Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

Committee is called to order at 02:18PM on 05/11/2026. Thanks everybody for being here with us today. Yeah. We're what we're gonna do today is go through the finance committee report. We've got it up on the screen, and, really, we'll just walk through it. I'm not gonna read every section by any means. The point is to just kind of go section by section. If one of my colleagues on the committee has something that they feel like we need to further discuss, just jump in and raise it. And then we will vote on the recommendations for each section. We can start right here in the top.

Maybe not right in the top unless any of you have an issue with my Westmore quote. But I think making clear what the priorities that were most commonly mentioned were is a really good way to start this off strong. So the we're we're working through exactly how to mention these. So transportation infrastructure or perhaps just improved infrastructure, which we have sidewalks, crosswalks, walkability, street lights, speed reduction, smart signals, and raised intersections. I think that covers it.

I'm sorry. Perry. Yeah. The part of this report that's in here.

You're saying report to the city council like it should be a breakdown? Think the first thing should be the the quote.

What does oh,

oh, oh, I see what you're saying. No. There was a there was a graphic

Yeah.

Beforehand. Mitchell is updating that graphic. Okay. Yeah. Alright. Is is there anything else we were missing? Yes. Because that was in there. She actually had already updated it, but the one thing she didn't change was changing '26 to '27. So she's fix

that. Okay.

Okay. So improved infrastructure. I've just copied what was from that presentation. So sidewalks, crosswalks, walkability, street lights, speed reduction, smart signals, raise, you know, intersections.

Yeah. I think that's right.

Yeah. I think that just And Bob gets at then with that I'd be fine with deleting this better service delivery for residents. Yeah. I mean yeah. The reason I think we could delete it is because you think community programs and environment sustainability more or less cover it.

Maybe the one thing that I'm seeing in here or that I'm not seeing in here that was on my mind under service delivery is improved permanent times. So maybe I could just lump that under environment and sustainability.

Or service delivery?

No, I'm suggesting we delete service delivery because I think it's covered under other things. Or if you think there's enough things that are not covered, we could put

a parenthesis behind it and list a couple things. Okay. So service delivery was not a term used in the brief. Correct. So that's why you're adding it there. Because it it was talked about.

So I wrote better service delivery. And then you suggested later that we just use the terms from the brief, which I think is smart. So service delivery is sort of a holdover, and I'm suggesting we either cut it or if there are parts of service delivery that are not in here currently that we put a parenthesis to say what we mean by service delivery.

How about I like your idea of service delivery in it. I think Karma had something, you know, to your point, Perrin, permit permits parking,

snow removal. Snow and garbage removal?

Yep.

That works. I Yep. Think

the residents are asking for better service.

Okay. Unless there are any more comments on that section about top priorities, I suggest we move on. Alderman Thorpe had a great suggestion to swap out this Annapolis graphic for something that says Annapolis works. I think that's really relevant to the new mayor. Miss Jackson, can you take care of checking in with either the PIO or somebody else in the mayor's office to get a pretty little Annapolis Works graphic for us?

I'm sure that Mitchell could do something like that. This was created from a council retreat that we had three years ago. So that was the priorities and the topics for conversation at the time. So it's been used over and over because of that. Yeah. Because that was sort of the continuing theme through the last term.

So All the more reason, it makes sense to update it.

And to be clear, when I say that says Annapolis works, a graphic that that says Annapolis works, which is I think what you're just Annapolis works. But Yeah. A cool graphic that says Annapolis that that communicates the message Annapolis works.

All of these little subs are what make Annapolis work. But

I hear you. These are important ones. Okay. So moving on to general fund revenue. I updated all these numbers. There should not be anything that's shocking to either of you. I think one thing that was a little bit surprising to me that I'll flag for you was as far as the revenue increase of the general fund. Most of it is due to property tax revenue that's not surprising, but also an additional $1,200,000 in income tax growth, which I was a little bit surprised by. So just flagging that for your awareness. And we don't have any recs in this section. So anything you guys want to discuss?

Oh, I give you two license to say we're not gonna talk about this today. But I don't know that we can really do anything about and and I know it's been a topic for a long time about about that almost two thirds of our revenue comes from product. But they're really going to are we really going to put any effort to diversify that or is that our revenue sources? I mean, I

got Yes. It's a fair question.

It's actually arguably a good thing.

We we signed that resolution back in March that we wanted to be able to look at this what the state is doing with both sales tax and other issues. So we did sign on saying we were interested in exploring other revenue opportunities for the city. And that's one of them. And I believe that the mayors suggested philanthropic consultants would be not revenue necessarily, but a counter Yeah. Against funding that would counter against what we need for revenue for our expenses.

That's a great point.

If that makes sense.

Yep. But but to your point, Audeman, for Thorpe, I do think it's fair to point out, like, if we're gonna put this as a good

good

I a point. And And think topics for us to have finance committee hearings about over the next year. Also just flag for you guys on your challenges that there was a worry in the last one about tightening of state and federal grant availability. We have seen that borne out to some extent, but I think not as much as we were maybe worried about last year. So this is that's why I wrote some.

I thought we were seeing more than we saw last year because for instance, in OEM where they had three positions that have been grant funded, we're now funding them from the general fund.

Right. I'm sorry. Maybe I misspoke. I meant we have seen less than I think we were worried about happening. But we definitely have seen more than this time in 2025. But as I remember last year, were like, oh my god. We're gonna lose all of our federal money. So that was how I I guess that was my baseline.

So you just said Said something I think I really like, which is kind of a criteria for challenges.

Fancy.

Which is the criteria as we go through this is, does it kinda come to or get close to it, the threshold to have a city council work session? That's that that would make sense as a good rough idea. Not that we bond ourselves by it. Yeah. But if it's a challenge, it's something we think is that significant. Yeah.

Yeah. There were one or two places on here I have to say where it had been listed as a challenge in the previous year. And I looked at it again this year, was like, man, we should have done something to think a little harder about that in the past year. Yeah.

That would be really actionable if we could turn that over to Neely and

Yeah. I'd be happy to sort through that with you. Okay. Moving on. Nothing terribly surprising in the expenditure column.

Miss Jackson, do you know whether this graphic is already or maybe it's Capri. This graphic that we're looking at here has been updated or not?

Yes. It's updated.

Thank you. Perfect. Can I

Yeah? Drop in anytime. It might be too late to do this, but would it have been a good idea to keep the '26 information in there? Yeah.

This is a report on the '27 budget.

I think it could be confusing in this case. I get what why you might want to. I I get why there are definitely situations where we wanna be able to look at the difference. But I don't think having two pie charts side by side would be the best way to do it. It's just like in in OpenGov, I can look at the stacked bars if I wanna look over time, or I can look at the pie graph for just one year. We could have the stacked bars. I mean it just would be it would get really confusing for this where we have so many different categories.

In the past, the public has appreciated the pie graph because it's easier to follow with all of those.

Alright.

I appreciate you asking the question. I mean, what we're trying to do here is make sure we have the best process. It's not a huge deal. But miss Turner, if there's a way to correct that so city council is not at 0%, if we could be at point one or something, that would be wonderful.

I can see if it allows me to update it to show a point.

If it doesn't, that's that's fine. Don't worry about it too much.

Okay. If anything, we can add a note underneath.

We'd appreciate the acknowledgement Okay. Of of just how cost effective we are. Moving along to the fund allocation capital reserve and budget stabilization fund. This is nothing terribly surprising. I'm realizing, I guess, I didn't change the color when I did this. Apologies. But these are all updated and it's it's it's a pretty darn simple formula. But obviously, the thing anyone can notice is that we do have the less one time use money at the end of this than in previous years. Feel free to stop me if there's something you want to talk about. Moving on to debt capacity.

Very similar that there is nothing terribly surprising in this. I think really the only difference is that in the previous budget cycle, we were talking about the f y twenty six debt service. And we saw that two years after that was when debt service cracked 10%. So it's f y twenty eight in that budget, and then it was above 10% for three additional years through FY thirty one. In this budget, we again see two years out is when we would crack the 10% debt service level in FY '29.

But slightly unlike last year's budget, we continue to exceed it through FY '33. Now caveats that there's all these conservative assumptions in this, etcetera, etcetera. But I do think, and this is the point Alderman Savage brought up, it's worth noting that we are seeing a year over year slight increase to how often we would be above that policy. All right. Here's the fun sexy part, the capital improvements budget.

So I did take a little bit of a different tact on this than last year and that I tried to just put a little bit more detail about all the different capital projects. So we have three categories, the ones that were completed or removed, the ones that were added, and the ones that had significant changes in funding or scope. So the ones that are added tend to be the ones that have the least information because we just don't know as much about them. But I feel like this covers what we need to know in this budget. And if anybody has anything before we get to the recommendation part of capital, if anyone has anything they'd like to edit within my description of capital projects, now be the time to speak up.

I think this is really well done.

Thank you.

I appreciate your effort.

Okay. And then as far as recommendations, they're both somewhat general. Well, one's kinda general and kinda specific, but it's literally about general. And I just tried to capture the sort of mood that I heard from all three of us. Obviously, each one of us are gonna have things that we want that might be specific to our wards, might be specific to our priorities.

But as far as what is the the top line understanding of the capital budget, there were really two things to me. One was shifting from internal facing upgrades to city government towards external facing improvements for residents that they can actually see. And then to get maybe a little maybe it's sort of a subcategory or it's separate. But the slightly more specific of that was general roadways, general sidewalks, general sidewalks brick, and general striping and marking were all areas that could be increased within that. Are there any suggested changes to these recommendations?

Are there any additional recommendations that you guys suggest we include? Are there any any ones of these you think we should take away? Do you have any thoughts on we were talking about this fire station and your conversation with central services? Do you think anything about that would be worth including here?

I'm gonna be a little specific. Have to tell you I think these two bullets that you've drafted are the key part to this whole document. Weeks of staff briefs and discussions we've had. It's these two. That's why my reaction about the fire station, we really didn't talk about it. But we are now, but if we wanted to put it in, we could. But but these two, I mean, it you know, you brief this tonight. I mean, I think this is the major takeaway from everything we heard. Yeah. And it it almost seems to me to kinda be my internal test as I have these discussions.

And I think it's also a very clear message to the to the of what the city council was looking for, and what became really apparent from the city staff.

Yep. And and I think a lot of it, you could sum up as we all agree on Annapolis Works. Part of that is Annapolis Works for its employees if we want it to work for the residents. But I think what we saw in here was a need to shift a little bit more towards Annapolis Works for the residents directly. So that that was the phrase I was gonna use tonight, but that there's your spoiler. That's the teaser. Jared's gonna watch this later and know exactly what I'm gonna say. Alright. Do you wanna talk about DPW enterprise accounts, Autumn and Thorpe?

Sure. I don't think I need to go through the bullets. What I did try to do under the good news is and and the challenges is when the increases were going, staying the same or going down. There's good news challenges when they were going the opposite direction, And I thought that ended up to be pretty straightforward and pretty informative. I am concerned. I think we're all concerned about the rate increases, but when you compare them to what we've been doing, And a little bit like spin, but the good news is the increases aren't increases over last year, in the previous The So

second order derivative is negative. Yes. Boy, that's I'll put that on a campaign poster.

It could be worse.

It still increases, but they're not higher than the increase with last year.

Right. Right. Right. I told you. I said the second order derivative is negative. Was I not clear? So that that makes perfect sense. As far as recommendations, one thing that we had talked about that I don't see in here was whether it would be possible to smooth the storm water increase somewhat. If we're talking about doing 15% in this year and 7% in the following years, could we do 10% over every year? And do you have any thoughts on that?

Do either of you have any thoughts on including as a recommendation trying to make them more stable? Maybe that's the right word, more flat?

I think that that's a good recommendation. My other question is also when they were here presenting they talked about the new calculations for storm water. Thought we all agreed that that is what we should be implementing, so that should be one of the recommendations. I set forward?

Totally agree. I think there's a a comment on that also in here. Yeah.

Because it literally says in the slide, we need an amendment to

That's an amendment we need to make.

Well, we're lucky we have miss Guild here who would be the right person to ask about this. Right? Oh, maybe maybe I'm putting you too much on the spot. It struck me as an environmental thing. Right. Wouldn't have the answer.

Tangentially involved with it, but that'd be actually public works. So Betsy McEwen would be the appropriate person to ask.

Alright. I think that's definitely a due out because is that

That's an amendment. So one of our recommendations is create an amendment to move forward with the plan set out by Stantec. Got it. To alter the how did I write it?

It's the calculation of the impervious surface fee. Thank you. Thank you. That's exactly.

So what the slide says is recommend the staff recommends any amendment for adoption prior to start of f I twenty seven on alternative fee structure for non residential properties.

So I just copied that. I just copied the word for word there and put it down on the committee recommendations.

So would it make sense to take that action with the budget? These a lot of the recommendations are just going be listed in the document. They'll be tracked in the future. This one we actually have to do before June The

very bottom of this report is the recommended amendments. So that will go into that one.

Perfect. Okay.

All right. But back to my point about flattening. I don't I feel like I lean towards saying we should include that as a recommendation but that I don't have enough information to say with a lot of certainty that it's the right thing to do. So if either of you feel like, yes, that's definitely the right thing to do, I say we should stick it in there or maybe if both of you do. And if you are in the same position as me of saying, that sounded like a good idea, but I'm not totally sure and maybe it has some kind of negative implications, then I think we can just keep moving and not include it.

So I I would fully support asking Stantec to run those numbers. The challenge is it may not may not balance out. In other words, it might become 14.88888 rather than 15.777. But even that, it might be even because when you do the 15, you do the 15, you get them all Exactly. Across the

That's a good point.

Seven seventy seven. Yeah. But you're suggesting like for instance, last year, they suggested 15 and we did 12. We voted for 12. So if we were to vote for 12 but add, Acting plus the three from last year, that would bring FY 28 to 12 as well.

Yeah, perhaps we ask them to run that. What if we did 12? What if we did 14? What if we did 13? What if we did 12? What would it do to the out years?

Yeah. And and I I think I did actually ask them to do that. I don't think we got a response. Which, you know, that's the difference between having public works so we can just pick on the phone and call and having an outside consultant. But I'm seeing that as a follow-up. Yeah. I don't see an answer from Stantec on that yet. So I think we should leave it out. And if we can get

Put it

in for recommendation and then we can further the amendment once we have the data.

Yeah. So let's just call it consider. Consider flattening fee increases. Anybody got a better way?

Averaging? Yeah.

Spreading.

Oh, Capri had a question.

Yeah. Miss

Turner. Capri, I'm our budget analyst. I wanted to clarify if your committee's recommendations are your amendments that you'll be putting forth?

I think they're a little broader than our amendments. So there might be some where we say very specifically, we want to remove a $100,000 from here and put it to here. And then there are other ones that are like, well, there are some that are broad, like, we should fund more of general roadways, which that's not really fair to make you come up with an amendment where we're not saying how we're gonna fund it. Now I'll tell you right now, I submitted an amendment yesterday that said, reduce this and split it exactly between these four things. But so and what I'm getting at, miss Turner, is maybe just we can go through you and I the recommendations at the end.

And anyone's that need to become an amendment but that for one reason or another nobody has submitted, we can just make sure those ones specifically get tracked.

Okay.

But, yeah, something like consider well, actually, maybe that's a bad example. But, like, get more information on the wastewater treatment cost. No. That's not an amendment.

You wanna finish your consider spreading storm water fee increases?

Increases across When he's writing might be an amendment if the data that StanTech comes through with makes supports it, but it might not be if it doesn't support it.

Excuse me. Jackie Gallaud, acting city manager. So are you sending a request also to director Vogel and or Betsy McEwen for to run those scenarios with Stantec?

Well, what what I did when we had the Stantec folks here was said very clearly to them, can you please run this scenario for me and get back to us? And as far as I know, they have not gotten back to us. So, yeah, I guess I would go to Betsy and make sure that they actually do.

Okay. I can follow-up on it. I can actually follow-up on it to make sure, that it's done. The only issue is that the deadline to submit the amendments is today. So if we received it after if we don't get it today, it would have to come, after the budget is passed.

Let's submit it as an amendment and we can always pull it later.

Sure. Correct.

I'll put that on me. I will make sure that it gets submitted. Let me just Oh, see what Yeah. You're Yeah. I'll just talk with Cabri. Yes. Thank you.

Said she would submit those forms. As as we tell her that's what we want is the amendment.

Okay. I wanna move on to fees and fines. And there this is a funny one because there are frequently some things in other departments that really were recommending fees and fines changes. But so, like, the storm water fee one. But I tried to limit this to only things outside of those four enterprise fund fees.

So this isn't talking about trash or water or wastewater or storm water. But note that there is this commercial recycling annual fee and refuse hauler permit fee. Those are permits rather than what we residents are paying for trash, I did include those. I don't think there is anything terribly surprising here that we hadn't heard about before. This house barges violation fine, jumping from 500 to 1,000. Is interesting. I think that's on marinas, not on individuals. Is that right, Alderman Thorpe? Do you know? Oh, miss Gowan, do you wanna weigh in?

No. I don't know. This is the first I've heard of this, so I'm very interested.

Well, it increased the fine from 500 to a thousand dollars. That's what the proposed budget does on house barges.

That's not our amendment.

Correct.

Does that come from the harbor master's office?

But it comes from the budget.

Okay.

And it come well, and it it comes from the fines resolution. Right?

Okay.

Yeah.

I'll check-in with the harbor master.

But I assume what that's

Copy on that.

I assume what that is for is we have regulations already about house barges. If a marina has more than they're allowed to, then they can get a fine.

Right. There's a fine at $2.50 and they can go up to 500 per citation so this is just increasing that. So I need to follow-up the harp master though to make sure. I don't know where this came from actually. I don't remember discussing this with them. So whether that's that should be imposed in the same way that's being imposed right now. Enforced, I'm sorry, the way on the operator of the house barge, the owner of the house barge. There have been just some discussion at some point that where whether the marina owner should also be cited, but it right now, it's you cite the owner of the house barge.

Good to know. That seems like something maybe we should change, but we would have to change it in code rather than here.

Huntley, though, I just noticed this, and I apologize for the question before. It was there only one fine change in the budget? I thought there was more than.

You know, feel like that doesn't seem right to me either. And yet, I went through it and could've sworn that I double checked that.

There are no no other ones.

Well, that's a great segue into one of our recommendations which is increasing fines for unlicensed short term rentals. So, Alderman Thorpe, you had a a suggestion down here for how to phrase that. And I wrote a different way in my amendments. I think I just hadn't read yours yet, maybe. $500 per advertisement per paper for each ad placement of unlicensed short term rental.

I wrote it as let's see. What's it? $200 now. I increased it to $500 or the amount per the amount how did I phrase it? The highest advertised nightly rate on the place. Meaning, if you're renting a place for a thousand dollars a night, you could actually get charged a thousand dollars rather than just 500.

And who is the enforcer on

Planning and zoning. So I talked to director Jakubiak about this. And I don't wanna speak for him but it it made sense. The only point I would say to you is I think it needs to be a cost and the way you just described it would be breakeven. I'd lose nothing. So I don't have any problem. I like your idea because I think what you're concerned about is the person renting their basement for $300 compared to their 16 bed house for a thousand dollars or whatever. But I would say two times.

Sure.

Two times, whatever the if they advertise it for $306,100 dollar fine. If they advertise it for a thousand, $2,000 fine.

Yeah. I mean, I think if you're advertising something for a thousand dollars and you get a thousand dollars, you're losing money on it. But yeah. Sure.

How about if you rent it

out? No. No. You I mean, I think you are because you have costs. Right? You're paying the cleaning service. You're paying the restock the toilet. Whatever. I'm not trying to quibble too much on it.

Oh, definitely. Asked miss Letter to come up to opine on whether we can actually do that or not. Treat in the fine schedule, do that variable fine.

Did you come up to tell me we can't do it, miss Letter?

It's a hard no but generally generally the legal advice for when you're doing fines is there has to be a rational basis for why you're charging one versus the other. And usually it has to deal with staff time, recouping costs. So you would have to if you're going to implement this, would have to indicate why one set that's getting larger fine, what the basis, what you're basing that larger amount in. And it can't just be on, like, what they're doing. It has to sort of tie back to, like like, how we're operating, generally speaking.

What you're saying makes perfect sense for fees. But for fines, how do we we charge $70 for a speed camera violation where you're going much faster and less if you're not going fast.

But that's because the rational basis is much faster. It's a higher safety risk. So what you you have to tie to some sort of either governmental cost, governmental staff, or public safety. There has to be sort of some sort of rationale because otherwise you're treating essentially two people that are essentially doing the same thing in a different way without sort of a basis for it.

Me can I walk down that path a bit to use a $300 and $1,000 comparison? The impact of an unlicensed $300 basement compared to the impact of $1,000 16 bed house?

That that could be valid but you just we need to have sort of that sort of documented on the backside so we know so that when staff is sort of applying it, they know how to sort of judicially apply

And I think that's what Alderman Huntley was going at

Yeah.

Earlier was it was it's different the size, magnitude of the unlicensed short term rental.

Yeah. So I mean that if you're tying it with Lyft, it's a much bigger rental and it's going to have different impacts. We just that just sort of needs to be sort of specified somewhere, perhaps in the code section, not necessarily in the fee schedule but in the code section saying that like the fines will be based on x y and z sort of. Just to help one, people understand why they're getting a bigger fine and two, help with enforcement so enforcement knows how to sort of apply it.

Otherwise it may be looked at as vague, ambiguous, unfrivolous, unsubstantiated type of fine. So that you just, that example you gave is a perfect example of the why.

So do we want to maybe I what we can do here is just put in two options and say, where our overarching recommendation is increase fine for unlicensed short term rentals. And then we can copy and paste your suggestion of $500 per advertisement, and we can put in my suggestion of minimum fine being the nightly the highest advertised nightly rental rate.

I'm okay with that but my Oh. I think we just got to a good solution. So

And we could do both.

Or just do one.

I gotcha. Do you do you

I would do the advertised nightly rate.

Yeah, two times the average.

Two times the average nightly

rate. Okay, I

Because would otherwise you're spinning your wheels trying to find all of the publications that somebody is advertising on. And what if there's a brand new one? What if there's a secret newsletter that they're advertising on to get their you know, they're not going through Airbnb or VRBO. They're going through neighborhood rentals ABC.

Yeah, I guess my and I haven't really thought about this so this is brainstorming. But if I'm going to game it then I'm going to advertise this 10 times for $10 and one time for the real fee. And so I'd like to think that if and as we work the short term rental legislation that if they advertise it 10 times at different rates then if I plan as only should use the most logical rate which probably is the highest but Right. But if we go to average that that kind of violates the kiss keep it simple sailor process because then the reclamation is wait a minute, you're finding me $400 but I advertised it three times in these other publications for $250 I'm you know so I would just keep it my thought is keep everything as simple as we can from an enforcement standpoint but

We're having a hard time right now.

Right.

I've got two in my board that have been a problem for at least a year and they're still renting.

So I think our recommendation here is increase baseline fines for unlicensed short term rentals to $500 per night. And set minimum fine equal to highest to twice to twice the highest advertised nightly rate. That work for you guys?

Works for me if it works for the city attorney. Otherwise, is it clear enough?

It's good. Can you just add a sentence that includes like your your thing that you're basing it on the nightly rental because you're because it's a bigger property that could have more impact on the neighborhood or something along those lines?

So so so the way the way it's written now, somebody could be fined if they rent their short term rental out without a license. They advertise it for 400 and they rent it out and they rent it out for three nights. They could be fined three times 15 plus two times whatever I said the rate was, $400.

That's not how I understand it. What I'm was thinking is you're not you're not double counting. You're doing it as this is the minimum fee. So if in your example well, let's say, not your example. Let's say the example of somebody who has a thousand dollar a night one.

If they were to rent it out for three nights without a license, under current law, they'll be fined $600. Under our upping it to $500 a night law, they would be charged $1,500. Right? Three nights times $500. By adding in this third one or this the second part, setting the minimum fine, We're making it so that they are charged $3,000. What we're doing is just saying, if you're advertising for more than $500 a night, your fine is increasing. Is that?

I would be fine with that because it gets a little too high if you do both. Yeah. But then should it say or among the two options or and then at the end whichever is higher?

It would be the higher of Yeah. A versus b.

Yeah. Because it if you did the three nights plus twice the advertising then you start to cut into their mortgage.

Yeah. And and I think that's how we would phrase it in the actual fine is we typically say this the the higher of the two is how it's typically written. Right? Cool. Okay.

Moving on to thank you, miss Leonard. I think we're good on that topic. I appreciate

stay there if you'd like.

You you can call up and get a cookie if you need.

Might get a cookie.

Yeah. Go ahead.

Easy to eat. Okay.

Please get it.

Okay.

Increasing short term rental registrations for non owner occupied while lowering them relative to proposed for owner occupied. So I'll tell you guys how I submitted this as a budget amendment with not knowing what exactly the number should be. I said bump it up to 700 for non owner occupied and bump it down to 600 for owner occupied. If I think that makes sense. If we if we actually have five times as many non owner occupied as we have owner occupied, would result in us making more money than, frankly, we should on these.

But without knowing the exact numbers from Chris of the breakdown between owner occupied and non owner occupied, I thought it made made sense to just say what we're trying to get at here is split the two.

Makes sense.

Makes sense.

Yeah. So are you guys okay with this as it's written?

Yeah. I'm fine with the number right now. And and maybe we actually even wanna include it as a recommendation. I I would like to to ensure and to the city attorney's point that fees can only cover the cost to the city. But I would like to ensure that we cover all the costs.

Absolutely. And this is one where I think we need to go the extra couple steps to ensure that everybody's costs who have anything to do with this and gasoline to inspect them. Mean, they would really I with the emotion that's involved in the with the residents, I think we need to capture every dime so that the residents writ large aren't paying for this program.

So I'm just I'm happy to add in a amendment because I think we're all in agreement on that and so I'm phrasing it as ensure what you're just saying. Yeah. Which is ensure that STR fees cover full program cost. Alright. The next one that I had put in here was increasing fees for recreation and parks and for the harbor master for nonresidents while lowering for residents. Alderman Thorpe let me know that the harbor master tells us apparently we can't do that for, for nonresidents. Do you know anything about that, miss Graub?

Yes.

And I'll I'll just give you his background. Yep. I started this quest with the trucks and boat ramp as that was a place that we know lots of nonresidents use, and it might make sense to just bifurcate those fees. So you let me know what you know.

So the the boat ramp, we do DNR's rules do apply to that. They do not allow us to charge differently. So there and then they have they they we applied for a fee increase and they have approved that. So we can do the increase. We just can't do it apply it differently between the residents and the non residents.

And so okay. Trucks and park can't do it. And but what about other examples within the Harvard master's office? Would you say, generally speaking, they're all under falling under these DNR rules? Could we gotten program this could because of program open space money. Right? That's

No. I don't I don't believe it's program open space money.

Is this is this law or DNR's rule?

No. It's tied with so I don't believe it's program open space. Although program open space

The watershed.

Does have that. But a lot of the DNR grants of which there's a variety, basically say that if you're taking state monies that you have to sort of apply it equally or you have to get their approval, written approval in advance for a change. I don't have a full I know there is a lot of DNR money of various types on I would say a substantial number of our water related facilities. I don't know if they're all but DNR did send me once a comprehensive list and it's a lot.

For the boat ramp there's one and we have to treat residents and non residents the same. For watershed improvement program grants which we we do our street end improvements with those, our bulkheads, our floating docks, etc. DNR those are DNR again grant related. I believe that is a across the board same. Well there's no fees associated with those anyway but we have city rules like how long you can dock, what size but those are city rules applied to that.

So there's no fees related to that. There's just citations which are not different based on who's docking, who's pulled up their dinghy there. And then we have mooring ball which are DNR again. Some of them but some of the fields are DNR grant funded. Same fees there for everybody. And but then the city operates its ding our mooring balls that the city owns that we put out annual leases on and we do charge differently for that because those aren't DNR funded mooring balls, they're city mooring balls and therefore we can make up our own rules.

Got it. So I'm confused. Can the two of you tell us specifically concerning the Truxtun Park ramp What prevents us from charging out of Annapolis different rates?

That one is definitely a DNR grant. Plus, I think there's program most open space.

I think yeah.

Truxtun has, I believe, both program open space plus additional DNR grant.

So we have used those two funds for Truxtun Park. Right? Is that what you're saying?

Farm Okay. Truxtun Park rather has a that's for sure has a lot of DNR funding tied to it.

Unable to charge different

So I'm gonna delete Harbormaster out of this. Do we think this is still something that's viable for wrecking parks? Yes. Okay.

But but I think you also had there was a fee increase for our mooring balls but that's and which again city could do that. We can increase our mooring ball rate. We're not proposing that. It'd be different for county residents or city residents but we were going proposal was to go from $35 to $40 which is still I think below market rate. I don't think anyone will blink at that. It has those fees have not been increased in ten years. Wow. So we're losing revenue there and they can they do generate quite a bit of revenue. They can be turned over 3 times in a day. So that could it's either $35 three times or $40 three times. And with city dock not being able to have as many people docking there because of construction, we're looking at the mooring balls to generate the revenue from our boating operations.

What would stop us from making the mooring balls for FY '27? 45 versus 35 just as a night, a way to make up for not having dock dockage at City Dock for the season?

I don't think anything prevents us. I think it's a question of the recommendation of the staff.

Yeah, so nothing prevents you from doing that. To make it whatever, dollars 100 a night if you had use if you wanted to. But we think, you know, and it's been ten years. It probably should be $45, even $50. But as far as, you know, people some people that come in are residents that tie up. I've done it. So I'm not a resident, but local area. You know what I mean? So I think the harbor master thought just doing $5 is not gonna cause any heartburn to anybody but if we went up $10 it might. But that's up, you know, you can make it whatever you want.

I would like to agree to give her top cover and make it 45. Go to what you're saying rather than $5 $10. I don't think $45 for a Morin ball is prohibited.

Amendment we could put forward? Yeah. We agree.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't I don't have a a problem with it per se, but I'm not terribly inclined to put it in our recommendation at this point unless we have a particular need to do it. Just because I'm a little wary of we just came up with this idea just now. And also, I'm not sure we would spend the money on. But that's just me being wary more than me saying absolutely no.

I would say that I would support it because I would not support lowering the resident park and rec fee. I do support increasing the non resident park and rec fee. But I believe that park and rec fee is, all told, if we had more revenue, there could possibly be more programming which goes back up to that after care scenario that is one of the priorities of the council.

So, okay. I'm gonna delete this while lowering for residents from the wrecking parks one. I'm fine with getting rid of that. You guys both really want to bump up the mooring ball fee. And I did have in other thoughts that we should better adjust for inflation. So if you guys both wanna do that, I am fine with increasing daily.

City owned?

Yeah. Fee on city owned. Everybody all right with these green recommendations? I'm going to move on to these couple from Autumn and Thorpe. Okay. So we can strike this first one about rental unit license. I'm sorry. Yeah,

yeah. I think if the harbor master is here, she would ask you not city owned. She would use she would ask you to use her

I agree, Alderman, for I think that it people's like, what is the city owned and what is not at that point? So and then there's jockeying for what they think is city owned. We just consider them all city mooring balls. I just would say mooring balls.

Put it with me.

And then if someone decide if we found, you know, the the rare situation where someone actually could install their own mooring ball, then that would be outside of this.

Okay. Failure to maintain a rental unit license, we covered that. So I'm just gonna go ahead and delete this chunk here. And then, yeah, I gotta tell you, Autumn and Thorpe, I'm not a fan of decreasing the red curb once. So I I mean, we could do something. We like, we have in another place where we put in here that it's you guys feel strongly enough that you want to put it in here and we'll just note that I'm dissenting. But I think that's better as an individual amendment if you're okay with that.

Yeah. I'm okay with that.

Do you have it saved before I yeah.

Alderman, I'm sorry, Huntley. I just had a reply from the harbor master and she said that the proposal does include the marina owner so a fine against the both the owner of the house offending house barge and the marina owner. The rationale being that the marina owner allowed them to be there without a permit.

Yeah. It makes total sense to me that the marina owner should be responsible. So okay. Thank you for explaining it. Yeah. The crack Sorry? You're saying they both get fired? Yeah.

That's what the current proposal is. Currently, the citation only goes to the owner of the house barge. The proposal is the owner of the house barge and the marina owner.

How would that happen if that would require a code change?

Yes, would.

Okay. Where is that code change happening?

It's not happening right now. There need to be an amendment for that.

Got it. Okay. Well, it wouldn't even be a budget amendment. It would be we'd have to do something

separate. Yes.

Yeah. Okay. Cool. Sorry. That's fine. Did you have this copied before I knocked it out

of here? Thank you.

Yep. Parking buses, I think that's a great idea. I know it's a little bit specific to Eastport maybe but I see no reason why the committee couldn't endorse this.

I think it I think there's other words that's I think Gianlu's talking about it too. Yeah. So I I yeah. I think this is I mean, and the the thing is they just sit there with their motors running.

Yeah.

And for a $100, it's worth it for them.

Worth it worth it for the AC.

Yeah. I have had residents when I talked to them about this say it should be 500 because the bus driver's not gonna pay for it. The company's gonna pay for it. So the whole goal of increasing this fine is to get the word out that don't park your bus and hang out on the streets of Annapolis.

Totally. So I'm happy to include this in here.

Yes. Way back when when I worked for Watermark Cruises as a salesperson, we were told to very explicitly tell groups coming into the city that buses were not allowed to remain on city streets while their kids were or groups were on tour, that they had to go to the mall or to the park and ride on Riva. And that was actually written into our lease agreement. So I think it's just faltered over the years.

Auditor, Yeah. Do you want to I'm totally supportive of this next one. Do you want to include it here? Would you rather lump it in with your other one about rent curves?

If you all agree, think we I think it should be here.

Okay. I agree. Yeah. I think we should we should delete the part where it says $200 so. Right? Or just to be consistent, we should delete that.

Yeah. Because Yeah. Whatever the number is. Yeah. It should be the same. You're right.

Alderman Huntley, I have one more clarification from Betsy McEwen.

Oh. Getting quick responses. Oh my goodness.

She said that she doesn't know if 10% would be feasible unless Stantec runs the numbers. So we'll have to do that. Run them under different scenarios, whatever you want, accommodation you want done. So she'll just follow you can follow-up with her on that.

Okay. Thanks. Yeah. I'll check with Betsy about it. Like I said, it was, we've had such phenomenal track record of our department directors responding that in one of these hearings when I say, you'll get back to me on that. Right? I didn't even think twice to make sure that they actually had because everybody, within the city had done such a great job.

Just to finish here. Yeah. It says currently is $100 I agree with not putting a final number, but which is different than the number for red curves. Just to be clarified for anybody who reads this.

Sure. Why

are we saying this? All

right. I have a note here that actually I just need to check on this. So we don't really need to discuss it. It's a factual question of whether that 2.6% increase is still true. I think that was just holdover from last year, but I'll check it. So moving on to the mayor's office. Alderman Thorpe, anything you want to highlight for us from this mayor's office part?

I don't think so. Beautiful. Back to and maybe focus on the recommendations since we put somewhere weight on them. The recommendations review what committee meetings are available in person online and determine the value making. So I I went and looked on the YouTube channel as to how many people have watched some of the meetings and there's a bunch of them that only five people have ever watched. And having heard the team talk about the strain that it puts on us, As I wrote here, I'm wondering if that's a continuation of COVID and and you know maybe we need to not lean so far into that and give it a try.

Yeah. I totally agree.

Yeah. I'm fifty fifty. Prior to COVID, many of the committees and commissions were not broadcast. You had a meeting. Since COVID, due to many of the meetings being broadcast, new things have come to light for us to know about.

I don't have to point out any one but there are a few that where before it was never recorded. And I know that administration is working on revamping some of the commission rules and regulations and asking that those commissions go to at least quarterly in person meetings because it's really important I think you lose some of the effectiveness of a committee if it's only on Zoom.

And I think it's a case by case and now with Laura Richards focused on this as she is and all that, there might be a case where the department director it's inconvenient for them to get here for a personal in person meeting so the decision is made to put it online. So I think it's case by case but I think right now the default is we just broadcast them all.

Right. I do think it needs to be studied and take a closer look at it.

Yeah. I don't really need

to add. I did oh, go ahead. I was gonna go to second bullet unless you wanna Yeah.

Nope. Nope. Nope. I had a question.

So second bullet, I thought I was trying to capture the the, concern that the city council had expressed with the deputy chief of staff. I think that almost doesn't need to be said, but it we're saying in our council report, finance committee report. Same thing with the ombudsman. And then the fourth one might be a little personal on my part. I don't think it's well defined and I submitted a request back in November and I don't have an answer yet. So the council went to great effort to put $3,000 per council member and there's no guidelines for it. Makes sense.

I agree with all of them.

Yeah. If I was going to quibble, I agree with the ombudsman thing, but I'm not sure it's super relevant to the budget. But I I probably shouldn't even say anything because I don't need to quibble. It's I defer to you.

No. No. But I think that's a great point that we ought to make sure we stay to the budget. My point is is we funded the the the position. Yeah.

Alright. Officer law is not terribly, interesting. No offense, Ashley. It's you know, that's it's like the finance department. You don't want them to be interesting.

When they're interesting, that's when we have problems. But I did update, the stats that Carrie shared because I I thought they were interesting. I noted the increase in budget, like, why the salaries and benefits were over budget even though we have significant vacancies. I also called out that the county's management of municipal elections is getting expensive. I think that's a place that if you just look in the budget, you'd see all the elections areas going up, and it's important to recognize why.

It's because the county is charging us more. And at some point, it probably just becomes more cost effective to run them ourselves. So I wanted to highlight that. But the only recommendation is updating the fee schedule for the hourly rate. And that's something, sorry, for the hourly rate of an MPIA request.

And that's something that is already in the well, actually, maybe miss Leonard can jump in here. In the proposed fee schedule, it bumps it up from, I think, 30 to $35 an hour. And what we heard from Carrie in the office of law was we wanna make sure we're capturing the full cost of people doing that. And, at the risk of very much putting you on the spot, I think that we're probably talking about more than $35 for an hour of your time. And so, I want to make sure I wanna what I'm trying to understand is do we need to change it further from what is proposed to get to that goal of fully recovering the time?

I'd I haven't looked at recently. I'd like to look at other jurisdictions. I know a couple years ago when we looked, they were basing it less on a flat rate and more on who was actually doing it. Keeping in mind they had limitations in like so for if you don't need a lawyer to do it then you don't have the lawyer do it kind of thing. But other jurisdictions I believe the last time I checked do sort of acknowledge that there's different levels of like cause we're talking about the search and preparation fee is what we're talking talking about.

There's a different level between like, you know, how much time IT needs to pull emails, how much time is needed for a lawyer to legally review and redact things versus someone just gathering you know like basic low level documents. There's a different workload on that. And other jurisdictions I believe reflect sort of if you need a higher paying individual to do something that that's reflected in the fee cost.

So yeah, that that is our goal. And I think the way the recommendation is written is clear on what our goal is. I wanna understand whether what's in the proposed fee increases

30

cover set?

35 is I mean, the reality is the office of law does most of the heavy lifting on it. So 35 is better than 30, but it's still not. I don't actually know off the top of my head what my hourly rate is, but I don't believe that's close to it.

So I think it is worthwhile to include this as a recommendation and work with the city attorney and the budget team on what would covering the the cost actually be. So anybody wanna talk about that more?

Yeah. The only thing would point out is a lot of these recommendations, I think this is one that we ought to really get a number for to go forward.

I mean, want to look at what other jurisdictions in the state are doing before I would make a solid number recommendation. And then some of it is I think some of them they actually just put it's like the rate up. So instead of putting a dollar amount in and it's a prorated amount of like like the hourly rate. And so then the staff person would have to look up their hourly rate and do the proper proration.

Yeah. But are you saying that you want to be able to write in here $42 or 43?

Yeah. That's that's what I'm saying. I mean, I think and I think this is a philosophical question too. It's I like exactly what you're saying is what do other jurisdictions do. We don't wanna make it so expensive that nobody requests information. But on the other hand, if if it costs $60 to do it or whatever, we ought to we ought to ensure that that we're charging the right amount. So what I'm saying is if it's possible, we ought to put a number in here, not by tonight.

Okay. But That was all I was getting at.

Yeah. Not by tonight, but but but for the the actual pass in the budget, we should work to to make sure that that we have a number to put into the into the

I I can look into it. I also am curious. Most of, honestly, most of the time burners are email searches. So I'm curious if any jurisdictions have broken those out. Because it's not that hard to find most normal documents. It's the email searches that are very time intensive and heavy.

Autumn and Thurber, if you wanna figure out a way to write what you said into this, I'm totally fine with it. Something along can charge the actual hourly rate of the employee fulfilling the MPIA request parenthesis encoded in the fee schedule. Because what you're saying is you don't wanna write down actual hourly rate. You wanna write down $45 an hour or $60 an hour. That's totally fine

for me. Or whatever. I mean, if if it's a range, I'm not if it's a range because sometimes when you submit a request, I've seen answer that come back that says yes we will do that according to the rules the rate could be between $50 $20 and $100 This is going to cost $80 or whatever. So whatever, I don't want to drive the way you do it, but if possible, this would be a good one just to wrap up in the next couple days so that we actually put it here. And it might be exactly what you got.

I made myself a note.

Okay. Let's keep moving because we got a half hour left and we do have kind of hard stop in that we gotta get this formatted and pretty. So on to city manager.

Okay. All good news. Rule the challenge could be made a recommendation, but I wanted to make sure that we noted the amount of effort being put by the onboarding that's going on of senior staff. We've already starting to see project to process improvement initiatives. And I wanted to make sure we note that with the new city manager, it it brings the deputy city manager back to the business of performance metrics. I didn't think that was a recommendation because she's already tracking it.

Yeah. But it's a it's a great point to make though.

Yeah. Resiliency and sustainability commented that Citi Doc is in progress and on track. And and I took to heart the brief that completed the climate action plan and the greenhouse gas emissions. Challenges, I think they really haven't changed a lot and committee recommendations provide fiscal year twenty seven performance measures relative to stated benchmarks and provide city council updates on the leaf blower rebates and enforcement. We talked about doing a work session.

Okay. Alright. And you got my 20% raise? I didn't hear it.

She she wanna make sure we included a recommendation for her race.

We had talked about 60%.

What was your recommendation? I like that one, Frank. Yeah.

Alright. Harbormaster, any questions on that one, Harbormaster? Harbormaster, real kudos for the amount of work they've done for their flexibility with everything that's going on at City Dock and not to be forgotten, all the work they did on house barges. Challenges continue to work with with the City Dock effort as well as ongoing changes in the mooring and and docking. And also the temporary op working in a temporary office space and same thing really zeroing in on on creating goals and objectives for the performance measures.

I wanted to note for resilience and sustainability if it's something that you're not aware of, our highest priority for the city manager's office in general is making sure that we have money allocated to the second environmental program manager that we hired in the past year that was made us that was a civil service position which he intended to make a permanent position but last year when we hired that person that money came from unused salary from the city manager's office. So it definitely needs to have be something that we include in our permanent salaries. Just highlighting that for you.

Yeah. Generally, our recommendations are only if we're suggesting we do something different than what's in the mayor's proposed budget. Okay. So that's and that is in the proposed budget.

It is

in the proposed. I just wanted to make sure you're aware of that because the funding source, it was confusing to some people at first, some of the members of council.

Okay. Great. Totally supportive of those recommendations.

Yeah. Community services.

You're up.

Good news, rebranding, increase in training, challenges. Still there's a very high demand for rental and utility assistance, but the funding is projected to decrease. Grant funding decreased by 10% even though requests were higher than in FY '26. And they talked about a challenge of repeat clients and trying to find solutions to help people better understand financial literacy and opportunities for growth versus coming back to the city time and time again. I said our recommendations were, again, in that repeat client solving that, partnering with nonprofits to offer education and financial literacy, create a process to make the housing assistance funds last longer, which they were already working on.

In the budget, we are budgeted to bring them a new case management software package.

I just wanted to actually clarify that one. Is the case management software already in the mayor's budget or are you suggesting? Yeah, it is.

Yeah. Was one of the positives that they said that the enhancement that they had received.

So can we just make that clear in the recommendation? It's something like, you know, I agree with just say to Mitch Guild just now, we don't put it in there unless it's Yeah. Not

agree with the implementation of the case management software. How's that? And then my last recommendation was outside of the budget process or somebody's recommendation, which I agree with. Rewrite the community grants code to focus more on funding, catalytic funding.

Yeah. That was my that phrase catalytic is you guys cool with what I mean by that? You understand what I'm saying there? That we give them money so that they don't need our money in the future?

I think we should spell that out.

I think

it should be focused more on self sustaining, becoming self sustaining?

Yep. To focus more on funding that can enhance self sustainability.

Yeah. Perfect.

Or support. So support self sustain. I'm great with all of those. Alderman Thorpe, want to talk about central services? Sure.

Super impressed with central services brief and the amount of work that they've gone to. I do think they are underestimating the improvements in both savings, productivity, and efficiency. And I think time will tell as they do that. I think he's working through the personnel changes. And I I spoke to to the director, then I spoke to the city manager.

They're not necessarily in sync. So I think there's a couple different chess moves that he's got to figure out. I'm not so on the risk manager position, he was able to explain to me a lot better what the risk manager was. So for instance, he explained maintenance had not been done on air conditioners for many years and there was nobody looking at what the risk was to that. So it's across the board facilities wise as to where we should be doing preventive maintenance and things like that.

So I I definitely see the need for that risk manager capability as well as I think as Buckland was pointing out fire drills and things like that. So I would not, I see the addition of the third one. I think we need to hear what the city manager and the mayor want to do with this department because I think it's all over the map right now. And so I would hesitate to move the chess pieces for him because I think there's six chess pieces, seven chess pieces. The original budget funds two, funds three.

He said he would give up those three for another two. And then the risk manager or the real estate position is a consultant and he's saying I'd rather have the risk manager be at whatever. So there's a whole bunch of moves. I, it's, it's a, it's of my mind in talking to the city manager, they're putting a lot of effort into this as to figure out where the chess pieces should be. So I don't have a position on them and I think they're sorting it out. My take is they're the best qualified to say that.

Yeah, I'm pretty darn opposed to the idea of having that risk manager. I mean every justification that we've heard for it feels like it can't possibly, the the benefit that they are suggesting will come from it can't be anywhere near the cost for it. Like, fire drills? I mean, we of course, we should do fire drills. Absolutely. No two ways about it. Do we need a $135,000 a year position to do fire drills? No. I don't think so. I feel pretty confident we do not.

And yet, I see all the time how not having a real estate manager harms our ability to negotiate leases. It harms our ability to, get right of way for city projects. And because it means more work falls to you're sitting right here, so I'll point to you, miss Leonard. It means that things that wouldn't even be under this position's purview, like a guy trying to negotiate easement on his land leads to ends up taking longer. So I I am actually would go even further than what I think on the road here and say, we should totally get rid of the risk manager position, fund a full on real estate manager.

There's a slight difference in cost there, which I think we can offset with happens to be almost exactly the cost difference between the deputy chief of staff as originally proposed and what that'll actually cost. And then that frees up a $100,000 of one time money for something else. So my recommendation would be get rid of it entirely. We could either say, we all three have different positions on this, and so we shouldn't include it. Or we could say, I'm over here. Alderman Thorpe's over here. Alderman O'Neill's kind of in the middle of us. Perhaps we take her position.

Yeah. So I literally am not having talked to him at length about this and then talked to Ms. Buckland about it. Don't feel that it's more complicated than one or the other. And they've actually, they're looking at a plan in central services to, I think, propose to the city council a change that will actually overall save revenue taking into account adding subtracting billets as well as moving the real estate manager from.

So should

our amendment be that we don't support the risk management position?

City government is already too risk averse. I'm all over that.

Well, so yeah. So that's the problem. And I talked to Matt about this, the title of the job. There's a lot of things that aren't getting done and I'm not arguing for or against it because I don't have my notes in front of me. He went through this great analysis and then Ms. Buckley went through the they've got they are wired on this. So my concern is for me to weigh in on either one of just these two when they actually fit into a bigger chessboard. That's my concern.

I understand that. But in the interest of time and the fact that our budget amendments are due today, and we could drop an amendment but we could not necessarily add an amendment until after the budget has gone through. If we support not funding that position

Yeah. Just to your point, I submitted an amendment on that from me. So I don't think we're under necessarily the constraint of we can't do it because you can only just vote for mine. But, yeah. But I mean, on the merits, I agree with you that we should just include as a recommendation

that we're safe in that because that way the budget doesn't go forward with it there and we are able to talk about a reallocation of.

Yeah. I think it's not gonna matter in the end. So I think if you two wanna express your concern about it through this, I'm fine with that. And and I'm fine with it because I know there's all this work that they're gonna that that the mayor's office, city manager is gonna come to us with a hey. Here's the entire it's gonna

It's gonna be an amendment Right. To the proposed budget.

Right. Because what's in the budget now that won't stand. They don't want it to stand.

Right. So I believe if we take the position that our recommendation is we remove the risk manager position from the budget at this time, It should be our recommendation.

Yeah. Standalone is that. I think that's a great discussion.

Move for its manager position. Do you want to include and create real estate manager position? That that would be my preference. But if you don't feel strongly If

you if you believe that, I would split it into two. Don't connect. Sure. That's fine with me.

Excuse me.

Yes. Can I clarify which position you're speaking of? Are you talking about the risk management specialist position?

Yes, the new one. Thank you for clarifying that. Risk manager.

Management specialist.

Management specialist. Thank you. And create real estate manager position specialist. Alderman Thorpe, do you want me to note on here abstain for you? Okay.

And

I don't know why it was it's colored brown on there when it was supposed to be purple.

It's because you were suggesting in purple. So it's yeah.

Thank you. Yep.

Okay. Human resources, they will tell you they did not request any enhancements, and so I did not have any recommendations to them. The that department has been working through having an acting director. I think it's not really the time to make significant changes. Alderman Thorpe suggested adding the city city's onboarding process needs to be significantly improved. I agree with that assessment. I suggested having a little bit more clear like, phrasing this more around what's wrong. So if you have something you can come up with off the top of your head, that'd great about the onboarding process. Like if we can put it more in the form of the challenge is

Didn't I say something? So

oh. Oh, that's great. Yeah. So how about needs a defined process? We could say the city's onboarding process needs a defined process and timeline.

To be clearly defined and included timeline.

And I would open up the idea of changing it from a challenge to a recommendation. I think the most important time in employee time at an organization they need to knock their socks off right from the start. And if it goes to the criteria of city council work session, I'd be honest with you, I'd be game for asking the new HR person to you got three months to come tell us what.

Yeah. So as it was written, I felt like it was not written as a challenge, but I'm perfectly happy with just moving it down to and having that covered. ITS, I I actually did rewrite a lot of their section here. So I just wanna remember if there's anything I put. No.

I don't think there's anything listed that you wouldn't have seen otherwise. Oh, I did put in this point about having not yet developed the internal AI usage policy, which I find And then as for recommendations, so this third one actually is maybe the only one we should talk about. This is something I want, but I'm perfectly happy with it just being a Harry amendment rather than a finance committee amendment. Do you two feel like you agree with this and it's it's worthwhile to include as a general, as a finance committee amendment?

I would say that as a recommendation in our lexicon and structure, it won't have a lot of meat to it unless we I would support an amendment that tasks the staff to I don't think we want to write it this way, but to spend $10,000 But to put $10,000 into looking into AI systems. I mean, our reaction to Mr. Jakubiak when all three of us wanted to jump off of the dais here and hug him. I think I think if the city council wants to do this, we should put skin in the game. So I would take it a step farther and and make that, like, an amendment.

Yeah. And I and I did submit an amendment for that. What I'm suggesting yes. So, yes. I submitted an amendment for that. And what I was saying is just like, it's is this niche enough that it should just be my amendment or do you guys both support it and wanna include it in the finance committee's recommendations?

You've already submitted it, correct? Yeah. So then it would be a double submission?

Yeah. So I'm I'm fine with it not being let's not go to this extra work.

Okay. I'm just gonna delete it. Cool.

Is there any chance, Alderman Huntley, that you and I could convince alderwoman O'Neil to support a one per actually, I'm looking at alderwoman O'Neil. Is there any chance we could get you to support that? In in my discussions with the director of central services, I think this is more of a mindset than anything else. We heard over and over from every department that their budgets were cut because of consolidation. And I fully understand that one of the things that was consolidated was like the BG and E bill, which we're not gonna get any volume discount. But I thought we were.

I thought that was like the example that director Flinner said they were already negotiating. It it doesn't

matter. Yeah.

So

my my point being though is I think I think the residents are looking for us to to get savings. And, I haven't had a chance to watch it, I'm getting the link of when this was was proposed. And I just think we need a mindset that we challenge the staff that part of this consolidation is saving money. Now I fully agree that if if the city manager and the mayor come to us and say we actually are increasing by 2% because by consolidating, we found that we needed three other software items to spend that I would support that. But I think from a mindset leadership management decision, think we need to drive them to saving money.

Philosophically I think that that's what they're doing by moving it to central services. Don't I think that we can realize the savings until we have actual data to prove that. And I don't think we'll have actual data to prove that for at least six to eight months into the new budget. So that's where I didn't want to pretend we had these savings that then we have to do a fund transfer to cover the cost of what we thought was going to be saved or whatever. If we end up saving money and we have money that we could put towards another opportunity later on in the year, I think that that's great and I think that's a discussion for later.

But I don't think you can start a budget with hopefully we're saving. That's that's why I dissent.

Okay. I give on the dissent. Keep it in.

Okay. Keep moving. And then but actually to that point, I do think we should have this recommendation be aligned between ITS and central services because we're we're doing essentially the same thing which in central services we wrote determine significant cost savings that result from creation of this department. But doing the same thing here. My suggestion is just that they be parallel.

Yeah. I think the difference is my level of confidence that the city is gonna come forward with a with a cut in central services is pretty high. I haven't dug as deep into IT. So what I'm sitting here thinking is is, again, what action does this with with the dissent, I'm thinking that there is no finance committee amendment at 1% because we're not unanimous. So maybe I should submit an amendment to reduce expenses by 1% by x number of dollars.

So I think, I do think a little bit it's apples and oranges because we don't, to Aldo Woman O'Neill's point, we don't know that other than the conversation we had, the philosophical discussion when the director of ITS was here. So

Okay. That's fine. If you if you see a distinction. So we're deleting both. Sorry. Did I mess you up?

Yeah. Hit control z so I can copy and paste it. There you go.

And, Alderman Thorpe, we should Wait.

I I think you should keep it in here that Alderman O'Neil descends. Okay. Right? Is that I

don't know.

Is that our lexicon or do we need unanimous?

No. We've had in it is my approach is, ultimately, we are governed by majority. And so if there's something that we think is important that there's a majority but not unanimity on, we should include it. And I I've taken that position in the past even when I was the one in the minority. But, it's always nice when we can have consensus. Yeah. I think it's worthwhile to include. Alright. Finance department, has some challenges due to low relatively low staff. My recommendations so first of all, Alderman Thorpe put in this one about put processes and placing complete ACFR.

Totally support that. Makes great sense. It'll make our budget easier next year. I think also everyone will agree about ensuring the debt service for f y twenty seven matches bonds that are actually issued, just because we had lower debt service than we thought we would in '26. We wanna try and tighten up all those numbers. The one that needs more explaining is this increased contingency fund ones. Con funds one. So first of all, I just don't think the contingency funds that are in this budget are adequate. We have three about $300,000 in the contingency fund. We overspent on snow removal by 60% more than that.

Their $300,000 for something coming up just strikes me as laughably low. Now it's hard to make the argument of, boy, I'm going to cut something I really care about and put money into well, what if something bad happens? Like, that's a a tough decision for anybody to make. So ultimately, this is going to hinge on where do we get the funding from. I do think, and I submitted an amendment on this that I've been working on the finance with the finance director.

I do think that we should calculate vacancy savings for more departments than just police and planning and zoning. And so that would be a very straightforward way to increase the contingency funds. Was a long explanation. But I hope you guys can agree that it is worthwhile to increase the contingency funds recognizing that that of course requires some pay for.

So I totally agree with you philosophically. My concern is to get from May 11 to a budget. I'm concerned that one, we can do it and two, we can do it without with the right amount of granularity in the effort. I totally agreed with the conversation this morning in the financial advisory commission that you led. And so the way I look at it, really commend the finance department for getting us to this part of the process of the budget.

And I think there's a desire in the finance department to do exactly what you're saying. But I think it's a it's a significant change to the way the city's been doing budgets for a long time. And so with the new finance director, with the new mayor, with the new city manager, We budget right now very conservatively and then we use the money next year that we saved. Think I know I agree with your sentiment this morning at the financial advisory commission, but I'm just worried if we make this shift in the next thirty days, what we end up doing to the finance department. I

Yeah. So so let me be clear. The recommendation is not put vacancy savings in. I I purposefully didn't include that as the finance committee recommendation because I

That's that's what I that's that was my worries. That's you were do you were doing.

Yeah. No. No. I I I totally think it's a good idea. I do think we can do it in the next month, but I intentionally did not write that as the committee's recommendation because I figured we did not have unanimity on it. What this recommendation is is just saying $300,000 is too low for contingency funds. And if we start putting in vacancy savings, it's definitely too low.

Yeah. So what I'm saying is I agree with you that the $300,000 is too low especially when your point about snow and other things. But it's not too low because of how conservative we budget and over years we have significant like millions of dollars. And I think the discussion that you had this morning about looking at that whole thing that I think contingency should be higher and we should be budgeting more accurately. But I just don't think we can get there in the next thirty days.

I would be, to me it would seem to, if we increase the contingency without becoming less conservative across the board, we're just increasing the excess that we're going to have a year from now. Whereas I think your sentiment this morning and today is that the financial advisor commission and now talking to the finance committee, we'd like to become less conservative on our budgeting I. E. More, maybe better say, more accurate in our budgeting which would cause us to require ourselves to have a higher contingency because we're taking more risk. So that's a long way of saying that I don't know that I want to put more money into contingency to raise that but I definitely think the sentiment is there across the board and we have the people coming into place to do it when the new finance directors identify and all that to quite frankly I think not only is there a city council work session, but I think we should direct as a city council to budget more accurately.

Yes, I mean it's a question of how soon should we do this. I feel like we can very straightforwardly come up with a metric. I feel like I have come up with a metric for how we can calculate this. And I hear your concern that we have a month left, but I also think we got a whole month. We can figure it out to say we there's a relatively straightforward way to do this. So we're gonna look at the the average for your budgets and salaries over the past however many years. We're gonna throw out any outliers and then we're going to apply that discount rate to your budget and salaries now.

Can I respectfully point something out?

Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead.

We have a new HR director coming in who's gonna drive the hiring process a lot harder. We have a new city manager coming in. So I'm not sure that the data based on the last two or three years, four years gives me the confidence to use that data to budget going forward. And we've had a significant amount of turnover. And so I agree with you philosophically except for I just think that there's a different, you know, I'm guessing a year from now we're going to have one senior vacancy.

Maybe. Maybe zero. But Right. But I think

the point of this is not to address senior vacancies. The point of this is to say if public works has 60 general fund employees on average, how many of them are we missing in a year? It's not it's not is there a vacancy at the top. It's and what you're saying could still apply, but I think there's the the what we're trying to do here is get at the savings that don't have a lot of variation.

And my my I'm sorry to interrupt you. But my point is I've had directors express frustration to me that they did all the paperwork ready for the hiring month after month after month. It never happened. And my point is I think that's gonna change.

Sure.

Yeah. Mean I think I I I'd like the city council to be I'd like the finance director to report on a monthly basis the number of vacancies we have. I think that's a huge I mean, all members of city council have, in some way, shape, or formed, mentioned why why isn't this person been hired that the city council said to hire. And I think that's an important metric, and I think I think we're gonna drive to it. Anyway, that

So let me let me suggest a different way of phrasing this. And you guys tell me well, we haven't heard from you at all, Paulo Romano. Do you have thoughts on how I've written this so far before I propose something different?

Gonna propose something different? I believe that the contingency fund should be higher. We should have the expectation of if we were over by this year, then we will equally be by that much because they did not increase the storm removal budget in DPW. That's just one example. So if

Well, now I don't wanna change it. It sounds like you just agreed with me. No. What I was gonna suggest that I think could satisfy all parties is saying this as increase the precision of our budgeting process, which would likely require increasing contingency funds.

Is

that okay? Yep.

I mean just to be clear, one reason I love it, it doesn't do anything in the next thirty days.

I mean, I think it could. They could find it.

Yeah. If you need an amendment. Yeah. That increases the contingency fund by x number.

Okay. And you leave it up

to them.

Yeah. Okay. I'll increase the precision of our budgeting process which would require an Alright. We are, at time, but I think we need to get this done. So, Otto Roman O'Neill. Oh, no. Sorry. Frank, you're up.

So really quick. I applaud planning and zoning for the metrics they put in their brief which were tremendous. I think we need to live by those metrics. And and a recommendation, as I stated earlier, when we all jumped for joy about the AI capability, I think we're all we're good to go.

Great.

End of brief.

Keeping it fast. Beautiful. Ottawa O'Neil Police Department.

Police Department. I tried to keep it short and sweet. They good news. 640 community outreach. They have increased their clearance rates for top what I call most violent of happening so they're well above the national average for doing that.

They have continued to have challenges with staffing and filling vacancies and recruitment. My recommendation is strive towards 100% occupancy of sworn officers. I know there's been a lot of questions about is our 126 an actual number or should it be the 135 that would account for our adequate public facilities number? I believe it's 135. 132.

Somewhere around there.

Exactly. So the only other recommendation would be what would be the difference if we actually put the number of officers in that is the national requirement which I believe is 135? If we wanted to add that as a recommendation.

I would not. Strive towards 100% occupancy of sworn officers, I feel is a great goal. I feel like maybe we can say that a little more clearly. Strive towards 100% or maybe say strive towards 0% vacancy for its warrant officers. Sure. Is that I know what you're getting at, but I'm just not sure the public would understand vacancy for a sworn officer position.

Everybody good with this? Nope. Do you think I left anything out?

I don't same boat. There was a lot of discussion about drones and, speed cameras, and are we we don't need to put that in there. I don't think we need it. I'm not saying we should,

but

just to make sure that the sentiment our sentiment is communicated.

I mean, If if you all three agree on we support the drone editions and red light camera editions, let's just write that.

Yeah. Speed cameras.

Well, they're doing they're doing both. Right. You want speed camera but not red light? No. I would

I I want speed more than red light, but I would gave for both.

Okay. I'm gonna just write speed. So strongly support program and speed.

Fire department response times continue to meet or exceed national standards. In this budget, it does fund the peak unit as discussed. There was a question for me on that. While it's good news, there's also an earmark by the county to partially fund it which we can't count on, but I didn't know how to put that in here. Because if we realize that savings of 258,250 let's call it 250,000.

If we actually get that passed through the county, where would that savings be allocated? Which could kind of come to I know that there was a lot of amendments in regard to the CIT budget and perhaps they're realized there. Challenges that 2,900,000 in overtime needed more office space that was not approved in the budget, and the way EMS billing changes are taking place, it could reduce overall department revenue.

Would you be okay with me adding or slow growth at the end of that? Reduce or slow growth?

I see the committee's recommendations about the full accounting of all the costs and revenue from the peak time.

Yeah. So I wrote that, and I'm happy to explain it if you'd like. So what I was getting at there is partially what you're saying that we have this county revenue, which to me, it makes sense. And I don't know if maybe miss Flaherty or or miss Turner can weigh in on it. But to me, it makes perfect sense to include that even if it's not in our hands.

I think we can trust the county executive's word. It also doesn't include any estimate of the revenue from EMS billing. And then there are also some costs that I think are left out. We don't see any increase to repair and maintenance for the units or for the uniforms. And so I I put together what I thought was as best I could a whole cost revenue whole cost revenue accounting of the Peak Time Medic unit.

And my preference is to include doesn't have to be like my thing is perfect. But include as many of the costs and revenues as we expect rather than as we so often do including doing it in the most conservative way possible. So, what I'm getting at is it should all be in there.

I can confirm that the calls, all of the calls for the unit are included. They were included with the enhancement request. And I believe the fire chief spoke to the revenue side of it that it would not increase the EMS billing revenues because it's what they're currently doing with what the staff they have now. So if anything, it may reduce some of the overtime, but, I believe he spoke to that as well saying that that wouldn't reduce it either. That's why it was not included.

So what I heard from him for as to why the the revenue from medical billing was not necessarily getting included is that we wouldn't have people on day one. We wouldn't we might not actually get it going until six months from now. But we're paying for the people as though we're having them on day one. So to me, we should just be consistent with the cost and revenue. Either we expect this to happen in six months or we don't. And we should try and have both of those things match that.

So we do have historically, we always, budget two months of vacancy payments for all new positions.

Oh, okay.

We forgot to include that in the budget, but it will be coming forth as an amendment to do so. However, we did not do six months. We only did two months.

Sure. Mean, I'm fine with whatever is realistic. I just think we should

Yes. That's fair.

And and similarly, if we think this will be operational two months in, then we should start getting the revenue two months in. We should just discount that by one six. And miss Turner, I just want to dig in. You said all the costs were included in the budget enhancement, but I think the budget enhancement only went to salaries and benefits and to the actual medic unit. Wasn't there what what about the line items for repair and maintenance? Those didn't seem like they went up.

The the they include, if they feel what they're asking for is exceeds what they propose for their repair and maintenance account, they include it. Outside of that, the request for the build of the position, the personnel enhancement, includes anything of that position that may be an expense as well. So it's the cost of the position, the benefits, any training and education, cell phones, any expenses that come along with that position as well.

Uniforms? Yes.

Okay. I'm sorry. I'm digging into this still. But the repair and maintenance for vehicles in f y twenty six was $776,500 for the fire department. We're gonna have a new vehicle next year. We're gonna have two new vehicle. Well, one's a replacement, but we're gonna have on that one new. And we're only increasing it by a little under $8,000. Is that really, like, a realistic estimate?

If it's a new vehicle, I wouldn't expect it to have high expenses for the first year. It would be in FY twenty

eight. Okay. I I still think we could say include full accounting of cost of revenue, and we can kind of hammer out exactly what that is and just like we're doing now. Mhmm. But

I'm fine with that.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you, miss Turner. I feel like I was kinda grilling you there. I didn't mean to.

Not at all.

Fine? Can we go?

Sabrina doesn't like it. Yeah. Go ahead.

Alright. I'm

sorry. Alderman Thorpe, did you have something else for fire? No. No. Go ahead.

OEM, good news. They helped with city doc funding, coordinated the emergency response to Stormfern, and there's we've seen a significant reduction in total overall overdoses? Total overdoses, sorry. The biggest challenges are federal grants that have not materialized and in an increase in festivals, events, and parades which add planning hours and workload to the staff. If that trend remains, the department will need to request more staff for FY '28.

But the director seemed to think that he was covered in FY '27. So we did convert three positions from grant funded positions into the operating budget.

And so no recommendations.

Do you have any other recommendations?

You got anything? Any last recommendations we need Mr. Mandel since you're here? I'll just repeat for the record what deputy director Mandel said which was essentially appreciated the council supporting the positions that had previously been federally funded but had not received that money.

Yes.

Okay. No recommendations. Keeping it easy. Yeah. Public works. That should be easy. Right, Alderman Thorpe?

Yeah.

A lot of good news coming out of public works. The city doc and FEMA grant, the two big ones, as well as the effort to revise the storm water utility fee structure and the fee reduction program for nonresidential properties. The traffic safety concept designs for West Street, Edgewood, and Hilltop. I wanna commend them. I think we should commend them for the clear results based on data driven performance metrics the public works has.

And, and I thought it was noteworthy to to, on the good news, tremendous response to the major snow and ice storm. Road surfacing and and exceeded benchmarks for high quality and safe drinking water is something we take for granted, quite a bit. On challenges, I think throughout the briefings, was discussion. This goes to the point number one on the top of the the report about visible improvements as well as the essential infrastructure and Alderman Huntley, I I agree with your addition of such a sewer mains. Think that's a that's a great great point.

Yeah. I just wanted to point out what less visible looks like because I think Yep. In a lot of cases, we were saying the infrastructure is the visible thing. Yep.

And then just shooting down to committee recommendations. I think what we heard during the briefings was that director Vogel tried to save a couple dollars on his technology for snow removal and I think it's the sentiment of the finance committee that we fully fund that technology improvement. The recommendation to support the challenges up there that emphasis on resource on visible infrastructure. Continue to provide a quarterly update. I think that's been very valuable and as and I didn't mention in here, probably could have and if you guys wanna go back and put it in there.

There appears to be a lot of effort going into clarifying and cleaning up the CIP projects and reducing them and and consolidating them. And I don't know that it needs to be added, but but I think that will make our quarterly updates, much more important. And then, we didn't talk about it at length, but I do think it's the sentiment of the committee that we would like to see more resources, spent and and work and amount of time and effort on street cleaning. And it will be the only place in here that it's mentioned.

Yeah. And I appreciated the fact that director Vogel had indicated that the snow plow software, could be utilized by the street cleaners. Yeah. I think that that's something that I've asked for for five years. Just get a heads up. Let me know. Next week, the street cleaners could be on my street. So I think that that's an important part of also agreeing to that software upgrade for them.

I had one little thing I wanted to change in this which was just, where we save response to major snow and ice storm. It's just tremendous. I maybe suggest we switch that to impressive in that public works response was impressive. They worked very hard. We were all impressed with how hard they worked. At the same time, I think if I went around town and asked residents to rate the response, they would not rate it as tremendous in terms of the the outcomes that they experienced. You okay with it impressive or you wanna disagree?

I would lean towards tremendous. I wouldn't stand for railroad tracks. I mean, I think as we were all trying to dig out of it, I think we thought it was horrible because of the inconvenience and the problems it caused. But I think as we look back and we saw the reports of the after action and the severity of the storm, Now to your point, you know, we could have tremendous response to major snow. I I'd be fine with impressive, but I I also put in their tremendous kudos for their acknowledgment and effort to improve what didn't go right.

And so maybe if you wanted to go with impressive response to snow and ice storm and commitment to improve or maybe tremendous and commitment to improve that which needs to be improved or something like that.

Impressive, Imprendis. Boy, talk about splitting the difference. Impressive response to major snow and ice storm and tremendous commitment to improve where there are opportunities to do so. Work for you? Yeah. It'll work for me. Cool. I just don't wanna get pilloried for that later. I bunch of people who are who are not happy with the the response. As as hard as we all agree, public works worked on it. There's a distinction between how much effort went in and and the results coming out. So any changes to the recommendations or other parts of the public works? K. Alright. Moving on to Rec and Parks.

These guys' presentation was well suited for our format here of good news and challenges. I did include as a challenge that we did not see targets for revenue growth. Maybe there's a better way to phrase that but I think that that was a real challenge that we heard. You want a better got a better way to phrase it?

I would just delete the word growth. Sure. You know, I mean, didn't see any targets for revenue. Yeah. Period. I mean, whether we want growth or not. And and I would argue some places we maybe don't want growth. Yep. In this area.

So as far as recommendations, I heard loud and clear that, we wanna see more maintenance to our parks. I tried to leave some, wiggle room, uncertainty on this both in exactly how we should spend that money and where we should get it from, but I made some suggestions. And then this one about establish maintenance schedules for parks to set public expectations. That was from Aldo Roman O'Neill, and I think that's a great idea. And then I let you guys work on the Harbor House pool part. So

Oh, look. We get to the pool, establish published maintenance schedules for parks to set public expectations. I think there's another part of that too which is my understanding is there's a tremendous backlog and I never saw a report on what the maintenance back. And I think that should be a required report. Especially the backlog that is beyond the lifecycle or the plan or whatever.

I get what you're saying. I think we're talking about two slightly different things.

Right.

I do too. You're you're talking more about facilities and I'm talking more about parks. And because you're talking about buildings not being maintained. Right?

Well, across the board, not just buildings, but other maintenance, ball courts, and all that. So you're right. I agree with you. It's different. Yeah. It can be a different bullet here but

Yeah. I agree with adding that bullet as a recommendation to for the department to create a report that does talk about the schedule for facilities. And facilities meaning ballparks, gymnasiums.

Provide committee with report on deferred facilities maintenance.

To me it's almost as important as public works quarterly report on CIP because if fences, if things aren't being repaired in parks and recs because of a lack of resources, we should know about that on a quarterly basis. And I understand there being a maintenance backlog and there probably should be by philosophy. But I'd like to know is it growing or is it shrinking? And I'd like to know on a quarterly basis so that when we come time for budget it's part of the discussion.

Absolutely. I've both put in that recommendation here and also noted it as an opportunity for a briefing for a future finance committee hearing. Alright. Alderman O'Neil you wanna talk about the poll?

It's not in my word but it's important to a lot of people. And I think I told you that trying to pull resources in fact, I got two phone calls while we've sitting here with people that are trying to help us with the resource to open the pool. In reaching out to Neely, she had also reached out to a pool management company. And it looks like that's the direction we're gonna go is hiring a pool management company to do it because it does not appear that Rexnaparc is able to manage that with staffing and with I'm gonna call it maintenance but having a pool manager who can check the chemical levels, make sure that we've got the right chemicals. I do have a slight request.

It's currently empty pool and I would love to see if we could find some way somehow to paint lane lines on the bottom of it before we fill it because that would increase its usage availability. There is an organization that would run their swimming practices there and we could also run swim team if we had that. Swim team and swim lessons by nonprofit organizations.

Do have something to add to that, Alderman? So speaking with director Johnson, she did recommend that HACA hire a pool company as you you said. A pool operator is required at that pool and the person who did it last year is no longer available. And record parks has been having difficulty finding lifeguards. It's even for running done pool, they think they'll get there for done.

They always she said, we always do, but then we don't have guards for HACA. And the guards that said they would work there last year, some of them when their parents found out said they they refused to let them work at Hakka Pool because they felt it was unsafe. So she obviously can't force them to work there. And then some of the other guards just refused to do so because they felt it was unsafe. So if we hire a pool management company, they will have a certified manager as you said for all the levels in in the pumps pumping system and other machinery there.

But they also have a pool of lifeguards that they can send in on a temporary basis as needed, on a full time basis as needed, and they manage all the payment of that. So as Rosalyn tries to fill her own needs at her pool, this is probably the best solution rather than waiting on Ros to get guards to see if she could do it or not. So that's that is the direction they're going in.

Yeah. So

Well let me just ask real quick. Is the funding that's in the budget already adequate for that?

Director Johnson believes so. I I believe it's $44,000 or something like that. That may not be the right number. It's close to that. She thinks that we're trying to figure out how to get that money to them without the city. Her worry is that if we pay the pool operator directly, then the city would look like we are responsible for that pool operator when HACA is hiring the pool operator. So working with finance to how do we do that? How do we make sure the funds can be transferred to the for the use of hacker but the city is not responsible for the operation of the pool and managing the operator? So we'll work that out.

So this is pretty complex but it really is should be easy. This exact conversation happened in January and February 2020 are on May 11 and we have not hired a pool operator company. So there's there is adequate financial resources. There is a lack of clarity as to responsibilities. One decision that's been made is that the city pays for the lifeguards and therefore that pool is open to anyone in the city.

People like that. There's all kinds of social benefits to that including what alderwoman O'Neill stated. And so that we have a clear confusion of authorities going on as to who should hire who. And I think Jack just mentioned it. So we've got to clarify for 2027 who is responsible for that pool being open.

Is it REX and PARKS which is where I think it should be or is it HACA? And when you get shared responsibility nobody's responsible and that's why we spent four months this year and the pool is still the fact the pool is still empty is good news because we can get lines painted on it. It's bad news is in that it's supposed to open in less than two weeks. And so I would recommend a line in here that says that the city manager should determine, whatever the right word are, go to the effort to determine who is responsible for opening and I would call it the Harbor House pool rather than the HACA pool. The Harbor House pool on Memorial Day twenty twenty

seven. Yeah. I

need the office a lot to jump in here.

So the only problem with that is HACA is a separate entity and they own this property so we can't actually force them to do anything nor can we legally take over the pool with

There's an MOU. Every year they do an MOU.

Yes. And I write it. But that MOU does not give us that sort of authority. HACA would have to grant us that. Right. I'm not sure. I haven't been involved in the this year's conversations. In the past, HACA has not been willing to grant us that level of control.

So so that that goes to my point that we need somebody, and I think it should be the city manager, to the fact

we don't have

She can but we can't tell her. Can finish? Yeah.

Mhmm. So the MOU should be done in this year for next year and it should clearly state what the city responsibilities are gonna be and what HACA's responsibilities are gonna be. And that should be our negotiating tool. If we're putting $45,000 into this, we should get a lot in return. And so who is responsible for what is totally up to, I think, the city manager as this is worked, but it should be signed by the end of the year so that it's done and everybody knows their responsibilities.

If if we take control though, you do understand that we're also assuming liability and insurance for it. If we if HACA agrees to this and they give us full operational control then all liabilities I didn't

say I'm sorry to interrupt you back but I didn't say full operational. I don't I don't care. I just wanna know who's got the responsibility pinned on them to open this pool. And right now it's this.

Well, that's because it's an act we have figured this out. I've done the MOU for the last two years, but the problem is it's a it's a give and take negotiation. Right. And when you're coming down to it, those are the these are the material things that sort of stall the conversation is yes we're offering them money but are we also offering help with insurance or liability? And it like I said, we figured it I have figured it out for the last two years. We've had MOUs executed to get the pools open. But as things shift in HACA's world, it it's it's a harder conversation this year.

And so what I think matters for this is is there enough money to get it done? And it sounds like there's a lot of questions about, boy, who's responsible? Who how do we give it to them? What whatever. But my question is, is there enough money? The answer seems to be a resounding yes. So I think the recommendation is use existing funding in the budget to hire, let's let's put this in the passive voice. For a pool management company I'm not sure it's budgeted.

Is it budgeted, Karma? Or do

they have thousand in the budget

for it.

So there's $45,000 in the budget for Rex and Parks to manage the pool for it to be open. But for Rex and Parks to take full management operation of it, it'll exceed the 45,000.

So let me

The 45,000 only the 45,000 is based off of the current operation hours with the current access that they have, staff, and a small budget for repair and maintenance that, the manager does herself.