City Council - Regular Meeting

Go site Of Remembrance because it was a site of the Transatlantic slave trade. We also have an a deep obligation to tell the stories in the city, not just of the men who signed the declaration of independence, but also the folks who worked the water, the immigrants, the families who lived right here in Indianapolis what it is today. Obviously, this moment is important because we have to preserve this city, doc, for our economy as well. All of the small businesses you see around here, every time there is a major flood, we are all on the phone checking in, making sure they have what they need, making sure we're corralling the state resources and local resources to get them what they need. Obviously, this is important for the present because of our United States Naval Academy.

And and rising seas do not respect what is city land versus what is federal land. And so what happens here very much impacts what happens there. And, of course, to the alderman from Eastport, you know better than anybody. When the rising seas cut off Compromise Street, that is a real emergency management challenge for the people of Eastport. Obviously, the moment of now as we address climate change across this country is so real, and it can sometimes feel overburdened. We we feel overburdened. It's just such a large problem. Where can we even start? Obviously, this started almost a decade ago with a vision from mayor Buckley and the city council and the the staff at the city who knew that this was not a nice to have. This was a must have, not just then, but knowing that those seas will continue to rise each and every year.

It's often said that success has a thousand fathers. I'd like to also believe there's a few mothers

There we go.

Tucked in there

as well.

There we go.

Obviously, to mayor Buckley for his vision, the city council for their dedication, the staff. I also wanna thank the hundreds of Annapolis citizens who participated in I don't know how many charrettes y'all had to make sure

Almost 300.

300 opportunities for the public to weigh in here. That's so important in this moment. To county executive Pittman who has just been a a champion and and making sure that we are all staying on task and on target. I so appreciate you. The state delegation, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the state funding started under former speaker Mike Bush. He had the vision. He knew and he wanted to respond with state dollars being the capital city. And he started the trend that I was had the privilege of picking up. I know delegate Jones, delegate Baylor, senator Henson, make sure we, in every single budget, make sure we are delivering for this project. To the federal delegation, I'm so grateful that congressman Sarbanes is here.

I also called senator Ben Carden, the other day to share the good news. There's not a lot of good days of good news in this job. Senator Van Hollen, you didn't tell me that when I first ran. But he was thrilled, and he wished he could be here today. I wanna give him thanks and credit as well.

It it's been said that that mayor Littman, has taken this project and been so thoughtful and so strategic as we met this critical moment. And I too received that SOS text message in February. Being on the armed services committee, the naval board naval academy board along with, senator Van Hollen, he asked, can we involve the navy? And so, that was my role to play in this orchestra of support that we all lent here is to call the Pentagon to call the navy and and remind them that the rising seas will also impact the readiness of our United States Naval Academy. And they made a call as well.

There were so many calls that were made in the month, mister mayor, since you sent that text message. And I just wanna thank you for your vision and your commitment. And we're gonna hear in a minute from secretary Strickland, from MDEM who has also been just a champion of this throughout multiple administrations. I wanna thank you for your support. You're also on our call sheet anytime we get a major flood, so I wanna thank you and your team for that. And without further ado, I wanna thank my predecessor who, has has been dedicated and focused to this work for his eighteen years serving in the United States Congress. I'm so grateful to be able to call him and turn to him for advice more often than I thought I would in this congress, but I'm so grateful to my friend congressman John Sarbanes.

Thanks very much, Sarah. This this is a great day. I'm gonna be brief. I promise, you know, if you let a former member of congress up to a podium, they could go forever. But first of all, let me salute team Maryland, senator Van Holland, congresswoman Sarah Elphith, representative of the 3rd District Of Maryland, I love saying that, to Jared, to Stuart, to everybody who's been part of this. I also want to give a shout out to Gavin Buckley. I got a lot of SOSs from Gavin over the years. So I've got a whole text string there. But thank you, Jared, for kind of picking up the ball and carrying it. It means so much to Annapolis.

It means so much to Anne Arundel County, to the state. This is an example of people coming together in a very, very powerful way. This was a Rubik's Cube from the beginning. I mean, had so many different and continues to have so many different interlocking parts that require special attention. So getting these resources finally over the finish line is just it's it's a huge win.

And it demonstrates, I think, and and you mentioned this here a moment ago, the resilience of the people of Annapolis. I mean, stepping up, how to conceptualize this, what what would it mean to execute it, putting all the phases together that you're now gonna see kind of rolling out over time. That that was a huge accomplishment. And then the last thing I want to say is this kind of a project, this kind of a resilience project, in the context of what we know are going to continue to be, increasing challenge coming at us in terms of climate change and weather disruption and so forth is going to be a model for how you do these things around the country. And Annapolis has always been a leader.

It's always been a a model. It's always kind of, taken the lead nationally on innovative creative approaches. This is another example of that. It's going to be a tough slog through the execution, but I know one that's going to be successful. So congratulations to the people of Annapolis, to to team Maryland, to everybody who got us to this point is gonna keep moving it forward. And obviously, very much, at the reins for this process, going forward is going to be, mayor Littman. I wanna thank him for all his great work and bring him up.

Thanks, sir.

Alright. Good

morning.

Good morning.

Good morning. My name thank you. My name is mayor Jared Littman. And on behalf of the city council members and I, it is our great honor and pleasure to thank and receive the $33,000,000 plus the 2 and a half million dollars for FEMA. And I just I am so relieved, frankly.

I know your my sleep isn't everyone's concern, but I've been sleeping a lot better the past couple nights knowing that this money was is coming. And this is the, obviously, the evolution of work from so many individuals, and they've been mentioned. But I just want to point out how our city staff continue to slog away at the financial, the technical, the environmental reviews, meeting every deadline, answering questions from FEMA. It was a long process and it seemed to evolve and they stepped up and they've met all the burdens and and requests. And their dedication has absolutely ensured our success.

To go over the funding of this huge engineering and infrastructure project, we have $24,000,000 from the concession agreement related to the building of, Hillman Garage, $10,000,000 from the state of Maryland, and I I see, our delegate, delegate Jones, delegate Baylor, and our state senator, Henson being represented here. $4,800,000 in congressional earmarks, although not called earmarks anymore. $2,000,000 from the county. And today's 33,000,000,000 plus the 2 and a half million from FEMA, plus the city's bond money to ensure and that we now have all the funding in place to see this project through. Right. Whoo.

That was

amazing. This

is a major investment in protecting our historic waterfront, local businesses, and ensuring that our residents can continue to enjoy this wonderful area that we all love for generations and generations to come. This is an investment in the future of Annapolis. I wanna acknowledge we have a lot of partners, and I I recognize the city is the small player here, and so we have a lot of people I wanna thank. I first wanna call out the current and former city council members who stood by form, mayor Buckley and I throughout this process. They all received lots of phone calls of, if this, then this, and the council, it was unanimous in supporting our efforts to move forward.

Of course, our thank you, council members. Of course, I wanna thank our federal delegation, senator Van Hollen, senator Alsoprooks who couldn't be here today, representative Elfrith, and, of course, representative Sarbanes who's always been a good friend. Thank you all so much for your support. Our governor and his team had been hugely instrumental as well. So I thank governor Moore and MDM secretary Strickland for your support.

The number of phone calls and conference and strategizing all along. And, of course, again, I wanna call out our our state delegation, senator Henson, delegates Jones, and Baylor. I think delegate Jones gets the award for latest phone call on this matter on a Friday night in particular too, so thank you for being available. County executive Pittman, you've always stood be behind and helped strategize, and I know that I can count on you as well. Thank you so much.

Mayor Buckley, I know, had this vision and now the hard work of going from vision to turning into reality, but that doesn't get started without the initial vision. So I thank you, mayor Buckley. Couple individuals that don't get a lot of limelight I wanna call out. City manager Buckland, I wanna thank you. Project manager Aileen Fogarty seeing this through.

Director in chief Kevin Simmons and David Mendell from office of emergency management. And Public Works Director Burr Vogel. Someone who never calls out for attention but is a friend and a leader in this whole project, Matt Fleming and the Resilience Authority. Thank you for your appreciate it. He's one of those guys that when we strategize of who needs to do what, he's like, got it. I got it. I got it. Thank you, Matt. Appreciate you. Looking ahead, I wanna call out all the individuals who are involved.

We all got involved in public service because we wanted to do good for the community. We're we are doing our best to serve the public. And as congresswoman Alfred mentioned, there are some tough days where when our efforts to do good are not necessarily treated as such. I just wanna let all of us take have all of us take a moment to appreciate the enormity of today's milestone. This is the this is the result of your hard work, your focus on serving your constituents, and seeing the big picture of what can be done when we join together.

And so I just want you all to pat yourselves on the back, pat each other on the back, take a moment to appreciate this. I know that there have been a lot of press conferences. I am so looking forward to having a ribbon cutting where we could say, come on, and it's not last minute in a hurry. This work is absolutely just beginning. I know that just because we now have the money in the bank, it's not all smooth sailing. But I know with the team behind me, they've all demonstrated they're willing to answer the call, be involved, be supportive, either quietly or publicly, whatever is needed to get the job done. And that's huge. That is absolutely huge. It is my absolute honor to lead Annapolis' efforts through this. And again, I thank all of the partners involved in this work.

I'm so excited to help deliver the CityDoc project for all of us. And with that, I wanna introduce my friend and our county executive, Stuart Pittman. Well,

first, just congratulations to everybody. I'm not gonna go through everybody and do all the same things all over again, but congratulations to all of us. We should be having a huge party right now. Maybe this is maybe we will later. I had a I had a meeting on my schedule today that got canceled. My scheduler told me, the mayor's office canceled our meeting on Friday, didn't say why. And then I got a text message, not the SOS one, got that too, but I got the good text message from mayor Littman. And the joy. I mean, the ability to sleep. That meeting was about we're in the middle of our budget process.

We're in the middle of our capital budget process. We managed to squeeze 2,000,000 out last year, you know, with the help of of councilwoman Rodbian for this district for particularly the welcome welcome center as part of this project to get it over the finish line. But not having the funeral money would have meant that the project would have been scaled back. The mayor had all kinds of contingency plans, and his contingency plans included more money from the county, I think. And so it was a big relief to have that meeting canceled.

I wanna I wanna I wanna particularly thank our our delegation, congresswoman Alfred, our senators, and every the the whole team. But I think I think in this time, we don't we've almost lost faith that we have a partner in the federal government and particularly in FEMA. It has been so so frustrating and sad and terrifying in some cases, to have FEMA no longer a partner. And and, but these folks didn't give up. These folks continued to work relationships that they had, relationships in places we don't even know wanna know who they talked to to get this thing across the finish line.

But but thank you. Just thank you for not giving up. In a time where we all just wanna fight, fight, fight. Sometimes we also have to get in there and negotiate and and manage to get some wins. And for the for the public, for the residents of Anne Arundel County who are so looking forward to coming into Annapolis and and seeing this beautiful, beautiful public space. It's gonna be like a park for the whole county, which is why I'm open I've been open to investments in it. It's with county dollars. It is it is just like a little bit of sunshine. We haven't had sun all week. But it's a little bit of sunshine in a dark time and that, in fact, government can work and things can get done.

So just thank you, and and let's celebrate. This is a wonderful, wonderful day. Congratulations. And I also wanna acknowledge, the the former mayor, Gavin Buckley, for the work that he did to get us to this point. You know, his name would have been Mudd if if if FEMA money hadn't showed up. Right? I mean, you gotta blame somebody, but now his name is not Mudd. It's back to Gavin Buckley, and we can all solve. Right?

Next, we're gonna hear from the great Maryland secretary of emergency management, secretary Strickland. Thank

you. Thank you very, very much. This is a celebration. I really I like that term. I'd first like to thank governor Moore and Maryland's congressional delegation for your unwavering support of this critical project.

I'd also like to recognize the city of Annapolis for their leadership and persistent advocacy to see funding awarded and the Maryland Department of Emergency Management hazard mitigation team who adeptly shepherding this project through many stages of approval. Now I'm gonna go off script for a second because there were two words that were mentioned here today, resilience and modeling. And emergency management's responsibilities, although many times at the back end of the crowd, just kinda watching and making sure everybody's safe, but it's before, during, and after a disaster that we're involved. This is before. Mhmm.

And before is mitigation. And mitigation is the center of the universe. We're really, really good at response and immediate recovery, but mitigation is that which will improve for all the businesses in the area and will make a difference of almost a dollar invested, a $6 return when it comes time for recovery. So I think that is so so important, and I appreciate the words that folks have used. So the mission of Maryland Department of Emergency Management is proactively reduce these disaster risk and reliably manage consequences through collaborative work with Maryland's communities and partners.

In Maryland, emergency management is a system of systems. We cannot do it alone. We are the counties and the local jurisdictions coupled with the state, working with our state agencies and partners, and with our private sector partners. We cannot do it alone. No one can, and it's only through that system of systems that we do it.

The Annapolis City, Dock Hazard Mitigation Project is an excellent example of this type of work, of everyone coming together. So the investment today comes a result of years of partnership and collaboration with the residents, business owners, and governments at every level. And I have to say we've been talking about it started in 2019. I started in state emergency management in 2004. This was a discussion then. It was a discussion of flooding back into the seventeen hundreds for Ellicott City. And when it comes time for a model, this will not only be a model, but there's another really, really good model in Frederick City that started with Agnes. And it took twenty years to build. And about three or four years ago, there was a flooding event, and it worked. It worked.

So we know that this funding will bring a significant return on investment for every dollar invested as I mentioned. We'll save 6 in re disaster recovery. And while the dollars matter, what really matters is our community and our survivors. That's where our focus is. So the hazard mitigation efforts on this scale mean more days that residents and visit visitors can enjoy Maryland State Capitol and the beautiful waterfront, more days that local businesses have to grow and thrive, and fewer days spent mucking out livelihoods and homes or wondering if the next storm or king tide will be worse than the last one.

So this proof is this project is proof that together we can do things which shape a more resilient Maryland where communities thrive and where no one is left behind. So from the emergency management community to all of you, one, congratulations. Two, thank you. And number three, we're not leaving. We are not leaving until it's done, and we'll be here for another twenty years to make sure it works so we can write that down. Alright? Thank you very, very much.

Thank you, mister secretary. Thank you, team Maryland. Before we take questions, I I do want to acknowledge a few other folks. And Sarah mentioned my former partner and colleague, Ben Carden. He was also tenacious about this project, and we worked very closely together. And just like congresswoman Alfred picked up the baton from John Sarbanes in the house, house. Angela Alcerbrooks has helped pick up that baton in the United States Senate. So I just wanna thank her. She could not be here. So let's give them both a round of applause.

So we're happy to answer any questions. And if not, we do have a check. Cash it fast. Any yeah.

Can you respond to the letter that you sent to the Trump administration regarding the Legionella?

I'm sorry.

I couldn't.

Can you respond to the the letter you sent to the Trump administration relative to the Legionella?

Oh, can we talk to you after about I'm happy to do one on one or wouldn't yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. Time for the real thing.

Check. Alright.

Should we

all Senator Feigbach, mentioned

one of

the person I've got

to ask.

Of course.

I also wanna call out lieutenant general superintendent of the Naval Academy, Mike Bork Schulte

Yes.

Who was incredibly helpful and just wanted to acknowledge his thanks his efforts as well.

Why don't you get in the middle here?

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04/30/2026 will be called to order at 5PM. At this time, would everyone willing and able please stand for the pledge of allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands.

One nation under god, individual, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. City attorney, please call the next item on the agenda.

Next item on the agenda is presentations ID 76 or I'm sorry, ID seventy eight twenty six, the capital improvement projects presentation, debt affordability, and other budget items, and a joint meeting with the financial advisory commission.

Thank you so much. So we're gonna be focused on the capital budget today and appreciate the finance team and Burr Vogel, director Vogel being here. In a second, I'll ask you to introduce yourselves. So how I understand how today is going to work, we're gonna work through the presentation first and hold questions. I imagine you'll get through the presentation and then we'll open up to Q and A from the council.

When we for the city capital projects, we're gonna try to do this at a relatively high level for how the budget works as a whole. If you have specific questions about specific projects, we're gonna collect those and do, if we need a work session at another time to dive into, we'll get the proper project engineer who's working on that particular project. So I just want to separate kind of budget discussion versus what's the status of my project discussion. Okay? Any questions before we get started? Alderman Huntley?

So as long as the questions we have about specific projects are budget related, not status related, you're fine with that. Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Great. Yes, director.

I just wanted to clarify

our Closer to the mic please. Bring the mic to you.

Oh yeah, that's fine.

It can move to us.

I just want to clarify our order of the agenda here. We're going to first start with our Davenport team here to go over the debt capacity update and then we'll flip to the capital improvement program and then I can end with some of just the council priorities as well as just some other discussion points. But that's the plan that we have right now.

Great. Would it make sense to take questions between each phase of that presentation?

Yeah. I think if we have questions for Davenport, the team here, they're gonna exit after their presentation. So it'd be good to have their questions there around debt affordability and then yeah and then we can continue from that point forward.

Perfect. Okay.

Why don't

you introduce everyone who's at the table and then we can start the presentation whenever you're ready.

Hi,

good afternoon. I am Jennifer Derickson, senior vice president with Davenport and Company. Davenport has been financial advisor to the city for over twenty years. I've been with Davenport the last almost ten years. Prior to that, I covered the city actually while I was a rating analyst at Moody's. So I did your all else rating for about six years prior to that. So very excited to be here today so thank you for having me.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Susan Ostuzewski at Davenport. I joined Davenport in 2019 and began to cover the city at that time. Prior to that I worked at a different municipal advisory firm so I have been doing this for about twenty years.

And I'm Bert Vogel, director of public works.

Nice to meet you. So

today we are here to present the annual debt capacity presentation. Really as we go through this it's just to provide information on your existing debt as well as the projected new debt that's proposed in your CIP. And then, you know, how do does the existing and the new debt sort of relate to the city's debt service to expenditure policy. And this analysis is really important for multiple reasons. Number one, it makes sure that the city's projected debt stays within its policy limit.

It also helps to maintain your double a one, double a plus ratings with the three rating agencies, Moody's, S and P, and Fitch as they're looking at debt metrics. And it ensures that, you know debt service remains manageable and that you know the city continues to maintain budgetary flexibility. So if we turn to slide one here, this is just an overview of the city's existing debt service for tax supported. So this includes the general fund, the fleet fund, and the transportation fund. This does not include any of the self supporting enterprise funds that are supported by their own revenue generation.

So we did include in the appendix the existing debt service for those self supporting funds if you that you'll see at the back of the presentation. But you'll see here in terms of the general fund, fleet fund, and transportation fund, if you look at that total column on the left, you will see overall there's a declining debt service structure. There is a slightly an increase between '27 and '28, but from there you'll see that it's declining. And this declining debt service structure is extremely important because it allows the city to issue additional debt and sort of provides that capacity as you you know move down through the years to allow the new debt service to layer in with what's already existing. And so there's about a 102,000,000 outstanding in total debt service.

On slide two this is the estimated new debt service. So this is gonna be over two slides. This slide shows the estimated service for fiscal twenty seven, twenty eight, and twenty nine based on your preliminary twenty seven through '32 CIP. We you'll see that if you look at the total debt service column for each of those bond issuances, The city has typically issued debt over a twenty year period using a level debt service. So you'll see that the total debt service for the '27 issuance is about 1,670,000 and then same with the '28.

It's it's level throughout the full maturity of those bonds. If you go to the next page we've included 2030, 2031, and 2032. Same structure, level debt service and these are based off of the amounts that are included in your CIP and the borrowing amounts that we'll talk about, Susan will talk about later in the presentation. But in total that would bring estimated debt service for all of those issue with issuances to about 151,300,000. So here is on slide four we've taken that existing debt service that's in that first column on the left.

That's what we looked at first. That's what as outstanding for the general fund, the fleet fund, and the transportation fund. Then in those following columns we've included the estimated new debt service for '27 through '32. I will say that the assumptions for that debt service for '27, we're assuming a 4.5% interest rate. Most likely, if you went to the market today, you would get under the 4.5%, so that is a conservative estimate.

And then to be conservative for '28 through '32, we've assumed a 5% interest rate. So then we've in the total new debt service that includes the existing debt service plus all of the projected new debt service. And then you see that overall there is increase in debt service to about 13,800,000 in 2031 and then it's declining from there. Now your policy is a debt service to general fund expenditure policy. We base expenditures off the preliminary '27 number of about 125,200,000 and then increasing 1% thereafter.

And you can see that if you look at that last column debt service as a percentage of expenditures, you are you know really your policy is between 1012%. You only go over the 10% policy in a few years between '29 and '33. But as I said there we were conservative both on the interest rate as well as the 1% expenditure growth because we went back to look about what happened with expenditure growth over the last five to ten years. Your expenditure growth over the last five years was about 6.3% and over the last ten years is about 4.8%. So well above that conservative 1% assumption that we've made.

And then here on slide five this is just looking at a visual chart of what we saw as the debt service to expenditures on the previous page. This is and you can see that there in that those few years that I talked about you go slightly above that that 10% policy. I think you know staying as close to that 10% policy and giving yourselves flexibility makes sense. I think you don't want to necessarily go above that midpoint of 11%. So and the the 10% range tends to be on it in line with industry standards and what other local governments have adopted. So with that I'm going to turn it over to Susan for the remainder of the presentation.

Thank you. So the next part of this presentation is dealing really with your debt capacity. How much can you issue in order to stay under your policy? And again we're using a more conservative estimate. We're using interest rate and we're still using that 1% expenditure growth.

So we believe that these numbers are conservative. The first slide here on page on slide six shows the existing debt service how much you can each issue each fiscal year with your existing debt service to remain under the 10%, 11%, and 12% policy. So for example, to stay underneath the 10% policy in fiscal twenty twenty seven, you can issue up to 32,000,000. Now if you did not issue that $32,000,000 that number would roll forward to the to the next year. So if you only issue 20,000,000 that would give you an extra 12,000,000 for example in fiscal twenty eight.

So these are rolling numbers. This is the maximum you can issue issue each year but you can issue more you can continue to issue if you do not issue at that point. The total number then to stay under the 10% policy over six years we get to approximately 85,900,000. To stay under the 11% you'd go up to approximately a 101,700,000 and then to stand at the 12% we would be looking at a 117,400,000 total. The following page, page seven, this one shows the proposed borrowing as you have shown in your current preliminary CIP.

So the we're in addition to that we're adding a little bit of a borrowing and an additional borrowing amount in fiscal twenty seven and fiscal twenty eight. And this is relating to the prior unissued authorized but unissued debt. So when you issue when you authorize this your debt each year, you don't necessarily go to the bond market for that full amount because you're trying to keep in line with your actual spent. So there's always a little bit of money that's been authorized but unissued. And so we're assuming over these next two years that you would issue some of that additional additional unauthorized.

Were you including a 7 and a half million dollars increase in '27 and '28 just to cover some of the prior years? This means that of the proposed CIP amount it's 80.2 but the actual borrowing amount that we're showing here is going to be 95,200,000. The follow-up then the next slide on slide eight we're showing the debt capacity assuming that you have issued that that those amounts on the prior page. And you'll see on that line then that to get to the 10% policy, this does go over your 10% policy. I mean, and you saw that in the prior slides.

It doesn't go over them by a lot, but it does go over. So there would be no additional capacity at that point. For the 11%, you can issue additional 5,800,000 in '27, and then after that you would be able to issue another 3,000,000 in 2031. Again if you don't issue that 5,000,000 though that does move forward to the next years. And then the 12% policy you have a 21,600,000 in '27 and then a total in the six year period of 26,700,000.

So we believe that this does provide flexibility for you based on your current CIP. We think you have room within your policies to to use that CIP. We also believe that our our assumptions are conservative so hopefully over the course of the next few years, you actually do better than that. But we don't wanna show that because, you know, we don't wanna be overly optimistic. And then the rest of the the only other part of this presentation is actually an appendix that shows all the city debt.

As Jen mentioned, we really wanted to focus on the tax supported debt because that is what your policies are based on and that is what the rating agencies, in particular what S and P and Fitch are going to be looking at is your tax supported debt. But you do have other enterprise debt. So just showing you here of your self supporting debt, you have existing water debt about 58,700,000 outstanding. You have sewer debt of 19,200,000. On page 11, we show the existing parking fund debt of 26.9, existing watershed fund of 5,000,000, and then the existing refuse fund about 450,000.

This combined in 12 page 12 with your existing tax supported debt, total debt of the city is approximately 189,100,000 at this time. And that is all of our presentation but we are happy to take any questions.

Thank you. A couple preliminary things. So we also have members of the financial advisory commission in the audience so thank you for joining us. If time allows we'll give you an opportunity to ask questions as well. But give me some flexibility on how the rest of the evening goes. And I'm just confirming whether we there's a 07:00 meeting afterwards so whether if so we need to clear up by 06:45. And so clearing out that element. Also want to I should have asked initially when you started, is this document publicly available? So if a member of the public is watching this and wanted to see this, how do they get to this document? What's that?

It's not linked to?

Yeah, I got it in late.

What's that?

I got in late to the team so if it's not on the lunch drive, my fault.

Okay. So if we could at least make sure to attach us to this presentation so someone watching can at least go back and if they're watching a recording of it they might be able to follow. Okay. Thank you. And is there 07:00? Okay. Great. So we do have till 07:00. Alright with that we'll take questions from the council. Alright it's all clear on our debt. Alderman Smith Brown.

Sure. Thank you all very much for joining us today. Hey, Burr. If someone's watching this and they see that in 2027 it's starting off at $0, will you explain why that is for page three?

Page three. The

reason that you start out with 0 for your this and this is for the total new debt is because even though you're going to be borrowing in fiscal twenty seven, you're most likely not going to have a first interest payment until fiscal twenty eight. You typically have borrowed at the sort of towards the end of the calendar year of that fiscal year. So you typically borrow in December of or yeah it's been normally December of that fiscal year and so what you do is you actually don't start paying interest until the following fiscal year. So while you are borrowing in fiscal twenty seven your first debt service payment doesn't occur until fiscal twenty eight.

Thank you. So what this is saying is we haven't borrowed any money in 2026. Did we do this in twenty

Well

twenty this is only the new money, right? So when oh I'm sorry. So if you go back a slide to page to page one, you'll see that there is principal and interest in fiscal twenty seven and that's the borrowings that you have done prior.

Right. Thank you. This is all new.

Yeah. No problem.

No. No. I meant the monies that's coming for next year, not the process. But yes. Just clarify. Thank you.

Thank you, Alderman. Alderman, I'll get to you in a second. I have a question about page four. From the right, the third from the right column, it's titled total debt service.

Yes.

When you were I was expecting numbers to be in the 20s and 30s million. So for each year, like for 2028, we're estimated to borrow, I thought was closer more in the '20 and 30 range in those years. Why is this only showing 11 and 13,000,000?

So yes, because yes, in '28 you're expected to borrow 35,400,000. But that debt service is But

it's not total debt, it's just the debt service on

the It's just total the debt service. So that's over a twenty year period for that 35,400,000. Yep.

An Took extra minute if I got there. Alderman Huntley.

Thanks. I've got a couple questions, but I would just say to the mayor, I do think it's important to make sure the fact has some time to ask him too. So I'll try to be fast. Looking at slide well, actually any of the slides. So it makes perfect sense to me why we are considering What slide are you on? I'm sorry. It's any of the slides. It's not specific to one. I had it written on slide five if that matters, but it doesn't. It makes perfect sense to me why we're considering debt in the general transit and fleet funds.

But as we are in a sort of our numerator for calculating that 10% figure. But it sounded like you said that for the denominator of that, we're only looking at the general fund. Why is that? Why do we not consider all three of them in the denominator?

That's what your current policy, specifies, and that's typically also a similar approach the rating agencies take. It's more conservative just as a percent of general fund. You know, I think the general fund in the fleet typically are funded out of the general fund in terms of the transportation transit fund. That was added in a year or two ago due to the fact that they get supplemented from the parking fund. So they're not technically fully self supporting. So but that's why we just use general fund expenditures.

Alright. Yeah. It seems it seems weird to me, but your answer of that's what the rating agencies do is fine with me. My other main question here is if we go to slide seven, how were you calculating the $7,000,000 in '27 and '28? I know it's based on what we issued, but what specifically were you looking at to come up with that number?

We got it from the city. That came from city staff.

Okay. That's yeah. Mister Falco. If you were

to do a reconciliation of the total authorized but not yet issued, it's slightly higher. But in discussions amongst city staff, there was a determination that this number both applies a level of conservatism that not all projects move forward, right? So in the CIP program, there's an expectation that there's bond funding that's occurring over years. Some of those projects may not happen, they might not happen at the same time, You may not ultimately let your entire amount of bonds that are issued or authorized. So there's a bay a layer of conservatism baked in there as well. The so we settled on 15,000,000 spread over two years.

So I'm just trying to understand this this $15,000,000 figure. Would it have been reflected within if I'm looking at our capital budget now, would it be reflected in where I see prior approved appropriations? Yes. That Okay.

Yeah. Where I would point you to and I don't have it in front of me is we have a bond issuance issue bond authorization document

Right.

That was published for fiscal year twenty twenty six. And on that, you'll see what was appropriated through fiscal year twenty twenty six and beyond or through fiscal year twenty six and prior approved and then you would see what we've actually let against it and then that would give you what your issued but authorized but unissued, sorry. And then it's using that terms to then figure out what is still available to let in the current year related to historical authorizations.

That makes perfect sense to me. Thank you. Those are my main questions.

One thing I'm taking from this and looking for confirmation is that the borrowing that we have planned is responsible, but we're close to capacity. And we're not we're not with all these conservative estimates in place and with all borrowing plans, we don't have a ton of money, ton of capacity left to borrow in the next five years. Is a good, is that a fair conclusion?

Yeah, I mean I think you are at a good place based off of where you're estimated to be. You know as both we mentioned with those conservative estimates we expect that most likely you'll end up under that as you have in the past. But yes, there, you know, as Susan showed you, if you want to sort of stay, you know, at the 10% there's nothing else that could be issued, you know, based off of what you have in the CIP. There's a little bit available as she showed about 10,000,000 that you would have if you wanted to stay under the 11. But we think while these are conservative there's probably a little flexibility in there but until the actual numbers sort of come in, you know, we prefer to show a more conservative approach.

Yeah. And I would probably push us back to that 1% growth rate. That is just that is fine. That that is just arbitrarily restricting or constraining your future capacity because if you're really truly growing at greater than 1%, your capacity is gonna expand beyond that. And so there is just numerous conservative figures figured in here. And so when we discussed internally the consistent messaging that Davenport has experts has shared with us is that we are within a very good position as a city operating in that right above 10 right around right above 10%, and then we're having the capacity to go up to 12 in the case of a significant need.

Alright. And have you able to comment on how this would look will look to the bond rating agencies assuming we made no changes to it?

I don't think it cause any concerns in terms of you know rating negative pressure on your rating. You know as I said, lot of local governments and sort of the industry standard is around that 10% range. This is historically similar to what your debt capacity presentation has looked like in the past. And so we went to the rating agencies at the end of last year and they were comfortable with where you were from a debt standpoint.

Thank you. Alderman Sevent. Excuse me. Thank you, mister mayor.

Yes. So my question I guess has to do with some of the trends and if so and again, I wish I had more time to look at this ahead of time. But looking at the past three fiscal years, there seems to be the city's deposition seems to be deteriorating incrementally with each cycle. So f y twenty five, CIP first breached the 10% policy for one year reaching 10.51. FY '26 CIP exceeded for two years.

And then this FY '27 CIP now exceeds it for five consecutive years with zero residual capacity at the target level. That seems to strike me as a worrying trend and it's because if the next year's FY twenty eight CIP follows the same pattern, the question is gonna become whether or not that 12% ceiling not the 10% target becomes the operative constraint. So it's that that drift, that continued trend is what worries me and I'm wondering if it's worth the finance committee digging into that a little more or the fact as far as should we be trying to stop that trend. Is that a worrying trend from the bond agencies and from your perspective instead of sticking to that 10% more consistently?

Yeah. One comment I would make in terms of the denominator, the expenditures, I will say that the growth between years I would say in the last two prior years of that expenditure number was more significant than it was this year. There was less growth between last year, the expenditure number that we used last year to this year. So that gives you a little bit less capacity and I think that's why you're seeing more of the 10% range than you have in the years past. I think, you know, this is a tool that you can utilize to sort of figure out, you know, I think you're in a safe place given the conservative estimates, but, you know, it's a tool to, you know, consider as you look at this CIP and also upcoming CIPs, you know, in terms of making sure that that remains affordable and well within your policy.

I'd like to add something to that too. So part of the context of your question I think bears in mind two things. One, the the long lasting effects of decisions that any council makes. And certainly the previous administration started a lot of projects, a lot of investment in capital projects. City dock is obviously a huge one. That's $11,000,000 off the top just for that one project. So there is a long lasting effect. So the effects you're seeing now are due to decisions that

were made years ago. I disagree with that. Because that's not what the data is showing. The projections were not showing us exceeding that 10% as often it is now. So I'm just wondering like if we should be, would it be more sound for us to actually try to push back perhaps some of the CIP projects so we are more consistent with our policy instead of again increasingly pushing past that 10%. Is that something we should try to strive for just again to adhere to our own policy but also to you know make sure we don't have any bad news from the credit agency or bond rating agency.

I also wanted to add additional context. So there was a significant effort this year going into the development of the CIP budget to not front load expense. And so what you may actually be seeing is a little bit of a smoothing effect as well because of what what what happened historically is that there's been a larger portion of bonds budgeted at the outset of a project rather than in the out years. And so there was a significant effort made to try to to to make that a little bit more normalized. And so I think what you are seeing here is a little bit of that effect as well too.

So instead of having a stark jump in a period and then the the historical trends always been that it has trickled down over time because the out year letting is much less. This year, you'll see in '27, '28, '29, there is actual letting that's occurring that's smoothing those CIP budgets across. It could be a factor of that, but your point is taken and we're happy to go back. And so I'll I'll throw a nod to the financial advisory commission. Something that we've been talking about is getting a

Thank you.

A spendable spending authority commission and getting some other things going like that to evaluate out year type activities.

I would like to get thank you. I stole the floor. I would like to get input from the fact at some point on their recommendation in that regard because I I do think because we don't have too much more time left draft amendments as the council. And so if we do if if we are if it's recommended by the fact or even our own committee to try to get down to that 10, I think that's something we need time to figure out how to do it. But again, I think it's if if the fact or yourselves think there's a benefit in providing, you know, kind of deviating from this deteriorating trend, getting back to that 10%, if there's a benefit for us to do that, then I think we might wanna I believe Chair had to do it. That's all I have.

If I may

address Alderman Savage's question.

Sure. Go ahead, Cardillo.

This is Chip Cardillo. I've been a FAC member for the last eight years. First of all, Joel mentioned the key assumption on the debt capacity is the denominator, the GFE. And if we continue to accept the inertia of the general fund expenditures growing, yes, there's debt capacity. But, the fact has been concerned with the growth of GFE and has, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy that you're able to have debt capacity if the general fund expenditures keep growing.

Secondly, it has been discussed that the FAC is concerned about decisions that have been made in prior budget years that impact this year and future years, which is why we have pushed repeatedly for a forecasting and spending affordability plan to be performed. So those are two of the FAC concerns that directly address the debt capacity.

Second point was a sent was a better way of saying what I was trying to suggest.

Thank you. And there are fact members present in the room. We can also

Any other council members with questions? Any other FAC members with questions?

I I have a question on Peter.

Sure. Want to

come into the podium?

Sure. Sorry.

Vail. Take look. Start with your name, please. Oh, Peter Vail. I've been on

the FAC for about a year now. Trying to understand why we're suggesting taking out $15,000,000 of additional debt above what's already been issued like the the what's been authorized versus what's been issued and we're assuming you know just that there's an there's an opportunity to take out that 15,000,000 but where you know where is that going if it doesn't line up with the CIP plan?

Yes. So the 15,000,000 is part of that prior authorized but unused. So it's been approved in prior years but it might not have been issued because those projects haven't weren't moving, you know and didn't happen in that particular fiscal year. So in combination with the staff it was decided to add 7,500,000 in fiscal twenty seven and twenty eight to sort of account for any projects that had been approved prior that are moving and might come to fruition and need to be funded in '27 and '28.

And and just so I understand that Yeah. Those projects aren't included in the $27,000,000 that we have, let's say earmarked for the for the FY '28 capital plan.

Those would be in prior capital plans that have

Sorry. Sorry. I was I was just gonna say that probably the easiest way to think about it is if a project came in and was approved in the CIP in 2025 and said it was gonna use bonds in 2025 and 2026 and we approved that. But then ultimately we ran into some sort of delay whether it was like,

you

know, I'm sure, you know, public works runs into delays all the time.

Right.

So we wouldn't have just chosen to let that money because we've been paying interest on that for a project that we weren't executing upon. And so it's still authorized to be let but we just haven't let it yet. So you wouldn't see it in the existing debt. And so on a conservative basis, we're gonna say the project might get back on track. We may let it now. So we're gonna incorporate that into the funding in 2027 because it's already been previously approved. It just we never actually took it out to not be charging ourselves interest on something that wasn't moving forward.

Okay. And then when just follow-up questions. My my apologies. So it what is the mechanism where, you know, we have these projects that were delayed which conceivably might also, if we actually do them, delay the projects that we're gonna be doing in in 2028. Where where do you sync what actually can get done in a specific year versus what was approved for the last three years versus what's actually gonna get done in the next three years?

And that's that's where I see this disconnect between the debt that we're we're we're saying we we have the ability to issue, but we might not actually have a need for it right now given the capacity of the public work staff to actually get the work done. Not not that, you know, not that they couldn't but it's just a capacity issue.

Yeah. I think, again, from a finance perspective, we're just taking a conservative approach so that we're not creating a situation where we're not planning against letting that money. But director Vogel, I don't know if you wanna touch on execution timing for projects and how when something gets delayed in a prior year, how that then affects future years.

Very few projects depend on another project finishing think I point. So there's really not that linkage that I think think I'm hearing you asking about. But of course just as we've been talking about the when we go to the bond markets we only ask we only look to borrow the money we think we're actually going to need if we're going to plan on let's say doing, going to the market every other year. We do a really detailed forecasting not just of when we need the money appropriated, which is really what the capital budget is about, is about appropriating funds, giving whoever that procurement officer is the authority to write a contract at that instant in time. Even though those invoices might take twenty four to thirty six months after that contract is written for them to, you know, contractor to invoice us and then us having to pay that that invoice.

So we we go through this fairly detailed process with finance department and then each individual project manager kind of doing a cash flow analysis and saying this is why we think we're going to need that cash and that helps inform what we actually go to the market for in terms of the bond amounts. Does that help?

No. No. It all helps. Just part of the conversation. So thank you.

And also keep in mind, public works doesn't do all these projects. Right? Right? There are other departments that are that are Yeah.

Specifically. Mean, just

yeah.

Right. But I'm I'm just the only one who's

here. Yeah.

I don't know. I I I drive the short straw over here.

Mister Arnett, would you like to come up and just wanna keep an eye on the time. We have two more topics to get to.

This is a simple question. I think you probably have asked it for nineteen years in a row. But I'm a bottom line guy. So I'm looking at the the total total across all funds for all years in the CIP and it's $101,200,000 and in the Davenport is $541,800,000 I would that could imply that there's some PAYGO money and grant money or something to make up that $40,000,000, but I don't think we have that much PAYGO or grant money in this. At some point, I probably need another remedial session to crosswalk between the tables in the CIP and the tables in the Davenport Fund.

Observation. Suzanne, do

you want to speak to that? There's another table that's not published that's part of our workbooks that is bond the bond portion of each project only. That's that's not readily visible in the upfront tables of the capital budget book.

Alderman Huntley?

Alderman Arnett, I had Claude make exactly what that chart is that director Vogel's talking about, so I'd be happy to share it with you. So I wanted to know exactly that.

There is a lot of grant money out there. That's kind of really explains most of the delta you're you're looking at.

Suzanne would you mind speaking to the microphone please? Introduce yourself first.

Suzanne Flaherty, a budget accountant. If you look on page 15 of the capital book, there's a listing of all of the grants that refer to the different part. I mean it's not by project but there's there's a listing of the different grants that we receive so we can certainly total those up to see how much it is. But if you look at 15, it's pretty significant.

A pre turn on budget analyst. I'll also point out on page 12 of the CIP book. There's an all fund summary page there as well that breaks out the total bonds, pay go, grants, and other funding sources. And it also shows the outer years of the totals as well as what's for '27 and prior approved. Page 12.

Oh sorry. I said page 15 because that's the page that it is in PDF but it's different on the numbered page. So we're referring to the same thing.

Thank you. Anything else for this phase of the discussion? Okay. Is there anything else for Davenport or can we excuse them? Anything else for Davenport? Can we excuse them?

Oh no, sorry I did not know that was directed at me. I don't have anything else for Davenport today. I just do want to thank them for all their efforts. Absolutely. And you know, they've been great partners for the city and they've helped steward us through this. And so, especially in my time here, they've been exceptionally helpful taking a lot of time to walk through this and spend a lot of time going through. So I really appreciate their partnership and I think they've been great representatives for the city.

100% agree. And I you're certainly welcome to stay, but I just always try to be respectful for guests like yourselves to give you the opportunity to exit as soon as you can. But thank you for your contributions and keeping us straight on all these issues.

Okay so For new council members welcome this is tonight's presentation or the slides that you have in front of you are largely self explanatory. I could pretty much stop talking and just tell you this is a guidebook. The capital budget book itself is very dense, it's a 130 pages, and you might be interested in seeing what what's new, what has changed, and that's really what the information that's in front of you is for. So I'll just jump right in and then we'll, I'll probably be done in two or three minutes. Then we can go after questions then.

Next please. So here's just an overall kind of a summary of the different projects that make up the capital budget or the different fund sources of the capital budget. Keep in mind from our last presentation that just in the general fund alone there are 6 or $7,000,000 a year projects that carry forward. And so of that $255,000,000 some of that goes back 10 or 15 years of of those recurring projects and they just keep adding and adding and adding. So it can be a little bit of a misleading picture there.

But it is our kind of plan in the next couple of years to start closing out some of those those prior years. So we won't see that in the future. Next. Just what I was was talking about, that $6,000,000,000 a year I actually just took a screenshot from the last time I was here. Next.

Okay. So what are the the new projects? Right here that I think in the public works side, I'll just point out that the general striping marking is something we've we've gotten a lot a large demand for that is for painting red curve, that is refreshing crosswalks and other striping. We've done a little bit of that out of the operating budget in the past. But here we're putting more resources towards it and we think that'll be well received.

Next. Last year when I did this, I was able to do it with just a couple of bullets. But this year there is so much change in the budget that I went ahead with two tables. And so this the first table that you see here, this is where funding was removed from fiscal year twenty twenty seven versus what was was prior approved. So this is what Joel was just speaking to about our kind of taking a deliberative look and if we didn't really need the funding to move it to the year where it is needed.

So many of these projects, for instance, the Stanton Center Reservation, I think that money shows up in a future year, but we just don't need it right now. So so we're removing it and putting it out in a future year where it is needed. Next slide. And then this is what we did with all of the money that we moved out on the previous slide is this is this is kind of where it went. And as you can see in 2027, dollars 16,000,000 goes to CityDoc which we had previously been in the 2028 budget, moved it forward to 2027.

And that $16,000,000 is not all bonds, only about 11 or $11,500,000,000 of that response. And that is really it. The rest of the slides are just a quick description of each of the new projects and you can look at those at your leisure. So as promised I think I probably finished in less than five minutes.

Councilmembers? Alderman alderwoman, excuse me, O'Neil.

Thank you. That spreadsheet where you showed where you took it away and where you added it, is that available to us? Can you send that to us?

I think is again taken right out of one of those tables that Suzanne and Capri just mentioned. If you go to, you all will find it faster, I can I can look here? But in the upfront tables in the capital budget book, all of that is there. So it's PDF page 12 and paper page seven.

Thank you. I hadn't seen that.

I copied straight onto there.

Any fact members with questions?

One more caveat to that. I copied out of there and then did a filter, only changes more or less than 200,000. So less than negative 200,000 greater than positive 200,000.

Auderman Savage had his time

for a second. Okay.

So I have two big questions for you. One is, can you talk some about for the projects where we chose not to appropriate entirely or as much in FY27 because there was money left over. Can you walk us through how those determinations were made, how much we decided we didn't need, and going even beyond the money part of it, the talk a little bit about the capacity part of it, like, say we I'm gonna use roads as an example, which I should probably flip to. But if we normally wanna be spending 3 and a half million dollars on roads, how much money do we have left over? And is that enough both to meet our obligations of 3,500,000 a year?

Is it enough to keep up with actually repairing as many roads as we really should be? And is it physically possible for us to spend all of that money? If the answer to the first two is yes.

You picked the perfect example. If you don't mind, bear with me. I'll look it up in my book and then we'll flip to

it. This is general roadways.

General roadways.

Should be somewhere page 60 ish.

Page 58.

Thank you.

What was that again? 58. So in this case we didn't actually remove money in 2027, we just added less than we typically would. So you'll see ordinarily $3,500,000 has kind of been the pattern or that's up from $3,000,000 previously. And we just we simply looked at this with the with the project manager and said with the remaining with the money that you currently have, much could you possibly spend in fiscal year twenty twenty seven?

And she said 1,350,000 And and that was it. So it was just that was purely a a capacity and the ability to write those task orders to that contractor and manage that work. So that's kind of why this one looks the way it the way it does.

And that that figure of with the money you already have, could you explain to everybody how that gets calculated or how they can figure out what that is? I know you and I talked about it yesterday but Oh. The figure you just said with the money that she already has, how much more could she spend? Right? Right. And so what I'm getting at is how would our colleagues here see what that number is for how much she already has?

You can only see that in as of 01/31/2026. You can see that there's $17,000,000 there and then prior approved was $21,000,000. So you would know that as of January 31 there was $4,000,000 unspent.

And so

And and I could look it up like right now. It's live.

And do you mind if I keep going on this? So to stick on this one, like you said, we've got about $4,300,000 as of January 31. But it seems to me we should subtract out what we're going to spend between February 1 and the end of this year. Right? The end of

this year. Right. That's what we do in the office. It's exactly that.

Okay. So how like I'm thinking for our budget figures in the operating budget. We have a projected figure. So that that 4.3 is like year to date. And what I'm trying to understand is what is projected at the end of FY twenty six figure for that 4.3?

Want me to ask you in a different way?

No, I just mean I have to do arithmetic in my

head. Okay.

Probably 2,700,000 or something. Think miss Turner's

trying to assist.

Sorry, excuse me. So that encumbered figure that you see there is the amount that they have encumbered for the rest of 2026. Anything outside of that, the additional 4,000,000, say they needed more than that 2.6 that you see there, they can add to that encumbered amount. But as we budget for our projections, if it's encumbered, that's what they anticipate to spend for the remainder of FY '26. But they do have the option to increase or decrease that number.

Here's how I would do do that math. We we can do about 3 and a half million dollars a year. So thinking about two full years worth of work, calendar years, I'm switching gears on to calendar years now. 2026 and 2027 we could probably spend seven million dollars. We have four.

Adding 1.3 here it takes you to 5.3 or 5.5. And then some portion of the FY '28 money comes into play in that in that following. So I think by the end of this year we'll probably have spent that down to $2,000,000. The 4,000,000 will become $2,000,000 by the time we close out the books for '26.

So if someone were to ask me how much is mayor Litmegen spend on general roadways and the city council? Cause we all approve it. I shouldn't put it all in your shoulders. How much is this administration gonna spend on fixing roads in f y twenty seven? The answer is this 1.4 figure plus the difference between the 21,000,000 and the 17 minus what we think we're going to spend in the rest of FY twenty six. So it's somewhere around

We can get you a better answer. That's it that it's too convoluted.

Okay. Yeah. That's that's what I'm getting at here is I just think it would be very helpful for us as we're looking at particularly the CIPs that are ongoing to know what we want to get at is how much are we going to spend in this next year.

And I think just best way is pass this prologue. If you look at the box there, the financial activity, you can see that a year ago, 14,000,000. Fast forward a year, 17.3. So during that period of time, we spent or encumbered $3,300,000. Pretty good chance this year is going to be close to that. No reason to think it won't.

That's a much easier way of estimating it. Thank you. I do have another kind of broad question but I'd let somebody else take a chance because I spent a lot of time on that one.

I'll take the responsibility of spending the money as well for getting the roads done as well. Alderman Savage.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So just two questions. First question has to do with the Equitable Public Water Access Plan and that just to understand the bigger picture what is happening there because I noticed the FY '27 budget was greatly Could

you give us all a minute to get there so we can follow Yeah. Public Water Access?

I think it's called citywide public water access.

It's number 40051.

Do have a page number from the CIP? 36.

It can be in the thirties.

36.

41 electronically. 41 in the PDF. Thank you.

I was just wondering if if if the does this reflect a reduction because those costs are being sent to specific projects or is this reflect something else? Just a general reduction in this.

I can't speak to this is one of those projects that isn't public works. Okay. So finance will have to take that one.

So it actually says on there that some of these locations have been moved to new CIP projects. As far as which ones those are, I'd have to get with the engineer to make that determination.

Now where did you see that note?

Scope changes.

Oh, I see. Well, some, yeah, signage locations. That's not a lot of money, but okay. If I could get if somebody could give me some more information on that, that'd be great.

And then And that that would is very likely Eric Leshinsky.

Very likely what?

Eric Leshinsky. Just for the record, try as we try to get the due outs to the right person.

Yeah. He didn't know. I asked him. He didn't quite know what was going on. So the other question is, let's see, complete streets. Let me see if I can find that one.

Next page.

Was the next page, thank you.

That also has like just a reduction in one fiscal year FY '27 and then jumps back up to normal in the future fiscal years. Is that

just because it wasn't all spent this past? No no ability or plan to spend it. No projects under construction for which those funds could be used.

All right. Thank you.

Any fact members with questions?

Professor Arnett, fact. I want to return to the roadways. Years ago, we funded 2,000,000 kept each year and kept coming up short on getting roads resurfaced. And all of you fresh off of campaigning know what an issue this is with the electorate. And so we increased it to $3,000,000, and the rationale was average life of a road is twenty years.

So they have to be repaved every twenty years, and we divided the number of roads into the years and came up with 3,000,000. Now it looks like we're saying it's gonna be 3.6. So I think I heard mister Vogel say we don't have the capacity to do more, but I don't think we do it. I think it's done by contract. So if we really wanna resurface the roads on a twenty year basis, are there more contractors that we can go to? I don't know if this is on or off.

Yes. Little bit of a So with the new microphones, it's always on. You don't have to worry about turning it

on and off. So we heard you. A little bit of a chicken and the egg. We have the overall, and just in public works, we have the staffing to execute the plan that we have in front of us. Really last year's plan.

But there's not a significant difference so I feel really confident that we have a solid match between workload and staffing at this time. Same thing, same principle applies with contractors. We have a contractor that we work with, they do a lot of the work for not just us but many of the other municipalities. They dedicate sort of one crew to the city of Annapolis or the city to city council to say we want to double this. Let's go to 6,000,000 a year and let's plan to do $6,000,000 a year for the the out years.

Especially give me a year's heads up to spin up. Then we could go to our contractor or or get another contractor just as Mr. Arnett suggests. We just need lead time for that and we need that sort of stability and visibility. And we and we could do exactly that.

Are we on a let me ask you differently. With the amount of spending that we're currently spending on roadways, how many years does it would it take to get to all of

our roads? I believe it's actually a thirty year cycle. I'd have to flip over to the performance measures but I think that's that's what we have.

The roads generally last thirty years or is it?

In general I feel like we are keeping up. I look at it a little more of a granular level. I look at roads that are in really bad shape and we had we do a condition assessment every four years. And I like to look at where how many zeros and twos we have. Those are our worst roads. And I put my eyes on them and say yep, you know it seems like this is we are taking care of our worst roads pretty in pretty quickly. So they don't nothing stays at zero for four or five years.

Ernesto, do you have a follow-up question?

I do. It's on the next page and it's sidewalks. And we're spending, normally we spend 600,000. We're proposing to spend less this year but 300,000 of that goes to something which I agree is very much needed which is re breaking the sidewalks in Ward 1 But think that this only maintains sidewalks. We have a lot of places in Ward 8 or Alderman Thorpe has a lot of places in Ward 8 that don't have sidewalks at all.

It's particularly pernicious on Chester Avenue and it puts a lot of people walking out in the streets and we've never really we have a complete sidewalk plan and it talks for having sidewalks which I believe is a public safety issue. But we don't put in the money, first of all, to keep sidewalks up to the satisfaction of the residents. But second, add the needed new sidewalks. And so I would raise a question about why we're actually going down in spending in fiscal twenty seven.

Do you have any response to that? Are multiple sidewalk projects. I'm not

sure there is thesis. There are multiple new sidewalk projects. There is also planning and zoning is working what they call a mobility action plan but is really a plan for prioritizing where we need to add new sidewalks. And I wouldn't argue it's council's view or council's prerogative to put more money into repairing sidewalks.

I was just going to say to Alderman Arnett that I think the answer is also largely the same as with the roadways. That we have a delta here of about $800,000 between what we've previously approved and what we've previously spent. So we are leaving $800,000 in addition to the $200,000 for those sidewalks. But

yeah.

Well, I agree. Why didn't we spend? I I hear you. But my are you okay with me going on to a question?

Let me wrap wrap up if you can. I'm go to Alma He hasn't spoken yet. I'm wrapped up. Alma Thorpe.

Thank you, mister mayor. So I'm not sure if we're gonna go through each one of these questions, whether that's tonight or another conversation. But director Vogel and I have had this conversation and I'm in the middle of working this very issue and I'll be coming to you with that discussion.

Yeah. Think that level of granular details best for another day.

Yep.

Hold on. Okay. Just want make sure there's no one else waiting.

I'm sorry. I think keeps putting his hand up. Feel like Hermione Granger or something. But I'm asking questions not answering them. What I'm trying to understand is when we do the operating budget, we see I'll take central services as an example. Central services came forward and said, you know, these are the enhancements we asked for. These are the enhancements we got. And that gives the council something of a window into what we could potentially fund. We could look at that and say, you know, we really think the real estate consultant's more important than the, risk manager. Gives us some options.

So I'm hoping I'm looking actually kind of at the mayor, but also maybe the public works director. You could help us understand what is some of what got left on the cutting room floor here. What are some of the potential CIPs that were considered that aren't in here? And for the ones that are, how do we decide that they are more important than the ones that didn't get put in or even putting more money towards ones that are in here?

I'll defer to finance on that one. I'm not always in those conversations.

You don't we don't cut anything, right? Yeah. I would say to answer your question, we actually are doing a comprehensive sourcing of projects. And so any projects that need to come online are brought into the CIP workbook and then there's just an evaluation of execution timing and spending along that execution timing. And there's just a lot of detailed work there. And so I don't I think what you see is anything that's marked as new is really coming to counsel to say this is the new projects that we're bringing into the the the book this year. You've we've never told anyone, no, we're not doing your project. Right?

But the city manager might have. I guess the manager might have.

I will say that the process that we use for the operating book with enhancement request is not the same process that's done with the CIP book. I've only for the time that I've been here, there's only been one time where we have reduced projects, but it was never in like cutting them. It was more in combining them into one project, not leaving a project out.

I could probably point you to a place to kind of look to to these kinds of questions apart from the recurring ones which are so few that we can really speak to them on an individual level. If you go to the main table back in pages fourteen, fifteen, maybe before where we list all the projects. So let's take perhaps Eastport flood mitigation. So you see 2,600,000 out there in FY 2028 and 1,500,000 after that. If there's bond funding associated, this is where I have to flip over to another kind of behind the scenes spreadsheet to see where the bond funding is.

Are the kinds of things that maybe things got Can interrupt you?

What page are you on again?

I'm on page 11 in the PDF. This is the upfront tables that show project by project.

Thank you.

Now unfortunately here's we're looking at this PDF, what you don't see is grants versus bots. It at the project level. But look to see things that you kind of have to compare twenty twenty's you know the last year's book versus this one. Did money move out? Things of that nature. There was there were some timing conversation. I don't think anything got cut. It's just about you know maybe particularly beyond next year. I think everything we kind of needed to do or ready to do in 2027 and in 2028, I mean do I mean appropriate. 2027, 2028, I think we got things in the right places. But there there I think there are some things beyond that that may be shifted.

I'd like to move on to the next topics. I want to I've been promising Alderman Smith Brown that we're gonna go through the word by word capital projects and wanna make sure we have plenty of time to that. So if you don't mind, real quick?

Well, it's a question about one of our finance policies.

Ask the question.

Thank you, mister. It has to do with the the capital reserve policy and there's another question I think I'd be curious what the fact facts input would be because we do seem to be increasing some of our the policy is kind of general. It's just like one sentence. Maybe appropriate as pay as you go funding for capital improvement. But we are using it for things like fitness equipment.

And I think I can't remember if we're using it for striping or not. But General Roadways is relying on it quite a bit. 19,000,000 of capital reserves over the next six years. So that consumes the vast majority of the capital reserve capacity. So it might be a question for finance too.

Is that what that again a good practice to to have or should we be trying to protect? I mean we're it brings us right down to the the required minimum for capital reserve, right? So should we be trying to preserve any more or are those appropriate uses of some of the capital reserve? In general, sidewalks also proposes to use some capital reserve. So I just wanted to get some clarity on that policy.

Yeah. The policy itself is very loose as you just said. The great way to think about capital reserve is that it is generated as part of the end of the year allocation of excess reserves above the fund reserve policy. And so capital reserves become effectively cash that can then be used in other projects. And so when you have a project such as general roadways or general sidewalks that are recurring in nature, you're actually putting the taxpayer at a disadvantage by putting bonds every year because now you're just creating a cyclical event of bonds.

So it's actually a very appropriate use of reserve because now you're pulling down and not going out to market to fund those projects with bonds that you know are recurring in nature. And so that's one justification for it. And then in terms of just general hygiene on the capital reserve, you do want to have a maintained reserve to use for emergencies. And so there is a portion of that as well.

Thank you. Let's move on to the next phase and the word by word portion.

I just need a moment to switch computers. Thank you.

Smith Brown, thank you for your patience. We talked about this a few times and now's your moment. Of course, but you've been very patient so I've been I wanna thank you for your patience.

Is my screen presenting TV team? Okay. So this is not something that you guys have in your hand today. We can work towards getting that to you but we went through an exercise of requesting DPW and other engineers who are owners of specific projects to go through the project mapping as requested by Councilman Smith Brown, Alderman Smith Brown to give some level of understanding as to which wards projects existed in. And I know this is super small, I'm not intending to zoom in right now.

What we then did was summarize the information in this document which is a just a really high level summary by Ward compared to projects. And so what we did is identified all 117 projects based on which enterprise fund or general fund that they're in. And then you have what is a gross amount. And so just to be really clear about amounts here, this is the fiscal year twenty seven to fiscal year thirty two funding amounts, so not inclusive of prior approved. And then you have by ward, which the count of projects that were indicated by the project managers as where they affected Ward.

So then what it is giving you is then what is by the number of projects, what is that percentage of the total population, and then similarly the dollar amount of the project and then the percentage of that dollar amount. And so the one thing just to be completely transparent upon is that this is not doing a analysis and a cutting up of an individual project. So if a project is deemed to so if a project had $10,000,000 of cost associated to it and it's deemed to affect all eight wards, you would see that $10,000,000 eight times. And so it is just a gross up. Just to help inform that because I'm not we didn't go through the exercise of saying, well 10% is in Ward 2, five percent is in Ward 3, fifteen percent, you know, that exercise would have been exceptionally onerous on the staff.

And so this is meant to be a analysis to just give you a high level view. And so the results that are here are they're actually pretty they're pretty cool in my opinion. You can see that there's pretty consistent funding across majority of the wards being in that 60 to 70% range Without larger portion on what's happening? Okay. And you can see that there is a larger allocation to Ward 1 and that can be almost exclusively explained away by city docs and that being allocated there solely.

So this hopefully Alderman Smith Brown kind of gives you that. This is in one of the documents that I posted out there for call the council priorities presentation. It should be the very last page.

I think

Right. I think that's an excellent point and obviously City Dock is a big portion. So if you, obviously Ward 1 has outsized spending under this analysis versus the other wards. But aside from Ward 1, which again is City Hall, City Dock obviously, the other city, Resilience Project Compromise Street. The other wards are largely in the same vicinity of each other.

I think is the big takeaway I took from this. And where I'm looking at that if you look, 51% for Ward 1, forty percent Ward 2, then we get to Ward 3, twenty five percent, 25, 30%, and 33%. So not saying they're exact but they're in the ballparks of each other except for Ward 1. Questions about that slide? There's another word by word presentation that we have next that talks about specific priorities for each word that I'd like to make sure we get to.

But I thought this was a good slide and appreciate it. And again, the call he was making about not trying to parse projects between different wards is an important one. If you add up the totals it won't make sense because of that. Just wanna be clear about that. Alderman Smith Brown?

First off. Okay. This is a phenomenal first step in the direction exactly of what I think all of us and our residents would appreciate. So thank you for taking the time to go about doing this and just for the predict productivity of our city. This is a a great way to visualize what's to come, what has been, and to the point of the parsing of the projects.

If someone did wonder, you know, how do I know if it's general sidewalks, which sidewalks are gonna be repaired in my area? Or if it's another general fund what what's happening in my ward? Is there, a breakdown of that somewhere? So for general sidewalks, for example, if I know we said it's, let's say, the $10,000,000 that was said, and we didn't do it by percentage per ward. How do we know, not just us, but people in general, which sidewalks will be done in our ward based off that amount?

There's a really long explanation of how we do roads and sidewalks at the public works web page. So that's really where folks who have that particular concern or interest in that topic, would absolutely recommend that folks go to the public works website and look on the left side and there's something there for roads and sidewalks. But it basically says for sidewalk repairs we do this two ways. One is somebody can just put in a submitted problem request that says my sidewalk is dangerous, people might trip here, and city crews will go out and they will fix that particular acute problem as reported by a resident or a member of council. The other deliberative part is we follow the paving program.

So where there's road in your ward that's about to be paved, we go out and we actively inspect those sidewalks, mark up all the things that need to be fixed. Typically we will address the handicap ramps, the crosswalks, and and make those ADA compliant if we can. And so to where are sidewalks going to be repaired in my word? Follow the paving program. But you have to look at that because that's got its own website and you can see what our plan is for paving.

Right. Okay. So that the listing of all the streets is it's in order on the paving program? Correct. Because you guys have seen that before. Right. That's and they can refer to that. And and you'll know, okay, next week this street's gonna be paved or Next year. Yeah. But this is generally speaking, kind of making it more minute.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you Alderman Smith Brown. Any other questions? Alderman Arnett? Former Alderman? What's the appropriate to refer

to You

can just call me your honor.

Mr. Arnett.

My eyes are old. I can't see this. Can we get copies of this? And apparently there's more slides about spending by award.

Yes, I'll ask Ms. Jackson to add this to the presentation for today's presentation. You. Maybe go on to the next document that you prepared, please.

Yeah. And so this is a presentation that actually is a just a accumulation of the information that we've gathered from the councilman through what they've said are their priorities. So it's really just taking a moment in time to just reflect on what was shared with us and then being able to kind of speak to how the budget is reflecting those priorities. And so just really going through it one ward by ward just trying to understand where we saw priorities from each of you going through Alderman Huntley's, you know, we can see that the key priorities were infrastructure, tax relief, and then customer service as shared by him in his notes. So focusing on roads and utilities and then also increasing responsiveness.

Alderwoman O'Neil's, we what we gleaned from yours was pedestrian safety, focusing on new sidewalks with some specific locations as well as the CIP maintenance plan, meaning long term maintenance around the parks and city dock and Stanton Center and then also wanting to evaluate the grants program for reform for the community grants. Alderman Smith Brown, you know, a strong focus on infrastructure, upgrading lighting, traffic controls and calming, expanding sidewalks and repairs, and then also identifying investment in public safety and youth as well as clean, green and affordable, thinking about beautification, composting and housing stability sport. Alderwoman, Alsup Johnson, we saw from your notes that there was a strong focus on streets and lighting, getting signage replacement as well as safety and infrastructure, increasing police presence and repairing drainage and water pipes and then also providing services more for youth and elderly as well as identifying ways to make security better for those areas such as locks and cameras. For Alderman Schandelmeyer, there was a very strong focus on the maritime apprenticeship and renewing that program focusing on child care assistance and then as well as emergency services such as the peak time medic unit. For Alderman Conti, there was a lot around the HACA resident services to fund staffing for rec center access, buildings and homework support as well as additional traffic calming measures and then also providing signage for homelessness support services.

Alderman Savage had a strong focus for sustainable mobility, speed cameras, micro traffic circles and other infrastructure for cycling, project implementations for benchmarks for fund, for establishing metrics around funded projects and then ensuring that council approved studies go to RFP and are moved towards execution. And then the watershed restoration fund to make sure that it is funding the 2,050 tree canopy goal and update rep parking regulations. And then lastly Alderman Thorpe's focuses have been on traffic and parking, making sure that we're increasing safety around traffic calming, parking reconfiguration, and then sidewalks, really updating the sidewalks and completing gaps in high pedestrian areas, and then also just the overall long term infrastructure plan to be multi year funded to remove utility poles from sidewalks. And so what we did when we looked through that, we saw that a lot of the council really did agree on many things. You know, we have pedestrian infrastructure, so we've talked about sidewalks a lot in this meeting even.

Lighting and visibility that adding to the safety and just calling for folks to feel more safe in the city. Long term planning, I think there's many instances of like beautification, maintenance, the striping, and other types of projects, traffic calming and safety, just the continued enhancements within the sustainable mobility efforts such as adding speed cameras and red light cameras and other just traffic calming work. Using community programs, there's been investments across rec parks and parks for additional programs. There's been discussion about adding to the HACA group for their their needs as well. And then also just additional investment in existing programs.

And then for environment and sustainability, think we've seen significant measures there with the tree canopy, continued investment for flood resilience, as well as just the watershed restoration overall. And so that was more just be a highlighting of bringing the council's priorities forward and just then now we've already spoken about some of the projects and some of the investments that are being made on the CIP side and and how that kind of aligns with what you guys are focused on.

Thank Thank you very much for that. Questions? Alderman Brown? I'm sorry, Alderman O'Neill. Forgive me.

That's alright.

Those are some tough ones you get confused. It's not like me and Brooks.

I think this is great. I love the fact that you put it into presentation form so that we can kinda see how it plays out as far as the number of times each of us and I think that a lot of the budget reflects some of that. I just wish we had not play with. I didn't wanna say play More money to put towards some of those projects because I don't see a lot of maintenance plans and long term planning in our current budget.

Men Smith Brown, did you intend to say something?

Well, the question is gonna also go to about I know we talked a little bit about the general sidewalks. What about sewer? You know, like the pipes and things of that nature. Is there a priority list at all for that online or?

Yes. There is an asset management plan. It's from about 2018. It's not something I think we have posted online, but we could we could certainly give that to you.

It's in the process of being updated. Wonderful. Okay. It's really important because then when we go out and we're talking to our residents and we're saying, hey, look out for that new sidewalk that you asked for, it'll be coming up in a year and a half or hey, don't worry about that pipe bursting right now because we're prioritizing it being fixed in the next two years. You know, those type of things. It's really important for us. So thank you.

Alderman O'Neill.

Thank you. If you go to Mr. Vogel's presentation, one of the interesting facts I heard from your presentation the other day was that we have sewer systems that are from, you know, the eighteen hundreds that are fine, but from 1980 that are not because of the quality of materials. Do you remember saying that?

That's correct. That's correct. Yes. From finance committee. Yes.

There's there's that and so the the asset management plan takes into account risk. So what it would be the consequence of this particular piece of pipe failing combined with its likelihood of failure, which would be kind of our assessment of its condition at the time, as we go after those high likelihood, high consequence things is kind of how we how we generally prioritize. But for the near term I would suggest if residents are interested in what we're doing in the utilities world do you remember that GIS tool I shared with you all by email. That's the best thing. Because that would that's really our near term plans are asset management plans would be things that we would get to after all of those projects are done which would be two, three, four years from now. And so that's that longer range forecast.

Ultimately.

I'm just struck by what I don't see up here that I do see in the budget. If we go and look at after city doc, our biggest uses of bond funding are we're doing a bunch of stuff with fire stations, we're doing a bunch of stuff with police stations, we're doing a bunch of stuff with city hall. And I don't, I mean, I think those are things that our residents are not necessarily clamoring for. Now, there might be reasons why they're not clamoring for them, but it strikes me that there's a pretty big difference between what we see up on the screen and what we see in sorry, at least our biggest ticket projects in here. And that's where my question from before of how do we determine which ones go in and which ones don't go in.

If the council is saying, boy, we want more projects on traffic calming, I don't think there's a bunch of new projects in here on traffic calming. But the council is not saying, boy, we want to redo all the fire stations. Again, there there might be reasons why we have to. It's not always about what we want to. But I'm just getting to I think there's I'd love to know how we're determining which projects go into here.

Wish the city manager was here. I feel like she would have some great insights on that. Yeah. So, I don't know if there's a real question there other than it would be great to hear that from the city manager. But to dig in on a couple of those, we have three we have four actually, but take out the the old fire Station 1, the Forest Drive Fire Station renovations.

We've got three active fire station renovations in here. The overall rebuild and then two specific ones. And I'm just trying to understand why we're going ahead with doing specific upgrades if we're planning on going to rebuild all of these in the next few years. How do we determine that we're not being duplicative?

I'm gonna take try to take a stab at answering your question. I don't know if it'll be satisfactory, and I certainly agree having our city manager here will be helpful. On this fire stations in particular, I think we might have discussed this if maybe this will be information for everyone else. There's not enough money in the CIP for actually rebuilding three fire stations. There's only enough money for coming up with a plan and a design for the three, assuming that there will be some duplication.

You wouldn't do one at a time and do another one three years. So you do the planning at once, and then there's just enough money for with a really rough estimate of what one station costs. And I want to emphasize really rough estimate piece of that as after you get through the design and planning stage you fine tune those numbers. And that repeats itself in a lot of projects. You brought up that one so that was just a really good example.

The other way I want to answer is you, we, collectively, we hire a city manager to filter through the expertise of all the direct input that they're getting. He or she is getting from, I guess, she and then it will be she again. All the input that they're getting from all of the directors, their various plans and like fire department in particular had a very thorough long term strategy and so there was some good information from there that I think fed into picking what was in there and what was not in there. But I think that's that's I think a very important expertise that certainly we want to the council sets priorities and policy, but the biggest thing you do in setting policy we do is picking a city manager to filter through to the experts of how do you run the city and let them make some of the decision making. So like I said, I'm not sure it's a very satisfying answer.

But the last piece I want to say is, obviously in a very compressed timeframe in getting this budget out, So we began staff roundtables to get staff inputs of their priorities. In the budget, as you know, that because you saw in the mayor's budget, there's an effort of getting more engagement with the public and with council members. And so and we have the eight town halls in the fall. My hope is with a new city manager, hopefully, we have a new finance director. No no offense, you know, a permanent finance director.

We'd love it to know it was you, Joel.

Yes. So certainly no disrespect meant by that. But a new city manager, new finance director, finished, let us do this engagement with the public, let us combine that and you'll see you saw a lot of efforts of collaborative agenda. Might not be the exact term of lawyer overseer, but she would tell me what the the right term, but something to that effect. And so much more optimistic that when we get to next year's budget, it'll be hopefully a better synthesis of council, staff, resident, and director priorities in a more defensible, explainable way.

Yeah. That that makes a lot of sense, and I appreciate you taking the time to explain that. And and I I agree with your philosophy about the city manager. I think just like on the operating budget side, we need to be able to see these are the options. The city manager made this call. We don't wanna second guess them on everything, but for our ability to evaluate the city manager, we need to know what the options they were choosing from were

and why.

Yeah. Yeah. So okay. I guess we'll, on that like very specific question of how we know we're not duplicating this, I would love a that is a feedback or a whatever we're calling it. A do out is what Alderman Thorpe would say.

Can can I also speak to, pedestrian infrastructure and traffic calming and safety? There is a very significant project 4,060 which is traffic safety improvements that is developing the concept plans for things that will become very large and probably expensive projects to do these things. We just don't even know what those projects will look like at this time. But I feel like for next year's budget we will have concepts and we will have estimates and so that will be a more robust discussion next year. We have prioritized those three quarters.

Thank you.

Alderman Smith Brown? Yes, if

I may, mayor. Do you mind clarifying just a little bit what you can I identify an alder person really quickly? Do you mind Alderman Thorpe sharing? I know you were talking a little bit about a private conversation you had. Is that something that we're all gonna be privy to? Something you were saying you talked with Burr offline about, I think we were referring to sidewalks when Alderman Arnett had brought it up.

No, I Thank you. Sorry.

Get me in trouble. I

went through the capital projects with director Vogel. So And

I'm available to all of you anytime.

Yeah. Very high level. Very high level. We took I took the priorities discussion and then looked at the capital projects for about an hour after the finance committee meeting, and and I find him to be exceptionally accessible.

Okay. I wasn't I wasn't certain if it was something maybe about sidewalks specifically because I know all of us are prioritizing sidewalks, etcetera. So I just wanted to And whatever

we needed from us or

and all of our net, you know, talked about Chester Avenue. There is no project to put a sidewalk on Chester Avenue at this time, but it will likely show up in that mobility action plan that Eric Klushinski is working on.

Thank you so much for putting the slides together. If Alderman want to ask specific questions about, I would imagine you have where is the funding for these priorities, how much, and someone I think can send those to the finance director. I'm sure he'll be happy to help get you that granular detail I suspect you want.

Can I just suggest rather than emailing them to the finance director that we create a tab in our finance committee follow-up, the same one that we're using?

I would be happy to take the lead on how you want that organized and Yeah, facilitate

sure. So what I'm saying is Ms. Jackson will create a tab in the same document we've been using for all the other ones and you can put questions in that.

Excellent point. Let's get off the email. Alderman Spence, are we looking to add something?

That's really good too because it keeps it all together in one space or place. Yep. Agreed. Just I think we should just say thank you, mayor, for even having this and being so inclusive and understanding and supportive. I'm sure we'll be complementing all of us each other throughout the years, but this is extremely important and valuable and for your direction and making sure that our our team here can provide that information. So I just wanted to throw that out there.

I appreciate that. Thank you. Okay. If there's nothing left on this topic, I will ask our city attorney for the next item on the agenda. Give him one last look around. Alright. Thank you both of you and thank you Ms. Turner and Ms. Flattery for joining us and for providing our expert guidance. I just want to reiterate again, I know it's in my state of the city but I don't think you were here then. So I want to say in front of you that I was extremely impressed with the knowledge that the two of you and Darren Smith. Darren? Mr. Smith's name? Mr.

Smith. But all of you in addition with Karen Jaye and of course director, acting finance director, just how much knowledge, expertise you brought and I'm a curious person, pushed you with a lot of questions and you always had answers and you came back with a lot of directions. Just very impressed with a behind the scenes finance team that we have in the city. So thank you very much. Darren Johnson. Sorry I just got that last name wrong. I'm used to calling everyone by the first name. You kind of forget sometimes last names. But Darren is certainly included in that. Alright, Miss City Attorney, next item on the agenda please.

Agenda is completed.

Okay. Anything left for the good of the order? Alright, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. We don't need a motion. We're done.