00112.07. So now we're going to move on to the work session. And I actually forgot to print out that. Here I have that part, the work session. And so Dr. Hutchings, do you want to start us off with the combined funds revised budget? And and yes, so I am going to start us off with that and I'm going to have our chief financial officer, Mr. Turner. He's going to share his screen and guide the PowerPoint presentation as I talk this through the presentation on the revised FY21 budget. So, Mr. Turner, are you can you share your screen? It says the host has disabled that ability. One moment. Okay, thank you. Okay, you should be able to share now. That should work. Sorry about that. Give me a thumbs up if you can see my screen.
002It's good to go. Thank you. Can you, is it a way to put it into, is this the presentation version? Or you pulled, oh, you pulled it from ESV. Okay, that's fine. So first, before I even get into the presentation, I do want to just start off just by saying, you know, this right here, having to revise a budget. at the end of this academic year for next year and actually making revisions to a budget that the board has already approved that we were all so excited about just literally a few months ago is telling for all of us. And today in the Wall Street Journal, there was a statistic in regards to the unemployment rate. It's at 14.7% as of today. 20 point four. five million jobs have been lost across this country. And
003that's tremendous. So the impact that this global pandemic is having across the world and especially here in the city of Alexandria as well, this is definitely going in the record in the history books for all of us. And I wanted to start off with that because it's really... i we are here um having to make revisions to our budget um this is my to hold it 19 uh pandemic so um i want to first start off with the budget priorities that i know the board is very familiar with um hold on i think that uh i don't know if um susan's phone is muted or zoom is muted i don't know ed can you mute her So let's take a look at the school board combined funds budget priorities for FY 2021. As I stated
004before, the board is very familiar with these priorities. We went through an exercise this past fall, that was fall of 2019, to develop the budget priorities using specific data points from... all of our academic data, as well as our strategic planning data to determine what are the specific areas of focus for the FY21 year. And even though we are now experiencing this global pandemic, that does not change the priorities of our school division at this point. You know, we still have K-2 literacy that we're going to need to focus on. It might have to be remotely in some cases, in some ways, but it's still an area of focus for us. We still are going to have to implement our special education audit requirements and things of that nature. So we are staying true to
005the actual budget priorities that were developed and approved by the board as we make these revisions moving forward. Also just want to remind us of what the approved FY21 operating budget look like. Oh, it months ago, February 20th, we were all high fiving. We were so excited. We were, you know, saying job well done to our team because there was a collaborative effort to even narrow it down to the two hundred and ninety nine million dollar budget that we developed and approved back in February. But now we're at a time where we are going to have to make some tough decisions and to. you know, force us to make some reductions in our operating budget. And I'm going to be able to share specifically what those areas are today. Before I get into that, I
006want to talk a little bit about the governor and the city manager's recommendations. You know, our governor, as you all know, had a stay-at-home order that is in effect until June 10th. As of right now, it may change. We're not really sure how things might change in the future. There are a lot of uncertainties out there. But one specific area that the governor... Discussed in his budget, because he's making revisions in his budget as well. And this 1 area I wanted to point out, because we put this into took this into consideration with the reductions that I'm going to share with you all today. But he proposed in delaying the increase of school counselors that are funded in our standards of quality or. And that was one of the reasons why we included additional school
007counselors for this upcoming school year. But I think it's important for us to just highlight that component to know that there are things that are coming from the Commonwealth of Virginia, as well as the video. We that. we put into consideration as we were working through our reduction for the budget. Also, our city manager talked about, you know, some of the issues that the city is faced with and trying to relieve a burden on, you know, our taxpayers in the city of Alexandria and making sure that, you know, we are keeping the Alexandria city's budget intact as much as possible. and I do want to thank our city manager Mark Jenks for you know believing in our school division making sure that we are supporting our schools and our academics and you know as we
008go into some of the recommendations that the city manager has made his his recommendations were around salary enhancements he was not recommending to impact our educational resources for our students or textbooks And that is something that is very important for our community to know because many cities right now are faced with having to have more than just a salary enhancement elimination, that they're forced with having a reduction in force. They are forced with having learning resources being reduced in some capacity. And as of right now, that is not one of the recommendations that came from. Our city manager, which is, which is really important for us to showcase another economic reality that the city manager discussed specifically during the revised budget process for the city. was that there are many uncertainties that are out there.
009You know, as you all know, I mean, every week there's new information that we're receiving either from the CDC or from the VDOE or from the governor or from the president of the United States. And, you know, some of these uncertainties could lead to us having additional reductions in the future. And it's going to be important for us over this summer to really monitor. what we're doing because there potentially could be a time for us in the fall that we are revisiting the FY21 budget again and having to do further productions which you know I hope that that is not the case, but it is a possibility. Also, as we're looking to see our economy recover, depending on how long this shutdown will be and how long it's going to take for businesses to reopen,
010we may also see further reductions due to the economic recovery going slower than projected in the city's budget as well as in our budget. So I think that we are going to continue to monitor that. The city manager and I, we are still in contact more now than we were before. So we are staying in tune to what's happening and monitoring what's going on throughout the state as well as the United States of America. So I want to look at finally the revised city budget and specifically, and this is just to give some specifics, board members, I know you're already familiar with this, but I know we may have some viewers and some community members engaged in this discussion today. So with the approved budget by the city council, which was approved on April 29th.
011This was a reduction of city appropriations to Alexandria City Public Schools of $7.4 million. And the $7.4 million was established by eliminating salary enhancements. in Alexandria City Public Schools, eliminating employer contribution to our supplemental retirement. And then the final area is a deferment of our high school project funding from FY21 to FY2023. of $103 million. So these are just, this is an idea of what the city council has approved. But in addition to our city appropriations, there's additional revenue adjustments that are going to have to be made in order for us to balance our budget, because we do receive majority of our funding, or a lot of our funding from the the city appropriation or majority of our funding from the city appropriations. But we also receive funding from other sources. And one in particular
012is our state revenue. And there are sources that come from the state, such as our state sales tax and our lottery funding that we receive. And as of right now, we've made estimates of about a $4 million reduction from our state revenue. We also receive revenue locally, and that is, you know, we rent out our buildings. We have people who attend school and pay tuition or fees that people may pay to the school division. And we're looking at a reduction of about $300,000 right now in regards to our local revenue. And then finally, our federal revenue is another source that we receive our funding. this is an area where we may be receiving some additional dollars and I'm going to talk a little bit about that which is our CARES Act funding and that is
013a one-time you know funding source for the school division and it can only be applied to certain aspects of our expenditures. And we're getting some more details about that now. It's still a work in progress. We have been approved to receive $3.6 million, but there is an application process and guidelines that we're going to have to go through in order to actually obtain or have that money appropriated to ACPS. And we'll have some more information about that, I hope, in the next week or so. So let's get to the record reductions that, you know, are specifically for the FY21 revised budget. And, you know, first and foremost, one, you know, I think, you know, blessing or excitement that we have from, you know, from this experience this year is that we did have some health
014benefit savings. And actually, our health benefit savings. for our health and our dental plans, they came under our projected amount. So we actually got a little more than we expected in regards to those savings, which this is an opportune time for something like that to happen when we're looking at having to reduce our current budget or our FY21 budget. Another specific area that we had to look at and that we're going to be recommending for reduction is the employer contribution for our supplemental retirement. And first and foremost, let me just explain a little bit. Our employees currently, they actually contribute one and a half percent of their salary to the supplement of retirement, which equals about $2.7 million. Our actuary reports, they say that we really should be contributing about $4.57 million, which we were
015proposing this upcoming year for the employer, meaning ACPS, to contribute 0.5% to the supplemental retirement so that we are narrowing that gap. that we have right now. And depending on, you know, the market performance, as well as the Supplemental Retirement Board, we'll be meeting to discuss this. But depending on what our market performance looks like, we could potentially, being that we're not going to be providing contribution to the Supplemental Retirement, that employers, I'm sorry, that employees may have to contribute at a higher rate. for their supplemental retirement in the future. And there are a lot of caveats to that. I can't tell you what that exact amount is as of right now, but we did provide just some history in regards to the employer contribution and the employee contribution of our supplemental retirement. It was
016an attachment to the board memo regarding the budget today. So board members have that. It is also public. It's available to the public. Another area that we have to look at reducing is our 2% one-time bonus. And in our current FY21 budget, we had a 2% bonus for all of our employees who were not eligible for either a step increase or who were at the top of the salary scale in order for us to balance the budget and to stay true to what the city manager as well as many of our school divisions across the Commonwealth are doing is to eliminate that one-time bonus for employees who were on hold step or not eligible for a step or at the top of the scale. A part of the elimination is also the step increase that
017was recommended for all of our employees for the FY21 year. That during an elimination of this at this time, this is any employee that was eligible for a step is going to allow us to stay true to the city manager's recommendations and what other school divisions across the Commonwealth are doing, as well as to assist us with balancing our budget and having the budget reductions. And then another area is reducing our new for 21 in our initial 21 budget. We had an additional 29.8. And we are proposing in the recommended revised budget to have an additional 13.7. so we're reducing our 29.8. a number to 13.7 in the revised budget and specifically what we wanted to do in this area was to to focus on our schools and the ftes that were at the school
018level such as you know content area teachers encore teachers so that we are not jeopardizing or impacting our schools and our students and we also in the 13.7 wanted to keep the the actual language. or translation services, sorry. We want to keep the translation position or FTE in this count, as well as the executive director of human resources that was a part of this proposal so that we can continue to recruit and retain highly qualified staff members. Because even though we are experiencing this global pandemic, we still have human resources within the school division and we're going to have to make sure we have and executive director that is working towards those efforts. The other area for our reductions is our 5% non-personnel reduction. And this is across all of our schools, as well as
019all of our departments in Alexandria City Public Schools. And specifically, this is a reduction of non-personnel expenditures. One suggestion that we've made to all of our principals, as well as our directors and our chiefs, is to look at the learning accounts that we have for travel because we do send staff to travel to be a part of different professional learning engagement opportunities. And being that we're experiencing COVID-19 in this global pandemic. You know, we don't think that it's in our best interest to send our staff all over the country or stay in your hotels and things of that nature. So that is an area we suggested for our principals, our directors and our chiefs to start when they're looking at their non-personnel reductions of their expenditures. However, we're not mandating that. We really wanted to
020allow our leaders to have some autonomy with. what specific areas they were going to reduce. We did provide all of our schools and all of our departments what the actual dollar amount is. So 5% of your non-personnel expenditures, we wanted them to know that equates to a certain dollar amount. We also Provided an attachment to this board memo for the public to view as well to see what that dollar amount is for the 5% reduction of non personnel expenditures. And then the final area that we are recommending for the reductions for the 21 budget relates to a hiring freeze for central office as well as our non classroom positions for the 21. And specifically, you know, we know that there are going to be essential jobs in vital positions that will need to be filled.
021So there's some vacancies that we are going to have to fill, but we are finalizing our process for all of our vacancies for FY21. Specifically, we want to make sure that they're being vetted, that they are being defined as essential or valuable. prior to us posting them or advertising those vacancies so that we're not in a situation where we're hiring somebody and then we don't have the dollars to pay for their salaries and benefits. That we're going through a full vetting process with finance and HR prior to advertising any positions for FY. 21. And these are only central office and non-classroom positions. So teacher positions and principal positions and all those positions, they're still being posted and we're still working through those. But these are non-classroom positions and central office positions that we are putting
022a hiring freeze on. So with these reductions that I have talked through today, it allows us to reduce the FY21 budget by $11.7 million or a little over $11.7 million. And this will allow us to balance the budget as of right now. But we want to keep in mind that the information that we have currently, it could change in the next month. And if that occurs, these reductions that we have put out, you know, as a recommendation to the board, as well as to inform our community, they may be this in addition to others. So we have to keep in mind that really just depending on how our economy downturn, how significant it continues to be, we may be coming back to the board. uh in the future with additional items so these and additional
023uh reductions that we may have to have to do to balance our budget moving forward And then the final area I want to just bring back to you is the 3.6M dollars that comes from the cares act funding and the federal government has provided these relief funds states. And we did have our, or the video we submitted their proposal and their application. It was accepted and. we are looking to receive 3.6 million or a little over 3.6 million dollars. These specific dollars are going to be used for one-time concerns, issues, expenditures that relate to COVID-19. So we want to make sure that the public understands that These dollars are not given to the school division to use and purchase anything we want. There are specifications and guidelines that we are going to have to abide
024by in order to receive those dollars. And the VDOE is finalizing all of those guidelines and requirements right now. So we'll have some more information for the board in the coming weeks. hopefully before June 5th when we do the final adoption of our budget or when the board does the final adoption of our budget. But I wanted to make sure that you were informed that there is $3.6 million that we potentially receive in Alexandria City Public Schools over the next year. So I wanted to give some examples to how these reductions can impact some of our staff members. So first and foremost, I want to go back to our goal is to not have to have a reduction in force. Right now, we are not recommending to have a reduction in force or a rift
025of our employee base in Alexandria City Public Schools. That's a huge... benefit for us because some school divisions they are having those hard discussions right now. I want to remind us that you know the unemployment rate today is at 14.7 I'm sorry 14.7 percent. That's extremely high for us right now. That's not as high as it was during the depression. I think it was 25 percent at that time but 14.7 percent is significant. 20.5 million jobs significant. you know across this country and we are trying to make sure that we're retaining our staff and that they are still receiving income uh in in their households but we wanted to give you just a snapshot and we cannot show you every scenario because everybody has different circumstances we have a lot of different employee groups but
026we wanted to identify a group that's the majority of our employee base that's the only reason we're using this example is to give you a sense of the fact that you know majority of our employee base are teachers with master's degrees right that's our largest population of employees that we have and we wanted to give you an idea of what it will look like in regards to their take-home pay with the reductions that we have recommended to the board so that means that you know there will be no salary enhancements however because the health premiums are going to increase for UnitedHealthcare and Kaiser this upcoming year. employees who have health benefits are going to experience a decrease in their take-home pay. And we wanted to show you what the decrease could look like. And in
027this particular scenario, this is a teacher with a master's degree who has UnitedHealthcare as their insurance. This is somebody who does not have family insurance. But this gives you an idea of what this particular employees take home pay is going to look like. You'll see from 2020 to 2021, the salary remains the same. The VRS retirement remains the same. The ACPS supplemental retirement remains the same. The life insurance is the same. The health insurance, you're going to see an increase. And that increase comes from the premium. So with that increase. that individual will be looking at $213 less over the FY21. So over next year, meaning from July 1 through June 30th, this particular employee would take home $213 less than they took home this past year, which is FY20. So this is just giving
028you an idea. This does not, you know, it's not the same story for every employee. Every employee's situation is going to be different depending on, you know, their individual tax information, depending on whether they have individual or family, and depending on. you know, any of the other things that they might have that we're not aware of, that some people have garnishments and things of that nature that we just don't know about. But this is what majority of our staff or employee groups will receive. This is the impact they're going to have. I want to move on and go to the FY21 non-personnel reductions because I spoke about these earlier and I shared with you that we provided to this memo a more specific budget item line and also showing some of the offices that relate
029to these departments. So you can see that laid out. But this overall is showing you The actual dollar amount of what 5% of non-personnel expenditures equate to for each of these departments. You know, you will see that our operational support, majority of our non-personnel dollars actually comes out of that department. Now, there are specific things out of that. So, for example, when we're trying to upgrade our services, you know, in regards from level two to level one, all of those are non-personnel costs. or expenditures, but we're going through specific items that we want to put on the table for reductions and the board will receive more specifics around what each of the departments, like what these actual dollars equate to in regards to items. You will see that in the coming week. We're trying to
030finalize all of those. uh right now but the dollar amount is going to remain the same but you'll be able to see specifically what those budget items are I want to next talk about the CIP adjustments. And this was something that, you know, initially when many people heard about the high school projects funding moving from FY21 to FY23, many were very nervous about that because people were thinking, oh, no, our we're not going to be able to open the school in September of 2024 as we expected or oh my gosh does that mean we're not going to be able to build another structure for the high school project and I want to clear the air that with you know the adjustment our team has put together a plan to still be able to deliver a
031building in September of 2024. And we're working through these final logistics right now with the city. But one thing in particular that we are asking for the city is to be able to appropriate $30 million in FY22 and then the remainder in FY23 as planned. Because you don't, for any project, have to pay for all of your costs up front. So we wouldn't have to spend $100 million. plus million dollars in FY21 because we're still in the planning and design phase at that point. But when we get into FY22 and FY23, when we're finalizing the structure of the buildings. of the building, excuse me, that is where we're going to need those big dollars. So the city moving the high school project construction dollars from FY21 to FY23 is not going to change our opening
032date. As long as we can receive that $30 million in FY22 to pay off some of those, you know, expenditures that are coming from this construction, as well as to be able to get some of the work started for the high school project in FY23. This is going to require some phased procurement, you know, a procurement process. And we're working with David Banks, you know, to make sure that we are legally doing these things and making sure that we are, you know, following all the procurement laws. that are out there, but it is going to be possible for us to still maintain that 2024 building date with these revisions that we're working through with the city as we speak. And then finally, I just want to go through the timeline of, you know, where do
033we go next? And, you know, today we're doing the presentation. Board members will have an opportunity to submit questions that are answered by, you know, the staff. And they're going to be posted to the ACPS website. There's also a deadline to submit combined funds and CIP add-delete requests, which is May 14th. May 20th, I will be sharing any recommendations regarding the ad deletes, and that'll be made public. And then we'll have a work session on the 22nd and a second work session, if needed, on the 29th with adoption of the final FY 2021 combined funds and FY 21-2030 CIP budget on June the 5th. So there's a lot to happen over the next month. And there's more information I'm sure we may receive, you know, between now and then. And we'll have a clear picture
034too around what businesses and things are going to look like around June 5th, I hope, as well. So with that said, I wanted to conclude the presentation and we will be available for whatever the board chair would like next. All right. Thank you for that. We, you know, what I had said to board members is if they had some, some, some questions today, because we have some time for that, that we could start with some questions today, even though we're going to have the written questions, but we will, we do have to keep our overall time in consideration today. So there may not, there may be remaining questions, but we already have that covered by the written answers, you know, questions and answers that we're going to submit. But I do have Dr. Reif who
035has a question. Yeah. Thank you, Dr. Hutchings, for your presentation. I know a lot of effort went into working on this budget with the staff. And I know it's not an easy process. And I really appreciate all the hard work and the difficult choices that had to be made. I just, I have a question but I wanted to make a couple of comments first. I appreciate that you know this revised budget really minimizes the impact on the academic programs for students, but I am concerned about the impact on staff. You showed the slide with the example of the teacher with the master's degree and as you mentioned, you know, does show a net loss for the teacher. because of the increase in healthcare costs and that's assuming an individual who doesn't have any dependents. So
036it could be, you know, that cost could be even more for some of our employees. And, you know, about the supplemental retirement plan, just a couple of comments I'd like to make about that. I appreciate all the documents that were shared for the meeting today. If you look at that list of contributions over the years, you'll see that for the last several years, employees, like you mentioned, have been making the one and a half annual contribution to the supplemental retirement plan. Whereas in years past, the employer was the one that made ACPS made all of that contribution. And so over time, that burden. for the supplemental retirement costs have shifted to our employees. And I also appreciated that you posted the minutes from the last industry advisory board, which is who oversees this and advises
037the school board on what the contribution should be. And I just wanted to highlight for my colleagues and anyone else who might be listening the There was a comment made at that meeting from Ms. McConville, who I understand is the retiree representative on the Industry Advisory Investment Advisory Board. And she said, it says that Ms. McConville commented that new teachers will not receive the same type of pension benefits that current longtime retirees have. New teachers have to pay so much more to their pension plans. and if there was anything that could be done about this. And so I was very pleased to see in the initial budget that ACPS was going to make this 0.5% or half a percent contribution, employer contribution to the supplemental retirement plan. So it was a big disappointment for me
038to see that that contribution was coming out. And I noticed that the city is still actually making a similar. contribution to their supplemental retirement for their employees of about a little over half a percent. But like you said, Dr. Hutchings, our Our annual required contribution to meet all future obligations is around four and a half million dollars. And as I understand it with this budget, we're only going to be contributing, you know, 2.7 million. And all of that's going to be coming from our employees. And this is not to mention the losses in the stock market that are going to also be impacting the Supplemental Retirement Fund. So, you know, by not making this employer contribution this year, it's going to be hard to make this up and employees are likely going to see additional
039retirement costs, you know, in the future, unless take home pay as a result, which really this impacts staff retention, which is one of our budget priorities. So as I understand from your presentation, this, you know, this is going to go back to the industry advisory board to take a look at. But I just wanted to, you know, make sure that. my colleagues and the public were really aware of, you know, you know, just how this, again, this burden for supporting the supplemental retirement has shifted to employees and how this situation could become even more challenging in the future. And it's really, I think it's just really important for the community to understand how these budget cuts are really impacting our staff in a very big way. And then with that, I just wanted to ask
040about the market rate adjustments. In Mr. Jink's 2.0 budget that he presented, he wrote in there that to maintain equity between city and ACPS employees, I have reduced the amount, the recommended city operating transfer to ACPS by 7.4 million. This amount is equivalent to the cost to ACPS to provide merit step increases, the 2% bonus for top of scale, targeted market rate adjustments, and a decrease in the employer contribution to the ACPS. supplemental retirement plan. But as I understand it, you've made a decision to keep the market rate adjustments for certain employee groups that we did the compensation studies on. And I was just hoping that you could talk about why that decision was made. And also, if you all could answer if we're still planning to do additional compensation studies in FY 2021, and
041if you know which employee groups you're planning to do the compensation studies for. in the coming year if you are still doing them. So yes, so we do plan to continue to do our employee compensation studies and that's for our employee groups that are falling well below our average in this particular region. When we did our compensation study this past fall, We specifically identified employee groups, paraprofessional fours, transportation, principals, as well as chiefs at the central office level, that salaries were well below the regional average. And one thing that we were proposing in the initial budget was that we wanted to ensure that we were getting those salaries or having strategies planned To at least get those salaries into the average range, which we knew we were not going to be able to do in
042the FY21 budget, but we can start working towards that. So we had a three to five year plan for those employees, those employee groups. And what we're recommending is that we keep that plan intact because those specific employee groups are well below the regional average. I believe that the city manager is also looking at something similar for some of his employee groups as well in regards to making those market rate adjustments for salaries that are well below the average because they're already at a disadvantage. They are not competitive salaries right now. They are at a disadvantage and the goal is to try to get them to a competitive salary level over the next three to five years. Okay. Next, I have a question from Megan Alderton. Good afternoon, everyone. My question was more of a
043point of clarification, just so I'm understanding correctly. So on slide number nine, we gave a snapshot of possible take-home salary impact. And that reduction is primarily due to the lack of steps and the increased costs in health care. So, but earlier in the presentation, there was some discussion about increased contribution to retirement. And so is it that we're not expecting that to occur this coming fiscal year, but in following years? Well, it really depends. So this goes back to our Supplemental Retirement Committee and our actuary who has to now look at, okay, now we're not making the contribution, let's get rates now. How do they look? What will be our strategy to now, you know, Fill that gap. So that is a discussion that's going to happen. You know, once this is, if this is
044approved that that meeting is going to happen soon and they're going to have to make a determination of when. But that is what the team that's what that committee does. They determine when and how much. Or make the recommendation of when and how much. Okay, I'm going to insert myself here with a question I wanted to for people who are joining us from the community in particular, just to point out that we are not an island in this situation and I know that we have some information about surrounding districts and that they're having similar, you know, difficulties, a and B also just a clarification about retirement this is supplemental but it does not, it does not really. mean that we don't put any money in retirement because we have the air brs system correct so
045just wanted to have you know those couple of clarifications for the for the public if i could yes and i would like for uh mr turner or dr wilkins to chime in on that too So yes, our employees have both the VRS, the Junior Retirement System, as well as the ACPS Supplemental Retirement Plan. ACPS, the employer contributes, I believe it's around 17% of the total pay for the VRS. um and then on the supplemental retirement originally we were trying to have an employee and employer share um but now that you know the covid 19 situation has occurred um the superintendent is recommending that that comes out so we can balance the budget um and stay away from the things that he he's mentioned already in the presentation I just, I mean, just to reiterate what
046the board chair just mentioned, I mean, these are dire times for everybody. I mean, this is probably a situation that no superintendent or school board wants to be in where they're having to make decisions like this. But I do want to bring to light that we are not having a reduction in force at this time. And that is something that is real. And if you all are watching the news or if you have anybody who's been impacted with losing their job during this COVID-19, it's serious. It's happening. And it's happening very quickly at a rapid pace. And, you know, I understand and I have complete empathy over us not being able to provide, you know. step increase or additional dollars, but we are not recommending to do a reduction in force. And I think that
047when we are talking about trying to have a high quality workforce, trying to make decisions in the best interest of our staff members, as well as our students and students first, that we are proposing something that is preventing people from having to lose. lose their jobs during this COVID-19. And that's at this time. So, you know, I don't want to be on the record to say that we are never going to have a reduction force because realistically, if this market continues, if this economy continues to have a downturn, and that's going to be a very tough decision that we may have in the next few months. Okay, you're having a little trouble with your video, Dr. Hutchings. I have time for one more question. I have Ms. Lorber has her hand raised. Okay, thank you,
048Ms. Anderson and Dr. Hutchings. I just wanted to ask Dr. Reif for a clarification of something she said. Did you say that the city is going to, actually they are going to continue to contribute to the supplemental retirement fund for employees? I just wanted to make sure that's what I heard you say. Yeah, when I was looking to see if the city also provided a supplemental retirement, because their employees also participate in the VRS, they do have a supplemental retirement. And it looks like the total contribution is 6.78%. Employees make a 2% employee contribution. And then the city was going to be increasing theirs in FY21 from like 4%. 0.1% to a 4.78%. So they do appear to be increasing by about half a percent, their contribution of the employer. And we just have to
049keep in mind that, you know, we are two different systems and different entities, you know, so it's hard to compare the similar with like our health insurance. It's hard to compare a health insurance for one organization in comparison to another. So it's not apples and apples that we're discussing. So I just think it's important for us to know that the same way we have a structure to determine what the rate of our contribution is. um the city has the same and they have reasons why their actuary is giving them certain guidance that they have and then we have kind of our reasons why our actuary is telling us what we need to do um on our end but i just wanted to make that point but what you know dr reeve is saying is accurate
050um i just don't want us to to to compare the two Okay, I think that's we're approaching the one o'clock time and we need to go into our closed session. So I think that, you know, as everybody knows, please submit your questions and we'll get those answers in writing and they'll all be posted. And so now we're going to conclude the work session and go back to our meeting.