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Albemarle County Supervisor Jim Andrews · Cville Right Now Live

• 0:00
  Courteney Stuart: It's 5:36 on Thursday afternoon. It is the day after the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors met, and we are welcoming into the studio the chair of the Board of Supervisors, Jim Andrews. Jim, thanks for being here.
• 0:11
  Jim Andrews: Thank you for having me, Courteney.
• 0:12
  Courteney Stuart: So My pleasure. Yeah. Glad to see you. And, budget has been adopted Yes. And allocated.
• 0:17
  Is that?
• 0:18
  Jim Andrews: That is correct.
• 0:19
  Courteney Stuart: So, so I guess congratulations on a lot of work that, culminated.
• 0:22
  Jim Andrews: Many months.
• 0:23
  Courteney Stuart: Many, many months. And, so the the total the total budget
• 0:28
  Jim Andrews: Mhmm.
• 0:29
  Courteney Stuart: 640 wait. I need to see what the, the full number. Do you have the full number? 640 something?
• 0:34
  Jim Andrews: 642 million. A little bit little bit more than 642,000,000.
• 0:39
  Courteney Stuart: 642,000,000, and that number went up a little bit over the course of the week. Right.
• 0:43
  Jim Andrews: Well, the the general fund, which is our main operating fund, didn't change, but, there was during the course of time beef between when the meeting was first, agenda pack was first put together and and the meeting date recognizing, some transfers of fund balances within the school funds and some projections as to how much state revenue would come in, which we still don't really know.
• 1:05
  Courteney Stuart: So that's that is still a question. There were some there are some, some tax increase, limited tax increases in the in the county.
• 1:13
  Jim Andrews: We made no change to the real property tax rate.
• 1:17
  Courteney Stuart: Right.
• 1:17
  Jim Andrews: And haven't changed our real property tax rate since 2019, but in 2022, we had looked at the personal property tax, which is your vehicle tax, and the used car market, you may recall, was crazy. People were seeing used car values, values, which were more what than what they paid for the car, year 2 previously. So, recognizing that a lot of this was supply chain pandemic related, we chose at that time to drop the personal property tax rate, by 86¢. Mhmm. Now looking at what we had in our needs for this budget Mhmm.
• 1:56
  As we started to look closely, we had about 8 pages of, unfunded but very important things that we were looking at saying, well, these maybe some of these should be in the budget. We did decide that some of them were important enough that we needed to add them to the budget. So we we increased, the ambulance service coverage from Burke Mar. We, have going ahead with, bringing in professional firefighters for some of the volunteer fire stations, where that's become necessary. Mhmm.
• 2:27
  And we've added to what our human services alternative response team, so we've added a second team to that, An additional police officer, additional sheriff, and and some other changes, but those are the big ones in terms of safety services. Of course, by formula, when we do an increase, it also changes the amount going to the schools. And the schools were looking at a shortfall because those projected revenues from the state are not what they were previously. So we chose, at that time, to see what we could do with our tax rates, and the personal property tax rate is now going up by a little over 15% to bring the amount of revenue back to what it was pre pandemic.
• 3:09
  Courteney Stuart: I see.
• 3:10
  Jim Andrews: But the, rate is still, 32¢ less than what it was pre pandemic. Right. So it was 428 per $100, previously, and we're bringing it back to $3.96 $300.
• 3:27
  Courteney Stuart: Alright. Well, that'll that'll make sense. And I wanted to one of the things you mentioned in the list of things that that that that, raise and the rate, is gonna bring is the, you said human well, the heart I know Hearts team.
• 3:38
  Jim Andrews: We call it the hearts team, but the acronym's a little awkward because there's human services alternative response, and we don't
• 3:44
  Courteney Stuart: You don't say Hussar team. Hussar team. Yeah. But I had I mean, I I I wanted to just talk about that for a second because I think that is, something really innovative and cool that the county
• 3:52
  Jim Andrews: I agree.
• 3:53
  Courteney Stuart: Is doing. And I had, I had the it's the basically, it's a it was a pilot program to, sort of change the way, first responders were allocated to calls. Right? So so sort of triage it.
• 4:07
  Jim Andrews: Yeah. That's a the appropriate word, triage, I guess, because it suggests tries. So we basically human services, alternative response team, which as you said was just one team at this point and we're we're proposing that we've added, funding for a second team, is a combination of a social services worker, of of emergency medical worker and police. Mhmm. And so when a call comes to the police department where they recognize that it may be dealing with a substance abuse issue or mental health issue, and and it may not be appropriate to, you know, look at it just as a police response situation.
• 4:46
  We send in a arts team, and it's been very effective and de escalating situations, and I think it's a great way to look to a lot of the policing in the future and those kind of situations
• 4:59
  Courteney Stuart: to keep
• 5:00
  Jim Andrews: it safe.
• 5:00
  Courteney Stuart: Essentially, doubling adding a second team, essentially doubling doubling it now. And was that that is a little bit ahead of the schedule. Right? The pilot program, it was was being tried out and and
• 5:10
  Jim Andrews: Yeah. I mean, I I would have hoped that, you know, if the as we've seen, the pilot's been successful, and so, yeah, when you realize something is working, you don't wanna hold off on on implementing it further because the, the needs are definitely there.
• 5:26
  Courteney Stuart: Alright. Excellent. Well, I'm gonna try to get, the the 3 of them back in to hear more specifically some of the incidents that they have handled and how that has changed and some of those successes.
• 5:36
  Jim Andrews: Great. I
• 5:36
  Courteney Stuart: think it was Khaki Dimock who is head of social services Yes. And then, colonel Sean Reeves, head of, police chief, and Dan Egleston, the head of Albemarle Fire Rescue. So I I'm making a note. They're coming back. I'm gonna I'm gonna issue an invitation.
• 5:51
  Okay. So, that's budget stuff. Anything else with the budget? There was, salary scales that
• 5:58
  Jim Andrews: It's a routine action that needs to be taken for the for the budget to be effective. We also have our capital improvement plan, which is a 5 year plan, but we are looking at, you know, definitely, you know, that this this, commits us to the 1st year of it, which is a new elementary school continuing with, improvements to Biscuit Run Park.
• 6:16
  Courteney Stuart: Right.
• 6:17
  Jim Andrews: Several, road projects, the 250, 240 intersection, the hydraulic 29 intersection, Ryer Road improvements, and several other, the courts project finishing that one up.
• 6:29
  Courteney Stuart: We know when how how long where are we in the in that process for the courts?
• 6:33
  Jim Andrews: Think it's gonna be open this year.
• 6:35
  Courteney Stuart: Wow. Okay. Alright. Because we're just about halfway through the year. It's hard to believe.
• 6:39
  Alright. So we're talking with Albemarle County, supervisor Jim Andrews talking we've just been talking about, the adoption and allocation of the budget. I wanna talk also, there were yesterday, also, there was, recommendations for, the affordable housing fund, and a little more than $2,000,000, has been I guess, is allocated for Premier Circle?
• 7:00
  Jim Andrews: Yeah. This is a fiscal year 24, which is our our current, not our future looking fiscal year, which starts July 1. But this is, a little over $2,000,000 to, fund phase 3 of Premier Circle.
• 7:12
  Courteney Stuart: Okay. And that I talked about that some with Sean Tubbs. That has multiple phases, and this is for is this for phase?
• 7:22
  Jim Andrews: This is phase 3. You know, this is, 3 good different organizations, Virginia Supportive Housing, Blue Ridge Area Coalition For the Homeless, and Piedmont Housing Alliance. And this is the Piedmont Housing Alliance, and this is a a funding that'll leverage, we hope, the low, income housing tax credit, like tech, funding. So, for the $2,000,000, we're basically looking at being able, through grants, to fund a $20,000,000 project.
• 7:51
  Courteney Stuart: Okay. Well, that yeah. I mean, that I mean, so
• 7:53
  Jim Andrews: that's 60 units.
• 7:55
  Courteney Stuart: Bang for your buck.
• 7:56
  Jim Andrews: With deep affordability needs.
• 7:59
  Courteney Stuart: Alright. Excellent. Well, I will be I will be watching, as that project, comes along. Anything else in your district, in the county that you think, people should know about or you're thinking about, focused on right now? Any meetings coming up?
• 8:12
  Any, sometimes I know there are sometimes meetings in various districts or things.
• 8:17
  Jim Andrews: We had a lot of town halls associated with the budget, and I really enjoyed that. So we got out and, we're able to talk to people about a number of different things, including the budget. We also talked about, different road projects and highway safety. So the police were there at the town halls as well. No.
• 8:36
  I mean, we're looking forward to, you know, just a little bit lighter schedule.
• 8:40
  Courteney Stuart: A lighter schedule with the budget behind you.
• 8:42
  Jim Andrews: A couple meetings in June, and we'll have, one meeting in July rather than 2. So that's the one time we take
• 8:50
  Courteney Stuart: take a break. Get a little break in the summer. Alright. Well, Jim, thank you so much for coming in. I really appreciate it.
• 8:53
  Appreciate you, appreciate you taking the time to talk budget, and I hope you have a great night.
• 8:57
  Jim Andrews: Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.
• 8:58
  Courteney Stuart: That's Jim Andrews, Albemarle County supervisor, chair of the board of supervisors. This is Charlottesville right now.