The Board of Supervisors held a public hearing on the County Executive's FY2025 Recommended Budget on February 28, 2024 at 6:00 PM in Lane Auditorium. The meeting was called to order by Chair Jim Andrews (Samuel Miller District) with all supervisors present: Ann H. Mallek (White Hall), Diantha H. McKeel (Jack Jouett), Bea LaPisto-Kirtley (Rivanna), Mike Pruitt (Scottsville), Ned Gallaway (Rio), and Jim Andrews. County Executive Jeff Richardson presented the budget overview, highlighting a balanced budget on current tax rates, total budget of $629 million, and general fund of $432.2 million. The hearing included six public speakers and was followed by board reports and updates.
Good evening. Welcome. I'm going to call to order this meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors on the 28th of February at 6 p.m. in Lane Auditorium. I'd like to note that we have on the day us uh Supervisor Ann Malik of the Whitehall District, uh Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Chew District, Supervisor Billy Capisto Kurtley of the Ravenna District, and Supervisor Mike Prud of Scottsfield District, and myself, Jim Andrews representing the man, Samuel Miller District Quorum is present. We're also joined at the meeting by a county executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, and here uh Mr. Steve Rosenberg, our county attorney, as well as our clerk, Ms. Pledged Borgerson. Um also let me please welcome and we will soon introduce our our other uh to take with staff uh who are presenting tonight, helping to present tonight. Um also let me welcome Albano County Police Officers present, uh Lieutenant Angela Jamerson and Senior Police Officer Ronnie Vanderveer. Uh we thank you for your service uh today and for the work you do and your colleagues do every day for our safety and security throughout the county. Thank you. So uh our primary business tonight is simply a public hearing on the county executive's fiscal year 2025 recommended budget. And to uh start this off, we'll turn it over to our county executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson. Welcome Chair Andrews and members of the board, thank you very much for the opportunity uh for me to be here this evening. Uh my name is Jeff Richardson, and this will be the second time in the last week that I have been before the board to talk about the county executives recommended FY25 budget. And as you noted, sir, uh tonight is the public hearing. And so what I will do this evening uh is I will briefly go through the slides uh uh as an overview of a part of what we rec of what we uh put in front of the board last Wednesday at our meeting, knowing that we've got a number of work sessions coming after tonight, and uh Mr. Jacob Sumner, who is to my right, uh along with Andy Bowman from the Finance and Budget Office, they will wrap us up this evening. They will talk about what happens after tonight. They will certainly be here this evening to answer any questions as well as as well as myself on any questions that the board may have this evening. But Mr. Chair, as you noted, tonight is the public hearing, and so I will try to be brief and run through uh several slides just to be able to tee up the FY25 recommended budget. Mr. Bowman, if you'll work with me to advance the slides, thank you, sir. Our screen's not working. Okay. I'm just gonna note the presence of uh Supervisor Ned Galloway of the Rio District has now joined the meetings. Yes, sir. So in the overview this evening that I'll be covering, I'll talk just a second about our budget development process that we have with our eye on the strategic plan. In doing so, we're gonna spend most of our time this evening focused on the recommended FY25 budget, and then finally, we'll talk about next steps after tonight. Let me talk just for a second about our strategic budgeting approach. I want to uh talk about the uh board's five-year strategic plan. This board stepped away in fall of 2022 and worked diligently with staff to identify your six most important goals that we want to focus uh as much attention and resources as we can to uh for uh the next five years. These six goals that you see in front of you represent the five-year strategic plan. Those six goals we work diligently to align our resources with. Last year, or last year we were at at this time, we were aligning year one with the budget process to these six goals. And so at this point, we're approaching year two, and uh we will be working with the board over the coming weeks to look at the alignment into the six areas. We'll look at where our resources are and how how that ties back to day-to-day operations in each of our departments. Okay. Board, this slide really is to represent, in addition to the uh five-year strategic plan and the work that went into that, that our budgeting process is almost a year-round process. This board, this board realizes that. You realize that uh we work with uh to look at our economic outlook. We we look at our five-year financial planning, we tie all of that back to our five-year strategic plan. We're keeping an eye on our revenues as we work toward the uh start of the budget process. We look at existing commitments, and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. And finally, all of that is underpinned with our financial policies, where we are a triple triple A bond-rated uh local government for a medium-sized local government that that's somewhat unusual, but we we are proud of the fact that we work hard in our community uh to be fiscally conservative and to guard our triple triple A bond rating. Okay.