Buncombe County Government, NC Health & Human Services Meetings, 23 Jan 2015

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From YouTube: Health and Human Services Board Meeting 1/23/2015

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The Health and Human Services Board held their monthly meeting on Friday, January 23, 2015.
Agenda topics included:

1. Call to Order
2. Review and Action of Board Agenda
3. Review and Action of Board minutes for October 2014 and November 2014
4. FY14-15 Financial Update
5. Buncombe County Economic Forecast for HHS Impact
6. Advisory Committee Report - Public Health
7. Directors Report - Recognition of Board Chair, Board Officers appointed by County Manager
8. Chairperson's Report

A

B

B

Any questions, although just favorite, say aye. I.

C

Moved to the minutes, the last meeting again.

C

That we accept them as prevented.

B

Thank you, jim. That brings this to you, my friend, okay, thank.

D

You very much I I might ought to say that before I do that we certainly want to thank our new.

A

Board members and she cut her head down over there he's getting used to being a board member, but anyway, thank you so much for taking on this. We look forward.

E

A quorum here, but we don't.

E

Okay, thank you. Okay. Thank you good afternoon good afternoon in your ipad, you'll see a snapshot of our financials through december 31st, so we are 50 through the fiscal year and we'll start with dss and looking at those.

F

E

See graphically you'll see overall, we are, our target is 50. There are a couple of areas for over that target again, just to show you how to the graph the mountains behind that the gray represents where we were at this time last year.

E

The line through represents where we are in the fiscal year 50 through the fiscal year, and then the bars actually represent our actual spending through the end of december 31st and you'll notice that there are a couple of areas we were over the percentages of 50, that's in administration, where we have those one-time expenses on unemployment, insurance and workers. Compensation we've also had one-time expenses across for longevity that are budgeted in income.

E

Maintenance, you'll see that we're over there and that's a direct result of the work that we've had to put in bringing on temporary staff for nc fast. As you may know, the commissioners two meetings ago, I believe, approved a recommendation that increased the staffing by 23 and provided the funding for those. So the temporary staff that were doing that work, we were able to show the need for those staff and commissioners generously approve the addition of those and the funding, so that will be reflected in subsequent reports.

E

As you see there, one of the things I did want to point out. That was a suggestion from vice chair belcher, was to look and see what our we would look like if we did not have if we had those one-time expenses removed from our expenses and you'll see if we did that we're still over overall in salaries, but you'll see that those one-time expenses, especially in admin, reduce those costs and put us right on target and as we talked about within income maintenance, we are.

G

Over that and that's because.

E

Of the expenses that we've had in temporary, we.

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Do projections.

E

And we look at this, where we are will be at the end of the year and based on our even our worst case scenarios. We will meet our budget targets and we will not be over budget. That would not be something that we will make.

H

Yeah one simple question on my on my computer: that orange line is not over the bar and I'm trying to see if we have.

E

A different data, what you don't have different data, what was sent out in your packet. The graph was cut off okay, so you didn't see that so I'm sorry! This is supposed to be corrected.

E

I noticed the same thing. Okay, thank you any other questions about the dss.

E

Then we'll go to public health and look at the same area. You'll see where we are you'll, see a little bit higher over in salaries and part of that is simply because of numbers. There's more people, there's a larger denominator within the dss budget than there is within the health budget. So when expenditures are a little higher proportionately, the dollar amount looks higher.

G

Same thing, that you'll.

E

See here when we look at that with those one-time expenses removed, you'll see administration where those expenses are under fifty percent.

G

Clinical is slightly over-aggressive.

E

As a result of uh temporary staff that we've had on board community protection and preparedness, that is one that is over and that we know that that is, and that's a result of adding three additional positions for inspectors in the environmental health area. Based on the need that we have determined in our food and lodging program. So that's an expected expenditure again projection through the rest of the year that we will remain under our budget targets and I'm.

F

Happy to answer any questions.

E

That you might have in public health.

I

Environmental health positions with positions thank.

E

I

Yes, those were not.

E

New positions, those were ones that, as we always do, look internally to see where those positions where the need might be met from other areas. That's one of the work that we continually do. We found those positions internally and jessica has used those positions to get us to target on restaurant inspections.

E

Thank you very much.

B

Thank you. I think that uh I need to put an addition in here that I'm sure that your new chair will make sure it's always done. I should have read, according to state government ethics, active duty of every board, remember to avoid both conflicts of interest and experience.

B

B

uh Okay, we we look forward to this next thing every year and uh and this year, hopefully.

J

It's going to be very, very good, but.

B

I

I think most of you know tom cavite, because he's been with us most januaries, um I think, since we actually, even before we consolidated, we started meeting jointly once twice a year, a research economist who always helps us begin the calendar year and as we plan for the next fiscal year, understanding significant changes in our local economy and some relevant demographic percentages.

C

Thank you it's great to be here, um I'm going to do something a little bit different this time, but let me tell you why, before I start doing something different, and that is um how many years.

I

C

I see a lot of familiar faces around here and this sort of reminds me when I was at the chamber. I got in this position that I'm in right now and that is that the economy looks pretty darn good and almost every variable that I would normally show you. I mean we'll talk about a few of them. It looks.

J

C

And that that's sort of a boring presentation I mean most communities would die for that, but I don't want to talk about the same things we talked about last year and saying that they're, better and most things are so low on rick would agree with me. We have incredibly low unemployment right now. um The metro is the lowest in the state which, if you look back in history, we've bounced around the lowest anyway, so we're sort of back to the same spot.

C

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C

Slides here and that'll, be my that'll, be my economic overview and then we'll go on to another subject, and I hope you'll appreciate learning about that. For.

H

C

That that are somewhat new to this just quickly. Let me tell you what I do uh mandy mentioned already, um but I go to communities and I tell them what's going on and that's about it, I'm not supposed to have an opinion, I'm not supposed to tell them what to do.

C

uh Last year, I spent a lot of time in the state of mississippi telling them about their skills of their workforce, and they had these grandiose ideas of what they want to do with their skill sets, bring in uh boeing and all this stuff, and my job was to come in there and say guess what guys it ain't going to happen with the skill sets and.

F

So they paid me to do that.

C

Just to get a better view of reality, I was in texas uh doing the same thing I was in uh our neighbors out in wilmington. I spent a lot of time out there same sort of thing, saying: here's here's what's going on, you do what you will, and so that's that's my role. My role is to inform you to help you make better decisions.

C

I shouldn't be telling you what those decisions are. That should be you so that.

F

Being said, as I go,.

C

I

Slides, if you see something.

C

Better, if you don't understand- or you have a problem with something, don't you're not going to hurt my feelings, if you interrupt me and say.

F

C

Understand it, or can you explain what that means? This is for your benefit. This is all about you. When I walk out that door. My only goal is that you understand um these items better and you can make better decisions. So that's too much talking there welcome county there's my two slides on the economy right now, specifically, this is buncombe county employment. You can see the recession there, the drop-off you can also see since 2013, where we have more employees than we've ever had more people working in buckingham county.

F

The growth rate is about.

C

Two percent between two and three percent: um if we compare this to the what's happening at percentage-wise state in the nation, you can see we're pretty much in line with the same pace a little bit higher um in 2013, and then it would come back. So thanks for chugging, along, as I mentioned before, he did his article about building permits this morning. That was mentioned in surgeon building permits.

C

Most variables are looking good and at the end of this, I'm going to give you plenty of time. If you want to ask me a specific question about uh things like home sales or building permits, we can talk about that, but relative to.

F

Where we were relative to.

C

Last year, everything's pretty much on the right side, except for one thing, and that's we're going to talk about the rest of the my presentation.

G

And something I'm curious about and.

C

And I think you would be too people in my profession. um I have trouble with a lot of people in my profession because they have a very high respect of themselves and they like to tell you what's happening all over the world and why it's happening. There's one issue right now that is very popular and it's a political issue too, and that is what about wages. How come wages aren't going anywhere? What about income? And you hear it everywhere?

C

I think we're going to be hearing as we go into a presidential election and there's probably half a dozen books economic books out there mentioning why wages aren't increasing and then it's the full gamut it's because of automation because of skill sets because it returns to capital. You probably.

G

Heard some of it.

C

uh It's 30 000 foot, stuff that I don't feel comfortable with, but it.

F

Is a question and like most economic questions,.

C

I have found there's much more uh likelihood of there being an answer when you look specifically at a local economy.

C

So what I'm going to do for the next 30 or so minutes is take you along the journey that I had to try to explain why perhaps wages are not doing anything if they aren't do anything here in buncombe county and if there's reasons- and I think we're going to come close we're not going to have the complete answer. But I think at the end of the talk.

F

You'll feel much more educated when.

C

You hear someone say: wages are stagnant. Why might that be? So here we go we're going to.

F

Look at different ways of measuring wages. The first.

C

One is per capita income. This is the national number. This is put out by the bureau of economic analysis per capita meetings. The total population divided by the income that's coming into the county.

F

And so you can see there.

C

That you know we're a little bit below the state and more love of nation, as we have been for quite some time. That's that's! Nothing, probably too surprising. If you kind of split one.

G

Eye you can see maybe.

C

There's a little bit of a spread, maybe we're falling behind a little bit more than the nation. You can also see the impact of the recession now, what.

D

I'm going to do.

C

Next is take out inflation just so that you get a feeling of what inflation is. If you look at inflation, inflation is what you can buy with it, so I'm taking out inflation so we're correcting for the rises in values of things, not actually what you buy.

F

And over a 20-year period, that's about a.

C

60 change and just the prices of things that have gone up for the same things. So this.

F

C

Different when we take out inflation and then you can really see what people are talking about of our income flattening out, you can see that uh really. We've had not much of an increase at all since about uh 2007 or so, and actually some declines back in the recession here, but wages didn't keep up, they actually declined as a percentage.

C

If you look over 10 years, 20 years, 10 years and five years, you can see the changes and you can see what probably is most shocking is over the last five years. If you measure the changes in per capita income, we've actually lost 161 dollars, in other words, you're.

F

Paid the same amount, but you.

C

Can't but you buy 161 less so so it is a problem you can see the nation and even the state, even though there's been a minor increase, there's something going on here. Something's, wrong wages are not or per capita income is not keeping up. Now.

C

This is an area, probably that you're more expert than I am, but income has three main components to it: it's earnings, salaries, wages, what people make who are self-employed investment income, dividends, rents, investment, that kind of stuff and then personal government transfers, which you are all experts in knowing and know more than I do about it, but that's everything: social security, medicare, medicaid, um all those dozens of programs.

H

I just have a quick question: is inflation specific to buncombe county for that? No? This is now the national number.

C

Yeah, there's no local. Unfortunately, I wish there was.

I

C

I

Relevant, though about all this is why we keep getting getting asked the question employment's up.

I

C

We're going to get more into that, but you're exactly right, so here's that same chart we're doing the change. This is just over those uh components of per capita income and this one's sort of scary, because if you look at the first government transfers, that's the only one that's on deposit, except for over the tenure, which is just a flat, so you can see, especially over the last five year period, the per capita income take out inflation.

C

uh The only increase is coming out of these personal government transfers, which is a unusual situation and, as you probably know, there's not a lot of high there's, not a lot of potential to to get much more out of this right. um I did some some work in.

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C

If havasu arizona with lake havasu, it's a retirement community, uh almost all of their income for the last 10 years or so, is retirement income, and so there's no way to get it up. People have pensions, they have you know uh 401 k's and that sort of stuff which comes in steadily, but there's no way to bump things up. You can't bring in a big company and raise wages yeah. So.

D

How does all this uh work into the the ages.

C

We're going to talk a little bit about that, but but it has to do with an aging community.

F

And, as a sidebar probably saw the paper.

C

This morning, if you did it's a little quote for me and it's it's more important than just a quote, and it says.

G

That you know this area.

C

Attracts two groups- and this is- I didn't just make it up- I've been following this for years- it's retirees or early retirees from out of state or floridians, and then it's younger folks in their 20s from within the state. And then I would tell you what they didn't quote me if you look at if you follow those numbers through what usually happens in aggregate numbers, the middle age group kind of disappears, which probably gets back to the wages, what kind of jobs and that sort of thing. So that's a historical thing.

C

That's been going on a long time, and so you know we're aging and we're getting older and that's part of living in a beautiful place that people like to come and visit decide to move here in the long term.

C

We're going to break those components out. I just talked about this: is a purple um broken out into the main categories and again you're you're the experts here: medical social security income maintenance, which is all the programs like snap and earns um credits and all that kind of stuff? um And as you can see and I'll do the next chart there. The real growth- unsurprisingly, it's in social security and medical.

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C

And, as was mentioned before, a lot of this has to do with an aging population.

J

But disabilities in here too.

C

As I recall, I was talking to lisa earlier it's one of those questions. I wish I had more time because I know the whole disability issue and how many people are on disability, which is another data set, would be interesting to look at so that was per capita income. Now we're going to look at remember, earnings were a big portion of that. We're going to just look at the earnings side, which is wages per job, so we're going to look different data set, but looking at earnings more focused on jobs. Now this is.

F

C

Is used a lot and there's a problem with it and you're going to get get it already? It's average annual wage per job, so this is just an average of the people working and we're going to talk about different industries in a minute. But I'll tell you right now: we have a big disadvantage because we have a tourism-driven industry and a lot of those people work part-time.

C

So you remember this is an average we're just going to average the whole thing out. So if you work part-time, it's going to take that average for the whole week, so we're at a disadvantage there already. So you need to understand that here again, if we take out inflation, you can see for flats it's about 2003, where the 10 years average wage per job is flat, and so you would say: oh that must be because our employers are are holding money back or you know we get paid less here.

C

Well, that's really not the evidence and I'll go a little bit deeper and explain why that is by the way. If you do have that mindset, where you say we get paid here less than for the same things that really doesn't hold true across the board, it holds for certain industries. So, for example, I just looked yesterday- medical pays more here average than it does in the nation.

C

F

C

A half percent less not a whole lot.

F

Which gets into economics and what you're good.

H

C

And you know what customers are willing to pay and that sort of thing, um but it's not that unique here than it is anyplace else, there's something more that's going on here here we take out the uh just zero to that 1994.

C

Just to give you an idea, so uh very little increase in the last few years and a 2 000 net over the last 20 years and here's how that looks same way. Looking at it here with a decrease of about 250 bucks.

C

So here's probably what we're what you might be thinking about and what I did here. Let me tell you: I looked at the 30 different industries in the area and I said which ones are in the top: quartile pay the top 25 and then look at the bottom 25, not necessarily the people, but the industry, so industries stay fixed and then we're saying the number of people employed and what you can probably see here is the bottom. 25 percent has seen the growth so about 30 of the total population was deployed in the bottom 25.

C

Now it's about 42, I think or 40, maybe so a.

G

C

Explosion in the number of people that are working in industries that are in the bottom quartile the bottom 25 percent, the top 25 percent. The percentage really hasn't changed that much interesting. Those big jumps there. What that is now remember. This is just me measuring the top and the bottom it's manufacturing, so manufacturing sometimes is in the top. Sometimes it falls right below, which is a factor of manufacturing, and it's also a factor of those top 25 percent.

C

So when wages surge in that top 25, for example, uh before the big housing bus, obviously finance in those sort of industries, wages were going up that bumped uh manufacturing out of the top 25 percent now manufacturing is. This goes to 2004 right away.

C

uh 2014 and manufacturing is back in there, so the mix of manufacturing- I didn't have time to present a slide that you would that I could feel comfortable with, but I did look at education um and it gets a little complex and let me see if I can explain it to you so.

F

H

C

Thing, but I did it by levels of education and by industry. It took me so long. It didn't make it to the final deck here, but what's interesting and a couple things that I thought was interesting was, for example, people with a bachelor's degree or above back here there was like three percent of the workforce here in the 25 percent.

C

Have a ba up here, it's about eight or nine percent, which maybe is that under underemployed question you hear a lot about, um but the number of highly educated people uh in the bottom um has grown.

C

Another interesting factor- and you would all understand this too, when you look at some of the higher wage jobs back earlier, you could see people with less than a high school degree in manufacturing, making the top 25 wages. You don't see that anymore, so, manufacturing, probably the skill level, is a little bit higher than it used to be.

C

What you see in manufactured a lot of people with the community college level, uh degrees and above um and then of course, what's got unsaid here- is that middle uh 50 percent um that that 10 or 15 percent increase down here has really taken it out of the middle piece. So the middle.

F

G

All those industries.

C

That are stuck in the middle there and that over this period of time has has been declining.

C

So here's how it looks in that same 20, 10 and five year hope you understand how this works, um and you can see that there is the top 25 has been growing here. um I've got a slide here, we're going to talk a little bit about it's not like.

F

C

It's gone away. It just hasn't kept up with the pace.

F

The relative pace now remember: this is all in context.

C

To the average wage per job, so what this is telling.

F

C

Is the average wage has been influenced by the composition of the insurance people? More people are working for lower wage industries, and so that's bringing that average down which is unique here and remember this is so every community is going to have a little bit different. Look and explanation. So no surprise. Here's those industries here these are the major ones we all know about leisure and hospitality.

C

Remember I came from the chamber. This is a good thing. You know, I'm I'm not one to beat industries over the head saying this is a good industry. This is a bad industry, they've been very successful, but an industry that will never be known for high-wage jobs.

C

Nursing care is interesting because nursing care does not have high wages, it's part of the whole health care thing and sometimes they're they're thrown into health care, but they're sort of a separate thing, and they have not grown that much, but they've been a good portion.

C

This is an interesting one and I just read my first paper about this. The other day I've been begging for someone to write a paper. This is.

H

G

C

Administrative services, those are temps and there has been- you can't really tell, but there's been a pretty good increase in administrative services in the last couple years and.

G

The reason I've been waiting for a paper- this is a national phenomenon.

C

G

F

C

That I can make a guess- and the paper made some guesses too, and it's peop it's firms not wanting to hire permanent employees. um So you know, then you fill in the next blank. Why is that? Are they afraid the economy is not sufficient?

C

Is it because the affordable health care act because they don't want to get permanent people on there? Is there other reasons? uh It's not.

G

A healthy thing I.

C

Don't think but there's been a boom there and they don't doesn't pay very well and then obviously retail retail, by the way is, is really connected at the hip, with leisure and hospitality that that new mall that's coming. They asked me to do a study gosh, probably three or four years ago, and it was on the retail.

G

Market here and part of the study.

C

Was um how much more retail spending per capita there is here than there should be? Which I know, and you know, is because people drive in from outside and they're tourists and they buy stuff. um So I can't.

F

Remember it was like, I think,.

C

Per capita is like double of what it should be in retail spending, and so they I think they made a good move and they want to be a part of that. So, what's the other first of all see the total increase there. Just so you get an idea, it's all upgraded. We.

F

Could look at the next.

C

One- and this is the top 25 um and outside.

F

Of manufacturing.

C

Which sort of skews it makes it look like it's all declining, but look at the top number. It stayed about steady, we're not losing in aggregate the top 25, but we're not increasing very much. You can see. The big increases are in ambulatory healthcare and hospitals, primarily so the health care industry has really held up wages and has really provided the bulk of high wage jobs here for the last 10, even 20 years manufacturing. You would you wouldn't know it.

C

People in the economic development would love to tell you about it and they should be proud. It's really leveled off here, which is uh something to be proud of. It hasn't been declining, it's been bouncing around the total number of plus or minus 100 or 200 jobs, and you know when you get a couple breweries in here, that we may see that increase a little bit. So it's been.

F

C

Pretty good turnaround a little bit unique to this area and something to be proud with about the professional technical services. Those are the knowledge workers. Those can be uh computer design, lawyers, landscape, architect, that sort of stuff we've seen pretty good growth in there, but but nothing enough to really bump up those average wages.

C

So hopefully that gives you an idea, that's sort of the answer behind how come average wages are not or are flatlined right now, it's primarily because of the mix of the industries what people are getting their jobs in.

C

So this is another way of looking at this is medium household income. That's just a measure of the all the money you get in a household. This is the one that's probably talked about the most. It's a census, survey, kind of thing and you as you can see. I did not take an inflation out of this. I just took their raw numbers.

C

They only do a survey for for certain periods of time, so you can't get a year-to-year change, but you can see where we're at it actually went down a little bit from the first survey to the second one.

C

And I'll tell you what this is telling you, because it's really hard to see, but once you see it, this is just the household income broken up by income categories and what you'll see is buncombe is higher in all categories relative to the nation up to 50 000 and then everything over 50 000, so obviously a strong bias on the lower side of things. Now I've got some slides here that I think help to explain why that is.

C

It is not just that incomes are lower. Now we already know that earnings are, on average, probably a little bit lower, but there's another factor that goes into this, which actually gets back to our question about who's moving here and why so.

F

Here's the sources.

C

Of household income, we talked about this from another agency, and this is the census bureau asking us the same sets of questions but they're doing it a little bit different way. This is just saying in your home: what are the sources of your income? Not necessarily how much?

C

But what are do you collect income from these sources and, as you can see, we're lower on earnings, so we're a few percentage lower on homes that have earnings higher on social security, higher on retirement a little bit less on supplemental and not big differences there on the other two. This is a significant one here. Remember the high end the ability to create wealth and and raise your earnings. That only happens here. The rest of these are pretty stable and you're going to get what comes in the mail kind of thing.

C

So here's the earlier survey 25 20 to 2007 it's an average by the way for those years, and what I thought I would do is say: okay, what's the latest survey show? What is the difference? So the little orange oranges things? That's the change change, and you know this really comes out even better. These are a number of poems by the way, if I read these out to you in percentage terms, because they're actually pretty dramatic in percentage terms, so the top one there.

C

That's a 90 increase, a 90 percent increase. Then.

C

There are 6600 families who survive solely no.

K

Not so they just.

C

That is part of their it's.

F

A factor in those yeah, so they may appear elsewhere, absolutely in fact yeah. These are. These are not.

C

Separate categories they could very well overlap one another. I suppose you could have all all categories. Perhaps so that's a 90. The um this is only a three percent increase. This is the smallest increase of all so households with earnings.

C

um Only a three percent increase over this period of time and then which, with cash public assistance, that's a 40 increase and ssis is a 55 increase. So in percentage terms uh the big increases there are outside government transfers coming into the household which.

G

We saw in some of the other databases as well. It's always good.

F

C

When you have two separate databases- and they agree with each other number of workers in the house, this is obviously important to earnings and, as you can see, no workers were only one percent more than the nation, but a little bit, uh there's a difference in one worker, we're larger and then the other categories, two or more uh less likelihood of being more than two or more workers in the house. So obviously the composition of the household remember we're talking about the medium household income, and so we're saying is a household a household.

C

It's not a household in buckingham county is going to be different than a household elsewhere, and that's going to impact.

D

Those numbers to find workers.

C

They don't have anybody, that's employed employment would be another way, but it's not unemployment.

H

Don't know exactly I mean they are getting excited.

C

Is this what they said you go to work you get. Do you get income from going to work? That would be the question. That's probably.

I

The retirement.

C

And then we're going to do the same thing and look at the change here and I'll. Read you the percentages, so it's a 20 decline in three or more workers, and this is about a 13 increase of no workers in the house. So whatever we were we're getting more of it, we're getting more homes that have no workers in it and we're doing fewer homes that have three or more workers in it.

C

So obviously, if you're looking for household income- and this is a helps- explain why it's lower- and this is also going to help- explain why it's probably going to continue to get lower. um You know somewhat unsaid in all. This is, if you have a policy- and you want to affect this you're, going to be running up against the stream here, you're going to have a real battle, because the demographics are are.

F

Fighting against us.

C

F

C

This is very important. Obviously, when you think about it uh married couple. um This is a married couple with children under 18 somebody living by themselves and a 65 year old living by themselves and, as you can see, there's some big changes to living by yourself.

C

There's a pretty big gap between what we have here, what we have in the nation and less fear, and if we look at that in the percentage difference, uh it's pretty dramatic, uh we're looking at a two percent decline um and that's like a fifteen percent um with people living by themselves and fourteen 14 of 65 and older living by themselves.

C

So big change in the kind of homes that are around so we're going to switch gears again because there's still something I haven't talked about. um You know if I haven't put you to sleep with charts and that's what about the really high income, and so I had a clie client a couple months back say you know. We know that in asheville, there's high income, people and they're coming.

G

Here and they're moving here.

E

C

Isn't there some way we can measure them and I thought about it for a while and you can actually download your irs not here, but you can download aggregate irs data down to the zip code, which.

G

Is sort of fun remember it's a different.

C

Format, different questions being asked so they're measuring.

F

C

A little bit different, but I looked at buncombe county for the last three years. That 2012 is the most current data and this is people making households typically adjust to gross income, 100 200 to 199 and 200 000 as well, and as you can see, it's not a lot of people, it's a good number of people, but you can see it's increasing now when I compare these percentages as a percentage term, it's less here than the nation in the state.

C

I think for the 200 and above um I learned not to say that 200 and above that's about three percent of buncombe county homes um in the nation, it's uh 3.6!

C

So that's actually.

G

2.7 to 3.6.

C

It's 2.8 in north carolina for a 100 to 199 it's about um 10 and in the nation. It's 14, so the growth I'll show you the growth here. The growth is, is outpacing, the state of the nation and the higher income groups.

F

C

Relative percentages are still lower than the state or the nation, so you could interpret this as as we're catching up or attracting those folks that we haven't attracted before, and this is the 200 and above which there again is pretty strong growth in percentage terms, um but as an aggregate it doesn't make up a big piece.

C

So I'm flying through my slides here. I hope you have a lot of questions. So this is the bonus slide, and this is something that you know what you want to do. Is you want to have a client ask your question that you always want to ask, but you, but you don't have the time or the effort to do it on.

F

C

So I had a client come to me and ask me so tell me about the second home market. We really want to know what is the second home market. How do you measure- um and I thought and thought about it- and this is my guess at it, and you can tell me if I'm right or wrong, I downloaded all the parcel data and I pulled out those parcels that the bill for their taxes went to not their residence here but went to a primary residence somewhere else and it.

F

Was fascinating.

C

And here's what it looks like when you talk about it, there's where they live. These are second homes. I made a 50 mile radius around um the city of asheville, so we wouldn't have people that own two homes here in the community, so these might be rentals, but a lot of these probably are not it's about.

G

C

Of all homes in buncombe and henderson county, their owner lives, primary resident is outside the area about 28 percent of them live in this state right here um and then the next state is north carolina, eastern part of the state, and then I believe, south carolina, and then it folds out pretty fast afterwards.

F

I also look at the value of.

H

C

H

C

These homes are, which is sort of interesting, are about 15 percent higher than average. So if you own two homes, the one home that you have here is on average about 15 more valuable. I grew up right here, so uh you can actually on the map. You can zip down and you can actually hit their house and so the question the client had was: are these high-income people or low-income people? I said I really don't know you don't know. We know their names.

C

We know their addresses, um but I know I grew up in santa barbara santa barbara is like malcolm county on steroids, meaning you know that's where they've got tons of wealthy people and so.

F

I drill down to.

C

These folks homes- and um these are in very expensive neighborhoods. I mean these people probably are not reading their homes out. These are people that you know come here and fly the weekends and fly out the point about this, and why I have that slide here. Is these people are not counted in any of the stuff I just talked about.

C

um They don't show up anywhere. They don't show up in household income, they don't show up in per capita income. They don't show up, in average wage per job. They could show up in average weight for a job if they were showing up to an eight-to-five job here, sort of doubt it, um but but that's a factor in the wealth of our community.

C

That contributes, um but we really have very little way of measuring that, and so.

F

It influences the.

C

Area we all know there's a lot of high-end developments around here and you look at those numbers I had before and you say: wait a minute. You know how could you have these lower than average wages, but we do have a considerable number of people that have second homes here. How.

D

Many orange dots did you come up with.

C

uh Twelve thousand ninety twelve.

C

And I didn't do con, I didn't do condos, I didn't do apartment billing, they just did single family presence.

C

So these are my observations, but then, if you want to talk about the economy, I'd love to talk about the economy, um it doesn't make for some good slack. Fifth year of job growth, I tell you I was in mississippi. Last year I was in texas wilmington um up in west virginia.

C

Those places were all struggling, and so I'm giving you one bullet point here that those communities would all die for, and I almost apologize that we're not talking about how good the economy is here, because it really is good right now, and things are are happening and in the fifth year of consistent job growth.

C

By the way I should have made it equals that's about two or three thousand net new jobs every year, two to three percent, but we all know that wages and income are lagging or stagnant um and the personal government transfers are growing and they have been for a while.

C

When you look at some of the data, I think we can probably all imagine it will continue to grow and that I would say one of the major reasons that wages average wages are lower. Here is just because we've had a lot of growth in lower wage industries, not necessarily good or bad.

C

We've just had growth in lower wage jobs. Obviously there's some policy implications there, but that's where the growth has been so a job is not a job.

C

You know when you get to a point where you have good job growth, then communities begin to talk about the quality of jobs. If you don't have job growth, then they talk about just getting jobs in period. We've made that hurdle um and we're on to the next changing the household composition is what hurts a lot of our measure of income.

C

Now, obviously, our earnings average wages are going to be lower, but the houses have uh are smaller, a lot of people living by themselves, a lot of older people, a lot of people making uh passive incomes.

C

When I was showed you that irs data earlier the 200 and above and 100 above, I should have mentioned that when you compare the sources of their income, which you all know, if you look to your 1040, there's about six different categories: their incomes for the higher income groups relative to the state and the nation they're, not from wages they're, not from salaries they're, not from businesses.

C

They are from passive income, capital gains, ira dividends, retiree kind of stuff, so the the people in those groups I should have mentioned um are impacted heavily from those passive income and then, finally, that little group that we need to recognize um is is increasing passion in the state of nation. So it's somewhat.

G

Of an outlier, but it's.

C

It exists, it's very more visual than a lot of the demographic groups. We've just talked about, um but it is happening and it's growing alone. So now the part that I enjoy it doesn't have to be about income.

C

um It takes a while you just good yeah.

D

Okay, so something I think is extremely positive nationally and particularly local is the fact that our gas prices have went from 380 to about two dollars. Now, in most of these, the areas the average person you run into everybody's, doing happy dances.

D

I mean they're, just the most exciting thing going on in most of those four houses, they will have more money to pay their bills. Stress will go down a lot of there's a lot of very, very good things individually, that that has occurred and, uh and I'm.

F

Wondering if you could.

D

Take that information in a county where we have so many people that you know that that is a huge impact on their on their household, that you might comment on on that if it stays you know, for the next.

C

Five years yeah I mean it's like a bonus. In fact, I just heard a speaker the other day, they're looking for because it's relatively new, where that money has is being spent because it's being spent somewhere, that's savings, um which is probably some retail, stuff and stuff like that. But.

D

F

Getting a raise.

C

It's like getting a raise and it and it's unusual that uh it's so uh you know the fossil fuels are so politicized that uh that somewhere somehow is missed. But it is an enormous expense and you could run it through a model and see because different.

G

Households, by the way, different households.

C

Incomes have different spending patterns, as you all know, lower income people are spending, you know a greater proportion on food and that sort of thing. So in that way, logically, you would say that you know that's going to go to fans of food and that sort of thing, whereas higher income will be putting in the bank yeah.

A

So have you studied other countries where they had a living wage applied to the communities or within the communities, and what impact would.

J

That have on or has had on, other communities on job growth, because the argument on one side is it's going to force you that you won't get the growth you want in the area. The other side is we'll bring up the medium income. So have you had other communities.

C

I probably read the same. I mean there is no uh definitive answer, I mean the one side would say, and I get you know that you're, obviously one side's going to say, increase wages. The other side would be you're not going to hire some people too, but.

F

There's been some huge studies.

C

The problem with those huge studies is it's really hard to see it. You know there's so many moving parts with something like that. It's very.

D

G

F

The employee, that's.

C

Got a reg wage increase. You can't measure the kid who didn't get a job, so you know I think, it'll be really hard to it's more of a value kind of thing and.

G

There's probably.

C

I think that is probably the most studied of any one subject now.

G

I've got two kids.

C

I've got a 23 year old and 24 year old, who work in that leisure and hospitality, industry and there's a part of me that was says as a dad.

G

I'd like to see.

C

Them get a little bit more money for all the work they do on the other side. I understand that there's no such thing as free money, that's coming from somewhere.

F

G

You mentioned our unique set of demographics, we attract old and the younger crowd, and it's tourism-based predominantly mixed in with healthcare. What are there any other areas? We can look to counties or cities with our unique set of characteristics.

C

um That's a good question: there's probably a nationwide there's a bunch wilmington has come to mind when I was in the chamber, you could look at wellington's economy and ours were very much alike. They went off the deep end because they over built because it was much cheaper for them to build.

C

So you know this is just sort of a side track. Homes here are more expensive. Part of that is because it's an expensive place to build because of mountains and wilmington.

C

They have huge tract areas: gated communities that are still sitting empty, a lot of them, so we have since diverged, um and our economy is actually doing better. We've we've gone through our inventory, which wasn't a whole lot to begin with housing and and we they are. uh This is sort of the policy side that community.

C

If you talk about manufacturing, they get a little squeamish, there's a lot of people that don't want manufacturing there and what's different about our community. The people here.

F

But people still value.

C

Manufacturing and they want to see manufacturing that community is actually shutting their door and saying we don't want to see any more of that, but they have the same demographics, retirees and the younger folks.

C

And that's one of those things you know, I I don't like using the word forecast just because so many people abuse it, but you can see the trends and you see why those trends are, and you know that these trends will most likely continue.

C

Let me get to the tourism attraction of people. I did a survey gosh 10 15 years ago, asking people about tourism and why they came here and that sort of thing I've thrown this story around a lot. So stop me if I've mentioned it before that some I had some western carolina students doing the survey and they were surveying people on the street tourists asking them why they wanted why they were coming here if they were going to spend the night.

C

That sort of thing first day of the survey, one of the surveyors came to my office and said: uh can I.

F

C

A question myself, I said yeah, but why would you do that? She said because, inevitably the question comes up about people wanting to move here after having visited.

F

C

So we actually changed. The survey and bottom line was that about 15 percent of the people who had visited here for the first time during the event they had made a decision. Now we don't know if they really did it that they would like to someday move here, so that leisure and hospitality industry directly feeds back into those retards.

G

Like an advertisement.

F

E

And then you know.

C

We could talk about that. That's a whole, separate subject by itself. If you talk to, if you've read the paper lately about apartments and how few apartments there are and the inventory's real low, if you talk to people that actually own apartment buildings, what they have told me is: they are seeing more and more retirees take apartments as opposed to buying a home which makes.

E

C

F

So they may keep that in their home.

C

Or they may actually cash out and come here, um maybe because they were burned on the first housing uh bubble, or maybe they know that there's housing bubbles but part of that filling of apartments locally is due to retirees, whereas probably 10 years ago, that wasn't they weren't a big factor in there. So there's an interconnection yeah. I know you talked about household size.

H

But do you look at birth rate and and all of that, because a lot of our services deal with children and I noticed.

G

H

Asheville city schools reported last week that their enrollment has increased and I think.

K

Balkan counties has.

C

Utility rates I I did it was something I didn't share here, because it wasn't very dramatic and that was average household size. It was only like a 10 percent smaller here. um I.

F

C

At single parent families- and it wasn't that different here than the nation- I've got a pretty easy to get. The fertility rate here is less than it would be other places, because remember I told you that 30 year old group is packing up and leaving so.

K

That that is that.

F

Group, you know.

C

K

Where, on your wage spectrum, did you find social workers, teachers.

C

Fire police, um that's a good question: educational services. You look at. If you look at it just as a private and public group, then it comes out in the middle. If you look at it as just public government, it comes out high higher it's not in the top 25, but it's biased towards the higher side and- and there were job losses, obviously in that sector, the last few years, so that decreased, that proportion of that group.

I

If you look at jobs, gaps which you've done for us before, like if we're planning for what skills do, we need to build for.

F

Where the jobs will be, does that change.

I

Significantly, or is it still pretty much those chemicals of healthcare.

C

Yeah healthcare isn't unusual and I have a little bit of a hard time with healthcare just because of the the federal influence in the whole thing, and I you know.

F

Used to be able to say well, there's.

C

More older people moving in so healthcare is going to be going up, and this is a one thing unique about our area. Is we serve the entire western part of this state? Really, you know the specialized care, not just the primary regular care, um it's sort of a wild card.

C

Now- and um I did I have spoken to some people on the mission board, who probably remain nameless and what there's a lot of different ways to measure health care and how they get incentivized right now, which is very complex, but they said a very good model to look at right now. You may have seen haywood county they're building this primary care facility.

C

They said that's because of the way the incentives are. They want to keep people out of the hospital and keep them at primary care. Now they say they're actually going to have to let people go on the surgical side, but they're going to turn around and hire more people in the primary care side. So it's in total flux.

C

You know I'm the guy that usually measures the top line number underneath that it's it's crazy land right now and I don't really know if anybody knows um what's going on, but but I will tell you this is um we are a very old workforce. I think we've talked about this before and if you look at um concentrations of old folks, it's in.

F

C

You know you look at 10 years out in healthcare. I can't remember the percentages, but it's like 30 or so those people are going to be gone and the other one holds your breath is government services and so look around you and forecast out. You know 10 15 years, a lot of us in this room may not be here. That's.

D

What we got, that's, why we got freedom.

I

C

So when you're looking.

I

B

You're not just looking at industries.

C

That are growing you're, looking at industries that are aging and we've got some real aging teachers.

G

Are the same way.

C

You know teachers are our agent, I think manufacturing is too certain sectors of manufacturing here are on the biased. On the older side, it.

I

C

Feels like from the economic development side.

I

That, as we have brought job search commissioners, it focuses a lot of energy on it's almost.

G

Specialized training.

I

You have to adapt to to that industry more.

G

I

Used to do which is train for two dollars, you know yeah and I could talk forever. The study I did for.

C

Mississippi just was interesting, so we didn't talk about schools at all. We said we don't really care. What's coming out of your school right now. What we did is we looked at their existing workforce and federal government.

I

C

Fantastic database not used very often, and it looks at occupations and has about 15 or 20 categories of skills that an occupation needs. So you know somebody.

F

C

At a web site needs computer skills, they need design skills. You know that that kind of stuff- and that's how we looked at the whole state and those skill sets of people in their jobs um who have those skill sets and then they can move to different jobs and they take their skill sets with them. So it's a much more accurate way of looking at stuff and.

I

Is that something you could look at for us.

C

Oh yeah, I'd love to yeah.

I

And if there aren't other things, always great about doing that kind of it's a sickness, it's easy to get him distracted on something really interesting.

C

That was, you know, what's interesting.

F

About the mississippi, because.

C

That was one where we really crunched the numbers all right, crunchy numbers was, they were perfectly suited for food manufacturing in their sort of industries where they didn't even know it, but they had all these people, not necessarily in food manufacturing, but they had the skill sets that were demanded by those industries, which is you know, working with machinery working with routine basis tasks and.

C

Your frustration that I hear from like av tech, you know what do we train people to do and.

I

C

I I would say you probably don't want to focus too narrowly. I do focus groups a lot as economic development strategy being johnston.

C

Community college here in a couple weeks and part of the focus groups, is you ask small and medium sized business owners and you ask entrepreneurs in and you ask them what their problems are and I've been doing these things for probably six or seven years, and you have to learn to kind of paint a straight face on, because you hear the same things over and over you hear skill sets skill sets and it's the ones we all it's showing up. It's not taking drugs. It's knowing how to learn.

C

You know we'll give you a machine and.

F

We'll show you.

C

How to run the machine, but you got to show up and have you know, account kind of stuff and.

F

C

That everywhere you hear it everywhere.

I

It's really kind of interesting that, because nc fast has forced us to drive an economic services as an example, I used very fast. We as we began profiling applicants using a skills profile that ability to learn that learning index is really what you begin to hire for. It's not so much what you knew, but how fast can it teach you something.

C

It's curiosity. It's intellectual curiosity! That's about it! You can do anything with that, but it's hard to measure and I.

F

C

What schools can do about it.

C

Any more questions, I appreciate it very much.

C

um I'll send you one that has sources, but by the way people on my field would say, I'm a I'm a bad guy, because I don't have sources on every slide. It's census bureau.

F

C

Bls, it's uh it's all big stuff.

G

Nothing made out nothing.

C

Purchased you you bought it. This is uh your taxes. This is the data, so thanks very much.

B

What the government does to the economy here county really indicates some of the things that we get involved with as many people as how much medicaid medicare do with uh with the economy here in buffalo county. So your information supports that okay, this gets us down to uh advisory committee reports and I believe that uh gibby are you going to handle this or gone I'll? Do it.

L

Are y'all? Okay with me just stay in here to do this? um The state lab processes, water samples for us that come from uh requests from the community, and recently we received a fairly significant increase in their fees for those for a number of those tests.

L

We assessed what we were charging for, those against the increases, but we also looked at surrounding counties to see what they were charging and the increases that we're requesting put us more in line with what's being charged in the region, but also allows us to at least cover our costs for um for the tests, not necessarily for the staff time and those sorts of things, but at least the cost for the tests that are run by the state lab. So.

F

L

Council actually looked at that and came back with this recommendation for increases.

F

Mr chairman, approval.

B

I have a second for that, a second second, any questions.

B

Not and all those in favor say yes, yes,.

D

B

Very good, thank you very much now. The next thing brings us to.

I

We'll do a few things first look forward. um We do that piece. First, I sent an update um a general update or shared an update with the health and human service board about some media requests. We've had regarding a child fatality and she's going to do some briefing at um probably not the next board meeting. But if there are any questions anybody wanted to ask today about.

G

I

Happy to do that can't talk case or if we didn't answer any of those and that you know I'll. Just leave that open and it's fine to catch angie on our own too, and her teams raise your hand for their summer.

F

I

Leadership- she was all here too, so um I also do want to recognize that our department heads you have new managers. Anybody for the day, do you have jennifer has.

I

I

um I would note that this is um while her retirement celebration is not today. It is gibby's last one very difficult to thank gibby enough for the credibility around public health and the expertise she brought to our consolidation efforts, and I know she gets her opportunity for us to say all those things at her retirement celebration, but did not want to let today.

I

As y'all know from the announcement is our new health director and will be joining us february, 9th comes to us as a sitting health director out of madison county, which was a great transition for us, because many of the health care systems and regional initiatives, we're involved in james already been involved in as well, but also comes to public health through um through health care.

I

A broader health care kind of background, which we think is a really good fit for some of the ways that we design and deliver public health and, as you all know, from changes in our organizational structure. She and dr melandor will jointly lead public health on a period.

I

I

And our board chair moved out of camp, and I say what was he.

H

I

Was very clear: around residency requirements around health and human services boards and um they had. They noticed that when we sent our bill, the board roster in um so it is, will be leaving us um as a formal board appointment. For that reason alone, that will remain with us in an america's chair bill. um Many of you know bill actually began much of his career in school administration. So we've known him as an assistant, superintendent, a superintendent, a coach assistant, county manager, county.

D

I

A dss board member dss board chair and a health board neighbor, and then our first and only today, consolidated board chair very hard to articulate the degree of support and guidance and energy that was given to all of us. Not only myself, but the leadership team in the board. Is we transition to a consolidated structure which, while we get lots of accolades and are noted as the best practice for our consolidated structure for those of us suzanne and dr oliver and wendy, and dr mclennan, who were here who lived through it?

I

It was not always fun um and it took a lot of all of our ability to see to the future and step over boundaries and.

F

I

At how do we give up turf issues and move forward in a streamlined consolidated way toward a common goal, and bill was very often um the voice of reason and the the the guide for all of us, as we made those steps and it's difficult to. Thank him enough for his service to this organization and to me many of our mentoring me, um for which he will continue his building. So all of our heartfelt appreciation.

I

I'll try to get through this.

B

Because this is somewhat emotional for me.

B

You know I had a big slogan where I was kind of managing.

B

Vision, the future and then created in 1992.

B

There was a vision that was made to the county commission about trying to put health and dss together because they were handling the same people and doing the same thing to each one of them, and they very smartly made a ruling that this would start and it sort of fell through for a while until this county was lucky enough to get or what I call to go green, that's with an e on you, one degree and, and she came out and she still comes out as a cannon.

B

If you don't believe it she's something else, and I had it for two years as my assistant county manager, and it's very evident that I needed to get the heck out of there. Let her go and then another thing happened along the way. I forget that today, 2001 or two one dss went to stone.

B

They turned the stone and between those two people, things begin to happen for what you now see and what you're now a part of those two people, along with the boards of commissioner and even the general assembly,.

B

It possible to see a vision come true and for that reason I'm glad to have lived that long to see it because I look back here at the employees and I it's amazing what this group has done and I'm just glad to have been a part of it in this very emotional.

B

But thank you so much.

I

You do have a small gift, although you're not leaving this you're going to be sitting right here every month and then there it is. I'm not going to make you open this one if you don't want to, but it's fine, if you do it's not like a yeah.

K

And I don't think, there's ever been a meeting that you didn't appreciate staff and their hard work and that human element is what I've learned about. Other things. Thank you. Well, I don't know whether this is an alarm clock a lot, but uh it's.

I

Very very much appreciated and it even has a statement up there and all my glasses on you want to read it. That's where we are in honor of your dedicated leadership on behalf of the health and human services. Thank you. So much.

H

I

Leadership staff really wanted to honor what you've meant to us in a way that we thought would be nice to use. So we have established a william e mcelroy leadership development scholarship.

I

We will honor a member of our staff every year with the opportunity to competitively applied. Let you, as you sit on the foundation board way out. There are applications, and every year honor a member of our staff, with a leadership scholarship, the opportunity for, because that's so much of what it means to all of us. I quote.

F

You all the time.

I

I've learned so much from your mentoring and we felt like the way we could most honor. You is to continue to grow. The leadership.

B

Six months later I said- oh, my god.

I

My dad came, I moved.

B

Out of buncombe county, but it wasn't done on purpose. It was done because we found a place in which we liked it. I call it my pre-assistant from home and uh but anyway, thank you all so much, and I thank so much of this group and what they stand for, and I I look at this tremendous board and dawn.

B

I'm grateful for your leadership and I thank you is a wonderful choice and I look forward to sitting back and watching. It still do its thing and thank you all so so much and staff. Thank you. Thank you.

I

Well, bill touched on this, but dom will be our incoming health and human service chair and both dr who's now continued with me. So we will continue to have that confidence and appreciate that unless there are other comments you can do your favorite emotions.

F