that, but I don't think they do. So as of right now, do we believe that most of our rural counties in Virginia are going to do this by region and not by locality or by county, is that the plan? Well, I don't want to speak for the rural localities, but what I would imagine is going to happen, and Dr. Morgan could opine on this. But one of the policies set in place by the Board of Pharmacy, when they adopted these regulations to leave the burden on localities, was the ability to essentially have the Regional EMS Council secure the licensure to be the provider to the localities on a regional basis. So I imagine that is what the rural localities would do. That's what I would pick it up. And Dr. Morgan, one of the reasons I think that what we have now works is because you know what you know much, I mean the hospitals have a stock of medication. Doing it like this, how do we do this? Do we order the medications? We think we're going to need. And then what happens if those expire out? Obviously we've lost the money. What if we don't have enough? How does this work as far as ordering the medication? We're going to keep in stock. Yeah, so that's a great question. So we do currently do a lot of ordering of EMS supplies. So we're used to adequate par levels for disposable medical equipment and things that expire in some manner similar to what medications do. But certainly the hospitals possess the expertise and the experience and the purchasing power of the advantages that come along with that. And so we will be new at this and that's part of why we want to bring in people with experience and resources and expertise specific to pharmaceutical management and ordering as part of these positions. So we do have a history of and because of our patient care tracking information, we have data that we're able to mine on how much medication we use over a period of time on average and, you know, health frequently, certain medications we carry, and we use very infrequently, but we really have to have it for that one-off situation. Others were using on a daily basis. And so we know all those volumes and we'll hopefully be able to have an adequate stock and supply so that we don't run into issues with supply. Things outside of our control, however, and if you've read the news, is there's drug supply chain issues, particularly with sterile injectable drugs, everything from a tornado hitting a plant in, you know, North Carolina, you know, last year to other things where plants get shut down temporarily and whole classes of medications just suddenly aren't available. And so the hospitals are used to dealing with these problems and we've benefited from their expertise over the years in procuring medications and maintaining adequate stock. Even despite all that, there have been times where we have had to not carry something for a short period of time because it was just simply not available. And then my last question is does this include benzodiazepines? Yes, we use that primarily for patients experiencing seizures. So now, so the Benzos will be included in the opioids that we will now be stocking. And distributing. Correct. We already carry them, but we're going to have to order, procure and manage to supply ourselves. Okay. Thank you. All right. I'm going to go to the motion and then I'll turn to you to make your motion to your end. I move the finance government operations to the Second Amendment Committee recommend the Board of Supervisors, Authorized Recreation of 4FTE in FY 2025 for the purpose of creating Loudoun County Fire and Rescue Pharmacy Program. Second. Second about your Randall. Any further discussion needed from us? Thank you for all the work on this. This is a huge undertaking. I think Mr. Hemstrey is right. We're fortunate that we have the resources here and the brain power sitting here and elsewhere in the department and our county to get this done. Not everybody is that fortunate. So I know we'll do the best job that we can to prevent any kind of disruption and the residents probably won't even know about it, which is how it should be, but I also know how much work goes into making that the case. So thank you for all that. And of course, we have to do this. I'm happy to support it, not happy about having to do it. Other discussion of motion? Your light's't want but you good yeah, all right all in favor say aye I want to pose motion carries five zero share a Randall I'm with the finance government operations and economic development committee recommend to the board supervisors that the following topic be added to the county state and federal legislative Agendas Just made second by Mr. St. Okay, so, so I don't actually remember being forced to vote on an item that is literally in contradiction to our federal and state programs, which is what this is. For a myriad of reasons, the unfunded mandate alone being one of the reasons. I also don't remember being forced to vote in the item that is this ridiculously illogical. And I think for a lot of reasons, it's a very, very bad idea. I am absolutely slayed by how professionally our staff handles these things all the time. Because you have to, and we have to do what we have to do, but your handling of this has been what you always are as exemplary, and I really do appreciate that so much. I do not believe we should pass that first motion without at least saying in our disagreement. And the fact that NACO, I'm sorry, VACO, is leading the effort against this, and I believe if nothing else we owe it to them to join in that effort. And so although this is being hoisted upon us, and we may not have a whole lot of chance to change it, I cannot, I couldn't live with myself if I didn't put something forward to say, we're doing this in the rest because we have to, but we do not agree with it. And it is, it's an unfunded mandate and for various reasons. Besides just's an unfunded mandate and for various reasons. Besides just being an unfunded mandate, I think it's a very, very bad idea. So this motion is registering that. It really has nothing to do with how amazing our staff has handled this, it's our fire and rescuer has handled this. But I wanted to, it's just me, you know, putting a marker down of how much I disagree with the fact that we are being forced to do this. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Chair Randall, for the rest of the... Thank you. I appreciate staff's response to this. And as Chair Randall said, always professional. I'm sure you were pulling your hair out at one point but but you come here and you've got the problem basically solved and and we do appreciate that and I hear I think Mr. Freeman what you're saying is that perhaps there's a slim chance that Virginia might get some kind of a waiver for this is that kind of the path that you're thinking about? Well, so what the FDA has communicated to our federal delegation and the links to more information are online. It's public information that there are certain portions of the FDA regulation that provide an exemption for certain EMS agencies by which they can apply and be exempt for certain regulations up until November 27th, 2026. that does not fix our problem. The problem is that the interpretation of the regulation by the hospitals essentially is saying while the MS services are carved out, hospitals are not. And so they are unable to participate further in the Stratkitt program preceding November 26th. Okay. Well, so the answer is no to what I was thinking. That's unfortunate. Well, I am sorry that you guys have had to deal with this because I think that you would probably rather just be out there helping people than trying to figure out how to build a pharmacy in the matter of what, six months, to cover a county of 420,000 plus people. So you guys deserve some sort of an award. Thank you for all your hard work and I'm happy to support both motions. Thank you. Okay, closing. No, just thank you again. I will leave. You know, the difference between who loud in county is right now and and the resources and the staff that we have and what we're going to see in other counties is going to be stark. I think that this actually not in our county but in some rural counties actually could be could be life threatening. So this is just very unfortunate what's happening here. So but thank you all very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. All right, all in favor of the motion? Say aye. I, anyone opposed? Motion carries. 5-0. Okay, have a good night. All right, last item. It is the budget development item, which I know everybody feels like right now. Department of General Services Organizational Assessment. I will say that we actually requested this during last year's budget process with all of the stuff that Ernie and his team are bringing us and org charts and lots of money for new staff. And so tonight Ernie's here to tell us that we don't have to do it and it's gonna be much cheaper, and he's gonna go instead, go buy a fleet of pharmacy vehicles. Yes, sir, we don't have to do it, it's gonna be much cheaper. We're gonna go buy a fleet of pharmacy vehicles. All right, well then we're done. Have a great night. And of that, do you want the paper tomorrow or tonight? So good evening. Chair Luterno, it's good to see you all back from break. I'm going to go back to the board. Unfortunately that is not what I'm going to see. Yeah, I did. You see me? Although you really do may need to go by a bunch of pharmacy vehicles. I may have to do that. So we were going to start out with you, weren't we? So Megan and I have put together this presentation to put your blame on her. I'm so sorry. Herner team, Amber, they were awesome to put this together. There's lots of numbers in here, so you know that was them. Okay. So you can rely on those with a great fidelity. So as you mentioned last year when we were going through this with our budget requests relative to our assessment, the board did ask for more information on it. So we provided this summary document and really looking at the three phases and our way forward. I will caveat this if you can go to the next slide. We, the ELA did not turn out so well. We just provided this slide to give you the first. It shows a look back of 2024 and really what it did for us was as we were going through this process, there's a lot of things happening in general services and we have grown immensely in our service delivery. So it caused us about a year and a half ago to really ask the question why. Next slide. Yeah. So what we've seen since FY 2015 to present is we've seen our budget actually more than triple. We've seen our staff double. We've seen expansion of services all very much in line with general services and public works operations do. We've seen a significant increase in the square footies that we're maintaining. You look at that bottom right-hand section there for work orders. Our work orders are more than tripled since fiscal year 17 through the end of 2024. And even with that, the increase in staffing that we have provided, it still has resulted in that increase of 25% work order load on each technician. So we're playing this pretty significant catch up game and have been doing so for probably 10 years. This was kind of our high level look at things. If you look at the next slide, this happens to be a slide that really tells a story from me If you look at 2015 you see maybe a slower period of growth first couple years, but then you start seeing it ramping up With the expansion of facilities primarily Waste management has grown extensively and that's these are staffing Numbers, but you see the corollary budget line growing with it. We currently now have the third largest budget in the operating budget in the county. We're only the eighth largest organization as far as departments but there's a lot of things going on. And I want to kind of direct your attention to the very bottom gray line on that, that's senior management. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a little bit. That was essentially stagnant from 2015 to 2024, and then you saw a small jump in that senior management in 25, primarily because of this reorganization change. No organization really does that and survives keeping the senior leadership at that static level when you see a doubling of their staffing levels and a more than tripling of their operational budget, which is a corollary indicator of the rules and responsibilities. So this was our why. Why do we need to have a look at our organization as a whole? And so we commissioned last July, a Alvaro-Arzimar cell, which was a consulting firm that really focused and specialized on public works entities, and they are nationally recognized for their expertise in this field. And so we chose them because we needed to make sure that they were really looking at the needy-gritty of our operation. Started out with an employee survey and to our absolute amazement, 61% of the entire department chimed in on this. That's a very, very high number, especially with an organization that is head down into operations. That's what we do, right? So, a couple of themes rose from that, obviously, Work Law was a key challenge, training and professional development was a high need for the organization, and they love their jobs, they just need more help getting it done. And so there was a clear indication that well with individuals we had good communication, could you step outside of that and communication started failing. Whether it's between divisions up the chain down, chain cross, and that's a real significant warning side and any side of organization, any size organization when you start having failures in your communication structures. So the consultant, Avarez, Marcel, kind of pulled together some high level findings. And I'm not going to go through them all, but I'm going to bracket them. First thing they notice is that DGS has this very, very strong, get it done culture. We're extraordinarily good at excelling and triaging situations and taking immediate action. We have a highly technical and capable team that can get it done. And that is what we've done over the last 10 years is we've actually grown the front line with highly technical, highly capable, highly competent service-oriented staff to get the job done. What we did not affect what we do is build the infrastructure behind it to keep it sustainable. And that is where we found ourselves at a breaking point with this. And they highlighted those breaking points that we haven't had time to address long-term strategies, which has limited our ability to identify funding priorities and operating needs looking beyond the immediate, which is one of the glaring weak points that we currently have. Are we getting the job done? Absolutely. Can we sustain that? Absolutely not. So we started the process of implementing this last year. We'll talk a little bit about that. But they also really highlighted that the current organizational structure and the operating model resulted in the key leaders, the very few key leaders that we had were stuck in the day-to-day operations, limiting the ability specifically me and my leadership team, the ability to focus on strategy, which is a, it can be a, a tactical and critical failure in operating departments such as general services. So they highlighted a number of, of, of very positive things about the organization, but they also highlighted quite a few glaring needs that needed to be addressed in the very short term. They bucketed these into five different categories, Department of Organizational Improvements, Talent Development, Strategic Planning, Operational Effectiveness, and Tools for Communication and Development. So we then subsequently built an implementation plan around these, working with them. But these were the five buckets that they identified. I have highlighted in the American Public Works Association of Credation as a big yellow box, primarily because that's going to be a major and very significant tool to help guide us through this process. You know, we have a lot of international and national standards that can guide us to this process. We're not alone in this and there's some good industry best practices. So just to kind of highlight some of the areas, organizational improvement. Good slide. They recommended that we re-line our current six divisions and a 13 divisions to provide sustainable functional operations. Critical element there was to provide a clear communication bridge for senior leadership at the strategy level and divisions at the operational level and mitigate a number of the critical strategic senior leadership gaps. In talent development, they identified clear needs for cross training and access to training opportunities. Primarily in the technical area but also professionally and personally for the staff to give them an opportunity to grow and not only their career but in their interpersonal skills as well. The next area was strategic planning. We do not have an effective strategic plan in general services. And what does that mean? I'm not a planner, I'm an operator, that's kind of at the core of what I do. So planning is unfortunately an afterthought, and this has to be a forethought, and it has to be strategic and intentional, if we're going to be able to pay attention to what's coming ahead. We have invested an enormous amount of resources in looking at our program reviews and the, what's the term, the stabilization, pathway stabilization. And those are very real initiatives that allow us to look beyond the immediate to solve the problems that Lawton County is going to have to address in five and ten years. Part of that is pursuing the American Public Works Association of Credations because it's going to help us get there in a really amazing way. Operational efficiencies, I don't want to sort out all the dirty laundry in here but we need a lot of help with this. And so we've actually hired a temporary employee to help us address some of our gaps in standard operating procedures and streamline our operations, promoting knowledge transfer and improving our onboarding process. And I'm talking fast, but I want to make sure that you all can get out here as soon as possible as well. We've hired Dr. Catherine Jefferson. Her PhD is in public policy. I'm not sure why anybody would get that, but I'm glad that she did. Dr. Catherine Jefferson, her PhD is in public policy. I'm not sure why anybody would get that, but I'm glad that she did, because she is brilliant in this field and has been an extraordinary contributor through this process. And then lastly, communications and collaborations, which I will assure you is the actual essential backbone of making this organizational process work. So just really the next slide we'll highlight kind of how we're doing, how we got there. This has been an incredibly collaborative process. I'll tell you the organization, we've got a few other slides to show this, but they have had enormous buy-in. And this is because we're willing to take the time and invest into our department and get the feedback from the team that is actually getting the work done. So as I mentioned, we had over 60% of the staff responding to the initial survey. We had 20% of our staff sign up immediately because they want to be part of the solution. So we initiated these sprint teams. They came up with recommendations working with the consultant and it was extraordinary what they came up with. And it was real, applicable, operational, realistic solutions to get us to that finish line. So back a little bit to the positions that we were talking about. We did initiate in 2024 some reclassifications of positions to address our greatest and most emergent needs. One of which is a deputy director, another deputy director for environmental services that's currently being classified by HR. We established a waste management assistant director, a waste management division manager, a second one that's currently reviewing applications for that, capital asset preservation program. These are the ones. This is the program that actually fixes the HVAC systems, replaces the roofs, replaces the windows. These are all projects that ensure that the assets that you will have invested in are preserved and maintained in a way that ensures that the work environment is satisfactory to our workforce. And we invested in another division manager in our facility maintenance program to focus on public safety and the security operations. Those are all in movement and happening right now as we speak. In 2025 we came to the board and asked for additional resource requests which you so graciously approved for us and we are moving forward on that one of which is the energy and environment division manager. Interviews are currently underway. Stormwater Engineering Program Manager is ready to advertise internal services division manager. That's a mid-year. Our budget manager which is also mid-year and are two grant CIP analysts and those are in process. So those are the first two phases of our organizational structural organizational re-alignment. The third phase and hopefully the last phase for this process, as recommended by the consultant, is four more positions that we will be likely bringing to you in the 2000, 26 research or our budget process. And that's another assistant director for management administration. Learning diversity and equity inclusion coordinator, another set of capital asset preservation program specialist, and then a policy and planning administrator. So what does that look like when we pull it all together, the organizational chart that we have on the next slide? Set up a structure that Alvar as Marcell says, you have an incredible operation, you do an extraordinarily good work. The economy is a scale by having what you do where it is, works perfectly, because you have a centralized management administration program. You are delivering more requisition orders and purchase orders than any other department in the entire county and it works effectively and seamlessly because you have this economy of the scale in this finance and administration internal services operations and it benefits all these other operational outwardly focused programs and divisions to get the job done but this is how you need to set it up and so they said that the strategic leadership element and the planning element Has to happen and you need to you need to focus it into two primary areas one of which is your fleet transit and facility operations Which is your essentially your rolling stock and your physical plant and then your environmental services and that's the waste management Which is the landfill and recycling and our public works and environmental services so That's kind of like the strategic side of it and the assistant directors are the bridge to the operations that division managers are now able to focus on operations and not be distracted by the things that should be strategic or planning or upper level communication and coordination. And those are the 13 divisions that we now have in place and are operating and the only one of the assistant directors that we now have in place and are operating and the only one of the assistant directors that we don't have right now is the assistant director for management and administration which would be an ask for 2026 but this is already effectively working with a few of those positions being filled or reclaced now. And so what we learned we had our second second all-hands, all-staff meeting back on July 31. And we were asking some questions, we were getting some feedback. And this was a remarkable response that we saw. Now, remind, I want to remind you, we've invested for a decade into the front line. And when we laid this out to them over a six to seven month period working closely with the team. Overwhelmingly, they not only understood the reorganization and the impact of DGS, they believed that it was going to benefit the department and its ability to continue to deliver services to not only our peer departments, but the citizens and businesses within Loudoun County. And that to me was probably the biggest testimony of a success for change management is that the organization understood it, valued it, and said it'll make a huge difference. So where do we go now? Our request is to be able to continue to implement the reorganization through the additional resources, resource requests that we're gonna be asking for in the FY26 budget process. We have created a number of long-term teams to address the training, culture, engagement, and communication elements. And we have a number of short-term teams to deal with some of the quick fixes, the strategic planning, and things of that nature. But ultimately, it's a continuous improvement process that the buy-in from the department has been amazing and they are wanting it and they are seeing the value through the quick wins that we've already achieved. So very quick, I am going to stop talking and I will make myself available for any questions you may have. Okay. Supervisor Brisbane. Thank you. That was very thorough. And I feel like you've explained everything really well. And I'm glad to hear that staff is on board with all of this. And it sounds like they're excited about it. As of now, you're not asking for any mid-year positions. OK. And then I just had one sort of overarching question. There has been some discussion about having a separate department for like an environmental department. It looks to me, especially with that chart that you were just showing. It looks like you're going to have an assistant director for environmental services. Was that the title? It'll be a deputy director for that. Deputy director for environmental services. So it sounds to me like we're addressing that need within your department. Would you agree? Yes, ma'am. In fact, that was what the consultant identified very quickly as a way to solve that. And when they looked at this, they looked at all a wide variety of options here to include creating another department. And they recommended against that for a number of reasons, but it was primarily for the economies of scale and the efficiencies that we get by providing the management administrative services for the entire department. The cost to split that up and then create that same infrastructure and other department is very expensive. This also, as Mr. Hemshreet has referenced in the past, this also aligns the non-regulatory and the proprietary environmental programs that the county deals with in one department. So it keeps it very clean. The public understands it. Other departments understand it. They understand who to go to for those non-regulatory elements. So this is a proposal that the consultant identified as the appropriate solution for that. And when you say non-regulatory, part of staff's pushback is the word I'm coming to, but it's not necessarily pushback. But concerns about having a new department would be putting sort of like zoning and those regulatory things together. Is that what you mean by you're going to keep the non-regulatory things over here and then leave the building permits and the zoning and everything else over on another side of the house? Yes, that's clean. Yes, and really that comes down to the development community. They understand that working with building development, planning and zoning is the regulatory framework to some extent of our moral health. And they know who to go to for that. And it's very clean, they understand it. I, in my previous life, I was a director of an environmental organization that did both. And I could tell you it is extremely challenging the way that we currently have a set up right now is very favorable to administration of the programs and also the understanding of the programs to do the entities that are either being regulated by it or receiving benefit from it. What's the total budget ask then going to be? So we're working through that now with- You don't know for 26 yet. Okay. we do not we don't have those numbers yet, but the positions for this particular priority associated with this are those five four positions. Six four positions. The bottom four, man. The bottom four would be the new ones. Yes, ma'am. Okay, so the ones in the middle, they were already funded. Okay, already approved. Okay, great. And then one last question, are you going to keep those colors for your departments? I like them. I happen to like them. So everyone knows where to go when they come into the office and yeah, I'm in the blue team. It works for me. Yeah. Okay. They actually voted on those just so you know they decided who, what what division was getting what color? Okay. Thanks. Thank you. That's good leadership. Thank you. Those are saints. So they got to pick you have forms too. I happen to like my uniforms too even though somebody calls me a little bit stoic in my in my formality but I I like them that identifies who is in your office. So, go back to the chart real quick, please. The chart? Yes. So where, for example, help me understand because I'm looking at it, I don't see it. Where would Keith Fairfax and his great team be? Under. They will not be in this. Keith Fairfax is zoning enforcement. So they are regulatory. And so they are still with building, I'm sorry, with planning it over. Yes, sir. Okay. All right. We are not proposing a structure beyond the current roles and responsibilities of General Services. Okay, don't keep. Okay. All right, very good. Keith would be very upset if he thought he had to come work with me. Okay, don't give. Okay. All right, very good. Keith would be very upset if he thought he had come work moving. Okay. Maybe he gave me a color. Yeah. True. I'll say any purple. We'll work on it. There's a few. Let's go with that. That's finance in the administration. Yeah. There's a few. Yeah. All right. Sorry, but do you feel very confident in this and it sounds like you got some good buying from the, you have to use the term, but rank and file. Yes, sir. All right. Well, that's the main thing is if they're, they're, they're supportive of it then. Well, they see the value of the thing and they And they're hoping they're very optimistic that this will be a change that will benefit their ability to get the job done more effectively and more efficiently. And this will be all to get, what's the ramp up to? Is it five years altogether? No, sir, actually we're in the second year and it's a third year ramp up so pending the board's approval or consideration approval of our request for 26. We would, fiscal year 26 would be the third and final year of its implementation. All right, thank you. Chair Randall. Yeah, I will be quick, Mr. Chairman. I just want to say first of all, I really appreciate the incredibly organized matter in which you guys have handled this all the way along. It's been, you've come to every section and it's been clear what you're trying to do. On page seven of the presentation, you actually mentioned what were the recommendations, but before you said that, you actually said, you know, they said we're doing really something very, very well, but these are things we're not doing well. I wouldn't mind hearing what you all think you are doing well because you should always say that. Just because, you should always say that. Obviously I would be supporting the motion. My message to you though to take back to your staff is I have never had a negative experience with anybody on your staff. Any request I make they're helpful, they're professional, they're just amazing at all times. And I don't think I've ever said that to you before to take back to your staff. But please do let them know that they've just been. I mean, I will call the night before and say I need help with fill in the blank. And somebody's there and does it. And you have a fantastic staff and please let them know that from me. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Just go back to that or chart for sec are any of those positions vacant? So I like the top so the deputy director for vulnerable services is a Reclass position. Yeah, it's in the process so technically, yes, it hasn't actually been classified yet. No, but you have somebody on the roll, based with us. It's me. I'm feeling that role. We're going to call that one vacant. Right. It depends on the day. So that was OK. I didn't even mean that. That was a problem. So the assistant director for transit fleet and commuter services that was vacated peggy peggy penny retired And that was the time when we consolidated fleet into that operation So it's or anything that rolls Construct and that was a recommendation of the committee so that is vacant and we're hiring for that now The assistant director of facility operations with just recently hired his name is Matt Jeffson came out of engineering facility engineering for 30-year career in the Air Force phenomenal assistant director for waste management, again reclassified new position we're currently reviewing applications and the assistant director for public works and environmental services is Mark Veney. Okay, so, oh and that's our, the other deputy up there is Jamie Cook, who we stole from Montgomery County He was deputy director for General Services in Montgomery County in Maryland Great steel by the way, okay. I was just trying to get a sense of kind of where that stood from an actual execution standpoint So how how long do you think this transition ultimately will take? Not necessarily just like how long till you get the positions you want all that, but you're trying to undergo a little bit more of a, I don't know what I call cultural, but you know. It is actually a cultural shift. So that's a very fair question, Supervisor Turner. And the formal and structural change will be a three year implementation, but there are a lot of other things that will take more time. I will tell you just to kind of open up a few things. We're looking seriously at an apprenticeship program to specifically target it to our trades. That takes an enormous amount of work. And we believe it's essential, the average age for the trades nationally is 52 years old. And we are having an incredible deficit in those, in those recruitments and we're competing against everybody that needs HVAC technicians, plumbers, I mean our ability to outsource them is becoming more difficult. And the only real solution to that, and Mr. Hemstrey and I have talked about this and we're working with HR to try to frame a solution for this, is really get into the apprenticeship game. The unions have been the masters of this for a better part of a half a century. And so we're leaning on some of the expertise that our Deputy Director of Fleet Transit and Facilities, Jimmy Cook, has had developed a partnership program in Montgomery County. So we're leaning on that to try to build a solution to where we can actually pipeline, not only just the recruitment but the retention and the growth of a sustainable well cared for and productive trades organization. That's just an example. Sorry, you could. No, no, no, that's fine. So those take years, but we have to get the infrastructure in place to be able to sustain it and to make it work. Okay. Thank you. to be able to sustain it and make it work. Okay, back off to it. Well, thank you for the presentation. I'm not going to say I'm going to look forward to the budget request, because, yeah. Understood. I think I'm going to break some point, but anyway. Well, we're going to do the best we can. All right. I think that is our last item. So with no further business to come before the committee, we will see everybody tomorrow for the public hearing.