Amelia County supervisors review capital improvement plan, ask staff to verify CIP fund balance

Amelia County supervisors spent their meeting reviewing the county’s capital improvement plan and FY2026 project recommendations, asking staff to reconcile discrepancies in the audited fund balance and ledger expenditures before the board makes any spending decisions.

The county’s finance staff told supervisors the audited committed amount in the capital fund as of the June 30, 2024 cutoff was $13.2 million. The staff member reported about $1.3 million in year-to-date capital expenditures, which leaves roughly $12 million as a working figure pending verification for unrecorded encumbrances and invoices. "It's on the page in front of you. Can you see that? It's 13.1 after we net out accounts payable. So it's committed amount as of that cutoff, 06/30/2024. It was 13,200,000.0," the staff member said during the review.

Why it matters: supervisors said they do not want to act on capital allocations — including an animal shelter request and other planning commission recommendations — until staff confirm the accurate current balance, outstanding encumbrances and whether recent receipts have been posted to the capital fund.

Supervisors reviewed a summary of FY2026 requests that the planning commission forwarded. The presenter said those recommendations included line items from the school board, roughly $1.8 million earmarked for an animal shelter and a combined total of about $4.4 million in recommended projects across school, parks and recreation, and public works. Separately, a previously discussed career and technical education (CTE) building — repeatedly identified in the meeting as an $8.1 million cost — was not included on the planning commission’s recommended carry-forward list and remains a frozen item. One supervisor asked why the CTE figure did not appear in the frozen-funds listing; staff replied the planning commission did not recommend it, so it was not included in the carry-forward recommendation to the board.

Supervisors also discussed several other funding items and recent receipts: a $125,000 deposit from a solar siting agreement and unspecified receipts from waste-management agreements that supervisors said might not yet be recorded in the capital fund. One supervisor noted, "we deposited a hundred and 25 ks into the capital fund from the solar, siting agreement," and staff said they would confirm whether those amounts are recorded in the capital fund or remain in the general fund.

Project-specific notes included ongoing draws from a Motorola radio-system contract, which the county pays on project-completion percentages, and draws on a Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grant that the presenter said originally totaled $1 million with approximately three quarters of a million drawn so far. Staff cautioned that invoices and encumbrances can change the working balance and that the figures presented were preliminary pending a cross-check of outstanding bills.

Supervisors identified personnel as the largest driver of increased costs in the proposed FY2026 budget. The board asked staff to provide additional detail on newly requested positions and frozen positions so the supervisors can weigh those personnel costs against capital needs.

Next steps and direction: supervisors asked staff to re-run and reconcile reports, confirm the location of recent receipts (capital fund versus general fund), and verify outstanding encumbrances and pending bills. Staff said they expect to return updated numbers within roughly 10 days to two weeks and offered to hold a short budget work session before the next regularly scheduled board meeting if needed. The presenter also suggested preparing a preliminary balanced budget for supervisors’ review once the reconciled figures are available.

No new appropriations or formal budget decisions were made at the meeting. The only formal action recorded in the transcript was a motion to adjourn; the motion was made, the chair called for an "all in favor" and the meeting closed.

Ending: Supervisors agreed not to rush capital allocations until staff confirm the county’s available balance and outstanding obligations. Staff committed to follow up with updated, reconciled figures and additional details about personnel-related costs and frozen projects before the board finalizes FY2026 budget decisions.