Budget Questions Answered. Thank you, Lori Allshouse.
Thanks to Albemarle County’s Lori Allshouse, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, for providing answers to my questions on the Proposed FY2017 Budget. What follows are my 13 questions, the answers I received, and some follow-up comments (in bold). Take special note of (5).
(1) Who are Albemarle’s peer communities in the “World of Work” compensation information?
Answer: Albemarle County’s Human Resources Department utilizes the median percent increase only from those WorldofWork responders who are from the Eastern Region (which includes Virginia) and are also in either the industry category of “Educational Services” or “Public Administration.”
The actual names of the Eastern Region responders considered to be Albemarle’s peers were not provided.
(2) Does the term “market increase” mean the same thing as “pay raise?” If not, what is your definition of “market increase?”
Answer: Market increases are one type of a pay raise. A market increase is a pay adjustment that is made based on movement of the market.”
Apparently, the answer to my first question here is that a “market increase” and a “pay raise” are not the same thing. Yet, taxpayers will still be paying for them whatever they're called.
(3) On page 52 of your budget summary the 2015 Consumer Price Index increase is shown as about two-tenths of one percent. The Social Security COLA for 2016 was zero. Why are you including a 2% pay raise in Albemarle’s FY2017 proposed budget?
Answer: In order to remain competitive with Albemarle’s adopted market and to comply with the Board of Supervisors and School Board’s adopted Joint Compensation Strategy, the County believes that a 2% increase is necessary. WorldatWork projected a 2.7% increase for the County’s market segment and the County believes that the projected market increase for the County’s adopted competitive market is 2%. The Human Resources Department also recently surveyed these localities and of the fifteen localities and schools that responded, fourteen are projecting a 2% salary increase and one locality is projecting a 3% salary increase to their employees. The County believes that salary increases are necessary in order to retain valuable employees as well as to attract and recruit qualified talent. A decision to not include a salary increase for employees in FY 17 could have the following impacts:
o Compensation would fail to keep up with our adopted market
o If market moves, as expected, The County would need to consider a larger increase in FY 18 to catch up.
o Would likely escalate a pre-existing salary compression issue which affects our ability to attract high quality applicants
o May impact employee turnover
I have highlighted in bold the phrase “the County believes” in the answer. It would be nice to know who the “County” is. Is it a person in Albemarle’s HR Department? Is it someone in the Management and Budget Office? Is it County Executive Tom Foley? Is it one, two, three, four, five, or all six Democrat Supervisors on the Board? Who exactly is the County person(s) who believes Albemarle’s government employees need another pay raise?
(4) How many pennies on the proposed 2.5 cent tax rate increase will a 2% salary increase require?
Answer: The 2% salary increase for general government costs $960,000. The School’s salary increase for teachers and classified staff costs $2,364,823.
What these numbers mean is that 83% of Albemarle County’s proposed tax rate for FY2017 is going toward paying employee pay raises regardless of whether “the County believes” they are a type of “market increase" or a "pay raise."
(5) How many Albemarle County employees are earning more than $100,000 per year in total compensation (salary and benefits)?
Answer: Using FY16 salaries and benefit rates, there are 93 Albemarle County School Division employees and 75 General Government employees who have total compensation of $100,000 or more each year.
Wow! And add another 2% on top for FY2017? What’s your compensation and pay raise going to be in the new fiscal year?
(6) How much do Albemarle taxpayers pay toward the healthcare premiums of a single County employee and to those on a family plan?
Answer: It’s $8,542 per plan year for each employee.
Wow again!
(7) At Supervisor Ann Mallek’s March 7th White Hall District meeting in Earlysville she said she would ask Albemarle County staff to include median home values for Albemarle’s peer counties in the presentations given to the public. I haven’t seen this yet in 5 public budget sessions I’ve attended. Did Supervisor Mallek communicate her request to anyone in the Budget Office?
Answer: Yes, she has. Our Assessor’s Office has recently obtained updated information from our peer localities. We plan to share this information at the Budget Work Session on April 5.
The $100,000 Compensation Club among County Staff should have gathered this information on their own and provided it to the public long before the County Executive’s February 23rd presentation of his recommended budget so that it could also have been part of his slide shows at the so-called Community Engagement meetings. How convenient that this information will be made public a week after the March 30 Public Hearing on the budget and just two days before the final TAX INCREA$E Town Hall.
(8) Why do your budget presentations not include a slide that shows that raising the tax rate from 81.9 cents to 84.4 cents is a 3% increase and with reassessments included the effective tax increase is 4.07%?
Answer: We have been using a slide for many years that demonstrates impacts of changes over time for a certain priced household. For consistency with past presentations, we had continued with that approach. The 4.07% effective increase is included in the tax rate advertisement.
Sorry, but this is not about “consistency;” it’s about convenience. Conveniently, not reminding taxpayers at TAX INCREA$E Town Halls what the impact on their personal real estate tax bills really will be.
(9) What is the most current median home value figure for residential properties in Albemarle County? What is it for each of Albemarle’s seven peer counties?
Answer:
Fauquier = $321,300
ALBEMARLE = $285,000
James City County = $284,000
Stafford = $273,900 Hanover = $226,800
Spotsylvania = $211,900
Roanoke = $191,600
Montgomery = $159,100
A lower dollar amount than I thought for Albemarle, yet more expensive in the rankings than I thought as compared to Albemarle’s peer counties. When we know what the new tax rates will be for each of these localities beginning July 1 and can multiply the tax rates by their median home values, then we’ll know exactly where Albemarle sits in terms of tax burden compared to its peers. Stay tuned.
(10) Why on page 50 of your budget summary do you use data from 2014 instead of more current tax rate data? Why do you not include a column for the comparative median home values?
Answer to the first question: It includes the data available at the time of printing.
Reasonable. I should have thought of this. Sorry for asking. Maybe next budget season, though, a slide could be prepared that is more current and that could be used repeatedly at the TAX INCREA$E Town Halls.
Answer to the second question: The data utilized in this chart is obtained from published documents.
My second questions still stands: Why?
(11) How much of the proposed $375 million FY2017 budget for Albemarle County do you attribute to the County’s growth in population over the past year?
Answer: Albemarle does not include any new positions in the FY17 Proposed Budget to address growth in population. Growth costs for the School Division are $859,646.
Thanks.
(12) How much money is in the FY2017 Budget for purchase of development rights under the ACE program?
Answer: There is no new CIP funding dedicated to the ACE program in the Proposed FY17 Budget. Unexpended carry-forward funding from previous years for the ACE program may be expended in FY17.
My mistake. I thought there was a million dollars per year in the CIP for ACE program development rights purchases from rural landowners. I looked at page 228 of the CIP document that can be found on the County website at: https://www.albemarle.org/upload/images/forms_center/departments/Budget/forms/FY17/FY17_Document-Capital_Project_Request_Summaries.pdf. Apparently, these dollars are only place-holders; the amounts are recommended or requested, but not funded. My apologies for misreading and misunderstanding this. Now, I’m curious to know how much “unexpended carry-forward [taxpayer] funding” exists for ACE.
(13) What is the cost to operate the Ivy Fire/Rescue station in FY2017?
Answer: The net cost to operate the Ivy Fire and Rescue station in the FY17 Proposed Budget is $428,000. This net number takes into account the revenue benefits derived by the EMS Cost Recovery program and the savings associated with the reduction of costs that are associated with the City of Charlottesville Fire Contract.
I have no idea whether this is a reasonable cost or not. I asked this question because Supervisor Ann Mallek (D, White Hall) has suggested that the Ivy Fire/Rescue operation may need to return to a more volunteer-dominated staffing model for budget savings.