Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

7 a.m. on July 15th. At this time, I'll enter, oh, roll call first. Alderman O'Neill?

Present.

Alderman Thorpe? Present. And I'm here. At this time, I'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda with an amendment that moves our general discussion above supplemental appropriation. So the order would be business and miscellaneous, general discussion, then supplemental appropriations and adjournment. Is there a motion for that?

So moved.

Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you very much. All right. Is there a motion to approve the minutes from the last Finance Committee meeting? So moved.

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Beautiful. All right. Ms. Jai, would you prefer to give us a general finance department update before budget to actuals? Do you have a preference which way we go? All right, let's just start with the budget to actuals. So, first of all, thank you so much for getting these to us, to the whole team. And... I will tell you just truthfully that I skimmed through it this morning. I have not had a chance to dig into it quite as much as I would have liked, but our goal here really is just to look through this and I'd be able to ask you any questions, but also if there's anything off the bat that you think that you want to call our attention to, I'd put the baton in your hands before we start peppering you.

Good morning, everyone. So, of course, this is my first time actually looking at this report and it's a wealth of information. My only concern is Basically, focusing on the material budgets, I think that is something that we probably can rearrange it to have those items discussed first. So rearrangement is important to me. And in addition to that, I really believe that we can probably come up with a way to present this in a different way. So I'm happy to have those discussions in the near future.

Excellent. Yeah, we'll be interested to hear that. Thank you. So at this time, I'll open it up to the committee to ask any questions, anything you wanted to go over anywhere. I'm thinking mostly about specific things, but if you have general questions too, that's just fine. Either one of you guys wanna go first?

I will be honest that having received it last night, I have not had a chance to do more than a cursory over. So at this time, I don't have any questions.

Alderman Thorpe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for submitting it and And I, Roger your guidance there Mr. Chairman, I'm going to skip the specific questions because here we are in, I don't have any specific questions because here we are in July on a March close. So I'd like to jump to my general questions and I think you touched on several of them right up front and I appreciate that. I'd like to ask you to go a little deeper into here we are in July, and what are your thoughts, observations, way forward for the closing process as you think about this, what you've seen so far? And I'm not asking you to look back, I'm asking you to look forward.

So for the closing process, we've talked about doing a quarterly or a monthly. I think that we should continue those discussions. I think that it is doable as soon as we figure out the format in which we want to present this to the council. But the closing process is, I think it's fairly simple where we can either do the monthly or the quarterly, but I do believe that it is going to take us some time in terms of sending this information out on a timely basis. The reason being is the departments is all of the departments in the city of Annapolis would have to put in their transactions on time in the general ledger in order for the numbers to be accurately reflected. And I think that that is a cultural change and it's going to take some time to do that. We have already started making some of those changes. We're pushing up the dates, of course, for the financial statements, so that's having a real impact with all of the departments. These are earlier deadlines. No one has seen these kind of deadlines before, and so we're already chipping away at that culture right now. So again, it takes time to change cultural. And so that is the reason why I think it will take a full year for us to do this.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I love the fact you use a cultural change. And I think, and you and I have talked, so I'm going to steal your words a little bit. I mean, I think part of it is your effort to help them understand that it's actually better for them to do this as compared to jamming it down your co-workers throats to do that. The second thing, again, staying general, I'd like to commend you for the annotations that are provided in the report to the right. I think the presentation that you provided full disclosure i read down the right side first and then you know looked at all those lines and uh just going forward i i i hope you continue to do that and um what i would like to to hope to get to in this committee is not that we have that we take this and say on line you know four of this department what is this but rather again as you and i have discussed that that you you provide an overarching here are the three or four things i'd like to highlight and and again i want to commend you on the comments on the right it's not just an observation that that something um is off, that there's a variance, but why it is or what you're doing about it. You know, the snow is a perfect example that, you know, it's a large variance. We all know it because we've been told it already that there's a transfer and we saw the transfer, but it's all written here. So it's really easy for us to go through this and recognize Your observation, so these discussions are more about your senior observation of this, which arguably is the same thing you've told the city manager and the mayor, and that we're not trying to go through 19 lines and asking you questions about each one, which is an awkward conversation to have in a forum like this.

Thank you, Alderman Thorpe. I do want to thank Capri Turner for putting in all of these explanations. I do also want to bring to your attention that those explanations are generally for anything that's 10% or over. So we do have a threshold that is embedded in this report. And I think that we should continue. That has been my audit experience. Anything that's over a certain threshold should be explained. But what I don't know is if we should do it by line item or if we should go to the total line of the budget first and then go from there.

Yep. And I'll leave that over to you. Even my opinion really is less important than your decision on the way forward. I love the 10%. I love that as a guideline so that when we're looking at it and we do see an 8%, that we know why you didn't put a comment. Because if you put comments on every one of them, then yeah. The one thing I would add to that, and I know you're probably already thinking this and Capri's probably thinking it, there might be a variance of 5% that you know to be significant for some other reason than the amount. And my assumption would be that it would still be noted or in your brief, you would say, this is a variance of only 5%, but know that we're highlighting it, we're focused on it for this reason, and this is what we're doing about it. So love that 10% threshold and that's good for us to know. So thank you very much.

That's a great point, and just to tack on briefly, and then I'll give you back the floor, but I had a professor who described the difference between statistically significant and economically significant in economics. And the point being, sometimes you can figure out that you're really sure it's statistically significant, but that the effect is only two pennies. And at that point, it's like, all right, statistically, yeah, we've done enough research to know it's significant, but it's not actually economically significant. I think that's kind of the inverse of the distinction you're drawing, that sometimes it's not statistically significant because it's small, but it is economically, or in this case, financially significant. I jumped in, but feel free to take the floor back.

The last, my last comment is, would be on timing as we go forward. From a selfish standpoint, I would ask you to look at the finance committee's schedule with the idea, first of all, I wanna commend you for sending this to the whole council. I thought that was a good move. At least I think you did as I looked at it, right? That's a good move, because they all should have that visibility. But if you could look at our calendar, to the best extent possible, realizing we don't live in the perfect world we both want to live in, but so that as we move forward, whether quarterly or monthly, the closer we can be to the actual time, because the better. And so, again, you know this, and I don't mean to be sounding like I'm lecturing you, because I'm not, I'm super excited you're here. and so but the closer we are to the close it's a more meaningful conversation for us to have the farther away and since we meet every two weeks roughly um if we could hit it right before rather than wait another two weeks but that's just that's a minor point and the fact we're talking minor points is actually a good thing

So I would like for Capri to jump in because she is familiar with the timing. The timing that I'm really concerned about is when we're closing the books for the fourth quarter. So I will turn it over to Capri and then go from there.

Capri Turner, Senior Budget Analyst. I'm not for sure if it's written in code, but I believe we have to deliver it on the 15th, by the 15th of the following month of when the quarter closes. But I do remember us having a conversation with finance committee for the fourth quarter for it to be delivered in September based off of all the transactions happening at the end of the year. I don't believe that we'll have to do it in September this year. It'll actually be in August because we plan to do everything earlier and have the statements prepared earlier. So it'll actually be closed earlier to deliver it earlier.

Thank you. Thank you. Every time we have a budget brief and there's a success story, somebody punch it over to you and says, this is the person who did it.

So I do want to say it was the whole team. The whole team works on the report with our departments and put the comments in. So it's a team effort.

And that was said, too. So thank you. So I think what I would ask and Mr. Chairman, this might be a do out for the committee. as we have the new team, and we're in the beginning of a 10 or 15 year team to be doing this, that we might wanna look at what's in code. And as you're putting together the calendar to get to a December close, do we need to amend the code or as the chairman has done, remove from the code calendar items like you've done with submitting the budget, some of the budget information. And so, not a request for you to do this afternoon, but as you go, as you set the calendar, as you look at it and say, this is a reasonable thing, reasonable calendar to have over a 12 month cycle, then let's look at the code and go, okay, this says September, October makes more sense, or it makes September, does it need to be there, whatever. So something to have in the back of our mind.

Just to put a fine point on that, I think the way I'd put it is as you're working on this calendar for December close, incorporating having these meetings would be very helpful.

Mr. Chairman, I don't want that statement to go. We're not looking for a December close. We're looking for a December audit.

I'm sorry, you're right. Yes, thank you very much. I don't want people calling in and going, wait a minute, what are we doing? Thank you, you're right.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you very much for all your work. Appreciate it.

So I take Alderman Thorpe's point that we want to hear the high level part, but I do think there's a benefit to going line by line and making sure that we, not line by line, but digging into particular lines and making sure that we have a full understanding of everything so i have a couple that i want to ask you all about and i'm maybe going to have them be most of them probably are more city manager questions and finance questions so ms buckland i saw ms lewis just came in if you guys want to jump in on these that's great um But one, to start, it probably is more of a budget question. On the very first page, I noticed that we're about 50% of what we budgeted on elections, but we're done with elections. So is that something that we should expect is going, that we're just permanently going to have only spent 50 or 34% for the year? No? Ms. Buckland, you're shaking your head.

The budget for elections is very cyclical, and so we do budget different amounts essentially almost every year to account for the activity of that particular year. I know that there will be a lot of discussions about the next subsequent cycle, what does that look like, what's the city's role? But no, the goal is to have... accurately predicted what is our responsibility for that fiscal year. So you should not expect just that that's normal. Sure.

And I totally take your point, but I think I was asking a little bit different question, which is, This says that at the end of Q3 FY26, we had only spent about 50%.

I'm sorry, were there additional expenditures in Q4 that you should expect to hit? I'm sorry. Yes, that's basically what I'm asking. I totally misheard your question.

Your answer was important too. It was just to a different question.

Yeah, do we do have some quarter four? Yeah, I'm looking over at Capri.

Yes, there are some expenses that trickle in after that coming quarter four on the timing of when the law gets the invoices to process them. But you're right that there are some savings there as well because For the postage part of it, we have to anticipate how much we're going to spend on the postage that we're receiving because we pay for what gets mailed in. The post office has a threshold amount that we have to meet. And they charge against it. So anything that's saved from that, then we go through a process of them sending that back to us. And there was a, I can't remember the amount, I feel like it was $27,000 that we received back. So they're not going to spend the full thing. It is loaded a bit.

Gotcha. Oh, that makes total sense. Thank you. Yeah, it just struck me as one where we would expect to have spent everything by Q3. I had just a couple other things I wanted to check in on. And some of these really are questions that I don't expect anybody in this room to answer, so I'm gonna follow up with the departments. this and this might end up being one of those but ms buckland or ms lewis do you guys have any idea why we were getting less requests for community development block grant funding this year than in 25 that just was another one that struck me as surprising i would have expected that we would get more so this is i'm looking on paid six under home ownership assistance trust fund

They're my understanding and I take this with a grain of salt because I want to fact check this with the director. But my understanding was that we did do make a bit of a change this year in what kinds of things got funded through CDBG. Our CDBG funding has been relatively flat. And so this year, we did make a push to encourage organizations for this year to engage with the community grants process for some more operational type things and reserved a bit more of the CDBG for capital. And so I believe that's part of what the difference has been in terms of like number and engagement.

That's awesome. I mean, it's not, it's neither good or bad, but it's awesome that you knew the answer. Thank you.

Yeah, that said, take that with, that is what is in my brain as my memory of that discussion, but I would in fact want to fact check that. Is that your memory as well?

I'm not for sure.

Okay, yeah. Let me, I believe that is the correct answer, but let me fact check that.

And I had just one other thing to ask you about, because I didn't understand one of these acronyms on, I think this is on page eight under Watershed Restoration Fund. There's a note about employees are honestly charging to WRF and WFP has been updated to reflect changes. What's WFP?

WFP is the workforce plan. It's what we use to build the salary and benefits. Got it, okay, sure. So the explanation is just that for DPW and enterprise funds, positions are allocated a percentage between, and they just weren't allocated appropriately. So we have to do a journal entry to correct that.

Makes total sense, thank you. I just, that acronym wasn't hitting for me. I kept thinking Working Families Party, which I knew was not right. All right, that's all the questions I had. Either of you guys wanna jump in with anything? Nope, all right. Well, thank you again so much to Ms. Ojai, to the whole budget team for making sure we got this. We're gonna keep working on making sure we get it a little bit earlier. We're gonna work on maybe a better format for it and would love to continue those discussions with you all. Thank you. Next up, we have our finance department update. I think we kind of just went through it, but is there anything else that the finance department thinks we should be aware of?

So we will present the audit timeline to the audit committee on Monday. So we will have those detailed discussions unless, is that okay, Alderman?

Yeah, let's go with me.

Okay. And then right now, we are in the preliminary stage of our audit. The auditors will physically be here starting next week. There will be four auditors that will be in contact with, in person of course, with all of the people throughout the city of Annapolis. I will be involved in those meetings. Ms. Inez Capone, who's our finance office manager, will also be involved in those meetings. And what will be happening at those meetings is that they will be taking a look at all of our processes and looking at the internal controls related to those processes. So that's what's happening at the moment.

Thank you. I'm excited to hear some more on Monday. Nothing gets the blood pumping, gets you excited like an audit. So we'll hear all about it. Ms. Lewis, I know you wanted to be here for a particular item. Are you ready? Can you remind me which one it was?

One is 23, okay, got it.

Yeah, come on up. Haley, that can't be right. This is about lighting. This is about lights. I don't think they wanna talk about lights.

Oh, no, it is not chair. It is a follow up from our last meeting with the request to make changes to our transportation fund and change.

So it's the essay we already passed. It's not 1 that's on our agenda today. Yes. Thank you. I'd love to hear that update.

So we made a commitment to going back after the meeting and taking an opportunity to look at the information that was presented to us, reconcile that, have conversations with the company, and present back to you kind of where we think we are. That was the first piece. But in addition to that, the director will also be presenting today some of the protocols that we'll put in place. to ensure that going forward our vendor not only for this contract but some of our other vendors particularly those who have been with us for a period of time and we value them how we will communicate and ensure that we stay within the bounds of kind of what we have engaged. So the first piece, I'll turn it over to the director, but what I will tell you is that we are happy to share that while we asked for nearly $500,000 to be moved for access to pay this invoice, I think the more reasonable total where we are today, uh is between 2 and 225. um we are continuing to work on that amount um we think that's a significant difference but we are still having conversation with the vendor so i can't promise you what the final amount will be within that range but to suffice to say that we have done our due diligence to verify um kind of our responsibility and the vendor's responsibility as part of that so i'll turn things over to the director

Yeah, good morning, Finance Committee Chair and members. Marcus, for the record, Marcus Moore, Director of Transportation and Parking. We wanna share with you information for the source of the surplus was the parking fund. The total amount was 573, and the breakdown was 492,300 for the SP contract, which is outside the concession area. So the biggest things that we came up with, as the City Manager made mention, we've had internal conversations with our staff, ADOT, as well as the vendor. But we're coming up with internal measures, processes to reconcile in a more timely manner. And if we do detect overruns, we'll immediately have a meeting with the vendor to discuss these findings. There may be at times a legitimate concern that will require a change order that would need to be approved internally before something like this ever happens again. So we wanted to just give you an idea of what it was, that overrun, as the city manager mentioned, close to 500,000, and we've come down quite a bit. So this is less than half of what we're going to be asking for. The other parts of this essay actually went to other parts of the transportation, the bonds and the transportation, transfer the transportation to cover other expenses as well. So we're just talking about that one piece with the contract.

So just to be clear, there are components of this that are reasonable as. That includes data fees as associated with the contract and also maintenance. Where there is a difference in kind of how we had to navigate it is other costs that were associated with the contract and the biggest disconnect throughout this process was just the need to do a change order to ensure that we were all on the same page and that did not occur. And so part of one of the protocols that we're just confirming with our vendor is that in order if there are any shifts or changes that need to be addressed, it has to be addressed by way of a change order.

I have two questions for you guys. The first is, I hear you, you're putting new processes in place. Could you, and it can be relatively high level, but could you go a little bit deeper into what those processes are? Maybe you already said it and I just didn't understand, but could you just help me get a little bit more understanding of that? Sure.

Yep, so basically internally, within our agency, we do have fiscal assistance that will do the scrub and going through the contractors, the way they present the data to us, something called client view, making sure we're looking at what the budget, those line items say and where we are at that particular time, doing that timely, maybe bi-monthly or just once a month as we see things progressing in a normal fashion. but raising the flag if we do see something like that, bringing them in and getting the additional information necessary and having them understand that budget overruns are not acceptable. We're not doing good stewards of the taxpayer dollars if we don't.

got it that makes perfect sense to me so essentially in this contract and and i do have to give the team um a a round of applause for for flagging this in in this contract it there is typically a monthly uh invoice that comes in that is pretty consistent um and when those invoices started to shift and tick up they made mention to the vendor that this this seemed to be something that we have not observed previously. And so instead of having kind of a longer window to be able to do that, we're proposing to reconcile that almost immediately every month to ensure that if there is a tick up that we're able to kind of confirm with the vendor that that happened quickly.

If I may add one other point about data processing fees and what they're associated with, and this is processing citations. So that's gonna be derived at the amount of citations that come through. Even though they may try to flatline it and divide that number by 12, we can look at general session and summertime of being those kind of peaks so looking at that we may see an uptick there but knowing the next month or two it'll probably balance itself out but data processing fees are derived at a citation trigger the other question i had for you and then i'll turn it over to my colleagues help me answer this question that i'm sure i'm going to get from a resident

and I think you partially just did, which is that we're paying basically for more citations, but the city's paying more. What better service are we getting because of that?

So citation, the data processing fee does generate citation revenue. That is up, and it's not always a good sense that more people are in violation. But that would be, it's driven this direction when you're writing more. The biggest driver that we're seeing here is the company that was used to produce this. we found midstream halfway through the second half or third quarter of the fiscal year 26, a cheaper way to do it. So that also is a savings. There's another guardrail that's already been instituted to save money to do the same thing.

But to clarify, We were not the owner of that company executing that function. That was the vendor. And so that was a decision that we flagged to bring the balances back down. But that, of course, was not in our control. That was a decision on behalf of the vendor.

Got it. Well, I think that's a reasonable answer. All right. You guys got questions?

So thank you very much.

I'd like to clarify some timing only because I think I heard a couple of different things. And first of all, I wanna thank you for, being people of your word, which is obviously an assumption that you always are. So that's not a surprise, but thank you for working it so hard. So my first question has to do with timing on these invoices as you track them, because I think I heard three different timelines. I heard bi-monthly, monthly and immediate. And so as I understand it, it's because these are fairly big invoices, you get them on a monthly basis. So does immediate mean immediately when you get the monthly invoice you're gonna look at it?

That's really a good question. There is a lag from the information that the vendor will get from the data processing, which could be 30 days later. Just getting things now in July from maybe late May or June. The internal processes that I was speaking of, of what we're gonna look at internally, every two weeks once a month but what we get from the vendor there may be a lag of 30 to 40 days of what comes in because what comes in may require two notices you know that second notice financial notice or whatever may come in so you may get citation revenue now that actually the citation occurred in march so if i can tell you what i think i heard you say i think i heard you say that

that the information comes from the vendor to you may be time lagged because of the nature of the business and that when you get it, you're reviewing them immediately. That's correct.

Yes, there are two components to it. Just to clarify, there is the initial review of what we get and trying to verify those fees. Those are probably more consistent. But the second part is a reconciliation, which is when we get the additional citation information or whatever the vendor sends us then it is reconciling that on that previous invoice to ensure that it is in line and everything has been verified so I think what we're saying is we we internally will be diligent both on the initial invoice that comes in on a monthly basis and the reconciliation that needs to take place which might have a 30-day lag to it so

You made a comment that the data processing fees are tied to the invoice. And this is an important topic for us to make sure that we, when we're out there talking to our constituents, can fully explain because I oftentimes have made the public comment, I never thought I would run for office. And if I ever did, I never thought one of the things I would run on is better parking enforcement. And you're doing it. I'm hearing the feedback that people are seeing the vendor out there. and continue to get good reports on the citations, no criticism of the citations you're given. One question I've often received though is, is the vendor rewarded for giving more citations? And so there's a nuance here between, That question really means to me, does the vendor profit 10% on every citation or something like that, as compared to if the number of citations goes up, the cost of business, i.e., what I'm hearing, data processing goes up, and we need to pay for that as part of the contract. Am I understanding that correctly, or could you better explain that to us?

Yeah, your two part question is there's no formula, there's no benefit for them writing more citations. That's all city money. they don't get any kind of bonus for, or a percentage of a citation. One of the things to keep in mind when we went gateless, everything there is mailed out a citation, right? It'll come in through the mail. But what we forget is the street. There's a ticket on the windshield and that still may need to be chased. so it's not just the garage but the others and as i made mention um when it triggers a second you know who does to a third um when do we write off as you know quote unquote the bad debt what is collecting uh maybe 85 87 percent might be in the ballpark so there's no benefit for a parking contractor to get some monies that belong to the city

Okay, thank you. That's a really, as we talk about these cost overruns and we talk about the reasons, that's really important for us to be able to explain. I'd like to slightly shift away from the data processing part and make a positive comment and make sure there's not a negative to it. I have found the parking vendors to be exceptionally generous with their time. The feedback I'm getting is, well, first of all, firsthand, when we invite them to meetings, when we reach out to them, they are tremendously responsive. I'm getting feedback from the residents of the same thing, that phone calls and all that. What I didn't hear and I hope is not the case that some of these overruns are the result of us being charged for extra time for their tremendous responsiveness in these challenging parking times. Am I accurate by saying that?

Very small amount. As we went through the town halls after the second one we did, they were coming out. But keeping in mind, that's just an hour and a half. So the other meetings that we might have had around the wards, ECA included, it's not like even a whole eight hours in a 40 hour meeting. or eight hours in a month. Very incremental, a very small amount is being attributed to that, but it has driven cost up a very, very small percentage.

Okay, and looking at your two's body language and the head nods, you're managing that appropriately that when you see the need to do that, to increase the amount of time, you're managing it in your words, immediate, not immediately when you're invoiced, but immediately when you're tracking it and all that. I mean, I think that would reflect very negatively on all of us as a city and as a vendor if we have an unlimited amount of overtime and then billing that goes with it.

So I will say, and I'll ask the director to confirm so there there is a a contract which we have very defined parameters around what we would like to see from the vendor and they are able to execute on that and and we should be reconciling that piece within the scope of what we've asked them to do In the event that we are asked to do additional things like increase enforcement or add additional things that the council might want as a point of response to the community, I think those will have additional costs. And while we will manage them within the budget that we have, I think perhaps what we should be more transparent about It's the actual cost of that whenever you, when you're asking that to happen so that you are clear on every adjustment that we make might have a cost to it.

Great. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Those are all my questions.

Okay.

Alderman O'Neill.

I do have, thank you. Just one question. This particular parking contractor, when is the contract up?

Which particular one? Oh, I'm sorry, you're speaking to this one here. Yes, it's June 30th of 2027.

2027. And have we started any talks or negotiations as far as?

It'll go out for bid, hopefully, most likely the end of this year. And they have the opportunity to bid back on it as well as others. But they're aware that the RFP will be going out in the next three to five months.

All right. Yeah, I... Yeah, I had a question that would go down a different rabbit hole, but I think I'll skip it. So that's been wonderful. Thank you very much for taking the time to show up and talk about this directly. I appreciate it. Thank you. All right. We got up next, essay 127. And I assume, Ms. Gilead, you're going to present on that?

Yes.

I think this is the one type that I put in my category of my favorite kind of grant, or favorite kind of essay, where we're just being given money and also there's no match. It's really my favorite. And seems like for, you know, I joke like I'm always happy to vote for these as long as they're not for puppy killing machines, and this is quite the opposite. Modernizing our lighting is something that has lots of benefits. So I don't imagine we're going to have a whole heck of a lot of debate on this, but would you mind just giving us a quick overview?

Absolutely. Jackie Geil, Deputy City Manager. This is a grant from the Maryland Energy Administration. It's one of their local government modernization program grants. The amount we received was $408,500, and that is to replace outdoor lighting, which was street lighting, parking lot lighting, fixtures to LED. The bulk of that will go to that. It's not just the light bulb. It's the entire fixture. It has to be changed out to accommodate LED. We also have some very specific fixtures in the city, so it's a little bit more... expensive especially in historic areas of the city and then part of this will go towards an energy um our building a beps action plan for pip moyer which is our building energy performance standards requirements by the state that we have to um submit for buildings 35 000 square feet and larger which pip is one of those um and this the audit that will be performed with some of this these funds is to um going towards acquiring and outfitting all of our street lights with led we did a study you may recall we did a study last year with funds um with tanco lighting that um evaluated which lights were the city-owned lights, city-owned and operated, those which were city-owned but BG&E maintained, and those which were BG&E owned and operated, and the benefits of acquiring them ourselves and maintaining them ourselves, which is quite significant. Over a period of 20 years, we can save millions of dollars. This is the next step in that process that we've decided to go forward with, which is a detailed audit to get a firm understanding of where the lights are, which ones are redundant lights. We are being charged for some lights that do not exist. Yes, and some are not operating effectively, and so we're getting overbilled for some of these as well. So some of the funds, about $100,000, will go towards that detailed audit, which is the next step in acquiring the streetlights by the city.

Right. And you know, I also like when I see that we're putting most of it towards doing stuff and only part of it towards studying doing stuff. So like that too.

Which is the next step in doing stuff.

I know that Alderman Savage does love to remind me that. Yes. But okay. I got no questions on this.

Anybody else got questions? No.

All right. With that, is there a motion to make a favorable recommendation on essay 127?

I'll make that motion.

Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thanks for sticking around with us, Ms. Gile. Next up, we got SA 227, which is another grant to the police department, and a relatively small one, but we want to make sure we get this recorded. This is the alcohol compliance grant. Can you tell us a little bit about what we do with that?

Craig Medley, Police Administrative Manager. For the alcohol compliance, it's a grant from Department of Health that goes to overtime and to pay a cadet to go and do alcohol compliance checks.

Great. Why did they end up giving us more this year?

I just happen to have a little extra this year.

All right. Thanks.

It's normally around $5,000, but it goes up or down $5,000 a month or so.

Much appreciation to the County Executive, I guess. Anybody got questions on this one? Nope, seems like it's going to a good cause. Definitely not a puppy killing machine. All right, is there a motion for a favorable recommendation of essay 227? So moved.

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you very much. Thank you guys, appreciate you being here. All right, with that, I think we're through our agenda. Is there a motion to adjourn?

Motion to adjourn.

Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries.