The Prince Edward County Board of Supervisors addressed a variety of topics at its regular monthly meeting Tuesday, including the proposed roundabout at the U.S. Route 15/State Route 692 (Kingsville) intersection and appropriations related to the Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 and 2018 budgets.

Regarding the roundabout, Prince Edward County Administrator Wade Bartlett shared details of a letter from the Virginia Department of Transportation.

“The meat of that letter is the last two bullet points on it,” he said. “And what they’ve done is they have agreed to the design request that we made …”

The first of the two bullet points reads as follows: “The proposed access to the convenience store shall be relocated adjacent to The Fishin’ Pig smoker to allow full egress and ingress into the property.”

Bartlett added, “Basically where it is now. If you recall before, it was more south of that and you had to meander through the gas pump area to get there.”

The second bullet point notes that “the proposed southern access to the Exxon gas station shall be relocated to be directly across the proposed Fishin’ Pig entrance. Both access points shall have full egress and ingress into the respective properties.”

Bartlett added, “That will give full egress and ingress to all of the businesses in that area.”

As he began discussion of appropriation of the FY19 Prince Edward County Budget, Bartlett read a summary, noting that the board approved the budget May 1. The resolution adopted on that date listed a total budget of $54,934,764, which included a school budget of $25,765,776 and a school cafeteria budget of $1,301,000.

He continued by indicating that the board voted in that meeting to move $5,000 from the Piedmont Senior Resources (PSR) expenditure line into the contingency expenditure line until it could be determined if PSR had received a grant for which the county had increased PSR’s funding in FY18.

Bartlett said it was determined that PSR was awarded the grant.

“Therefore I recommend the $5,000 be transferred back to the PSR expenditure line from the contingency line,” he said. “This will not change the overall budget, the total amount. It’s just where that’s going to be to spend it out of.”

Then Bartlett turned his attention to health insurance.

“We voted on a 7 percent increase for our own cost to pay for that,” he said. “That was approved after the budget was advertised. Therefore it was not in this budget. That would cost the county $45,707 with our current employees and $20,226 for DSS. After review of revenues through April, I am confident the personal property revenue for fiscal year 19 could be increased by that amount, $45,707, and placed in the Insurance Allocation Expense line, which is in the General Expense Department and only used if needed, unless the board so desires to put it into the insurance fund. I recommend this amendment be made and the list of appropriations be increased to reflect this action.”

Later in the meeting before a vote, Buffalo District Supervisor C.R. “Bob” Timmons Jr. asked Bartlett what he meant by saying “only used if needed.”

“All of this depends on expenses that we get also,” Bartlett said. “We fund it internally, through self-funding, and then we pay bills, and so if the bills are less, if we have a very good year, we may not need it.”

Timmons said, “That would be using the insurance fund not as intended. It would be using it as a balancing account. So, I have a little issue with that. I think we need to go ahead and dedicate it. If we need it, we need to dedicate it to that fund and leave it alone.”

Bartlett readily said, “OK, I can easily do that. I’ll allocate the $45,000 to the various departments.”

Timmons said, “And it goes there, and that’s where it stays …”

Continuing his summary, Bartlett said, “With the late passage of the budget by the General Assembly, I also anticipate we will have to amend the school budget. Numbers just came out. The school budget, I talked to the superintendent today. They are still working on that, so she would feel more comfortable, she did not have time, her and her staff, to thoroughly vet through that. It just came out, I believe it was late on Friday. So they’re going to look at that, and we’ll probably amend the budget next month.”

With regard to the discussion of health insurance, the $45,707 amount increased the FY19 budget total to $54,980,471.

The board voted unanimously to adopt this change and three other recommendations: the PSR transfer, approval of the Annual Resolution of FY19 Appropriations and appropriation of the FY19 budget for each county department and fund, as amended.

The board also approved a FY18 budget amendment related to Prince Edward County Public Schools, which was requesting an additional appropriation of $20,000 to the School Food Service Budget.

“What’s occurred is most of the cafeteria funding is from the federal government, and there are some guidelines in there, and on those guidelines, they can only have a certain amount of money in their fund balance, and when they exceed that, they have to appropriate that money and spend it,” Bartlett said. “… The request is to appropriate $20,000 out of the cafeteria fund balance and put it into the food products line and all, and that will keep us under the limit set by the federal government.”

Central Virginia Regional Library Director Rick Ewing spoke briefly at the meeting. In addition to introducing the new branch manager of the Barbara Rose Johns Farmville-Prince Edward Community Library and highlighting the new mural there, he announced expanded hours for the facility. Starting July 2, it will open at 9 a.m. Monday-Saturday instead of 10 a.m.

“We were able to do this without an increase in our money that we’re spending by doing some shifting around of staff, and I think that’ll be a real benefit to the citizens of Prince Edward County,” he said.