Board of Commissioners · Regular Meeting · May 23, 2024

announce what you all did what Claudia said a second ago it is a plan for us to finish ahead of time today like that it seems like a lot of discussion time it doesn't mean that we have to take it all up that's like four hours without any presentation when you include lunch so she did say it before everybody got here but do not look at that and look at sticker shot but go ahead thank you Commissioners uh I will start and preface this by saying this is not a new story that I'm getting ready to tell you this is the same story I told and at the policy Retreat back in November it's the same story I told at the I know a hym that sounds like this there is a Baptist hymn that sounds just like the old old Story the old old Story the same old story if I were to Summit up if you have other emails that you want to read while listening to this conversation let me sum it up for you we will not get caught doing that the revenue growth is slowing expenditure growth is growing

25 tax rate increase to make up the difference between revenue growth available and expenditure growth that's desired that may or may not be enough but that's the fundamental issue that we're facing you all know that you have decisions you can make on top of it so you're not going to hear anything new but you are going to hear the same thing and we'll talk about it's not just this year we're looking at 2425 there's some future issues out there that are concerning as well so and you've heard me say decisions you make today affect decisions and outcomes that will happen in the future financially and otherwise so just want to say that before we get started Claudia yeah and I I we can't reiterate that enough um having just gone through a a rating agency review which was one of the most most rigorous I've experienced in my 30

years there's a diligence in which um entities must govern to make sure they're prepared for the oute and that definitely includes realistic expectations of affordability and realistic um views of what's down the road from an operating perspective as well as planning for day de because as Keith has reiterated the expenses are pacing faster than our revenues are keeping up so I showed this slide at the budget Retreat or the budget yes Retreat for you all and probably policy Retreat this is how the budget looked early on when we were developing it well before the manager recommended came up we looked like we were in the hole we had $33 million in identified expenditure needs and only8 we'll call it $19 million in Revenue to support it we were already in

the hole before we even really started with significant discussion about schools this was before considering expansion of school DPS funding before expansion requests for County departments and a and a host of other issues we might consider only point in showing you this slide is to show we started from in the hole just to get to flat ground and I suspect we'll be in that same position in 25 6 but that's another conversation for a different fiscal year when we look out in the future and Claudia this is a big issue for Claudia's is sort of identifying future needs I need you all to pay attention to these bullet points I don't know if I'll go over each one in detail but we had a sales tax inter local change with Durham the city of Durham where we lost a million dollars this year of potential growth we didn't really have a choice in that there because David and I did the math there were any other options but that number will continue to shrink as the city grows in the county the split in that

Ila will continue to change to our detriment it may be one year it may be two years but that's going to take a hit on our sales tax revenue growth oxy tax you all are considering releasing occupancy tax to discover durm or whatever their new name may be in the future over one year three years that's a loss of Revenue it's about $5 million a year that we get for that what will replace that that Revenue there's really only one choice um and that's property tax Andor you reduce expenditure costs through reduce services or programs or increased efficiency obviously our use of general fund fund balance is a number we have used that significantly we reduced the amount we're using this year and we'll get to a slide about that when I say this year I mean the upcoming fiscal year we'll talk about that when we get there but in the future we may not have as much fund balance available to use as a revenue Source unless we make some different decisions DPS funding obviously is increasing significantly

every year Universal prek or the board's attempt to get to Universal prek means future expanded cost there employee benefits are for are going to increase in the foreseeable future we jump over to employee compensation obviously is increasing infrastructure fund funds are ending arpa dollars will end but the needs that are being supported through arpa dollars will not end and we will have decisions there to make in the next upcoming few years eviction reduction are we going to continue to support that and grow that property tax relief on the one hand we're talking about a three and a quar cent property tax rate increase the city's looking at a three almost 4 Cent tax rate increase we may change those numbers that's eight or nine cents we're only putting more pressure on this program in the future revaluation how will that effects there are lots of things coming in the future that cause me to have concern about overall budget growth and how we deal with that with

the available Revenue sources should concern you all with that being said the manager has priorities related to the 2425 budget and as always number one is the education focused budget with DPS at its core that can be seen in a $1 13 million roughly rounded $13 million recommended increase in DPS funding for a number of needs also it is the manager's budget priority to support County Employees where possible I think she has supported them as best she could within the financial constraints of this budget with the recommendation for a 3% increase in salaries would have liked to have made that more but Financial constraints uh got in the way she always wants to maintain County's fiscal accountability we're doing that a little bit by decreasing our use of fund balance leaving it available Claudia just noted the toughest uh Communications with the LGC as it relates to loans long-term loans for

capital projects so we also want to focus on reallocating existing positions through supporting minimal new additions and we'll get to that we only are recommending 10 new positions this year that's on top of 20 last year but those two years that the manager's been here have been significantly lower FTE increases than the years previous to that positions are expensive not only just to pay their salary but the cost and benefits space and a whole host of things so trying to maximize efficiency minimize new additional FTE that does come with a cost because you know departments needs are growing as the population grows Claudia likes to point out very clearly that our population growth has been significant over the last decade and that puts pressure on every program in the need for positions all that being being said the manager's last budget priority was to put a pause on departmental expansion uh and wait for the to try to coincide with a more well-defined

strategic plan and also to allow a deeper dive this year uh where budget office and management finance and every other uh internal service department is going to work with departments to try to review efficiency sort of build their budget from the ground up Claudia calls it zero based budgeting but we're just going to work with departments and say what are you actually spending what do you actually need to try to trim those budgets as much as possible to help some support some of those future needs we just talked about in a previous slide Claud you know and and one of the the parts of this exercise is determine what service level we can offer it's easy to say hey I have you know a a budget to support a particular service It's Tricky when we pull back on what what level of service we give or if we need to discontinue so um that's where we will definitely um need board support through that exercise next

year and now we start with the same old story or that old Baptist hymn as commissioner Carter referenced much of what drives our County budget each year is the natural growth in some key Revenue sources natural growth is a growth without a property tax rate increase it's just growth in sales tax revenue growth in property tax revenue growth in occupany tax Medicaid hold harmless these things happen naturally and as those revenues grow we use those revenues to pay for increased employee salaries to pay for increased benefits pay for operational increases even to support DPS additional funding if necessary or if capable this year is different this year being 2425 our Revenue growth slowed significant except for property tax property tax continues to be the star of the show for Durham County it's growing annually due to increased evaluation what is

2 million of that goes to the general fund 3 million goes to the capital financing plan fund remember your property tax rate of 75 cent 68 cents of that goes to the general fund and it's 10 point some odd cents goes to the capital financing plan fund and that's what yes ma'am could you remind me have we raised taxes yet to cover debt service related to the 2022 we did this year okay I in this time frame when I say this year I jump around in the current fiscal year 23 24 when you all approved the budget

last June it was with a 3 Cent tax rate increase one and a half cents was for the general fund and one and a half cents was for the capital financing plan Fund in relation to the 22 Geo bonds okay so one and a half so far one and a half so far the key word there is so far we have yet to take on the full debt responsibility related to those 22 Geo bonds and as we take that on we may need a tax rate increase next year so really my question kind of was getting at um refreshing my memory on exactly what we had raised but also I wanted to ask you if you thought that the um the the taxes that are set aside for the property for just what you just described right say it again we have some for operating some for Debt Service 68 cents for the general fund and 10 plus cents for the capital financing Plan F do you think that the capital financing fund set aside is under the same kind of pressure that the it's a great question occupancy tax by

3 million you do the math if we lose the oxy tax then the capital financing plan fund is going to immediately need at least one cent of property tax outside of natural growth to replace that Revenue Source okay on top of other issues that may need I was hoping maybe it was really sound insecure and we could borrow from that and order to have more for operating but got it well and and also last year this time there was a big debate on what number to budget for um Capital Finance fund at the time sales taxes were going game Busters and so Keith talked about the

occupancy tax issue we may face we are facing immediately the impact of the sales tax decline so last year this time sales taxes um I think they grew um from the prior from 2223 we budgeted about 21 million more so part of that for the Capital Finance fund some a small amount for the budget for the general fund most of that for the Capital Finance fund so when we were planning last year we said okay we're at a good place we sales taxes are good so we're not going to need to increase property taxes why do High to support the Capital Finance fund because sales taxes have for the past three years grown at a certain rate well you'll see and you've heard that plemented it's and it's back to preco growth levels okay we're still growing which is a good thing but it has an impact so I'm very concerned about the

5 right we

got very but then we came back and we did a tax increase of 1. 85 so please know that we are two bodies of government raising taxes on people I like I I was surprised uh the other week when the superintendent said that she

85 I would encourage you to watch that and just know that for some of folks up who don't pay their own tax bill that is what we are sending to the public and I'm sorry Keith I I ain't got no questions but I I want us to really think holistically about what we have done well I just want to also give the context that the reason one of the strategies around the Durham next and um redirecting some of the occupancy tax similar to what um other counties do is because we have to look for new ways to increase our sales tax revenue and the hope is that if we can support festivals and and events and build a Convention Center one day that's

worthy of our community and a sports PL hopefully we'll have other people helping to pay for the needs that we have so sometimes we have I agree and I hope later we'll hear more about strategies that you all are going to recommend for how we make this transition but I just want to also share the larger context for why our board did make the decision that it did board has to make hard long-term decisions and Investments about ways to make Revenue that may not play out for five or 10 years I do know that over the next couple of years it's more of a loss of Revenue than it will be a gain even though the gain may come in future years so let's get back to natural growth in Revenue sources property tax doing fabulous has been doing fabulous for a decade now as Durham continues to grow the only problem with fabulous is there's nowhere else to go but down when will property tax growth slow I don't

know well it's my it's my job and my natural inclination to be a nervous we have been fabulous for a long time all that being said you heard Claudia say sales tax growth was relatively small it was Tiny this year natural growth and sales tax between the two funds was around 3 million see sales tax under capital and sales tax under the general fund last year that growth was $20 million so a drop from 20 million to 3 million in growth is a loss of $18 million that you could hand out to DPS and various asundry departments and programs without a property tax rate increase investment income is increasing Register of Deeds revenue is dropping for the second year in a row I asked y'all this economic Pop Quiz question at the PO board retreat and I'm going to ask it again do y'all have an idea of why register feed Register of Deeds revenue is decreasing for the second year in a row correct the register Deeds collects

money from the sale of houses uh and the sale of houses or property not just houses but property durm is slowed down significantly partially because there's not a whole lot of inventory to to buy and sell but that's also related to high interest rates people are staying in the houses they have and people aren't buying houses because it's a lot more expensive to do that so we've lost $2 million in Revenue I do need y'all to understand something here when I say we go backwards in revenue from a loss of 2 million it's really more than that in a field if you all think about a salary increase you get every year you expect let's just use a $1,000 increase in your salary if you lose $1,000 that's not a swing of just $1,000 loss that's a swing of 2,000 to how it feels you were expecting a $1,000 increase and you got a $1,000 decrease that's $2,000 do you understand what I mean from a net how it feels to you because everything else in the world is gone up in

7 million we're not putting it in that

7 million less I I yes not being a trained budget analyst I think commissioner Carter you did a great job say it is a revenue line item that we use that we never expect to spend we never hope to spend you yes to answer your question you said it correctly the bigger question is why are we reducing it partially because if you remember looking at the 2223 acur that came out from the finance department our overall fund balance percentage of the general fund dropped significantly for reasons that Claudia can explain well some of which we did on purpose because it too but that's 2223 right what about the Year we're in right now right 2324 is a little bit scary too these Revenue estimates for 2425 aren't

happening in a vacuum they're happening because of what I'm seeing in the current year we're in right now so we have some expenditure increases you all have had some fund balance Appropriations significant that you have appropriated throughout the year for a host of issues where you took out of our fund balance right but at the end of this fiscal year we're not going to grow our fund balance as much as we normally do because we're not wildly over collecting in Revenue this year year and our expenditures are higher than normal so when I plan for next year I'm not only looking at the 2223 act for I'm looking at what's happening in this year with Claudia and and finance and trying to estimate and I think this year is going to be tight so I think the fund balance number when an a for comes out for 23 24 sometime in the fall is going to be lower and I don't want to put pressure on that number for 2425 because we always are trying to land in a Range a range that when we try to borrow debt when looking at the 5

years out we have enough kushion to show that we are solvent and we have the appropriate mix of dollars if emergencies occur and it is a delicate balance and we do our best efforts to do that um but we're at the point now we must be very Tactical uh some of the other reasons for tightening up the number is as as we have a lower vacancy rate in some areas some that are higher we're also uh will'll freeze some positions next year and so that will help us to some extent but the the volatility in some of the areas not knowing how sales taxes May land if they will continue to to to de declined slightly uh there are just so many factors so a best practice is to not budget as much of your savings um

two years ago our fund balance was pushing 46% and that was a bit high but part of it was because we had our um funds that were saved to support the debt service for the bond referendum in the general fund and so we move some of that to The Debt Service fund um again we just we're now closer close to around 34 35% we want to stay in at 30 to 35% range because we are the savings account for schools for for all the entities funded to us and for us we're looking at well what does that savings look like if an emergency happens and so those are the parts that we're balancing just yeah yes ma'am we'll talk about the Medicaid hold harli I guess if I were to put an analogy it's one I just got this we we had a HVAC guy come and do a assessment

7 and tax one you know not quite 1 cent less but close right if you if you on average this year kept pulling

from your savings account to your checking account to pay for groceries to pay for an unplanned cost to fix your car to pay for some increase in your child's college education or he or she wants to go to Europe for a semester and that's an extra $10,000 and you're like oh my God honey we've pulled out of our savings account four times this year already that's future money you were going to use we need to fill our savings account back up or use less of it when we're making a budget next year as a balancing number or draw from it less on things that actually might be less important that you didn't know you were going to have to weigh one against the other I mean I find that frustrating these we make these fund balance Appropriations through the year without even blinking because we feel like our fund balance is ample enough to do that but now we're um limiting ourselves you know even though we know we have some priority expenditures we want to spend money on I bet you there will be some fund balance Appropriations that'll come through the year that if I

had to weigh them now against some of these you know requests that we're receiving from our departments and from the schools and from the sheriff you know I would think nah I'd rather spend it on this I'm sorry we're gonna have to hold on on that one so I I don't know this is th it's kind of one reason why always when we do these budget amendments I wanted to know do we have enough money in fun BS can you guys reassure us that this is okay but we just do it you know we just do it um and now we're in this pickle well I I think it's the it is a cumulative impact it's also the philosophy I know there was pressure at one point like hey it's too high and and and so we've even externally had some critiques is getting a little high I do understand also but I I think for us it is the balancing act so we're saying we're not going to appropriate as high of a numers we did last year but we're for the county side we're also looking within and saying hey

we're going to freeze spending we're going to you know we're we're going to put some other pressures so which is when you when you add all those thing together it's almost a penny I'm just looking for places where we can get some more money honestly and looks like it might be one I don't know yeah we understand and if I can just ask Deputy manager Hager to talk about the conversations and questions we've had rating agencies local government Commission because now people are hyperfocused on our fund balance and the County's um flexibility to be able to help out in emergent situations so because we just issued lobs you know we weren't sure we thought we were going to have to physically go before the local government Commission because there were concerns that had been expressed about our fiscal health and could you clarify manager not ours the schools well it's really the school just say three years in a row the

schools have mismanaged money my first year well excuse me my very first year and then this year and that's why they had to go almost hat in hand in New York so I'll say it if you want it has not been us they have been very physically sound it is the schools and that's why they keep giving these two like these insane exams every other year because the schools Miss manage money period this this was a this listen I totally understand the pressures and I'm feeling it deep in my gut but I I also want you to please please understand what what I'm my position where I'm coming from I I hope I'm clear you don't have to agree with it but I just hope I'm clear gu man we we we do understand we we know that the burden of any tax increase is tremendous and as staff it is our we try to strike that balance of of protecting the organization so we can maintain our rating so we can actually borrow the

money that's why we hire you and I am so glad that you're good at your and so I think for all jurisdictions postco there's a different level of scrutiny um because you had this infusion of infrastructure dollars and there's this focus of well how are you now going to function when it's not there we had a lot of questions about you know uh how we were functioning postco funds but most of our dollars are for one time type expenses there are other entities that did not necess necessarily plan in the same vein and phasing it out and and because of that we got a lot of questions like about that and not only for us but also for those entities who are funded by us such as the schools community colleges Etc so from a risk perspective and the

question well how are you going to pay for this because the pressure is back on the county in North Carolina because we are the ones who have the tax and authority and have you know support when there is a gap from the state or the feds and so from that perspective um to Dr sell's point it is not only how we manage we got a lot of questions about enrollment a lot of questions about um just the all that happened in the past few months um but it is our position that we have guard rails on how we manage in our board sort of make sure we stay in those parameters and we allocate funds based on what we know we can afford and when we can't through the process of um budget review and tax property reviews uh that's when we try to address those gaps so um to Dr

sell's point it it it's a a more careful look because across the country entities are trying to um close gaps that are significant and we are fortunate that the board for our federal funds were very um tactical in in how they made Investments we going to get to fund balance little commissioner Jacobs yes ma' and and just to clarify right now what you all are recommending is that the amount is at 35% is that is that that's the f policy recommendation and we're slightly and we're going to come back to talk about the policy because we're going to change it either to a range um like 30 to 35% the the market is there's you know you and that the reason you have policies is to to refine them every few

years and if you may recall we brought a potential policy change to you about two years ago and it was um and we said we would come back and so we'll we're going to we're looking at that and we'll refine it but we're working with our fa because ultimately our goal is to make sure that we can get debt all right um coverage and so and at the best rate and so um we'll we'll work with our fa to bring a refinement of the policy which we'll look at what's in the designated um area and undesignated category okay but just to get clarity right now what is in the proposed budget is what what percentage is it well Kei I think that's a separate question so we we're appropriating for fund balance how much ke I think it's 19 plus million we have a slide on this later and I'll show you how appropriate

so we're appropriating 19 million that's not going to jeopardize our level of percentage but we'll come back with some more information yeah I I I didn't I hav't I mean I'm reading through the budget book but I didn't see that we don't we don't typically we don't typically deal with fund balance percentages as a relation to budget because we're dealing in Make Believe dollars the percentages only done in the act for side after actuals have happened so just so you understand the percentage just even if fund if fund Balon we don't use any fund balance but we don't grow it the percent would go would decrease every year because it's two numbers it the percentage rate is the amount of fund balance versus the general fund budget so as the general fund budget grows you need fund balance literally to grow every year to keep the percentage flat that's right so even if you don't use any fund balance but you don't grow it the percentage would progressively

decrease that's just the nature of the size and the scope of government we are the bigger we get the more savings account we need to carry right exactly and that's the fluidity of it all yes yeah I'm just trying to understand where we are at now because I I know that we have decreased yes um the amount and I know from years of hearing Scott Carter's presentations is that the reason why we need to have a bigger fund balance than other counties is because we don't have for instance Wake County doesn't have the same policy as us because we just don't generate the types of revenues that they have um and that part of the reason that we do get a tripa bond rating is you know it's just kind of like a you know all these different um parameters that we're trying to manage and assets and and deficits so I I just so we we are a managing

tripa and uh and so to your point our reserves help us posi be positioned in a place as a triaa and so what we're proposing is our shift to formally state that our general fund balance coupled with our debt fund balance those are the areas that we will look at as far as our financial position we we we were reflected very positively by um our our financial position and our governing and managing policies that's the other part how does the board manage policies and and the board's management of some of our recent crisis reflected well on the county and so it is a combination of many factors we will invite um deck duck Carter to come and Jeremy to remind us

of this again we live it a lot but I I need reminding quite a bit myself um because it does lay the groundwork and Foundations so that you can Thrive for decades to come and so could I just throw at because I'm guilty let me talk about myself first we've interrupted y'all a lot we only had an hour allocated perhaps we should have had more it's not to rush y'all because this is the first time folks have been able to go home and kind of ask questions of themselves and not so I am guilty also so I'm I'm open to not asking any more questions until you all conclude I I would respectfully request that everyone else do that you don't have to but I know that we have two other teams to go and maybe we could ask them at the end while they finish again talking about myself also so I'm not picking on anyone um but but I'm open to doing that if everybody else is and you all can proceed but I but I get the questions that I say that with love go yeah

96 billion it's about five almost 6% growth over 23 24 before you say anything and I know you're going to ask questions can we push that number have we have pushed valuation in the budget office you might see from Dwayne I know K's out a little bit lower valuation our office has done some trending itself we have pushed that number so if you're coming to me and

going can we find a little bit more free money from property tax valuation I would tell you David 80s is not here but if he were here he would say strongly we have pushed that valuation number enough to not be comfortable pushing it much more [Music] I don't police people I don't police people I said I'mma do it for myself so is that what you mean here that's this is the underestimation and you you you you overestimate you you you underestimated less than usual we all of this is make believe we are when you say we're not that good at like the truth we we are estimating a number based off of Trends but then we based off our Trends we are budgeting a

little bit more but your fundamental concept is correct we tend to be conservative on Revenue estimates and a little bit more expansive on expenditures and hope that difference makes up the magical fund balance we're not going to get back into that's how we make up our fund balance between those two concepts this year due to pressures we we knew we coming we've pushed up that Revenue estimate related to property tax a little bit more than previous year's conservative numbers already 100% though right of what you really expect that's an unknown number what we really expect that's giving all of us far too much credit including the tax office we have used trending in the past and looked at growth but nobody knows what's going to happen for the next 12 to 16 months in terms of valuation could all stop tomorrow we could get in a recession things could continue and something could brand new could show up I don't know that tax office doesn't we have to have some

range we're in a Range closer to aggressive than we have been in the past all right got it thank you just want to add really quickly uh good morning Dwayne Brenson assistant County Manager we never uh intentionally underestimate Revenue it's just that the the revenue sources that we have at this time they are all unknown as Keith mentioned we have the real property appeals period going on we don't get the public service companies until September from the state Motor Vehicles we're estimating motor vehicle values that won't come to us until uh a year from now and then personal property you you see on routinely on agendas we have organizations and homeowners come in and ask for um exemptions and brownfields and you have all these things that come up throughout the year we have to account for those as if they're going to happen so that we don't have to go into fund balance and sometimes they don't happen which is a

4 s c that's the manager's recommended property tax rate uh one cent of uh increased property tax

25 C tax rate increase what does that mean for a home it's $33 on a $100,000 valuation house very few houses in Durham County and particularly in the city of Durham are valued at 100,000 it's well over 300,000 I suspect would be the valuation I'm 99% sure after next revow is going to be higher than that let's look at

11 cents it increased 1 a. 25

11 equals. 35 for the upcoming fiscal year that's pretty significant is significantly higher than the three years previous to 2223 and higher than some previous years that is Durham County not exploding in

growth but we talked about being the bell of the ball or whatever just fantastic doing fantastic over the last decade all property valuation growth there are three distinct Cycles here that's while they're circled and we just want to see it keeps getting better it's been doing fabulous but as I noted my concern it's my job as a budget director to be concerned when when is the dance going to stop and I don't know when and it may never but we're at we're really high rates of overall valuation growth that gives you $19 million a year a new property tax revenue or $20 million a year what happens when that number drops to only 15 million a year historical growth in property tax revenue it's a complicated graph it's not that complicated it's just giving a lot of information the key things I want you to note are the bars those are Delta numbers growth the blue portion of the bar is natural growth $22 million 2425 remember 19 of that million of that 22

is in the general fund and three million is in the capital financing plan yet you're putting an additional 17 million which is the green to property tax rate increase on top of that to make a budget that work works at least for the manager's recommended budget but we did the same thing in 2324 we didn't have a tax rate increase in 2223 we did have a tax rate increase in 2122 of 1 cent what I want you to note more than anything else is look at the growth natural growth the blue part of those bars from 1516 to 1920 compared to 2122 to 2425 it's a whole different frame of reference in Revenue growth just natural we've done really well in the last four years compared to years before that but it's still not enough we have to have property tax rate increases and this is in theory the good news this is the property tax rate over a whole host of years since 9394 we had a tax rate increase last

25 to go to 78447 we will have a reval next year and that number will drop as we go to revenue neutral or some equivalents the revenue neutral rates are where those red bars are in this graph to show you how much it dropped huge drop in 01 to o02 smaller drops in in the next sets of revals because it will have been six years with the upcoming reval I'm expecting the drop in the property tax rate to be significant that's not a savings to taxpayers because their house valuations or property valuations will most likely increase on average to where it Nets out hopefully the flat some will win some will lose really quick um again this is not ours Abdul's mom has a question uh for those of you all who do not know Abdul and Aliyah's mom his chair along and she has her hand up and

25% increase and this may be a very silly question I'm just looking at this and the chart portion can you help me understand so the impact for the 100,000 it says the increase the cost increas is $33 more per year for $100,000 home versus 150,000 is 49 so that's a $16 increase but then the 785 to 1,177 is a lot more than that can you help me understand that sorry the

700,000 the $785 versus 1,177 like that difference is like $400 versus okay I can I jump in so commissioner L I hear your question because you're not here so what he has there is what their tax bill is currently the second one is just the increase so if you do I hate because I know the math equation that 70 uh the 78 cents is per $100 so if you were to do 78 cents per $100 or 7 5 cents per $100 on $150,000 that's actually $1,177 that additional 3C increase um is what 78 cents times uh into on every $100 is$ 250,000 don't be I I done got Savant like working with Dwayne but that's what that number is is every $100 and so

2 two which was what it was before the managers recommended that's a new tax bill amount based on the valuation of the house and then this the third column is the growth in the tax bill because of that new tax rate where I'm confused is like so from the 100,000 to the 150 it's $33 to $49

increase it's correct $16 half of $33 roughly because another $50,000 of valuation is on that house so the increase on that house has another $50,000 getting three and. half cents charged to it which is another $16 every 00,000 is going to be a $325 3250 increase or rounded $33 so another 50,000 is half of 33 which is another $16 on top of the 33 does that make sense so 200,000 would simply be double 33 in this case David rounded down to 65 but 6566 which is twice 33 it's just $50,000 increments does that make sense chair kind of no okay no I think so I think I just need to look I need to

probably just sit down and work these numbers I'm probably thinking too much about it and for and and for the public because I think I know where my my sister is um it looks like from somebody who hasn't looked at a chart like this before and not that commissioner Alam has not um but it looks I think somebody might look at it and be like Oh 785 plus 33 and then we get to 1,00 and that is not what that is so that this is literally what the value so I do I I I heard you I really I really do get what you getting at she the first question she actually asked was how did we go from 33 to 49 but it's 785 to 1,17 and that is not an addition to that number on the other side is is the addition from what it is from 24 I mean 23 24 to 2425 and maybe an additional column might help because there might be some in the public who feel the same way that you do it's because Abdul is so cute it's all right each one of those rows are separate they you run you have to run your own math on

each one of those rows they are not in relation to each other outside of the formula that is used to get to your property tax bill one more column that showed what and I'm happy to the 2324 where we came from to where we're going well we could do that absolutely special tax districts is not only Durham County tax rate you all have to approve tax rates for special tax District most of our special tax districts are fire districts where you support volunteer fire departments vehicles for them equipment and folks but we also have a special tax District out there and um RTP that helps the RTP foundation and also supports fire and rescue support out there that's the dcfr to make it clear here Bahama and Le and bahima and Lebanon are not asking I'm

25 Cent tax rate increase related to the manager's recommended budget and possibly another half cent to their tax bill related to the Redwood fire district dcfr which is out there in RTP RTP is doing great is actually requesting a one and a half half cent decrease to their tax rate valuation has grown up gone up so quickly over there they're making more money on the same tax rate so they actually can reduce it which is great any questions about this slide moving on to some lesser news bad news depressing news however you want to go with it sales tax revenue total sales tax revenue is not small it's $131

8 million in new Revenue look at 2425 that's not the same that

is it's lost Revenue it's it's not a decrease it's just tremendously slower growth it's going from a bonus if you work out in some fancy tech company out an RTP of a $10,000 a year or $50,000 a year bonus down to $1,000 you got a Bonus but it ain't in the same ballpark that's the key I wanted to show you here why are we doing that because we're actually looking at sales tax estimates for the current year barely meeting our budget numbers usually they grow well above that talk about conservative Revenue estimates and over collecting this year that's not happening we talk about fund balance and I want to get in that conversation part of the reason I'm concerned about fund balance in 2425 is because this Revenue source is in over collecting even though we were thought we were conservative you're reflecting that in the in the budget for sales tax but we're also feeling that in fund balance any yes ma'am Keith how does what we're

5 million

3 million it feels like punishment to us because we forgot about 17 18 18 19 191 we just have to adjust our expect expectations

7 so what we get in some we had more than that amount decreased in some other areas when I look at all

8 million plus 19 million plus 7 million what's the number we're getting for 2425 Vice chair Burns less than a million don't make me keep saying all the bad stuff cuz I'm leaving these other people can read they just choosing not to I'mma beat you Keith cuz I bought Farm I'm this is the news I'm telling you that the revenue growth has slowed tremendously but our appetite for expenditure growth and needs has not and so we find ourselves in a bit of a conundrum commissioner Harton you wanted to talk about Medicaid hold harmless here's the Medicaid hold harmless Trend what I want you to see that table is still astounds me it was just starting in 20145 that we started to get a trickle as a positive Revenue Source out

2 you talk about a conservative Revenue estimate guess what I budgeted for the current year in 23 24 12 $ million fully hoping to get 14 million 15 million because

3 it went backwards what happened Medicaid cost apparently across the state went up 20% I asked the question publicly and caused quite a Kur fuffle at the Department of Health when I jokingly said on the list Ser is this relate all your teams you don't want to bring it up again yes the manager I was just curious why County Medicaid costs went up 20% across the state every County experienced that type of which then outpaced the amount of article 44 sales tax growth which means we got less money but what was the answer I haven't got I cost went up I don't know we're going to move to the next slide all that being said if I'm only collect if I'm only collecting $9

25 Cent tax rate increase Andor it we don't have this Revenue 3 million I'm actually going backwards plus the for me it's another 3 million in growth that you don't have that $6 million had this

grown at the same Pace would have been one cent on the tax rate plus you could have given more to prek you could have done a lower tax rate increase you could have recommended more money for salary increases for employees you could have given more money to prek you there any number of things that could have done with that money that's how it affects us it's just from an estimate standpoint I have to go backwards $3 million and I'm concerned that it won't stop what happens if 2425 we have higher Medicaid cost then we do article it may go down again and Ne and then in the next year's budget I have to go backwards again the state is keeping more for themselves because they say that Durham County's Medicaid costs went up 19 20% and I did some math on all the other counties CU I collect that in a whole whole bunch of counties had 26% growth in Medicaid cost 22% I mean it was 30 40 50 counties it was across the state I

7 million compared to what we appropriated in

2324 it had been growing as a number to use as a balancing number but remember we were wildly over collecting in our other Revenue sources and underspending our expenditure so we were able to make up $26 million not spend $26 million because we over collected and underspent I don't know that we're going to going to do that in 23 24 to the tune of $27 million so that then also makes me concerned for TW budgeting for 2425 so I just felt like we needed to slow down the amount we're using we're still using $23 million just not using 28 or 29 that growth curve if I had been growing theow remember I talk about look at the trend the slope of that line before 2425 it was growing each year went from 26 to 27 all things being equal had sales tax revenue continued to do Gang Busters and Medicaid hold harmless I might have gone to 28 or 29 that have been a plus two

7 million yes ma'am that 23 million that's the what I'm calling contingency line item that is not money that we appropriate from during the year when we make budget amendments that's those amendments are in addition to this this is the starting number got it that's it for the major Revenue sources if I can take a deep breath that's a walk through the good and the bad good property tax bad every everything else on the revenue side less than Stella but that's just half the story the other half of the story is the expenditure side what are our expenditure needs well

7 million in expenditures but we're getting a million dollars from state and federal sources but it's still costing the county $700,000 to take on those 35 positions

that were approved mid year this year correct I I would need the DSs yes director to be here to answer we will yeah the thing is that you don't get enrolled once you have to be re-enrolled every single year so it's an ongoing cost yeah so minimal new positions 10 new positions roughly costing the county an additional $685,000 in the recommended budget as part of the recommended budget as a savings the manager recommended limited hiring of non-crucial personnel what that means is freezing vacant positions could I I because I wanted to say this last week at school board meeting and I didn't have the numbers and I was on a roll and this is a is it 19 I know you know Wendy off the top of your head excuse me commissioner Jacobs is that 19,000 people so far that have been enrolled or 177,000 something like that I I'm

trying we have I think the last number I got was that we enrolled 11,000 people 11,000 but and and we're expected to do that within um we were supposed to do that in like a year and we did it in 6 months right so the state is actually now I I don't remember the we were expected that in North Carolina I think the estimates that were 500,000 people were going to be eligible for Medicaid they have now increased the estimate to be closer to um I think it was like 2 million people right so it is amazing but like the num the numbers are are just go off out the roof all over the state that that we are there are so many more people that are actually eligible than was ever thought yeah so right and so the only reason why I asked for the number really quick I I wanted to have that number I should have asked another

time but and this is not about the comment that was made before but you know the reason why I don't mind when money goes to fund balance is because I like the fact that we can be malleable enough to do this right like I like the fact that I had we had such a professional staff that we could do a turnkey job in like less than a month and have job descriptions and hire 35 people and now there's 11,000 more people in this county that got health care and yeah they got to if you're familiar like we were both point out you got to reenroll every year so I I do feel like the expenditures that we make with our fund balance dollars or the expenditures that we make uh with theendum um um to our budget I don't think that I was going to wait and hold this to the end so I do apologize like when commissioner Jacobs came to us with the 54 units of housing that was $6 million in that was the easy yes for me it's not reoccurring I didn't mind spending $6 million on 54

apartments for poor people uh when we fought the form for $2 million yes there going to be some programmatic expansion but I thought you know that the Briggs Avenue Farm was insufficient for what what our population want to do and yes one time C there'll be some programmatic expansion so I just want to put it out there for folks who I think there are some people who think where they spend money in the middle of the year on just frivolous things those 35 people got 11,000 more people access to health care and I'm happy that we had the money to do it and if the state don't come in with their $1 million I ain't going to touch that Keith I'm still happy that we have the money to do it so that's just what I wanted to say about our funb B but I'm done I I think that's a wonderful push and pull between two different ideas neither one are right or wrong or fully but yes you should be concerned every time you pull out of your savings account and you use it midye unplanned on the other hand you should be happy that you have it AA enough available to consider midyear TurnKey whatever the

term but both of those are they're not in opposition you need to balance out and ask questions on both sides great great comments yes wanted to give the exact data that I had um so for Medicaid expansion the state had estimated that we would enroll 600,000 people over two years in actuality in North Carolina we have enrolled 450,000 people in six months and they're estimating that there will be 2 million people eligible in North Carolina I just want to share it because I just think it's it's incredible and everyone should know that and also Durham County we starting from um let's see we we were up to on May um as of whenever this was like a week or so ago oh I'm sorry um we were at

11,448 and again they estimating that we would have 22,000 people but we're probably going to have more and also I'm so proud of our DSS um staff doing Medicaid expansion a lot of counties are getting they're not meeting the criteria every month and they're actually um getting they're they're not meeting their the standards and we are doing well every single month on Medicaid expansion so sorry I just had to share that so we talked about one of the ways to save on the expenditure side was limit the hiring of non-crucial personnel an example would be is we have a vacant budget analyst position in a Hawksworth in our department maybe the smartest one of us all decided to leave her job and go travel the world and good for her but besides that point that philosophical point that position will most likely stay vacant the entire year to save funds to help add to that minus $2 million and that's hopefully going to

happen but it's going to put pressure on departments who may want or feel like they need to fill those positions but we're struggling between expenditure and revenue additional funding for eviction diversion that's a plus $780,000 we did ask departments for a second year in a row to find uh to to reallocate existing dollars and in fact actually find some operating reductions so we found a million dollar in operating reductions on top of $2 million last year you can't keep going to that well every year and have departments continue to operate at the same level we're asking departments to reduce operating budgets to help fund other things or limit tax rate increases but at some point with population increases various other things you can't make it all work by reducing spending while having increased needs we are increasing our IEP our industrial extension policies these our econ Economic Development grants we give to various companies out there that's a plus $684,000 is cost in the county yes ma'am

commissioner Carter um the prek investment line item of $950,000 um I read somewhere I think it was on the summary sheet the the budget recommendation summary sheet that uh 500,000 of it I think was um sort of like for prior year changes for midyear changes this year mid year changes so it's really only 450,000 new money yes ma'am another issue I have hard choices I know but that's such a value I don't know we can talk talk about it later maybe we can have that added to the list of things to discuss in more detail or something I don't know if anyone else is interested but Monica the slide I think we've sat too long in the slide can you fantastic thank you oh yes' I have a question that's confusing to me because in the manager's recommended budget she had said that we would cover

the I thought we were going to cover the Murray massenberg prek which is 745 so that would not cover it then it does it doesn't cover all of the seats that were asked for from DPS but it covers the amount of seats that Duram prek asked for and I think it was like 40 some seats oh okay so I guess I do dur prek was one of the things I want to have budget work session discussion on but I I would like to I have more questions about that so and you probably do commissioner Carter and I would also like to note that we do have a satisi and arpa that we were also going to blend so um so I I I'm sure we'll land at a good place but just wanted to put that out the the arpa funds as you know we have until 2026 but so it buys us some time um but this strategy helps us

2 million the key thing on here I wanted to point out with the employee health insurance cost we sawed tremendous growth thank you Shannon rri in our office for doing some serious analysis and trending of our health insurance cost specifically a little bit in our Pharmacy cost but in health insurance month over month we've seen increases over the last seven or eight months remember we're not done

7 we're asking employees to take on some

7 million in funding from somewhere to stay at the level we are and budget what we think are reasonable health insurance or insurance cost numbers commissioner Howton uh asking the question why are we increasing their cost so much so can a little bit about that uh we're actually going to have a presentation from HR on that and they will go into more details

and so if we we'll if it's okay if we save that for a little bit later yeah she's going to walk through all of the changes and then spend a considerable time on the and from Medicaid expenses we've seen an uptick consistently in about 50 counties of 30 to 40% right and then when we look at our own health care cost here in the county we've seen from our employees who are not on Medicaid or Medicare we've seen an uptick of 30 or 40% I just wanted to elevate that that across the health care Market whether it is employees here or it's Medicaid Health Care cost are going so I I'm not bringing this up about the compens I'm not talking about this I just want to say um there are a lot of things going on it's not just the weight loss drugs

but I also think and you brought this up during our oneone we have people now who are finally getting surgeries that they could not get during Co folks who need to get a knee replacement in 21 and 22 couldn't get it folks that needed to have fibroids tuck out stuff that doctors felt were somewhat elective and possibly could have held on uh folks that needed kidney transplants so I just I want to bring back what you said a second ago about medication home harmless and just say this is a trend across every Insurance insurer and that was all I wanted to say and I could be wrong but it just seems like it no that's exactly correct there are so many factors and that's why we'll watch it carefully and again I'll say I'll let um Dedra who will do a much better job explaining all of that but that is what our broker also share and I would add that remember we talked that second slide in this presentation about fiveyear Trends to your point P chair Burns I don't know when this sort of cost increases is going to slow down

3 million for the general fund what I want you to see here on the

expenditure side is how the last four years relate to previous years and it mirrors Revenue growth does it not this is our general fund expenditure summary in previous years 1516 to 1819 1920 it was 17 1720 then Co hit in 2021 and we sort of paused and then expenditure fut growth in the general fund I won't say exploded but is significantly higher year-over year remember the columns we're looking at the Delta instead of $20 million a year growth 37 44 51 we're at 42 million because health insurance costs are increasing DPS prek employee salaries the list goes is infinite on the expenditure side but the revenues to support this for the last three years has been there and has been great but the revenue growth isn't there this year which means you have to make up for it with a property tax rate increase but our expenditure growth has been exploding and we are going to have

to take a good look at that which Claud and I referenced at the very beginning of the this is just Personnel cross just the biggest part of our budget in total is Personnel cost salary and benefits it's the same Mirror Image there look at the growth in Personnel cost 1516 to 1920 compared to 21 22 to 2425 it's entirely different frames of reference just a few other general fund expenditure increases I'm not this presentation isn't about reviewing those it's just giving you a summary increased DTC funding last year dtcc I think got well over a million maybe even close to two million this year it's only a $220,000 increase the managers recommending to support some locally funded dtcc positions they get State salary increases we you have to pay for that 220 new youth home FTE 8 FTS is $569,000 two new positions in

3 million more than it was last year that we had to find those are your expenditure increases in total the FTE it shows 50 new FTE for 2425 but

remember that's 35 that happened mid year plus another five but only 10 new FTE are being recommended two for Cooperative Extension eight for the expanded new Youth Home Services Durham County's population Claudia loves to note this and may remind you Durham County's population is grown by 20% since 2014 we support a lot of that population growth which then incre has need growth related to it for County Services by an increased population but we're trying to slow down new position growth remember the manager increased new FTE for 23 24 was around 20 new positions she's only recommending 10 for 2425 even though it shows 5035 positions were related to Medicaid implementation these are the 10 new positions I won't go over it you can see the growth the chart there shows you the growth of new positions we're at 233 positions across all funds 99 95% of

all FTE are in the general fund but since 20156 we're looking at what 320 new positions significant that's increased insurance cost that we have to support space cost internal service department departments Vehicles whole host of things positions are expensive not to mention salaries and those things this is a graph that I've shown you in the past because you all have asked how funds work we move money between funds just want to show you the grouping of funds when we talk about the general fund the finance department and you look at the AER and it looks at fund balance considers all of those blue funds to be General funds it's a grouping of General funds then we have special Revenue funds and we move money to different funds we move money from the swap fund to The Debt Service fund per board policy we move money from the general fund to the uh Capital financing plan fund and then Capital financing

plan money to The Debt Service fund to payoff Debt Service you see all this in the budget document this is just sort of a visual representation of how that money moves are there any questions about this it looks more complicated than it is it isn't complicated it's just to give you an idea of how money moves around toay yes ma'am how much is the swap fund increasing or is it it's not increasing we don't I am not budgeting you go ahead Claudia and we um we can give you that those detail we're not budgeting for it we did cover it in the um budget Retreats we did I remember and so we can get you kind of flat it's flat it's flat as a revenue but we hold that and then we use it in The Debt Service fund to offset the need for property tax CR rate increases in future years or if we have a surprise project that's a fund that we can go to to pull money from I do remember one year we when we were trying to scour the budget for some increased dollars that we took

some money from the swap fund yeah for some one time items maybe I don't even remember what I remember was Ellen I think it was related to um Health Public Health yeah and I'm about to get to a slide that I'm going to show you something that we're doing for 2425 that may answer your question this just shows you how the general fund budget is set up at least from a financial standpoint there's the general fund and within the general fund there are functional areas where similarly operating type departments exist and then there are departments when each of those functions General government has all of those departments you see in the blue square box Public Safety is County Sheriff emergency communication so when you look at the budget document you'll see a function page know that these are the Departments that are set up is just sort of by similar service area and we have acms and dcms that generally follow as much as possible these functional areas this is the slide commissioner Carter I want to show you this is you all have a board policy that says

3 million is going directly to cash to go to County projects to support needs in the county in the upcoming fiscal year what is

2 million in Revenue that isn't a property tax rate that is going to the general fund by robbing Peter

Debt Service fund and Capital Finance to pay Paul yeah and we've done it over the years a couple of different ways the the problem with this is this is one one time money it's one time and it is not identified to pay onetime cost we will still have DPS cost next year we will still have prek increases we will still have insurance cost we will have to make a choice do we hit these numbers again and hit the fun B if I don't use well until you run out the I don't know if modeling um I just don't know if about modeling I'm going to do a highlight reel I'm going to do a highlight reel y'all do model when we look at other debt coming online if you know if we want to do a referendum in in upcoming years if we want to do additional County related projects our our our multi-year

planning on the debt side is a lot more um rigorous and so there's more caution um and we have um economy sensitive Revenue sources supporting this fund so when we talked about the sales tax and it plummeting and I not having that as an option this year so that put more money pressure on the property tax so right now we can afford it but looking three years out we were counting on that so there's there's the discipline that the board always exercise in aggregate you and vice chair burns are are asking the same questions from different sides and and you neither one of you are wrong or making statements can you use more sure until it runs out and then you don't have money Perry man's just sent me an email and we need to work on some

windows over at the Detention Center to get them fixed to make for safety issues that's a plus million dollar project that sort of pops up how do we pay for that billion dollars comfortably without losing our minds we go to this money if we have used all this money to support the general fund and I don't have it then I am losing my mind that gets back to commissioner Burns talking about midyear fund balance Appropriations and feeling comfortable that you can do things when the world changes on the however you're also right in saying how much do we need to save every year what's a reasonable amount can we put some of it in play there is is no right answer there's only what we're comfortable with plus experts telling you what we should have to keep a AAA rating and what we should have to be flexible and stay financially stable as a county all of that is in the framework of an environment where Revenue growth is slowing and expenditure growth is increasing can you continue to feed that

Beast with one-time money what happens when the money runs out there are no answer to these questions these are the Deep philosophical ponderings of budget there are mods that is true and we debate that yeah so see she has checked out she ain't even doing her job she don't left the ship no no all I'm going say this is that no I promise you I a laughing at you but what I'm going to do because you know I love Commission maybe every year commissioner Carter thanks the law change but I got a decent memory I promise y'all I'm going to put together highlight real her and Keith have done this four years on this exact same set of slides I have proof I I did some of the staff know I said y'all wait till we get to the ones where we got to see the different funds they G to go at it for 10 minutes some of y'all owe me my money I'mma see y'all at lunch but go ahead I

5 million Public Health

3 million um and it was just being going into their budget would it count in their per pupil allotment yes ma'am so I would like to know that number how much $62 million more would be on the if we add that to the if let's say we weren't doing it the way we're doing it and I don't want to change it but I do think it's misleading because I don't think we don't it's not really

showing what the per pup amount is relatively easy formula I can get you that number and that that needs to be actually part of our going forward um how we present the information because well depends on of the general fund budget or the total yeah call yeah yeah so to Heidi's point we we need to know what is the per pupo amount and also what percentage of our budget is this really okay that shows our level of effort right do that yeah and and and to go along with my colleagues uh yeah we can take a break for the I'm joking I do want to point out that this is for the public that's looking I do not want you all to look at my colleagues like they are doing creative math because they're absolutely not uh if you look at our uh neighboring counties this is the math

3 million short of what um of what the superintendent actually asked for but so I I don't want anybody say well why do they keep adding numbers we are trying

to give you all the same number that people around us are giving us and um also I want to throw out you know and and this is not a commissioner Carter is not I think you made a great point you know you said why don't we want to be number one when I got on this board I think we were rank fifth or six in p uh expenditures we are now third so we are on track like we have consistently been doing better by uh that body and have lacked a lot of transparency but in good faith because we care about children we have consistently done our part my only question I've always and this is the one where I ask every year I really struggle to believe that our nonprofit direct support is only $177,000 so I don't want to go I don't need a presentation on it but I just want to throw that out there because I feel like even mid year there are some things that we do that I don't know if we're adding up because I feel like there are a lot more nonprofits that come to us mid year that we give funds

to and they directly go or support our durm Public Schools so I just want to throw that out that's not to take away from the hard work that you all did but that number has always from year to year seemed consistently small to me it it's a matter of definition of what a nonprofit is if you're helping Children's Health is that related to DPS I think these are two main nonprofits that are very it it really gets hard when you start broadening the I think we do I think other people don't right so we we can definitely look at that we prefer the conservative path when we're don't use that word they'll email about you I know when tying it to DPS specific because there are lots of nonprofits that we do fund that are directly and directly supporting schools thank you we're getting close to the end thank you all for your patience and all the questions I want you to see this is dur public public school funding and it's

remember I showed you general fund expenditures and how the last four years were fundamentally different than the previous years and I showed you how Personnel costs were fundamentally different higher Delta numbers than the previous years look at DPS funding as well not a judgment it's merely a pressure that we are all experiencing so 156 it is a Val that's a great definition it is a value but the amount going to DPS in additional funding year-over-year has increased significantly starting in 2122 through 2425 compared to previous years that is just a value choice that the Commissioners are making I don't see that number slowing down in the future the Delta number that is concerning to me from a revenue and expenditure standpoint regardless of values financially only I leave the values to you all where do we rank in terms of current current expense this is 2223 data right now because this is what

I could get available or Claud and I could find available current expense rank we're third in County funded systems we are number one in the assessed Valu uh excuse me number 22 and assessed valuation per capita what does that mean we we're not as Rich this is one definition of rich in terms of valuation compared to some other counties in North Carol Carolina per capita who's number one dare does that make sense dare has a low population filled with a lot of wildly rich people who have $10 million houses on the beach Ergo they have a number one valuation per capita we're number two in funding number three in funding for schools but number 22 in out of 100 counties in the assessed valuation we as a value to a cost to some sort of it cost account it hurts us a little bit make a choice to fund DPS versus some other things be it

through an increased property tax rate increase or doing Less in some other areas because we're not we're not number three in assessed valuation we value DPS that's all this is showing we value Public Schools we value Public Schools County School System local funding just to give you a frame of reference the I want you to stop at the top top left table start there these are different school systems that we sometimes compare against and it's the number of locally funded positions in each of those County School Systems Durham County's third in that list we and over the years as of 2023 we had fund we're funding 1,144 positions out of the 1990 million we give DPS 200 million is being proposed for 24 25 but this goes from 2019 to 2023 the second table shows you the number of students ADM number of

students for those same systems I simply did the math and said so you can compare because different size systems have different number of locally funded positions I divided and said per number of students per locally funded position to equalize to compare big counties against smaller counties yall following me here and so Durham County that green line in the bottom table says on for 2023 we have 26 students per locally funded position equalized in comparison against Charlotte meinberg Charlotte meinberg has twice the number of students per locally funded positioned for Scythe County schools which I consider as close to a sister uh system as Durham count is in terms of racial makeup and social economic makeup to Durham County has 40 pupils per locally funded position there are a lot of locally funded positions in Durham County compared to these other counties

Orange County schools has a a little lower number of students per locally funded position but they're also number two in the state in funding it's just another examp it was it's just one simple example to show you the value that we have for public school yes it's a value yes don't make it seem like it's something negative TR this is positive I'm proud of this thank God but I wish no I wish everybody else was proud of us I wish everybody else even so we're top we're stop we're top in the state we're still bottom of the freaking Barrel in the nation so you know thank goodness we're top in the state just another frame of reference that's all this I'm proud of us the people that bought a billboard on 85 are not proud of us the people that are going to march in here are not not proud of us like that is we I agree with you I'm very proud of us what I what I and I'm going keep saying this till I'm purple in the face how can we keep getting giving more

1 billion ours is a billion we are a quarter of their size and yet our budget is 50% theirs let that sink in they have 10 other cities they have 10 other cities to do a call share with EMS they have 10 more I think more than 10 more police departments there's so many and I'm proud of what we have been able to do I'm very proud of it I just wish other people were proud of it and I think what

we do throughout the year is a disservice because we allow the community to tell our story and we don't tell it and then the people sitting over here get punished for it let's really talk about it the letters that we got the very first sentence said and it REM reminds me of the emails that we got in 2020 the look at the majority of the emails we got it literally says I am disappointed in Dr Kim so well that's the first sentence of every email they don't even know this sister they're not disappointed in the four of us they disappointed in her why because the world told him to be disappointed in her that's the same and I'mma say it's the same emails we got in 2020 with Wendell Davis it's the same ones we got with beos it's the same ones we got with CJ Davis so no I'm proud of us I want everybody else to be proud of us and I want us to tell our story but we don't do that we don't go into community and say look at how look at what we've done we let somebody else tell that story and then we get beat up every year about it that's all I'm saying and I feel like I should be allowed to defend the people in this room throughout the year not

once a year when a group of people come in here with a ski mask and a brown paper bag and a bunch of emails that say I'm disappointed in a County Manager they ain't never met I'm sorry Keith go ahead prek funding we're going to end on this slide we've already gone over briefly it's an increase of $965,000 but 500,000 of that is catching up from a midyear appropriation this year so it's really only about 450,000 and it is to increase a portion of the seats in theory at Murray massenberg but we can bring prek in and have that discussion at a later work session I just wanted to show you those two slides on the expenditure that's it you know it we can have discussions that is the end of the rather long budget presentation really helps clarify yeah commissioner Jacobs yeah I had some just tax related questions one is I don't I didn't see in the budget

7 I think is what it is we can scan a document F but we'll get an answer for that too okay and then my other question is with the um Trends around sales tax how are we doing with the transit tax revenue and and is it within what is projected in in the Durham County Transit plan that is not a number that I look at because it doesn't come to Durham County it goes directly to the transit folk and it is entirely up to them to do a budget versus actual not up to me but what we

can do is give you some information on those revenues collected because it's sort of as said I mean because you know we have half cent sales tax in our budget I just didn't know if it's trending the same way but it is it's trending roughly the same way slower growth so we we'll follow up with that yeah so I'm just interested to what that means for what is in our Transit plan and how I mean I know that was very done very conservatively but I still that would be good to now point so Wendy that the go triangle budget will be approved um I think around the 12 and it's not TR in well it's trending just like it is for us here at the county um as a chair of the board um we discussed our the finances on yesterday we've been talking about it and talking about it so it's not it's not good anywhere yeah for the

first time gold triangle is not in the red but it has a lot of there's a lot of trist and turns about it so we're hoping we're going to keep it uh out of the red but we've got some challenges um right now and I'll share that with you later thank you have one other sorry I've looked at my list um could you give also get to us um I know you had one slide about the historical Trends with the sales with the property tax rate could you also um show us or get us information showing um the trends you know maybe over historical Trends related to exactly the amount of our property tax increase and combined with the cities at

1 is that correct so you know this is a historic I'm trying to understand the historic nature of how big already this tax rate is going to be for Duram residents so I think it would be helpful for us to have that um data just to understand we can get on that thank you I passed out a piece of paper David ades was listening from home or ever responsive and he has delivered a slide that gave you the 2324 tax R you're welcome we will be emailing it to commissioner Alam that's about near real

time and we will get answers to your questions this is why I fight for y'all unapologetically every day rock stars this was a fantastic presentation I I actually believe we all fight for our staff um and and stand up for our staff and respect and and and love our staff and think they do amazing work even when we push a little you know and when there's sort of healthy tension I did want to also say that as far as being proud of the work that we do and the value that we have for dur public schools and how it's reflected in the budget I I hon I've been responding to every one of those email that we get and trying to help them see that yes we fund the schools at a very high level in this state and it's not just the per pupil expenditure that goes directly to DPS there's $62 million and all these other social supports that we provide um so that it will it will just help be sure people understand what the realities are

of how we fund the schools and and what the overall budget constraints are um and you know you know I hope that helps I hope I I hope it helps Commissioners um we will now transition to the benefits conversation we covered the tax slides um in our budget overview welcome ladies thank you thank you for having us um we appreciate um being able to um come before you with the benefits Plan update I am Deedra Gonzalez the benefits manager here at der County government um I am under we are here

4 million um is spending for pharmacy at this point in time some of our contributing factors as it relates to our budget considerations for the upcoming fiscal year was of course our Pharmacy and and pharmac the medical and Pharmacy trend has increased

up to a 9% um there is an increase of Pharmacy spend and the mixture of drugs that are being filled under our plan is a contributing factor as well um our current enrollment count is 2,120 in a different slide you'll see how that plays aart um in our budget but that is an increase of 6% um over our average enrollment between July through July through April and then in addition last year there was no changes to our rates so um our renewal was pretty much constant at 0% so there was no um increase um our current broker analysis reflected that our renewal should have been a little over 5% um our self-funded health plan um contains our fixed cost which is Administration and then stop loss and at the bottom you can see what the stop loss insurance is um for those who are not familiar but those costs make up little less than 10% of our Benefit Plan

3% of our plan spend does go towards our um employees and the pre-65 retirees um Health claims this is a chart to show you um fiscal year 2324 this is our current spend um how they're coming in on a monthly basis as you can see um starting with July 20 23 our total employees in pre-65 retiree count was at 25 members if you go down to our current enrollment count that is 2,120 so that is an increase of enrollers or enrol Le excuse me on our benefit fund of about 115 or so um and of course that is the same for our total membership you will see the difference of our total membership is growing on our plan as well which means we have addition add

claims or additional bodies to um pay for claims for um we I want to draw your attention to our gross paid medical claims you will see that with our gross paid Vision exam only claims um in addition to our Pharmacy claims will then give you our gross paid total claims for each month we include the vision exam because on our medical um plan all employees are eligible for a free preventative I exam so that lets us know um employees are seeking out the vision um plan Services um but as our gross plan total claims excuse me gross paid total claims you can see is 30 million 89,4 43 that is as of April 2024 um of course we still have more that we have to um post for claims for the remaining fiscal year but this is literally just to show you where we are as of right now um I want to draw your

attention to the loss ratio column to the right hand side loss ratio is reflecting the amount of claims that we are receiving in comparison to the amount of premiums that we have budgeted for each month anytime the loss ratio is over 100% we have over budgeted excuse me we are under budgeted if you will excuse me um so for example August 2023 2023 we are at 122 % so 22% over what has been budgeted um I'm going to draw your attention to this next slide which looks very familiar the same slide however this is a rolling 12 Monon period um this reflects more of our um uh increase in our roles uh May 2023 1984 but as of again as of right now we're at 2120 that is an increase of enrollment counts of 136 um and then our total membership um is a

little uh 160 additional bodies that we are now um you know uh responsible for claims you'll also see that that gross paid total claims is 36 million in compared to the 30 million on the prior slide um this with our rolling 12 months this reflects um seven out of the 12 months where we have been over the 100% for our loss ratio this is a visual to share that over the past year claims have exceeded the amount of budgeted premiums in seven out of the 12 months with that rolling 12 month chart that I just reflected this is a slide of our highest paid claims as of today um as you can see there um majority of the top um top 10 are related to Cancers and this is a

continual um talking point that I I have to um you know speak to you guys about every year cancer is is very prevalent in our population um but this is just to draw your attention on how you know our the relationship which is on the left hand side e represents employee SP is spouse and CH represents child so um there are high paid claims for a variety of our our our our members um and this is ultimately what those claim and totals can um reach just under individual so one person with for example a liver cell carcinoma that claim was 29,000 that was the top fif fifth claim so this is just to show yes ma'am quick question only because you've given us dates on every other one I would just be curious is this a calendar year is this the last fiscal year only because I have so okay so this is this this is the current fiscal year thank you ma'am yes ma

okay um and this slide is this slide is showing you that our prescription utilization is from July 2023 through January 2024 these are our top drugs by spin um of course we hear the giggles I think we know what the giggles are for um the red font is is signifying that those are those glp1 drugs that everyone is speaking of right um we definitely saw a change in our members um utilizing some of these drugs um of course we know some are specific for diabetes but we also know that they help with obesity as well and some for example the we obies and the majour are um excuse me the we obies and the um um and there's other ones that are specific for obesity that you know our employees are taking advantage of um one of the questions I'm sure that we will ask is is there any way that what are we doing right to kind of cost

contain ourselves when it comes to these um we've looked at different ways um we've done an analysis um in in partnership with Sigma and we've looked at prior authorizations we looked at utilization management which also means that whenever um an employee is trying to fill these prescriptions um signal will go at extra step to say hey are you over um this BMI or are you do you meet the criteria before you are before they fill it um anything outside of that would only cost the county $100,000 in savings for the year um so that's where we are we were going to we decided to just keep it as is and keep an eye or watch out on those types of medications um and if we find that our spending is is continuing to increase then we will um look at carving out um metrics or some type of other case management tools

that we can use specific to those drugs but right now the savings opportunity um right now only appears to be $100,000 for the whole year I just want to throw out I I would love I'm just saying this for commissioner Al and commissioner Jacobs who will be here uh afterwards it would be interesting and maybe I'll tune in in the coming years to see if you all continue to um spend at this rate to see if we do see a drop in asthma medications uh some of the diabetes medications that don't have anything to do with weight loss it's uh I see y'all y'all were horrible because y'all actually put them in red I go your zic Manjaro trulicity and what is it rivis is one that they've now added to that category but for the what is it Dexcom for the farga for the jiant for some of those that don't have those B it would be interesting to see if those ranks went down because due to the weight loss people are not taking hypertension medication they're not taking as a

medication and for some folks who don't really have chronic arthritis might just have arthritis due to weight gain like I'm just it's just a thought because I think we're going to see that and I think that's what the state is seeing especially since the treasur cut it off in April but I'm that's but to your point that's one of the reasons we didn't make a change because we don't have data yet and we want to see what that data um shows us um and how it impacts the utilization of the other Pharmaceuticals full transparency I don't have off writers no more let's see if that makes the internet so wonderful and and I think that's also one of our mindsets is you know those that are taking this medication are they we don't want to appear as if we're an obstacle right we in the long run it's going to help ultimately reduce all the other Co cability or other types of illnesses so we're just looking at our data and we reevaluate it commissioner yeah I I was thinking the same thing I was looking at Medical claims and I

think it would be really interesting to try see if we can then see any reduction any of the diseases that are um Co you know related to co comorbidity with um with uh obesity or things like diabetes and things like that um and also it's it's amazing because I I just did a quick math and it's almost 20% of our employees that are using these um medications um it's pretty extraordinary I mean it's so I think it's really fascinating to see um to track this and see what the impact is thank you um the the let's see the gross paid Pharmacy claims have been increasing um just looking at that chart again but I feel like I heard you say I kind of went out real quick to get a cup of coffee and I may have missed it but I feel like

I heard you say the the pharmacy is not the biggest driver of our increases it's or is it one of the biggest drivers it is one of the biggest drivers because of the mixtures of the medications that are being prescribed some of these medications of course are specialty and and they don't have a a competitor right so they are able the manufacturer able to you know charge us really charge a lot absolutely so specialty medications for oncology types of patients or cancer um that continues to be our same um bullet that we have to bring to you guys that those specialty medications are still very expensive for our plan benefit thank you that that helps me thanks well what commissioner Carter just asked um I'm wondering are there any generics um on the horizon for some of these medications that will there be anticipate also reducing costs or lower um option lower cost options um are we referring to the

specialty ones or just the ones that's on the list well any of them but especially the ones you know we're seeing the the biggest cost and uh right OIC and Mobi um are there is there do we know on the horizon are there going to be other options for people um we we know that there are um for example like hamira there are going to be some there's actually an alternative right now that is being due to Market so that there will be a change in our herir if some of our um uh members definitely go to that new one um as it relates to like the wovie and those but we want we know that others are coming to the market um what are the price points for for those that's unclear but we do know that more are coming to the market and I just want to follow up these are newer drugs so they haven't reached the thresh threshold yet for a generic I was about to say the patents I just Googled all the patents just now we a little way

off B sh Burns oh hey it's up D Mom oh sorry go ahead yeah I had my hand raised but I don't think you can see it um I just wanted to make a quick comment while we're on this slide and discussion I just wanted us to be more cognizant in the way we have this conversation I personally I just didn't feel very comfortable I just want to be very Frank and honest with like how this conversation started with saying like with the giggles around the medication names um and the specific uses I think we need to be more cognizant and sensitive of what these medications are used for and the fact that obesity and weight loss are health conditions um and to not make light of that when we're having these conversations because these are these are drugs that benefit our employees benefit People's Health and we should be sensitive of that um and I think it's really important for us as a

board and a team uh to make sure that we're not stigmatizing conversations around obesity and diabetes and weight loss so chair I I didn't know what the giggles were about I just kept looking at the numbers I I really had no idea what that was um were you finished I do have a question yes ma'am thank you commission go ahead um my question has to do with providers and uh and I'm sure that you have looked at and and calculated the the difference in the providers and what they the numbers as to what they provide for the county um I'm just wondering as you check as you evaluated the different providers what did you see in their quotes as to what they how they rated the counties and what they provided as

far as a package are we referring to like the prescriptions are we just referring to the plan design I'm I'm talking about the plan per se and what as to in other words when you calculated the providers were there from last year or the year before where did you see as far as the numbers I am unclear of what we were referring to at this point I do apologize companies have different numbers that they provide that they present okay so we're referring to our like for example our medical provider yes okay we did not go out to bid um in the past we haven't went out to bid for medical since 2019 okay um so we've been with Signa since then um they've provided us renewals since that type of since um uh

we renewed 2023 with Sigma so that's the last time we've actually did any types of renewals with our medical provider so what we received when we renewed was um going to the pharmacy we were able to um get at least $7 million in some concessions which affected our medical and our Pharmacy together so that was the renewal proposal received okay so it's been seven years since we you have considered going out to bed for another company yes since 2019 19 yes ma'am so that's about four years okay it's just I was just curious as to if this was the best rate that we could get so um as it relates to Signa provided a very great rate back in 2019 hence the reason why we decided to move with them um when it came to our

Pharmacy and moving that from RX benefits within the last last two years CA also provided those $7 million in concessions and that was the Richer um um the Richer um company that provided us which those Rich concessions so hence the reason why we moved to um our Signa pharmacy at this point in time because we had CVS Pharmacy we had CVS Pharmacy that and Signa was able to yield better savings and as um D said better savings and plus then yeah then we actually also the advantage with going with signo was we were able to get our rebates earlier so that it would hit our benefit fund um at the during the same time frame of the claims being issued okay well thanks for that information I just know that sometimes when you uh have been with a particular company for a long periods of time yes um it shakes up things a little bit if you go to a different company you

get better r uh and you may not I'm sure you checked that out but I was just curious our Brokers typically always tend to do go out to bid um uh for us to see what those proposals would look like when it does come time for us to renew okay yes thank you oh commissioner Jacobson I'll hold my comment go for no I I just wanted to follow up on commissioner howerton's point I I I really would like to understand I mean that that was five years ago um and especially if we're seeing increased costs why did we not um go put this back out to bid well do understand that um uh in the midst of covid in the midst of everything that's been happening inflation everything is rising as we've you know talked to as we spoke to this earlier um health care costs also rising and then commissioner Vice chair commissioner um Burns also um shared that you know everyone is now

doing their medical um procedures that they had negated to do during covid so the increase of course is because of the inflation because of we have an increase of enroll enrol Le um and then just the amount of the services that are being provided and I just want to chime in really quick um to give a little bit more detail around this don't forget we are still recovering from covid so we're seeing the aftermath and the cost going up because indiv uals are coming are having additional issues that may be the cause from them having Co and so that is something that is being studied throughout the country the total impact we're seeing of um covid overall right I know I'm not but I'm just questioning that's not what I'm questioning I'm questioning just the process and when when is the next opportunity that we have to put it out for bid because I mean we've always we've been always very proactive about

making sure we're getting the best deal and especially since this is such a huge driver in our budget and really impacts um our staff when is the next opportunity for us to do that and so if I can add that's one of the things we're talking about that benefits broker we did go out to bid for a new benefits broker who is instrumental in helping us evaluate and put out the bids for the providers that we use and we just selected a new benefits br BR ER for this year and we realized some savings with the the um fees from the benefits broker and then the broker will then help us develop that process to go out to look at um and and look at new providers and and those proposals that was the first step in doing this they did just select a new benefits broker and so for right now we are locked in with Signa for three years so we'll have fiscal 26 we have an opportunity to um go back out we can

always break it we've done that in the past rest assured that is that is an option we did it with one of our providers in the past was not receip well but um but as as the manager said this this gives us the chance to revisit um it's been a different stage postco uh not only rising cost but when for your own personal self think about I don't know if you can easily sometimes call your doctor get an appointment easy all of those kinds of things are factors that are rising um the increasing time for folks to wait to get Services done and then also driving up cost because they're dealing with supply chain issues or as or employment issues as well so uh we are doing our best to navigate this but will come back to the board with with recommendations on the path

forward thank y'all and I do before we go to commissioner Al I yes I do want to uh throw out the uh not the elephant in the room I do think that the women up here do hold ourselves to a higher standard I I honestly sincerely do and I think there are times where we will sit up here and talk about our fibroids and we will talk about breast cancer because the public does not talk about fibroids and breast cancer uh and many times men sat in these seats and women did not feel comfortable uh talking about those subject matter uh those subject matters and I think that we are now at a point in our culture where we can talk about obesity and perhaps everyone is not at that point and you could see me and my colleagues maybe argue a second ago and then we will literally be in the back talking about Spanx and Broad sizes because we do absolutely love each other and so that is our humor it is no one else's but that is why I ended in full transparency and a point of personal privilege for about 60 seconds there are Maybe three people in this room who knew uh two years ago that I could not walk

out of this room maybe two Monica was one there was one more and it was because I gained so much weight and that was back in uh 2022 and my Giggle was a giggle at somebody in this room who came to me for counsel uh after they saw I lost weight in 22 and 23 and wanted to know how and I can't take I'm a state employee they don't cover these medications anymore more the county does so I am happy that folks have access to it uh when my doctor came to me and told me that I was possibly it made no sense to me I lost 100 pounds before to give my sister kidney she ended up getting one Co I work a full-time job which some of you say I constantly remind people but it is because I go to work and then I come here and I try to put the work in I gained like 80 pounds in this job uh and so I did go on mjro that is not a plug that is not a push but since we love to embarrass withy Goldberg and we love to embarrass Kelly Clarkson by all means embarrassed commissioner Burns who

sits here right now and got on the scale and I saw a number the other day I haven't seen it in a decade my blood pressure is 116 over 67 I do not have diabetes and I do not have arthritis and I want the women and men in this room to share in that same Joy I am Unapologetic about that absolutely Unapologetic about that so for those who I might offend it with a giggle it is my joy and I shut my joy down for no one the fact that I am in a better position to give my sister a kid if she needs one I I I I apologize to those who might have been offended but I don't apologize for being happy about it and I don't apologize for the women in this room who are now in this position to do the same thing commissioner Al you had another question yes thank you Vice sharance I had a question regarding so this plan changes uh and the tiered options for the plans is it technically like something even that this board I don't know I'm just confused with the timeline

of it all because it seems to me like it's already been approved and moving forward but it's coming to us in this budget to vote on these changes because I was looking I got the email for the Open Enrollment changes and it's already telling employees uh to go into the system and choose their buy up option before we've even passed this budget so has this already been implemented okay and so I can respond to that it is something that I um approved and suggested as a part of the budget to um minimize the expenditure growth to my knowledge the board has never had to approve changes in our benefit plans it is not something that comes to this board for approval it is something that if you all wanted us to revisit it we certainly would but it is at the manager discretion as to how we Implement benefit change to make sure that we are not creating expenses that we can't

support it's an administrative decision I fully support the board's desire to want to change that but it is an administrative decision and so I understand people sent emails and that's what brought this to your attention and I will tell you I've spoken to our staff who works they understand this and they say thank you for what you've done for us in the past we know that this is something you would not have made this decision if it were not necessary staff understands that we had hard choices to make this year and they are supportive of this change however we will certainly defer to the board if you would like for us to go back and revisit that but it is not something that has had to come to this board um for the board's approval before and can I also throw out there oh go ahead commissioner Al I'm sorry no I was just going to say okay that's helpful clarification because I think just the way it's been presented like discussed in the budget um makes made it sound like it was something that is like

25 5 million uh in the difference between changing to this plan to what we've been previously covering and I'm supportive of us uh continuing at that level to make sure that uh our employees don't have to do these tiered options and continue to receive the same coverage as well as our retired employees I do just want to throw out the I have I I've talked to some of my colleagues I haven't talked to all y'all and I've talked to the staff and and I'm happy to hear you say that because I did want to give my I am indifferent to it at this point uh simply uh not because I don't hit employees and not because I don't want to spend the money I just I

think this one this is the best insurance I I wish I could sell this to young people say please come work for the county I've never I've had Insurance all over the state it's the best insurance I've ever had but you know what I also know as a state employee I along with every DPS teacher has a tiered plan the teachers have a tier plan I remember back in the day when we had a 7030 with the state a 8020 and a 9010 that was back when we had Kaa Permanente you could have a baby for $45 I was looking forward to having a baby for 4 you if you had 910 you you you know that is your you know but I do just want to throw out I I know I this is one of the ones where even some of the staff push back at me I don't have a problem with a tiered option cuz that's what our teachers have they have to choose between 703 and 8020 I don't know what ours are because I haven't looked at all of them I know y'all sent me the email um I don't I'm not going just crazy for someone say well if I were here next year I would not have a problem paying into a plan because I've always paid

into one and a significant portion of our employees uh in this County paying to a plan and so I do just as we're sitting here saying we want to make sure that we're equal uh in pay you know everybody's talking about how we can get the schools in 1922 also recognize our teachers pay into a tiered plan and I don't have a problem and I'm sorry y'all I love y'all with our employees here having to do the same thing just a quick comment um since I've been have the longest tenure uh our manager is right about the Commissioners not um really getting involved in the benefits plan the only time that we really had that input is when it's brought to us uh to approve the dollar amount and um and inquiring about so that I so that we understand what's

going on uh and that's I that's where my question is coming from is understanding because we've been getting the questions from our citizens to I mean why are you doing this and you know what about our benefits so to be able to relay back to them when we ask questions what's going on so I appreciate the input and um and I appreciate the hard work that you do but I also would like to see a revisit of of the the carrier at some point to really evaluate um what's possible you know what are the benefits that's possible that we can get in the coming years thank you um this slide right here is showing the Dual option medical plan um prior to this I had the benefit

analysis to show you the The Benchmark to show you what guided us here right um so if I can do the Benchmark if you allow me to um uh we benchmarked um all these different jurisdictions with their benefici you know uh to um to capture what Vice chair burn said we do have a wonderful benefit package um but we wanted to truly take a a deeper dive into what our benefits look like in comparison to others so um all 10 of largest counties in North Carolina is included eight of the 10 largest city and then we also included the State Health Plan just to have a comparison right um this is the lowest cost plan um for each jurisdiction and the lowest lowest cost co-pay plan so here individual medical develop before we even made any change you will see that durm County was green at the $750 deductible Mark what that meant is imp before um before uh the county

kicked in with their funding the employee had to meet their deductible outside of any preventative Services that are already free and included right um prior to any change was at 750 as you can see some of our counterparts the state had a $1,500 one we're more so to the left and kind of centered with the update um the buy up plan has the deductible as as a thousand so we still feel that we're very competitive um and then we also offer the base plan which is at 2250 at a lower monthly a lower Premium cost to the employee of course with the base plan um we also with our Benchmark we also um in required to see how many plans each jurisdiction had um there was 32% of our jurisdictions that already had two plans um and only about 15% that only had one and at that point we only had one so we felt like it was great for

us to offer a dual plan for because we have we have a diverse population right we have some healthy employees or or employees that maintain the health and they don't really go to the doctor and don't have a need for that one uh Rich benefit that we we had so they would um in essence uh sign up for the base plan because it's cheaper for them right um they may only go to their preventive exam um and then maybe a followup for the year but that was it but then for the buy up plan that plan is geared more towards those families or those individuals that have more of a health um Health needs or health Necessities or they they they foresee themselves having procedures in the upcoming year so they would in essence do the buy up plan to help them with uh once they met that $11,000 deductible that is when the county will kick in with the 8020 split okay when it comes to the family medical deductible the county was the fourth to the left at

$1,500 um with the base uh with the base plan it is now $4500 for a family to meet the deductible um we are still ahead of the state's plan meinberg um Carrie and Charlotte um and then the buy up plan again is $2,000 uh we're still trying to show that we're competitive with offering both um plans individual medical out of pocket maximum meaning the employees will not pay more than um x amount of dollars per fiscal year um the base plan is at $4500 uh we and then the buy up plan is 2500 with the buy up plan of course um that stayed the same you can see durm County was already there um as it's indicated in green pcps uh Primary Care Providers specialist in Urgent Care co-pays this one a little bit harder to see but um you can see that durm County was all the

way to the left we were already offering the cheapest lowest PCP specialist in Urgent Care co-pay but if you look at some of our surrounding Raleigh was charging $25 for Primary Care um $45 for specialist in Urgent Care um the city of durm was charging $30 for Primary Care um $60 for Specialists and Urgent Care was also um was was $30 um we we looked at this and kind of was looking at a good mixture so that's why the base plan is now um the PCP is $30 The Specialist is $50 still cheaper than our sister city over here city of Derm and then the Urgent Care is $30 um with the buy up plan your primary care you can go for $15 specialist $30 and Urgent Care $15 generic copays Duram County was already at the lower left with Z copay

as you can see others had already taken a stance and had a more of a cshare relationship with their employees um Greensboro $10 Raleigh $10 weight was $10 the State Health Plan was $16 so we uh had our base plan to be at a $10 U copay um and I give you a caveat that a lot of um the medications that our current employees are still own are considered preventive so that means they are zero dollars so they would not have to pay a co-pay for those preventive um um prescriptions although the base plan may say $10 a lot of the times it's going to be Z copay if it's a prid of medication they are taking um and then the buy up plan would be at continue to be at 0 contribution rates um employee only so this is how much did the employee pay on a monthly basis for their premiums durm County was already towards the left Z

doar with our current plan um with the updated plan the base plan will still be0 for anyone who uh for all of our employees who elected um but the buy up plan for the entire month would be $68 which is $34 it's some change every pay period for the buy up plan and then the family contributions um what the employees paying for a family premium rate Durham County was the uh fourth one to the left indicated by Green at 235 um with the updated plans the base plan is a little over it's 8% higher at $53 and then the buy up plan is $441 per month um so $2 um 20 some dollars per paycheck and this is uh the Benchmark kind of got us here to the Dual option medical plan continuing to use our

8% renewal increase um just because of our plan design that equated to about $6 million um with the alternative option with also adding a dual plan and giving our employees a choice between the two um it the change in plan design resulted in $8 million excuse me 8% increase which actually equates to about um three a little over $3 million here here you will see that the base plan the things that are indicated in yellow is truly what has changed from that current plan you will see the base plans annual deductible we talked about this already in the prior SL 2250 and the family deductible was 4500 um plan out of pocket maximum is 4500 to 9,000 for the family um primary

34 that is an 8% increase from the current rate of $71 61 um Cent um the employee and child is $53 73 Cent um again that's still an 8% increase from the current rates that we are operating under um today um at the bottom pre premium

equivalent what that means is how much much does it really cost um for us to the premium for an employee who only uses employee only coverage really the cost per month is $947 um 37 that is per paycheck we're spending that okay excuse me my apologies per month employees employee only is at $947 37 so the county is paying for that per employee per month if they only have um um the employee only coverage okay any questions on this slide before I progress commission yes this is very helpful um you know because it's you know going back and forth and trying to look at things like the co-pays and deductible amounts um one question I have is what is the definition of a wellness rate versus not Wellness rate So currently

here at the county we have the health risk assessments so if an employee um completes the requirements for the health risk assessment then of course the county will um take on the give them a health risk assessment credit and that amounts to $40 per month for each employee that um qualifies and does what they need to do okay but that's another change that we had this year which is that we used to make it really easy for people to do the HRA we provided that and then this year all of a sudden it changed to you have to do it on your own which I know I personally found very confusing so H how what what's behind that so behind uh we did do a change um of h8 process it was still um the criteria was to do a health risk assessment survey online through the signal website um also do your biometric screens the blood work to see what your

numbers would look like um and and and do a annual physical um those were requirements that is a signal program it was easier to administer but also we did hear noise throughout the years that employees wanted the ability or the flexibility to um do their HRA through their own provider um some didn't want to come on site to do the mass HRA um some were still very um cautious because of Co and didn't want to be around the crowd so we wanted to this this signal program provided flexibility to allow the employees to go to their PCP if they wanted to or they can go to the employee wellness clinic to get it completed or they could have did it on the MD live which is a virtual uh appointment the county pays for that for the employees to to seek uh virtual appointments through their providers or through any available provider that is virtual um this year we did hear more noise and we are making some adjustments we are going to have a hybrid approach um this

upcoming year well we'll still have those other mechanisms but we also still planning to have a one week of a health risk assessment um on site for those individuals that prefer to be to come on site I appreciate that that you're doing that um and then um yeah I'm just what I'm really trying to understand is that unfortunately with again as Keith would reminds us of the context that we're in and the fact that you know we're doing very conservatively just a 3% cost of living increase compounded with this that is it really what is the actual impact to our employees especially those who have families and does this really end up being a salary cut that's what I that's what I'm concerned about is is what is the actual overall impact and I

don't know if we could get some data um related to you know different scenarios or averaging to understand like that that's what I'm kind of to commissioner alam's point about this like I'm I really want to try to understand what the actual impact is going to be for the take-home pay um when all is said and done and so that's something that that unfortunately we can't tell you now because different people choose to you know different things for their insurance um plans and so that's something we will track um but we can certainly get that data to you once we know what people have selected and and um individually where people are with their plans we can provide that data okay um and I just you know I just think going forward I don't really remember to be honest what we've done before to commissioner howerton's point this has happened before but I do think in before it has

happened more slowly and it's been you know the roll out has been not kind of as quickly as this time and I I just hope that in the future we will do it in a way that there is more time to at least let staff have input um and so that you know it just feels really rush to me this time and I I just want to make sure that when we do this in the future that we're really looking very um you know we're really looking at all the options in a way that's also bringing bringing all the staff along as well we can certainly do that yeah and and I will tell you I know they have this um slide we haven't gotten to it but there were changes made back in 2018 2019 but it was to reduce the cost for employees and

so you wouldn't have heard much about that but please know that there was cost prior to looking at 16 17 17 18 this this type of cost was there for employees and so the other conversation that we've had with staff is once we you know feel like we have a good grasp on our benefits cost we certainly have the option to of course like we did in 201819 to roll those costs back um a personal decision that I made I didn't feel comfortable adding this on to the property tax increase knowing that we may roll back the costs if we're able to to minimize the benefits cost because rarely do we go back and take back a property tax rate increase I just didn't feel comfortable adding this to the property tax rate increase knowing that it's a cost we may very well be able to reduce in the next year or future years um manager so if I may also to uh

commissioner Jacob's last question and comment about the actual cost um burden on like uh the individual employees and their families I know you're saying that we don't have a way to calculate that right now because it'll based on the selections they make and open since open enrollment is open at this moment and I I'm sorry I forgot what day it closes could we provide employees at least with like if we have a formula or a spreadsheet so that they themselves like as they're making their selections can see okay based on the different tiers this is what my cost increase is going to be in comparison to what my Cola increase potentially may be and so they can just have that overview as they're making their selections so yeah the HR team they're I think we're going to be able to do that we can look at doing that we can look at seeing if we can provide that um

most employees have already done calculations um after the manager's um meeting last week they took the opportunity to look at what that may look like for 3% and we've heard feedback from employees just like you all have heard from the retirees about it being um uh difficult for some but maybe not all for all depending upon their situation like Dr soell said some employees absolutely understand and they are in agreement with what's currently going on but we do have employees who may have some challenges given the cost of living that is going up in this area period with the cost of everything being more expensive and it is certainly within the commissioner right to increase the compensation increases for employees from 3% you have that authority too I appreciate that I mean I think I've said uh my thoughts on the benefits portion if I know it's an administrative

decision but if you want my view on it I've shared that and we can always make changes if we are if you all require for us to to open enrollment although it's going on now if you determine changes to be made that uh medical piece can be something that we engage in having individuals redo it's we work at your pleasure just just just to follow up on that the what individuals that are having difficulty with the rate are there alternatives for them we have actually um we have been educating our employees on using flexible spending accounts um that is a wonderful benefit that we would like to uh like we wanted to make them aware of especially with this change in the

benefits um we had a wonderful HR Connect session um about two weeks ago where we invited all of our employees to a presentation on learning about flexible spinning accounts how they can and um kind of take a general estimate of how much you think you're going to spend um through the year um ask for a flexible spending account the county pays for that cost of the administration cost of a flexible spending account but ultimately They will receive before July one they will receive a card a flexible spending account card with those funds already on the card for them to be able to utilize for anything medical dental health related um Pharmacy over over the county over the counter prescriptions anything related to their health care or their family's health care um and what happens is with the flexible spending account you might ask for $2,000 on this card and you have it because maybe that's all you need for your deductible right um um but the county actually ends

up every paycheck we will um take a deduct on a pre-tax basis from your paycheck so instead of you having that $2,000 right there I mean you have it but you're kind of pay for it all throughout the year on a pre-tax basis so that that's kind of a um an alternative to assist them with um and there's another cost we absorbed was it the cost for the HR it was our County Manager absolutely um approved All County Employees to receive the HRA credit which is the health risk assessment credit so they also have that Savings of um $40 per month um of sa okay well that's really important because $40 per month translates into you know almost $500 520 $480 um for the year um to go towards the cost of whatever they do so that that's thank you I'm glad that's a very

important point Thank you and additionally I will say with the change in the HRA process with um sickness um motivate me program whenever our employees do um uh receive healthy results from their biometric screens um they receive $50 gift cards for their cholesterol $50 um gift cards for their blood pressure um $50 for their blood sugar and then $150 for um their waist CC conference being underneath the um threshold so there are additional ways that employees are earning of to $150 each year um completing the health risk assessment um activity so would um so would you go over this chart for me please yes so this is just a chart that is reflecting all of our past changes to our retire benefits policy although it says retire benefits policy do know that any changes

that we make for employees is the same for our retirees so these are changes so if you re see back in 2014 2015 we had three plans our richest plan which was the Premium plan the retire only monthly cost was $119 so that was for the richest plan I'm kind of similar to where we are with 1516 we decided to change it to core basic because there wasn't a lot of participation under the premium so there we changed that in 2015 2016 and this is again reflecting core and basic tier so we already had multiple tiers before in the past um back in 2016 2017 we had our Accountable Care Organization tier core and then that basic tier with the ACO you can say see that the retiree only monthly cost was0 the individual deductible was $750 for them at that time and if they wanted to elect um something higher then of course they had that ability to do that 1718 we had three tiers uh and then

starting with 2018 2019 um to to now we've had that one tier that we have been offering all um employees regardless of their health situations right so we're we're very happy that we're able to provide them with a a choice of two plans um and this reflects that the base plan for a retiree only monthly is still just Zer um but if they wanted a richer plan they can buy up um for a monthly cost of $ 6861 which again um if you look in the past we've had uh higher ones up until $119 $80 in the past so this is just reflecting that we're not averse to making changes to our benefits plans especially when the budget um is kind of guiding Us in that direction okay thank you you're welcome I'm gonna hop back because I know this is very important uh I want to go over briefly our retire benefits policy it is our policy to provide access to Quality and affordable medical dental Envision

and life insurance as a benefit to our employees who re retire um from the local government Retirement System in good standing so as with all of our employee benefits these benefits are always subject to change for future changes and revisions based off cost and funding this is in our policy and this is what we um emphasize whenever we do have conversations with the retired reads um those are in good standing and they're covered by the Personnel ordinance of course they get to adhere to this we have not we've always been able to um number one share how valuable and how we value our retirees and we support them um and we're very very fortunate to have been able to provide them z um retiree only cost per month with any of our plans all the way up until uh you know since implementation back in 2006 um so we still continue to provide them with a zero doll option as well uh which is you know access to that quality

and our and our affordable benefits package our policy states that we will offer eligible retirees medical insurance benefits if they meet these requirements so um we have we kind of have a grandfathered approach for our retirees um benefits policy if our employees have retired excuse me if they have 20 years of service um and they were hired prior to July 1 2006 then we will offer them the medical insurance benefits however if they don't meet all of the criteria years then they can they still have access but it will be on a prated basis of time currently we have 208 retirees currently on the group's self-funded Medicals plan because they're pre-65 once they turn 65 then um they move to our Medicare supplement and our part D um drug plan and the county continues to pay for that as well um 204 of those individuals are fully paid because they met the criteria and only four of them

are partially um contributing to to um the retiree um cost and again that only ranges between 2% and 8% so we have someone just paying 8% of the total cost of retirees and that could be um you know 40 some OD dollars okay and we've already talked about the past changes to our retirement benefits policy and that concludes uh my presentation thank you all right if there are no other questions we appreciate y oh commissioner Carter great detail um I just I just think this was great one question I have is about dental is it Incorporated in how does that relate how Dent Dental is um the dental was not included in the presentation this one is really specific to our medical and Pharmacy since that

m. thank you all you

and so V sh burs we um it's 1210 but I don't know if you want to because we did want to give you all time to talk about um the other presentations we want to make um for our next budget work sessions would you like to do that now or do you want well because I see that tax has left they escaped actually we covered because we Dwayne stepped up and talked so we're good we're good we everybody I told if you all cuz I didn't see lunch back there when I came back if you it's okay so lunch is back there uh what is the pleasure of the board do you all want to ask some questions do you want to let it marinate and then come back I was going thank you that's what I wanted to hear can we do it with a working lunch look at God see if I just take my hands off the steering wheel somebody drives so yes working lunch if that's okay with you manager

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as well as for uh putting forth some really great ideas uh we have broke for lunch but we are now back and we will start our group discussions and I imagine that they're going to be facilitated by doctor Kimberly so well our wonderful manager thank you so so much this was really good discussion today and thank you all so much for the thoughtful questions um we wanted to accomplish two things this afternoon one wanted to give space for if there were other presentations Andor discussions you would like for us to bring before you we would like for you all to give us those recommendations so that we can work with the appropriate parties to make sure we get them scheduled um and then if there are any follow-up questions from anything that you've heard today that you you would like for us to get information back to you please let us know what it is that you need and we'll make sure we follow up with that information okay if you don't mind can I start from this way and let everybody kind of sort of go you need your list

back I took your list do you need okay all right um I will just mention things that I know I think Heidi was going to mention two things so I won't mention those um one was definitely would like the opportunity for us to be able to directly ask questions to the superintendent and dur Public School staff um and I have a list of um information that I'd like which I will try to send today so that we they have time to be able to be responsive to that um I will also try to write down all of my questions for staff today um the budget staff and not take up any time in here right now okay and then second um I would like the opportunity for us to bring Linda Chappelle back to

ask some more questions about um pre prek early you know issues um related to um you know during public schools and US and all the resources and also I guess really we haven't figured out what are next steps around the 300 East Main Street property and what we can or cannot even do within this budget um and then the last thing was around um Alliance um I don't think it would very long but I do want to have the opportunity to understand I mean I did notice that actually the the funding is going down that we're allocating for them in the budget but so understanding that and also I'm specifically interested in support for threshold um commissioner Burns and I went to an event

there um Alliance provides much higher level of funding to threshold which is a um Clubhouse for um mentally ill adults in our community they are very very effective um really amazing resource and um anyway there's a big discrepancy into the funding that we provide versus Orange County okay um so so I that's specifically I'm I'm interested in understanding that and would you like because I think we have Alliance scheduled for the June work session if I'm not mistaken um ACM Pierce isn't here but I think it I think it needs to be part of the budget part of the budget yeah and it and it could only be 30 minutes okay but I I think it because you know the our our ordinance or I mean our rules and procedures around um our budget work sessions is that we need to

that the things that we discuss we can we can swap have to be budget related so I just want to make sure that okay it's part of the budget work session and I just want to confirm really quick that the um Alliance item is listed as an agenda is for discussion um at our pre- agenda meeting and our agenda prep meeting but it is already in there so we can swap it out okay swap it out okay and maybe there's opportunity to swap something else in that's right let us get to the end yes um I I'll leave mine because I only really have one or two so I will yield to my other colleagues hold on before we go I'm sorry yeah is commission alarm still on or if not okay and so commission alarm at any time you know jump in because I can't see your hand but go ahead commissioner card I'm sorry oh no problem um um I I've completely support the ones that Wendy has laid out and um I don't

3 million for each or something like that um so it was quite a large ask very much needed but anyway if we could talk about um

homeless Services needs um as they've been presented to us I guess that could also in include the homeless Services Center um and the issues around uh the need for expanded shelter space and expanded services at our shelter and what our thoughts are on that as far as how to fund some of this going forward lady can I add to what you asked about the um sustainability plan as was also to get information about the resiliency plan yes that we heard from um the um environmental Affairs board at Joint City County right yeah and just what are how can we what are the ways to move forward with that within the challenges that we have that's really all for me for right

now okay chair Howton commissioner Howton um was the presentation that Wendy and I uh was privy to on yesterday around suicide uh I don't know if Alliance has anything already in place for that but we are uh we're experience a lot of suicides and with our young people and I'm just wondering is there any is there anything in place that supports our young folks around that night I I don't know we we just saw an incredible presentation yesterday at um ncdot in Greensboro and he gave us a number I can't remember what was the number of of of folks that had committed suicide I don't remember the number but

119 119 it's pretty that's pretty strong um but just to put that out there um the other thing is you know um the USA games uh are coming and heel Carol has already spoken with Raleigh and got them on board and we I've asked the manager to meet with him tomorrow we'll have a conversation uh so that Durham can get on board I don't know exactly what his ask is but we'll find out tomorrow um because I think that's that's we have to be in in the queue there um there's one with with hey hey Tyre borne that's already on uh and there's one other item but I think I need to the manager is going to meet with the individual and we'll see if we need to bring that one up forward um J Spence we just need to have a

conversation first are the ones that I have wonderful uh man there are certain departments I do want to get some things for but I do know you know this is not like last year where we had a million things and there were some we were jam-packed so I do agree with my colleagues that I would like to see during Public Schools come back um about a couple of things I know that there's some folks who have questions on our board I would only respectfully request that we we submit those to the manager and I've already talked to everybody about that so that as they present their presentation it they can't say it was a surprise like these are the questions that we have so that we can kind of work with folks and meet with folks and meet with them where they are when they when they do present so thank you for everybody for doing that sometime because I don't want people to feel like they're ambushed I never want people to feel that way uh I know it might seem like it is not it's just that's my question an answer phase I AG again also agree with the threshold

uh uh conversation I'm happy that we're having it it should not take long um I will throw this out here uh the city and the current budget uh has come back and they have recommended a million dollars for ha TI reborn Justice movement they voted it down last year they saw how great it was how many graduations we had I was not prepared in full transparency um to even bring that one up but it is interesting that somebody got them there I'm not necessarily requesting a uh presentation but I would love to see like I know we're working on a $700,000 grant with them I would love to see where we could meet them because in a short time we've had four graduations and with so many more of our programs struggling to produce results I I I'm and with so many deaths and a gang war going on because that is exactly what it is it is nothing short of that

that is going on in the community I do want to make and the fact that we hosted the My Brothers Keeper Summit on yesterday I I I I do not feel let me say this uh I do not feel that the stuff that we do on this board is performative allyship I honestly sincerely do think that we have done a decent job a great job of putting our dollars uh where they need to be when our community is struggling I just want us to continue that when our community is at its most troubled so that's that um the only other thing I will be talking with the manager I have I know commissioner L I don't know if you'll be able to give you yours in the event that we have to pull and push some of these please don't nobody take it personal we love y'all it's just some of them uh might have to be on a work session for a later time it might be something we can do like I I'll give a good example the safety and wellness Tas Force which I argue with a lot um actually did have a decent

recommendation for or and I'm going to say the drug test are wrong but it actually but it's $25,000 that is something I'm interested in buying I don't need a presentation on it I don't need to be put in a budget again this for you commissioner Carter we can take it out of fund balance like but it was also wonder opioid or the opioid let me say this or the opioid settlement money right so I don't want people to think like I a lot of the requests that I have I have really tried to sit down and think of other places to get the money I have now I ain't saying other people haven't I've had convers I know you guys you ladies have done the exact same thing so I'm just saying like that was one that Gan brought up and I remember before she left I really cared about it is one and then a vehicle for it how can we pay for that out of opioid dollars so that is a request I have but I don't have to have that discussion for Budget um the other one that I would like to have I think some people don't understand the dollars that we spend for tax incentives for companies I I want to

clap it up for um Andy meracle he produced that report about what was it last week we all got it we've seen how many jobs that we've got and so that's a line item that people might not understand thank you I'm pretty sure he didn't do the pr by itself so thank you to miss de uh um director Craig Ray shop for getting that done but if we could get 20 minutes on that I would really appreciate that because these are just to let people see that impact like there have been things built there have been tax dollars accured from those and I want to showcase to people that money that we pay out is way less than what we get in somebody correct me didn't he say for every tax dollar we expended we're getting 613 $613 back so I do think that 20 minutes on that in a budget conversation might be helpful so that people don't think that we're quote unquote giving out tax breaks to billionaires because that is absolutely not what we're doing but I agree with the ones with my colleagues and if I have to preface some in mine for another time I I completely get that and last but not least Shameless plug

I'm going to always want $100,000 for my black boys round table but again I can wait I want it on the budget because I want it to last longer than any of us are here I want it to last longer than any of us are here if we cannot get that I will come back that will be the one thing when I'm no longer commissioner I will beg this body for because I think it's worth it and I'mma end here we gave more money to Joint City County Planning I mean excuse me to juvenile crime prevention and they've been able to give out my grants and there are some nonprofits that I didn't think were going to make a big difference and even I had to eat crow because I see what they doing with the kids and I feel like if we let the people who are closest to this issue the folks who are on that black male black and brown males round table that My Brother's Keeper Summit if they are in a position to make micro grants on their own or at least come to us with some recommendations it's it's not like the safety and wellness task force they ask for $2 million and as or over a million dollars when they were in here last week they've had that money for two years they've not spent

it I know look I'm not going to repeat what commission is Jacob but they had a million doll right I I don't want to give a task force a $100,000 of and not let them use it so that's the one but again I can't wait on that one if we have to but I ain't GNA wait too much further after November 25th that's all I'm gonna say but um those are those are the ones I I back up the ones for the school I want to see one from Andy I back up the one for DPS and I do want to see something from Alliance but thank you thank you thank you and we have the opioid settlement scheduled for the 30th so that's going to incorporate some of the things that you mentioned and can we also do a press release once we do that one because everybody else and I I know we've done the work but we've been getting a lot of press questions saying why hasn't dur decided what to do with that opioid money that is not it we are just not out talking about it all the time because we did it the right way we did a gan did a a road show and so I do want people to know about that work that I that uh uh Rashana did and that g did

and so yeah okay commissioner Jacobs I just want to follow up on your last com comment that I believe not right now but the manager is going to be coming back with the um Community intervention and support services yes um with some recommendations on some I think there's going to be the opportunity to um yes to reallocate some funds and things so I I think there'll be a future opportunity yes I hope you all heard that dog whle Madam clerk yes our chairarm is is waiting to speak as well hi ch took so long till it we

sorry and if she doesn't she can email but we can wait cheram are you able to hear us we can't hear you while we waiting manager any other thoughts from you or we just gave you a long to-do list this we will be hard at work making sure we get this scheduled I will also say I think um commissioner Jacobs we also had a conversation about Soil and Water you wanted us do you still want that okay the Betsy program M okay so we have um just to recap so we have the soil and water Betsy program we're going to ask the DPS superintendent and staff to come back going to ask Dr Chappelle to come and

speak to us about Duram prek and when you mentioned the 300 East Main Street commissioner Jacobs she on the phone okay commissioner Jacobs has cheer Alum on speaker phone no okay you're on you're on the mic and speaker phone right now thank you you commissioner Jacobs um I just wanted to Echo sayto to what other Commissioners raised especially around DPS and one of the things that I know we've had conversations at our joint City County meetings around um like the different areas that we both support and fund within the city and county but can't

hear I see y'all struggling with the mic so I don't know if you can even hear me yeah we can hear you now okay um with like the rental assistance um programs that the city and county jointly uh contribute to in different ways if you can get an update on like how conversations are going with the city manager on that about like it was in her budget just the shared responsibility as well as the 911 call center uh and just different areas that the city and county overlap in if we could incorporate that into the budget conversation somehow okay than great suggestion hug the babies okay so I will say based on all of these wonderful suggestions it looks like we're going to need to move to June 4th as well and use that date um but that's okay that's why

we have it reserved I'm sorry what did I say you said it you June okay okay June so June 4th these will be succinct presentations yes that was what I yes so the we it'll be back to back day so we have June 3 we already have um had some things scheduled so that's a Monday um and then the fourth if we do use June 4th it's 1:30 to 5 I'll have to be on a confence call it 1:00 one for an hour okay so you'll miss about 30 minutes of it because we're scheduled to start at 130 on June yeah okay that's fine then I'll just come here and make the call so that I can just walk in the office okay great did

um anyone on staff need clarifications or have questions that we need to to get answered before we start working on this we good DCM Jones good DCM Hager budget team is Keith oh he's back in the corner did you have your hand up oh okay okay I thought I saw you lift your hand up if you can come up to the mic so people can hear you sir yes good afternoon uh ACM Delgado in regards to the 300 500 block how much I like to kind of information you need for the presentation yeah good question I was going to ask that when she was on the phone were you referencing like the the child care space that we'll have so she she wants an update on where we are with that got thank you much I just wanted some clarification on Alliance just to be clear Alliance

funding was not decreased in the budget it was held flat um so want to be but what is it exactly you want so when I contact Alliance to come I would like to know a breakdown of exactly what that funding is going to and what level is being um funded for threshold currently what is the history of that funding and what is the funding level that they provide to threshold in other counties or or the same concept I think in Orange County it's called Club Nova but other mental health um club houses thank you commissioner Carter I think we have in our notes and I'm trying to get some clarification from our notes talked about hsac the homeless Services homeless Services advisory committee I could just forward you the email if with a request if everyone wants me to re forward that I can and you want us to what would you

like for us to do with that you want to pondered among you want them to come and talk to you all about I think I think it's more like what do we you know what are our options for either funding some of it or none of it you know I just think that's something we need to talk about among ourselves and I guess hear from staff as to if there is any arpa you know potential that kind of thing also what the city's doing are they going to are they how are they responding if at all um I the interesting thing is it's almost like they asked so early it kind of fell off our radar in a way last year they asked too late you know and I think we encourage them to ask sooner and they just asked in February and anyway good is there any way and I'm just wondering like and I'm wouldn't take it away because I know that's a big ask it would be different if it was Gap funding because I think they've asked for like 70 something I not taking it away after the budget discussion but is there any way that maybe we can with the same discussion that commissioner uh that

chair Alam question like these joint projects that we work on with the city can we put that within that one and have our staff is that fair yeah CU homeless Services advisor I think they've done it but this is an example whether it's eviction homeless Services whether it's um a lot of the joint plans that we do that's one where we're asking them so maybe put all that one into one and have staff present those recommendations is that fair yes instead of a separate one yes that that's fine um and the homeless Services Center you know the shelter the day Center the combo I don't know to call it homeless Services Center I saw in our budget that some funding had been removed from previous years not just because it was already spent I think it was a one time funding right um however I think it's connected to the need for ongoing funding or at least Capital funding and I just I don't know where where we are with that as a board

or as a county as a partner with um the homeless shelter you know urban ministries I just I just don't know where we are yeah and I will say we have just recently assigned um Samantha Smith to be our leaon because we didn't have a true person dedicated to working with hsac and so we do have someone now that is attending the meetings and that can bring back recommendations and needs to us thank you commissioner howon you spoke with the USA games and how Durham can get on board to what exactly would you like the discussion to be about what I'll give you the manager now meeting with the hill Carol tomorrow and have more conversation uh all I know is that Raleigh has already signed on as a partner and Durham needs to sign on as

well I don't know what that mean as far as dollars and we'll find out tomorrow and let you know I suspect our County Stadium will be a center of attention on some of those things so absolutely I don't know that anybody has the numbers yet but for planning yeah we're looking at over a million people coming to coming through this area so we've got to be prepared several of you spoke of hati reborn do you want them to come and propose a request again or yes they are on they already sched they sched the 30th I I want to make sure because we've already had a PowerPoint I'm I'm interested in their budget actually never gotten a detailed budget it's the bud that's what you mentioned and so they are coming to talk about the budget I just want to make sure we get that in advance okay yeah right do that all right I think that's and then commissioner Alam just to make sure you all heard would like to hear from a

couple of our combined departments Shar departments on what they're doing and proposing rental assistance think e 911 and and she and I not that the manager somebody said it up here that she did put it in her budget the 68 whatever did she put the 68 in there manager page did thank you okay so that's all we had Vice chair thank you all so much look forward to talking to y'all and have a great day all righty for