City Council - Regular Meeting

How are you?

This is two. Jesus Just last week forward. The March 30th, 2026 Auburn City Council workshop will be called to order. Uh we have uh two items on the agenda tonight. The first is a presentation by the Auburn School Department relating to the Auburn Middle School. I believe Dr. Doris is going to present. Amanda

Scott. Good evening and thank you for having us here tonight to talk with you about the Auburn Middle School project. I have my team here with me. So we'll have them introduce themselves. Amanda Cooer, business manager. Scott Anir, assistant superintendent. Pamela Albert, atlarge representative and school committee chair.

Tonight we're going to give you some information about the project. We're going to tell you why we want to do this project and what it involves. And we'll also look at some potential future cost savings and answer any questions that you may have. So, we'll go ahead and get started. So the middle school project right now involves adding sixth grade to the middle school which currently houses 7th and 8th grade students. Creating the 678 middle school has been a longstanding recommendation from all of our facilities committees over time and this first came up in 2009. The rationale first and foremost is educational programming. When we can put sixth grade at the middle school with our seventh and eighth graders, it allows for us to have a continuous curriculum, grades six, seven, and 8. And most of the products and resources that we have are K5, 6, 8. So currently we have sixth grade at the elementary school and they're kind of an island by themselves. If we are able to put sixth grade at the middle school, it's really going to improve our curriculum alignment. Also, putting sixth graders at the middle school is more developmentally appropriate because they are adolescents and the programming there is built for that age group. The opportunities are also expanded at the middle school. our sixth graders would have access to athletics and co-curricular activities. We'd also be able to have that threeyear span where we could build stronger

relationships with students, families, and staff. And then there's also the opportunity for more specialized instruction in enrichment, in music, in art, in science, and things like that. Why do we want to make this investment now? Well, one reason is rising costs. It is increasingly more and more difficult to run six elementary schools and it's hard for us to sustain the current structure that we have. Another reason is space and flexibility. If we move grade six to the middle school, we're moving around 240 students out of the elementary schools. And this frees up space and it creates an opportunity for us to rethink how we're configuring the elementary schools. It's a smarter investment because fewer schools equals more strategic capital improvements. Right now, we're putting our money into six different facilities at the elementary level. And if we can have fewer schools, our investments are going to be more strategic over time and we can focus our resources where they matter most. And then planning for the future is very important. This allows us to consolidate and potentially close an elementary school. And the long-term goal here is fewer schools and a stronger system. This project also ties into one of the school department's goals around facilities and this is the goal around having a master plan for facilities. The school

department will utilize the facilities assessment which we have had completed by Herman to create a master plan to address the capacity, sufficiency and structural quality of all school department facilities. This slide shows you the process behind the work around this project. A few years ago, after we had Haramman do a facility study, we created an advisory committee and the advisory advisory committee looked at Harman's plan and came up with some next steps. And one of the next steps was that we create a standing facility subcommittee, which we do have now. And another step was to create an advisory committee to study the Auburn middle school and look at the possibility of adding grade six there. And so we did that. We have had two community forums over the last school year to give feedback on this project. And then we brought some recommendations to the school committee in January from the AMS advisory committee. and the school committee unanimously approved moving this project forward. These were the recommendations from the AMS advisory committee. The first recommendation was to reconfigure and renovate AMS to accommodate grades 6 through 8. The second was to adopt Herman's concept plan and we'll show you a little bit of that tonight. And then the third and fourth recommendations are dependent upon whether or not we move this project forward. So if the project moves forward, we would be establishing a transition committee within the school department. And then we would also

establish an elementary school advisory committee. And that group would be looking at the configuration of the elementary schools and determining the possibilities for consolidation and closing an elementary school. And then the fourth, these last two, addressing traffic concerns. This is ongoing at AMS, but this would be something that we would need to look at if we added another grade level there. And then adopt the recommended funding pathway. This has to do with the 11.2 $2 million bond that we're going to talk about later in the presentation. So, if I think we'll wait till the end for questions and I'll turn this over to Scott and he headed up our AMS advisory committee and he's going to walk us through what this project involves and what it looks like.

Thank you. Some information in terms of the project overview. Uh it's twofold. Uh first there's addition and renovation to accommodate sixth grade classrooms. The next piece is the renovation of certain spaces to accommodate displaced music room, art room, STEM and special education classrooms. The second phase of this are already identified capital improvements. So through the Heramman master facility plan, we'd already identified some major needs that needed to be done for the Auburn Middle School. And those include a uh the replacement of the roof, mechanical systems, ADA accessibility, the secure vestibule, sprinkler and systems, and a foundation waterproofing on the first floor wall, as well as there are already some food service improvements through the kitchen area. They are a growing hub for delivering food throughout. And with their farm-to-table grant program, uh the work happens throughout the summer. So there are already some identified kitchen improvements that came through. So orient yourself standing in front of the Auburn Middle School. So these schematics will kind of prepare where you are as you look at this. So if you are standing in front of it, the far left is the gray areas on this drawing. The areas to highlight on the far left are what we used to see in our um vocational woodworking shops down at the end. That has been our STEM program for the last few years and that has really shifted into more of a classroombased approach. There's still a lot of hands-on work, but down in that left gray area is where we would reconfigure

those into classroom spaces. It's vastly vastly underutilized space. To the right of that is some green areas and that would reconfigure into more of a traditional classroom space. So if we move on to the next slide. So now you get a better understanding of what that looks like. Those gray areas now become more of a traditional classroom space. The green areas are formatted into a typical classroom space. The area on the left on the top left area that says addition, that's one of the three classrooms that would be built. This becomes really accessible from a financial standpoint because we're only crafting two exterior walls. The other wall, the other two foundational walls are already there and there would be an extension coming out from the left hand side that is now currently open parking area that comes into as a loading area into that spot. the STEM program would switch to this vacant uh storage space and it would be the creation in order to get there would be creation of a set of bathrooms as you can see just bel to the left and just below where it says STEM bathroom spaces would go in there to accommodate those classrooms down at that end of the hallway. The next slide is you are still on the first floor all the way to the right. Really in the rest of the building in the typical classroom areas, it's really updating and making ADA compliant bathrooms. These bathrooms are the originals from 1982. They are way out of compliance. One, we already knew that going in, and two, this would be the time to make those updates. The other

real important feature of working on that side is the waterproofing on this ground floor. It's right into the basement. We have water penetration that is really making it very challenging for the usage of those classrooms. This needs to be addressed from a health and safety standpoint. We go to the second floor. I would draw your attention is to the far left again. Right underneath A is the two additional classrooms. The first one on the lowest portion that stacks on the classroom from the first floor and the one adjoining it goes out into the landscape from there. So those are the additions of the three classrooms that are actually square footage increases to the overall footprint. Uh those three classrooms really allow for the creation of intentionally designed science classrooms. they are little larger and have a little more um access to having electrical outlets and lighting uh to sustain and fulfill um the the needs of a science classroom as well as sinks more of a lab type space. Without making those, we now have an inequitable set of teams because as the middle school does, they do they have about four teams per grade level. In order to do this, this allows for creating those science classrooms that can adapt and expand over time, but it continues to have that equitable access for science that and then on this first on the second floor on the main academic area, it's updating the bathrooms again. When we get to the next slide, we can talk about what happens in the back of the building. So again um highlighting the the addition of those classrooms. Same thing the um the bathrooms on this both standing bathrooms on the second floor

and on the first floor all need ADA compliance. Again 1982 it's time for an update as well as they they need to be compliant. We're held to that. Again, another view of nothing changes in the academic area to the right on the second floor. And now the big work that happens in the back is the work around the locker rooms. And currently the locker rooms are vastly vastly unutilized at all. Mostly it's a storage space. And so when we look at reconfiguring the first floor on the lefthand side, we re need to relocate the art room with an identified kiln and storage space for their needs. And so that would go into what is currently the locker room would be reconfigured as well as we would continue to have changing spaces and bathrooms on right adjacent to the uh gymnasium. So students who still wish to change still have access to their changing rooms. We have one on each side, a male and a female. They have bathrooms, they have showers. It's just reducing that size and allowing for the space to be more meaningfully used for the art classroom. And then across the hall from that that is identified as special ed now allows us to um have identified spaces for special ed conference rooms, testing rooms, as well as an office and entry area. So there's greater privacy and confidentiality to work with students and families when they come in for meetings. And then the last piece, as I highlighted before, were the kitchen renovations. It was already time for the kitchen to be updated as well as the increase of the freezer and cooler spaces. Uh and we've been working with Herman on uh working with their consult on some other designs there. And then the last piece on this on the second floor is really around reconfiguring what has been the multi-purpose space

which has had a movable wall and to turn it into a permanent wall that would be more of a music classroom. So where we are in the timeline of the project, as you can see, we started in July of 2025 and here we are in March of 26. Uh the hope is that we've started to get some of the more dialed in schematic designs. We have these designs, but we really need to start dialing in where the HVAC systems run, where the all the outlets go. And that becomes real important because we need to have those documents completed to be able to send them out for bid. And so that typically takes about a 9-month process. So we would kind of kick that off in June of 26. So that March of 27, we're able to have completed bids and move forward with the project to kick off in April of 27. It's a 16th month process with the end line of moving sixth grade in in August of 2028. And now I'll turn it over to Amanda Couture.

Thank you. So, we've spent a significant amount of time with our architect of record at Haramman Associates to narrow the scope of this project. Um, we've spent almost a year going through all the different pieces and we've narrowed it down to the capital improvement plans that are needed at this time along with renovations in order to include the sixth grade at AMS. So, our budget falls just below 11.2 million. So we had categorized the components of this project um to show kind of the need and why it's there. So we have the sixth grade inclusion as our first uh category on this slide. So that includes the addition of the three classrooms as Mr. Aner mentioned as well as all the renovations of classroom space to allow for instruction of a third grade level. The second category is the capital improvement needs. Now, these were identified in the 2023 Heramman study, and these were all expected to be necessary in the first five to 10 years past that study. So, we're already moving in on year four since that study was done. So these items that we have listed here, the ADA compliance and bathrooms, the roof is a serious need, as well as a new fire alarm system that's actually been identified as necessary as well. So those make up the 11.2 million that we're requesting in this bond. The third category, as Mr. Enir already mentioned, that is actually funded by the school nutrition fund balance. Um, so we don't need to request any funding for that, but it does make sense while we have contractors on site to do that at the same time. So that is the the plan going forward. So our goal along with what Dr. Doris already mentioned in her ration in the

rationale of the project is to move forward with this capital improvement project and then begin research on the consolidation of our elementary schools. And it's really important to note although it's a little cut off on the screen there that any action having to do with the consolidation of elementary schools is going to take a lot of study. So that's why we are actually in really good shape to have sixth grade inclusion the fall of 2028 because that gives us time in the meantime to work with community input and um studying the region, the city and where our uh students are living to see how that would look. So the last slide has a lot of information on it but I want to make sure that I explain what you're looking at. So, we we did receive, thank you to the city for for getting us a um estimated schedule for an 11.2 million bond should that be approved. The top two rows come from that schedule. And you can see the annual the years across the top. So, that's just what the payments would be each of those years. The yellow is just the sum of those two amounts, the principal and the interest together. So, the yellow is the cost of this project, if you will. The green just below it is the expected savings should a school close. So I just want to explain the three rows at the bottom just a little more in depth because those three rows make up the green dollar amount under each year. Maintenance and utilities. We're talking about repair and maintenance within the building itself and then utilities within any one of our elementary schools. That is what we're looking at paying already for one elementary school. and I increased it by about 3.7% each year because our utilities do go up as well as our maintenance costs. So you

see $29,000 in FY29. Now notice there's nothing in FY28. We're looking at our sixth grade moving to AMS beginning in FY29. So that's why we look at closing potentially in fall of 28, which is FY29,

right? Okay. So, okay. I don't know what I said. I guess um workforce attrition is the next row and that is working with our administrators and our school leadership to discuss how it would look when we um have our students at potentially five elementary schools instead of six. And the need for staff would expectedly decrease. Um, so of course I did add like 6% to each year after that after that first year of savings. So that's why you see the dollar amount increase each year. The last piece was um we've been working on a draft for our facilities plan for the next 5 to eight years looking at our our nine buildings and any of our elementary schools, not including Park Avenue. We didn't really look at a lot of need there, but any of our other smaller elementary schools were looking at the need for capital improvement costs around $6 million. So, a very loose estimate of what the cost would be for a $6 million bond. That's where that $710,000 comes from. And then it decreases each year because interest goes down each year. So adding those three rows together is where we get the green row where it says one school closure savings. Thank you. Moving on to the end of the presentation tonight. In terms of the project direction and accountability, I want to say that this project is really focused on students and learning first. And then as you've heard tonight, this is very well planned and thought through. There are different phases and we are very transparent about what we're doing here. One of our goals and it's one of your

goals is to be responsible with the use of public funds and we want to continue engaging the community in this work and the school committee will have oversight over this as well as the council. Why this project matters? First of all, it improves educational programming for our grade six students and also I would say grades six through 8 alto together. We're we're now able to put three grades in one school. It really strengthens the relationships and the culture of the school. And then we're addressing the rising operational and facilities costs. This allows us to study the elementary school configurations and to reconfigure and potentially close one elementary school. And that creates long-term operating and capital savings for us. And then this project really represents a strategic coordinated municipal investment. You know, this is very forward thinking. We're looking ahead. what we can do now is going to save us money down the road. So, it's a proactive step toward a more efficient and sustainable future for Auburn. And when we look at next steps moving forward together, it will be a continued collaboration with the city leadership and transparent planning and community engagement as we've already spoken about responsible stewardship of public funds and positioning Auburn for long-term sustainability. So that concludes our presentation and we would just like to open it up now for discussion and questions that you may have.

Thank you very much. I appreciate you coming in with the team and making the presentation. Questions from the council. Council count. Thank you all for the presentation. It's an exciting opportunity. I think you know hearing it again for the second time. It's just, you know, it truly is about the students and it's a bonus, but a really nice bonus that we're talking about potential financial um savings. Um, I apologize if I missed this, but could you speak to uh how many other schools already have six through eight grades combined? Yes, we are one of

10, is it 10? We just looked this number up tonight. So, we're one of 10 schools in the state that have only a seventh and eighth grade middle school. So most middle schools are 68 or 58 and then in your smaller communities you'll have K8 schools. Thank you. You're welcome. Other questions from the council?

Council Gary. Go ahead. I really appreciate really appreciate all the hard work and thought in this stuff and to me the education of our children is the utmost important but with so many unknown factors especially where we've got housing coming up around Grace Road over on Stson Road and other places. I don't know. And also, I'm torn with the price of our new municipal building. I mean, our public for fire and and police, I don't know at this point in time without the with the unknown factors of where the classrooms are going to be needing once that housing comes online. I don't see at this point in time, even though I support this, where the heck we're going to get this money and not totally annihilate our taxpayers. I know they're they're willing to give everything for the kids in their community, but they can only afford so much. They're going to have very hard time with what we're doing this year. And so that is where I'm coming from. I'm torn all up inside. So, Dr. Doris, if you can defer the conversations about the finances a minute, we'll get to those. But my recollection from um presentation in past years is that the school department uh utilizes a professional firm to do a capacity planning. Could you talk about that a little bit and how um the analysis that's been done um and how

that fits in with this plan? Yes, we have had a study done that shows what our enrollment will look like over time and it looks like over time our enrollment will be decreasing. And so that that's a very strong factor in bringing this project forward. In fact, currently within our system, we have I'll just give you the example of about 200 to 215 students down in kindergarten, first and second grade. And up at the high school right now, it's it's about 250 275. So over time, even though we have housing coming into Auburn, the trend is that our enrollment is decreasing. And I know Mr. near has been attending some of the planning board meetings and involved in looking at how many families with children are actually moving to our community. Maybe you could speak to that a little bit, Mr. Inir.

Yeah, I've been fortunate that city has allowed me to kind of participate in and follow along in their discussions on what we're seeing in housing and so many of those are are um folks that are moving into the housing are not starting families. they're young couples or they're or they're singletons. And so it really, you know, those increases of housing, we're we the ones that have already taken place, we're not seeing a major bump in any of our enrollments in any of our elementary schools from those housing pieces. Um I can't say to what the target audience is for those. I think it's all financially driven for the folks that are looking for the housing. But what we are seeing are we're not seeing any increases there and the trend has been not for families to be developing that are coming out of that housing. Um and just to kind of follow up what we're already seeing for what we have for capacity, we we have close to 250 slots still available in terms of capacity of what we've marked out from square footage for for classes with that across our elementary schools. We have some up and some down. So, we're really um at a situation of looking at schools that are way underenrolled.

And um when you did the analysis, did you utilize the um report that the city commission that was looking for the number of housing units that we needed in the future to meet the state goals?

So, we've had two streams of data that have come. One has been from the department of education and the other one has been um working with the comprehensive plan folks and being able to look at what do they see for demographics in terms of school age children and and those both models follow the similar trend and so we thought it was helpful to not run two streams. I just started with the DOE as one, but then as the comp plan was going, I reached out to the folks that were directing that work and the the trends were were very much the same. And it's not a it's not an off-the-cliff thing, but it's a continuously gradual step down. Council Deval,

um yeah, so I think my question here is related. You mentioned in your presentation that um this work will actually help reduce enrollment systemwide. Can you explain that statement? Does it have to do with this declining population or is there something else at work there when I mean shifting the sixth grade to another location wouldn't necessarily reduce enrollment?

Um, so what was said was if we move our sixth graders to the middle school, we'll be moving around 240 students out of the elementary schools. So each elementary school will the enrollment will be reduced in each elementary school. Other questions from the council? Council Butler, if um if the approval for this landed on the essentials um that are already discussed in terms of the roof, fire system, etc., can you speak to what the impact would be on your overall plan?

If we're looking at just the capital improvement needs, then unfortunately that would not allow the sixth grade to have the instructional space at the middle school. Uh that was the approximately $6.2 million amount was the capital improvement needs such as the roof and the fire alarm system. So the additional $5 million is what is needed in order to create the space. Um adjusting what is currently a large locker room space but unnecessary adjusting an additional music classroom as well as adding three new classrooms including one of them being a science room. Um just to the left we saw on the map. Those are in addition to the 6.2 million. Those are the additional 5 million. So 6.2 is the capital improvement needs, but that would not allow for the space for a third grade level at the middle school.

And that 6.2 um for the counselors that are new, um you might explain a little bit about the Haramman plan and where that 6.2 I'm not 100% sure, but I think that 6.2 two is already in that plan over time from what you said earlier. That's correct. Yes, council.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, thank you for the presentation. I've been following along obviously for months and months and months. Um, I just wanted to offer up my opinion on this. Um, so concept conceptually speaking, I I think it's a slam dunk. think we we have to trust our educators, our administrators that moving sixth grade into that realm is what's beneficial for students. At least that's that's my belief from what I've what I've learned and what I've ganed thus far. I think um where the rubber meets the road is understanding the the finances behind it and um the economics. I think two comments I will make to the presentation. I think you've you've undersold it a little bit in that um I I don't think you should be com you should be including the full $1 million bond when comparing to operational savings. Um what what we've just clarified up here is that 6 million of that 11 million are CIP requests just for the building. It has nothing to do with sixth grade. So those would be requests coming through the process over the next couple years. When looking at whether this is economically viable, you really should be comparing the payments that will be made on the additional $5 million request against the operational savings if there are any. I will say to that also though, I think there are probably some increases in the AMS operational budget that that aren't stated in this report as well. So I I do believe overwhelmingly the numbers prove that this will be um a success. I I think there's further um deliberation, studying. I mean, as the report shows, um there's a lot more that needs to be uh looked at and and considered. Um but I I wanted to make those points and I want to make sure that everyone on the council understands the two pieces of that CIP request. About half of that is a request that would would occur regardless of the sixth grade. Uh and the the other half slightly less um is for the sixth grade project.

Other questions from the council? Representative Edwards. Yeah, I want to thank you guys for the presentation. Um I guess I have a few concerns um as a student and I'm obviously going to go and become a taxpayer and I guess we're still paying off Edward Little. Is that correct? Okay. So until Edward Little is more paid off, wouldn't this almost be like irresponsible for the taxpayers at this time? So,

so I have a couple financial questions as well. So, I'll jump in here and then we'll return to Representative Edwards. So, it seems to me in reviewing the financials, there's a couple comments I would make. This is unlike typical bonding. We have to bond to generate the 11.2 $2 million. But in effect, this is a self-funded project because the offset for the debt service is the reduction in the expenses that the school committee would otherwise be subject to for a school that's going to be closed. Um so a couple observations I would have um to follow on uh with councelor Platt. Um there is some differential here meaning that the school closure savings are greater than the cost of this project but I I I don't think that the council should look at that as savings because there is a large backlog in the Haramman report of capital improvements that need to be made at some of these other schools just to continue to use those schools. So, another way to look at this is that this offset in the green line will mean that there's going to be less need for bonding. There might not, let me say that differently, there might not be less need for bonding. There still be a CIP item, but there'll be money available to help pay the debt service on some of the other uh schools. The one question I have to this though is in the FY28 column. So, the way this is presented, um, it would show a need for almost $1.8 million in FY28. Uh, because of course there's a lag time from the renovation starting until you have your first school closure. So, my

question is, can you comment how if this is going to be self-funded that the school department might fund that? Is is there fund balance available that could be utilized for that first year or is there some other type of approach? Sure. And I'll try.

All right. Okay. Yes, we did note that there is the potential that the the elementary school closure might not happen until fall of 28. There are still options out there for some um consolidation in the meantime to save on some items to be able to perhaps um not replace as as folks are leaving the school department. Um but yes, overall the cost is that 1.8 million. We've discussed with the finance committee in the school department to set funds aside out of our unassigned fund balance and that actually is on the agenda for next week to have that conversation and potentially move forward with that. Uh that being said, we are also discussing setting that unassigned fund balance aside for other capital improvement needs such as other schools as items arise. Yeah, just to follow on to uh councelor Gary's point, I think as the council's um looking at this um it would certainly be uh more palatable if that gap year was funded in this plan. I realize that perhaps you could have other CIP money and changing from one side to the other, but I I think it's more beneficial uh to show that this is completely selffunded. So, um, Representative Edwards, did you have further comment?

No. Other questions from the council? Council Walker. Thank you. Could you uh tell me would this have to go out for a vote or does it just lay here with us?

This is with you. So just just I know council Walker knows all about this, but so we're clear for the public there's a there's a cap that gets adjusted every year. The manager could remind us it's a percentage of the um the budget. Um and the 11.2 million would be below that threshold like most other CIP items um and wouldn't be a large enough project that would have to have a referendum. Second question, could you tell me if uh how many schools have a sixth grade in them and which ones they are?

Yes. Um we have six elementary schools currently. They all have sixth graders. That would be Fair View, Sherwood Heights, Park Avenue, Walton, Washburn, and East Auburn Community School. Council PL,

I guess one just one more quick thing to add. Um I think it was the mayor mentioned the Haramman facilities report, but for any council that hasn't taken a look at that, it's it's important to see that see some of the um large, you know, seven and eight figure numbers that are tied to some of our aging facilities. Um, again, I'm, you know, I'm not going to sit here and tell you which ones to look at, but it's important to look at the whole thing and understand what the capital needs of the school department are, um, over the lifetime of that facilities plan. I think that helps to, um, shed a little more light and put into context what the depth and magnitude of this transition would be, but also what it could possibly affect. because it's not just the operational piece that the mayor was talking about to Representative Edward's question about are we spending more than we should. The goal is that you're actually saving money every year, saving in air quotes. But there's also tens of millions of dollars of uh improvements to facilities that depending on what the strategy was, you could possibly forego those as a community. So, it's important to understand that. Other questions from the council? Council count.

Just a follow-up comment um related to the existing school referendum debt um this year. What that would be uh 1.1 million that's on the tax levy. So it's a much bigger project, but a lot of that is paid from state funds. So I think it's important. I just wanted to let the public know that figure. Um so because I I agree with you. it it seems daunting and when people are seeing oh my gosh we got a public safety building and then we're doing these other things. So I think it's it's important for us to be thinking about that differential that divide there's a lot of the money from the school that's being paid for by the state and there's smaller amount for the extra that we agreed on. Other questions from the council thank you again for the presentation. I really appreciate the creative work by the school committee and the school department to find a way to help approve educational outcomes but at the same time uh self-funding these capital improvements. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight.

We'll move on to the FY27 um budget. Um the manager will be presenting. Um I think it important to take a minute here uh especially for the public to let them know where we are in the budget process and what's going to be happening here going forward. So we have before us the uh manager's proposed budget. Um uh it includes uh the school budget as well to date. uh the um instructions that were given to the superintendent and the city manager was a current services budget. In other words, what is the cost this coming year to provide the same services that were provided last year? Um that um uh results in a 12.95% tax levy increase. Um, this is the closest approximation. The tax levy is the closest approximation in the budget process to what somebody's actual property taxes would go up. Um, the earlier discussion by the council was to set a benchmark number of what might be uh potential tax levy increase. Uh, the council sent 7.5%. I think it's important to remind the public again this is not a finalized number. Um it's a number for the council to work towards so that they can understand the um effect on programs and services as they work to that number. Um so using the 7.5% um the the guidance to the uh staff was to calculate in dollars the difference between a 12.95%

tax levy and a 7.5%. Um and that's 4,456,999. Um doesn't all come out even because there's a lot of moving parts. That would get us down to a 7.2 21% reduction. Um, as we go through the process tonight, um, I think it's important to recognize that as the manager talks about the impacts, uh, of these, these are not recommendations of the manager or of the staff. They're responding to the city council's request about what the impact would be if the 4.45 45 million was uh proportionally spread across all the accounts that have um general fund monies. Right? So you'll see not every account has an impact because some accounts in whole or in part are paid with funds other than general fund monies. So um a couple things for the council to think about as we go through this. um the um the recommendations uh don't account for any prioritization by the council between programs and services. Again, this is just a equitable distribution of uh uh the general funds money. So the council might find as they go through this that um they prioritize um some accounts or some departments uh at a higher level than others. This also doesn't include um any reduction in the school general fund money. We won't get the school budget until the 6. Uh but that's something that the council will have to think about um as we go

through this tonight. The 4.45 is all coming out of um the city side. So I think as we go forward, the city manager will talk about the impacts and the various uh program areas. Um the council should feel free to ask questions and provide feedback as we try to uh work towards um uh the prioritization of reductions in various programs. Uh so with that, Mr. Manager,

thank you, Mayor. Uh thanks for the summary. I think that really covers uh the exercise that we're going through. I think it's really important to make sure the public realizes this is an exercise. We're talking about some really drastic impacts to municipal services. What we provide here as a city today will look drastically different if we reduce $4.5 million from our budget. And uh so I want to make sure that we know that this is not something we're executing tomorrow, but it's what you're going to have for consideration, especially with the proportionate uh reductions. As the mayor said, it was across the board. So you might have a higher priority um in one department you might identify but because it was proportionate we took that equal amount through each each line item. And uh we also took into account if there was a reduction in revenue what that reduction in revenue would do or if based on our decision it was going to shift revenue uh maybe out of an expense back into the budget. We took into account that as well. And so I'll I'll try to make sure uh between the three of us, we'll make sure we can we can flag those for you as we go through and walk through the budget. I'd say for a lot of the departments, especially, you know, when you look at police, fire, and public works, um you know, the information I shared with you is like four to six bullets, maybe a little bit more depending on the size. Just know that there's probably a five-page report from the department manager on what those impacts are. So they're all here. If there's something that we're not hitting that you want further information about impacts, the director's here and the director can come up and talk about that further if we don't have the immediate response based on what's being proposed. So I guess to start is we're going to go right in alignment with if you notice this matched your master list of department codes and so uh so we'll walk through this uh starting with the mayor

and council and in that line item the reduction uh for the council was 19,287. Um just within the last few years um you through the council uh made an addition uh to stipens for the planning board. So we were uh based on uh priorities what we would recommend is that the planning board stipens would be eliminated. Um just for counselors who are new um to to recognize is that you can't change your salaries. And so you currently have a set salary that has to stay that wouldn't be able to change until the the following uh term. So you can't make a you can't say well keep theirs and we'll reduce ours or uh do something with your your stipens by uh by charter those has to they have to stay in place. Uh we also t uh identified some reducing uh some training um some facilitation services. We always carry some funding there if we have to contract somebody for facilitation. And then um um and then some of the training has to do with uh items that you might receive uh for uh through MMA, maybe a training course. And then the elimination and through the process, you had added $2,000 in uh for LifeFlight. I had placed that in under your budget. And so this recommendation would be to remove that $2,000 for Lifelight. Um, questions on I'll hit each one and then we can do questions. Mayor,

any questions? Council, um, I just want to highlight a response that I to a question I had from Phil and that with LifeFlight. Um, you know, if we were considering that 2000, we have not historically given that money. we instead have provided support through the Auburn Lewon airport and that the amount that we're providing to Lifellight is even greater than 2,000. So as we're all thinking about that that we we provide a benefit of greater than 2,000 already to the Lifellight program. So Council Gary,

it well it's more of a point of information. Where are you in the book right now or are you in the in our budget book? If you follow it by um within your depending on what sheet you're looking at, but if you're following it by uh the master list of departments, you can track it that way. Or if you have the the updated sheet that I provide you as a memo, you'll see them all. That's that's what I'm going to walk through is that memo that was provided. I don't have a didn't have a printer, so I figured you'd be handing that out, so I didn't make a copy. Yeah, Dennis will provide you one.

Other questions on the mayor and council account. All right, moving forward. I'm sorry. My my only observation there would be um I I I don't I appreciate the the um issue around the charter provisions, but um typically we don't utilize all of the mileage or supplies money. Um uh speaking for myself, I just pay that stuff out of my stipens. So I would certainly be interested in some reduction in those two lines.

Yeah, we can do that. I think you're right. Um they're not always pulled. However, there is an obligation to reimburse you if you request. That's why we we leave it in there and uh but we could certainly reduce move on.

Okay. uh city manager's office. We had shifted the the change that you saw in that line item was we had shifted a position from the finance department regarding grants uh the grants management position that was in finance shifted into the police and so it's almost that you know it's it's not even the full amount of the 72,000 that came as the result of the reduction. So what we would do is we would remove uh 72,570 from the general fund budget for the grant position. However, we would pay for that position out of our grant fundings that we have for different uh programs, the 72,000 portion. We keep the balance of that salary um in the manager's budget and we did not reduce uh the fringe amount in the uh the fringe account. So when we get to fringe, you won't see that reduced there. Uh the purpose of that is that uh we currently have uh just over $28 million in grants that we manage. Um we wouldn't be able to eliminate that position. However, we could use funds from the various grants to cover the administration of those of the of those grants. It gets, you know, it gets creative because we need to make sure that the time spent for those grants are applied to the appropriate grant. we just can't have one grant pay pay for uh all the other funding. But what that does historically for for Auburn and we'll talk a little bit about this in the engineering um reduction as well. Historically, we haven't pulled administration costs because we use the full amount towards the program that the grant is is budgeting rather than a position because then we're not chasing that. we have consistency with that that uh position regardless of where the grants are coming in. And so um so that's how we've done it. So that's the recommendation uh that's that's being

proposed here. Uh that amount would be eliminated in the general fund budget. However, it would be offset in in the grants line items.

Council column. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um I understand that uh the the cost shifting and that would allow that this person will be able to manage the grants. Can you speak Phil to any restrictions uh from current day in terms of writing and seeking grants or philanthropic awards and relationships? Yeah, it could it could reduce that time because, you know, we have some grants that um that allow for administration costs and we have some grants that are just for a program cost. And so there's times when it when we're looking at um applying for different grants. our grant writer probably has somewhere in the range of 20 or so grants that she's reviewing now of do these make sense for us as a city? What's the cost impact? Is there a future capital expense that we could offset if we were to apply for these? um that time shrinks because of the time that uh as you start coding out this person's time to the various grants, the time that she has for researching um because it's really only going to be based on the total take the total uh package for u fringe and salary. that's the percentage of time we now have available uh to be able to do those uh do the research but also to manage the grants that don't have administrative offset. Yeah, great good great question. But that's that's the difficulty in that and it'll change. So that will constantly change as different grants uh come forward and what we're applying for that percentage then shifts. Other questions on this item? So my concern um to follow up on your last comments is that this could be

actually a net revenue reduction, right? Because we could we would be foregoing nonpropy tax revenue if we don't have time um to apply for that. So, it would seem like um I I understand the transfer of the funds, but it would seem like it would be helpful to have an understanding of how much time we need available to ensure we don't have a net revenue reduction and not transfer all of this.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, this is phase one of the exercise. if this was we're moving forward because if we were prioritizing these reductions, this one wouldn't be in the mix because there's just we need the consistency. And so, but if we were, that's where we would start to drill in on actually taking the how much can be applied to each of those grants currently. And some of that would require us for grants that we currently have to do a modification to our program because we did not allocate that. So, we'd have to see if that was approved and then we would start taking that percentage to to get to your point, mayor. It could be it could be uh that differential uh regarding revenue offset.

Other questions on this account? No.

Great. So, the next uh is um code one department which is city clerk uh program impacts. The total here was 62,243. Uh really the big reduction here has to do with customer service operations. A few years ago, uh we were able to reestablish uh the switchboard operator, which we had for years in the clerk's office. We eliminated that through a previous budget reduction, and a few years ago, we were able to bring that position back. Um, one of the complaints that we had continually heard from the public was just a difficulty in finding or being connected to the right department when they're calling. Um, if you're in local government and you have a question about a certain item, you would know, okay, the assessors handle that, but the average public may not know that. And so when you get the uh the phone tree message, if you're looking for assistance, we do a lot of uh frequently asked questions when we do switch over to automated, which happens on occasion if uh u it's during a lunch break or something, but someone's not available to answer that call. But it's really difficult to find the find what department you need. And often um the switchboard operator can answer any question that the person is calling about and so they can just take care of that right away. That citizen's getting an immediate response. If there's no one in that position, so say they had a question regarding um the vehicle registration, then it was then that call would be transferred to uh that um those staff that handle that. But they probably with customers they're not going to answer the call. It then would go into the voicemail. So the person is now wondering am I is my call going to get responded to? When would it get responded to? So those have been some of the benefits with that the biggest portion of that. But then also it's a

position that's may able to be offset when it comes to um voting season and because there the position does get deputized as a deputy clerk to assist in uh ballots and as well as um handling uh voter registration as well as um handling some of the uh the filings for uh vital records which is uh sometimes times can get backlogged and so that position is able to do that um in between calls that that person is taking. So um and then the elimination of the records restoration uh we would um we would just delay that and so uh we've been making good progress. I think we've been chipping away. I think the council has been uh supportive of funding that over the last few years and so we've been catching up. This will just put us be behind on our on our track of getting that up to speed and getting those records um transferred in a in a way that it restores them no longer and uh and preserves them.

Questions? Questions on city clerk? Council. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Actually, it's more of a a comment in my perspective. One additional benefit to the current structure you have around um the switchboard and having someone there is that is you pointed out that they often can answer the question and don't have to transfer on to someone else. You're saving other people's time that I'm probably can't quantify that but I think that's an important piece as we're thinking about that. There's some cost savings there some efficiencies. is not just it's great it's quality service but there's also efficiencies gained in terms of our staff and their time.

Other questions? Council Platt. Thank you. Do we have off off the top of our head uh figures for like call volume and or in-person volume per week, per month, per year in the clerk's office? Not sure in the clerk's office. We have it in the finance. they've been tracking pretty well because I think we've handled I think they're handling what 30,000 transactions through the through the finance office. We just recently merged those two departments and so um being able to break out just what though that call volume. I don't know if we're tracking that.

Uh so we're not tracking that specifically, but what I can say is every single person that walks into city hall goes to this information window. So, uh, even if they've registered a vehicle before, they're likely going to speak to that person first. Uh, wondering if is this the only place I'll need to go? Will I need to go anywhere else after this? Things like that. Uh, sometimes they're just asking a question because they're already here about something unrelated. U, so I can say that when she's sitting at that window, every person that walks through that door is being greeted by someone and is often being directed or helped by that person. uh there's over 30,000 transactions handled by that office in that lobby. And I say over because it was 30,000 with just the finance side, not the uh vital records or voter registration. Uh you know, we have 26,000 registered voters in the city. Um all of those records are being handled by these people as well. So, with the change of uh license plates and uh I almost said real ID, I almost said voter ID, not what I meant, real ID. Uh there's been an increase in requests for those those vital records. So, that's been taken on by this staff as well. We could get some numbers. I could get a report on how many vital records they've issued and things like that, but it's over 30,000 transactions in a year is handled by this staff of

Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm always just searching for orders of magnitude. So, it sounds like a 100 to 200 touch points a day, you know? I'm just trying to get a sense of how many people are getting served down there daily. So, yeah. Thank you.

Yeah, it's a great point because we we ran the model, the staffing model on finance alone based on the numbers of 30,000 transactions. We know that um they're currently at five. However, there's um those are transactions of people coming in. There's a lot of transactions that take place um that the person doesn't come in to file if especially if they're registering a fleet of, you know, 40 vehicles from one of our our larger manufacturers or or one of the other businesses. Those are coming in behind the scenes. So, that's not included in that process. And so there's downtime when they need to do that. U but then there's also time off, right? So if you have, you know, you have people that take vacation, they have sick time, and you start factoring in what is your actual hours that are that you have available for the public to come in. We know that if we drop below four, we're below the amount of actual operation hours to handle the 30,000 calls. That's giving an average of 10 minutes per customer. That's a pretty quick turnaround. There's a lot of times some of these are a little more um you know a lot more detailed as far as they're on the phone with insurance companies trying to get the insurance record or they're trying to track down the title of that vehicle or there there's a lot of things that happen. But but if just taking an average of a 10-minute um especially if somebody's just coming in for a vital record that could be just a 10-minute transaction. Uh but we know we don't have enough if we go below five. We know we don't have enough people. However, you're going to see part of the recommendations here is just keeping that because you know we need to be able to manage that and that's if everybody comes in and every minute allocation that's available and people don't do that. We get spikes in the morning, we get spikes at lunch and then we get spikes right at closing as well. And then obviously certain days of the week if it's summertime, we're going to see the spikes on Fridays um before

uh people registering their votes say and uh um and then we're certainly going to see a large increase when people are coming in to pay their taxes just that that week before taxes are due. So other questions on this item? What what's uh looking at the CIP? There's some uh pictures in there of documents that are queued up here for restoration. If we have these that are this old, is there statutory requirements about preservation of these documents? And what what happens if they deteriorate and they're no longer accessible?

So yes, there are main state statutes that require that we keep records restored and preserved. uh there are records that we're required to keep for all time. So if we're unable to access or read those records, we're no longer following state statute. We're we're in violation of that statute. Uh as city manager said, we have made great strides in this record restoration. There was a time when that was removed from CIP. Uh we fell behind. Some of the records were getting to kind of a scary point of whether or not we would be able to restore them. Uh we're currently moving into some marriage records. We've done a lot of the older birth records and things like that. So we're in a healthy state with our records at this moment. We could reduce this this line and still be able to move forward with some preservation. Um we wouldn't be going at the the clip that we've been going at for the last several years. It's important that we get to a point where everything prior to 1900s is restored and preserved. At that point, you can go at a slower pace because those records aren't deteriorating. It is such a fast rate. Um, but that picture that you have on that detail is one of the records that we currently have that needs to be restored.

Other questions on the clerk's office.

Okay. So, finance department um line 108 um you see the reduction here is 145,832. Um, I'm going to let um Kelsey cover her pieces here. I think the one that I would just recommend is that um you know to get to this was also reducing uh some of the senior tax reimbursement program. Um so that that's new as of last year. Uh so the reduction gets us uh still providing some relief but not at the full amount that was recommended. Again, we can't get the exact amount because it varies based on everyone's application, what they're qualified for. Um, but we would we reduce that. The way that that program is currently set up is that we have once all the applications are received, then there's a a leveling of what's what's being provided. Um, but then based on what they're also qualified for, but Kelsey, I don't sure. So, uh, the reason we included that, as the city manager stated, was that 150,000 was not in the budget before last year. So, that's quite a big hit on our budget when we're asking for $146,000 reduction. So, that said, our staff also handles administering this program. So, no staff is brought in to add in administration of the program. We just distribute those duties between current staff uh to handle that when and if it is funded. it does change that maximum threshold. So, um it would depend on the number of applicants and whether or not they they are qualified for that amount. Um the other reductions that we put in here to meet that reduction goal was uh a shift in workload, which would be reducing a staff member. That would result in loss efficiency. Uh our biggest concern is a potential increase in error rates, which is what we've been working towards. We've talked

about this during the audit process of uh staying in line with GAP and Gazsby standards. That's the general accounting principles, uh governmental accounting standards board, staying in line with those principles. And we've also talked through that audit process about a lot of the new standards that are coming out that are a lot more uh stringent. So, it's important for our staff to stay up u up to date with those. So, that leads into that reduction in training to align with that reduction in staffing. I did reduce that but I did not I did not gut that line. There's a reason for that. Uh any additional cuts beyond what I put in there to read that reach that reduction goal uh could affect any certifications that our staff holds as well as the the GAP Gazsby compliance. So there are continuing professional education requirements for our staff to maintain their certifications. um if we lose those certifications, you I mean you have the historical knowledge, but they wouldn't be able to remain certified or stay up to date with any new standards. Uh Gazsby standards, we get at least one new one a year. So, uh last year I went to a Gazsby 101 class and a Gazsby 103 class and I actually run into our auditors there for example. They were going to the same class to learn these standards. So those are the effects of these. Uh the other major piece of this was elimination of any GIS map updates. Uh that creates what's called spatial blindness. It degrades our ability to maint maintain infrastructure um and maintain our financial compliance. So uh you'll see GIS actually in another piece of of this reduction whole sheet. It's the easiest way for us to maintain parcels. Um, we have parcel viewer which also gives us uh information about gosh everything you could do every

single layer possible in in our GIS mapping. Um, if we can't do any updates, any changes of ownership, zoning, anything like that would no longer show in our GIS database. So, we would have to go through our paper records in order to see any of those updates. And those updates would also not be available for the public consumption unless they came in and requested those records. question finance. Questions on finance.

More of a comment. Uh my concern with um some of these cuts and the and the credentiing, but also just the potential error rates is the the longer term but downstream consequences of this. You know, it seems to me that error rates lead to um potentially credit rating and and and other bond sale potential. I don't know if you could speak in more detail to that.

Yes, it is in effect to answer your question a domino effect. Uh if there are an and I said you know our biggest concern is a potential increase in error rates. Obviously our staff does everything we can to maintain records accurately. They get reviewed. A loss of a staff member would change the amount of times things are reviewed, things like that. So if there's an increase in error rates which then result in additional uh adjustments through the audit process for example that can change our bond rating which we always say at least the last several years we've said we've maintained our bond rating which has given us this really great rate. So a reduction bond rating also affects our municipal reputation for anyone coming in wanting to do any investments. Um but also affects how many people want to bid on our bonds. So a reduction in bond rating gives us a higher interest rate. It doesn't qualify us with that next tier for example of bond buyers. And if people say they're not handling their finances as well because their rating has now lowered, uh fewer people will bid on our bonds, there'll be fewer buyers available and therefore fewer options for getting those better interest rates. Those those ratings are really our our report card. Um and if we're not doing well, they'll notice. And so it's just a domino effect at that point.

Other questions? Council PL, could um could we get a quick review on the success of this uh senior tax reimbursement program of it was 150,000 that we budgeted. Can can you remind us how many people took advantage of that? And specifically my question is was that program overutilized, underutilized, were we out of out of proceeds immediately or did that program go right up to the end? It's its availability that is

we paid out I'm going to round here because I'm not looking at the number around we paid out around 125,000. So there were remaining funds that went into the general fund. There were around 145 applicants that ended up qualifying. 165 or so applicants overall. So around 20 did not qualify either not having a homestead or you know any number of those those qualifiers. Uh, everyone was notified whether they did or did not qualify. The average um, payment was around $600. There were some outliers that created that average being lower than expected. The max payouts were 1,000. If we were to continue with this suggested reduction and we stuck with the same number of applicants, same number of people that qualified, that max would be around $680 rather than a,000. So, it does it does affect that maximum payout option for those people that did qualify for that maximum. Uh the other piece to to keep in mind is that while that does reduce that that total senior tax payment reimbursement, we're also reducing the tax levy at this point. So it's reducing that that tax burden on them at that level as well. So I understand that it does affect that that total max payout, but those are the those are the numbers. So to follow up on the senior tax program, um given it was the first year, some of those people that didn't qualify, they they may not have qualified because they didn't have the right paperwork, right? They hadn't filed for the property tax fairness credit or they hadn't they didn't know that they had to file for the homestead exemption.

Most of them were homestead exemption or uh actually not old enough was a couple of them. If someone turned everything in and just didn't turn in the correct uh sheet from their taxes, uh we made we contacted them and obtained the correct sheet. So, we didn't just say, "Oh, you didn't turn in the right paperwork." And disqualified them that way. We noted it, contacted them, spoke with them. So, most of them were uh homestead age related. Uh Homestead was the biggest one. And so I'm a little concerned that um since it was the first year that we should assume that we're going to have the same number of applicants this year. I I'm assuming

I wouldn't assume that. That was just for that purpose of I'm assuming we'll have more applicants this year and um it's probably unlikely even though they qualify people are going to get the $1,000 match, right? because you know theoretically you don't have to go far beyond 150 people and you're going to be below the ability to provide the maximum match theoretically. Yes. Um other questions on finance. Council Walker,

I was just going to make a comment that quite a few people still didn't realize we had that program going and because I heard a lot of people after it was too late to to be able to submit. So I think we would get more definitely this year if we can go with it.

Anything else on finance, Mr. Manager? So, human resources uh line item 100009. This is one of those where some of these departments there was an amount but you couldn't hit that amount because what you had to take away the amount was actually greater. This is one of those. So what we would do is uh we would eliminate um a function that just uh began in HR as it pertains to our recruitment hiring uh process as well as uh maintaining um certain trainings that are required through Bureau of Labor and then also uh investigations that we're doing on workers comp inquiries. Uh what would end up taking place is we would have to go back to outsourcing some of that which we've done. Uh the challenge with that is as you outsource some of that it's just not as efficient. It's not you have you have gaps. I think a good example is our um emergency emergency management planning for each facility. Um that changed over then we realized that that hadn't been updated. And then as well as uh the changes with Bureau of Labor standards, I think when we brought this person in and did a a full review of where we are across all the departments. We had departments that were out of compliance. Um we were able to get them back on track, trained. When you outsource that, you just don't you don't have that efficiency. And then the same as it pertains to our selection process on bringing individuals in. So we would reduce that and we'd have to outsource outsource that work um with the with the remaining amount that's in that line item which would would cause those impacts that I just shared.

Questions on human resources council vault. So just to clarify um the money required for the outsourcing is already figured into this number. Correct. Other questions? So go ahead council.

Thanks Mr. Mayor. Is there do you have any sense of the impact on on uh turnover rate? How much of a satisfaction are bringing people on or is it more success? You mentioned the selection process. Are you are you seeing I mean is it's potentially less efficient in terms of the timing of when someone gets training. But are there also benefits in terms of uh this new process? Are you are you spending less time not finding the right candidate and having to continue looking further?

Yeah, I think that's that's a great question. I think the the uh savings here is at getting the right person in the right seat, making sure we're we're we're doing a better job at vetting only because there's just the current HR staff is really limited there. You know, there's three people that are managing, you know, 250 employees benefits, um all records, all inquiries, not to mention um there's work that's done by our HR staff for people who retire. as far as some of our uh communication regarding retirement plans, health insurance plans, all that. So, so even though we say 250, it's greater than that because your employees that retire still come back for um inquiries regarding their benefits. And so not having that that individual that really works on the uh the complete onboarding process, the the interviewing, the uh selection process saves us time because we're if we just hire somebody who's the wrong fit, not the right fit for that uh position, then it's going to it's going to cost us more. um time, but also uh and that time could be just, you know, yes, somebody's got to spend that time to put the the ad back out, all those things. But it could also be depending on the department, it could also be um it's the wrong fit, meaning that we've got a safety issue with an individual. And then there's that whole process of now that the person's on board, you know, on boarded, now how do we start taking the right steps on eliminating that person? And then also um if there's a vacancy then some departments it requires additional overtime costs. So it's a ripple effect with some of our costs as far as not getting somebody in there as soon as possible so we can eliminate that. And uh uh so yeah we see you know we're we're so new into this. You know this was about rep prioritizing positions

that we currently have. This wasn't adding anyone. It was just putting this position in where an area that was a high priority for us, things that we had been seeing, but we haven't experienced it enough to really identify um all those benefits. Uh but week one, it was just it reduced the time regarding a workers comp claim that we would have been paying through the workers comp fund for an attorney to do that work. We were able to do that inhouse. So you you immediately saw that savings that the workers comp attorney wouldn't have to have really we handed them a package if need be. And so uh so there's some of those benefits.

Other questions on human resources? My my comment on this is I I I don't see how this saves any money at all. I mean, one personnel investigation gone bad, one workers comp case that isn't handled appropriately, the impact on the city is going to be way more than $39,000. I mean, this this whole the reduction in human resources is really risky, right? just from a financial standpoint that um if you don't do some of these things the payout is going to be way greater than 39,000 in in a single case. Absolutely.

I mean yes I think it goes to you know the work that the council's had to do over the last few years by adding additional funds to workers comp. Those weren't because all because of just larger claims. It was because the entire process on those workers comp claims are more costly as we're paying our provider uh to uh process those. Other questions on HR. Um we'll move on.

So 106 this is communication and community engagement. The reduction goal here was 31,739. Uh what was recommended uh based on the amount where what the the least amount of impact as far as uh programming again because you can't none of these actually fit the perfect um okay let's just remove this program. It's so the the program that equaled closer to that was the elimination of the uh New Year's Eve Auburn uh program. And so uh so that event that signature event would be reduced. Um the revenue was offset as far as what we bring in for sponsorships. And um and then there's economic impacts within the community as well. And so uh because this is becoming that signature event where we're getting a decent amount of people coming to that impacts the businesses, the hotels, those kind of things as well. So, um, so that's the reduction for this line.

Council G. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. What's the total cost of that budget and how much do they normally spend per year?

Liz is here. Liz might be able to answer that for us right away. She loves speaking in public. Uh the most recent was Yes, I do. 35,546. So it's almost an exact that covers your salary, your staff salary if you have staff and all the costs or just this um that does not cover communication staff, but it does cover um police, fire, the stage, the lighting, the bands, you know, any expenses affiliated with that that event. Correct. So, it's just that one event. It's not all the events you hand.

Yeah, we would propose to keep the Blues Festival in the fall and the lobster festival in the springtime plus all the Christmas parade and, you know, all the other smaller community events as well. Could we get a copy of what your what it does cost to run your office and for all these events?

You have our cost to run the department in your in the budget as well as all the events costs are in the budget as well. Those are those are all built into there already. If you want the separate line items for the events, I think we can get you more information um on those if if you're talking about cuz this is another one where yeah, we know what our fixed cost is, but we uh negotiate a uh a sponsorship level where someone is going to a business is going to provide x amount of dollars to help offset the cost. Liz will just work within that provider to say, "What would you like done at this event?" And so maybe at this event, they just want to be, you know, tagged on this type of material that's being produced. Maybe it's on a banner, maybe it's on some material that she's putting out, but for maybe one of the larger signature events, they want, you know, you know, the gold the gold standard on that. So it's it's a little hard to break it out completely. we can give you the fixed cost for each of the events, the revenue offset does shift. So, it's hard it's hard to nail that down. Um, and then we also we don't factor in necessarily um the staff's time for those events because the staff is also they're doing they're they're managing all the social media platforms, they're managing all the other things within the city. So, we don't have anybody that's just handling uh events. So uh but we can provide you the the actual cost uh to uh to host that event.

The back of tab two of your book also available online uh but it's the blue and white section that's each department and their detail lines.

Other questions on this department? No.

Thanks, Liz. All right. Health and social services programs. This is a zero budget goal. This one is already This is what we would consider a fixed based on what was proposed on what the uh general assistance office is seeing for current uh requests and where we're projecting. So, this line, Adam, had actually already been reduced by 164,000 compared to last year. And again, that's a a portion, right? This is the 100 100% of that. However, there's also a 70 uh 70% of what we expend is covered by the state. And so, the revenue has that offset already built in.

Yeah. So, this is statutoily required. Not only that we provide the assistance, but there's time frames set forth by the state to respond. Correct. That's correct.

Questions on 10:32. Okay. 1013 is the business and community development program impacts. This really has to it's 143,305. Um this is this is staff reduction. These these people just they administer programs. That's that's what they work on. However, there's also limitations on this because there's funds that come in through grant funding. And so what we have to work with is really built on which positions within within that department can you eliminate? What does that look like? And so it's about removing and then sharing uh responsibilities. Uh that will add time for general assistance. So right now uh we have um we have an individual that's full-time, but then we also have an individual that is doing some general assistance and some other uh grant administration within the office. And then we have a public health uh position within the office handling um the workload regarding uh communitywide our presence communitywide as it pertains to public health and um initiatives that are taking place as a community and that liaison role between those organizations in the city of Auburn um is the position that that individual does. So, you're getting diminished ability to be able to meet some of that mandated demand, but you're also um impacting um weight lines for general assistance. So, um and that has an impact. We know that when we're working with our vulnerable population, just getting there is a challenge. And so if they're if they're getting there and then we're not able to provide the service because they're waiting and then they might have to um either wait longer u most are coming with families. There's

there's a there's a larger impact uh that we don't even really recognize completely. Uh so that becomes a challenge. And then this line item also to get to the 143,000 also eliminates the the add-on that the council did regarding the request from the drop-in center uh for expanding uh the services at 121 Mil Street. Uh so this reduces or eliminates that expansion. Um and then overall it just has a major impact on just administration of our HUD program. You know, I think if you saw this kind of reduction, we would be working with letting them know for the same things that Kelsey identified as far as um concerns about errors. This is this is an error. This is a concern that we would have by not having the staff to be able to spend that time ensuring that all our reporting with HUD is done in alignment with the the mandates that are related to the funding that we receive. We also administer we're the receiving agent for Lewon's citybg hunts funds that's offset with a cost for us. We would continue being able to do that but then that also reduces you know our our capacity uh within within this department

questions. Okay. So 1011 is public services. We would need to restructure public services shift and then limit um our in-house economic development opportunities. This would eliminate our relationships that we've been building with um our manufacturing uh organizations. It would discontinue all active relationships that we have at the state level pertaining to economic development. Uh it would limit the municipal economic development functions um as it pertains to just some basic permitting assistance um making sure that they're prepared as they come in to move forward with their projects and then it would rely heavily on contracted services and again that's where you see the uh deficiencies that take place and I think the piece as the mayor said regarding um you know one of the other line items that we were talking about it's not even realizing the full impact of the the loss here, right? When you start having that impact on an econom you don't have a you don't have a consistent presence for economic development, you're going to lose economic development opportunities in a commitment community that will have, you know, it's something you can't necessarily quantify at the moment, but you will have missed opportunities as it pertains to manufacturing commercial um growth within the city.

Questions on this item? Council K, just a comment. I I just to underscore your comments, Phil. I I think this is um an unwise short-term uh decision that's going to have us have an impact long term and even medium-term, perhaps even short term. I just, you know, I think, you know, we've talked a lot and we've explored a lot as a council and tried to support staff to to expand business presence in Auburn. That has an impact on our longer term expansion of our tax base and that this seems uh to be an unwise choice towards that goal.

Yep.

Other questions? Yeah, I would follow along with the same uh line that uh councelor Cowan brought up. This is a net revenue loss. Uh the council only needs to crack open the assessor's report and peruse down through say the top 30 taxpayers in the city. Um this economic development activity is not just attracting new people. It's supporting the businesses that that are here to help maintain their presence in Auburn. And um there's nobody on that list that comes anywhere near $48,000 in tax payments. They're way higher than that. So, you know, this this will have a significant impact on revenue, right? It it's going to absolutely next year it's going to be a lot worse on the other side. A copy of the assessor's report that you were just mentioning is also at the back of your book.

Okay. Line item 1010 which is the planning and permitting. This also includes this line item also includes codes even though those are two separate division. They share the same um budget line item. So the reduction goal here is 74,651. We would need to restructure the code compliance and permitting. uh that will reduce that will just redistribute our essential functions. Um this would actually eliminate um our vacant building registration program that was just initiated by the council. We'd have to repeal the associated ordinances with that. We wouldn't have the staffing to be able to um enforce the ordinance related to vacant buildings. Uh because it's not just getting a complaint and going and seeing if the building is is vacant. It's maintaining a registry of vacant buildings and ensuring that that revenue is coming in as a result of that. It also reduces the overall code compliance activity. Um it increases permit review times due to reduced in-house capacity. Uh code enforcement officers don't just do um code um complaints like somebody has their trash out or uh there's a extra vehicle in there in the u in a driveway. Those are things that they also do, but they also review um new development. And so as permits come in, the code officers have to check those permits as it pertains to code compliance. And so that would delay that code um component within within that function. And then um and then also um we would need to do a real comprehensive review of all of our municipal codes as it pertains to uh code enforcement.

which one you the worst thing that the city can have and we this is something we've dealt with over the years and I think we're we're working on making sure we have the right staffing within code to address this but one thing I of often share with the council when there's a request for a certain ordinance to go in place that has an enforcement arm to it do we have the capacity to be able to do that if we don't then don't put the ordinance in place because there's no there's no one that's actually going to take that to that next step and say yes we're going to make sure that somebody's complying with that or if a complaint comes in because nothing frustrates the public more is you have this ordinance why aren't you doing something with it? Mayor I talk about I talked about unregistered vehicles and you know those those are things that are in the ordinance but it's just the capacity to be able to go out and do those enforcements becomes really struggle with it. You know, it's a it's a great thing. We've got extra, you know, we've got a lot of uh growth happening, a lot of development happening. That means their time is being spent reviewing that. That means their time is also being taken away from uh doing some of the uh ordinance enforcement. So, we'd have to go through really do a comprehensive review, strip out the things that no sense in having that language if you're not actually going to enforce it. It just means that now that's going to have a major impact the quality of life. It's going to have a major impact on um the vibrancy of some neighborhoods because that means people will be what would have been out of compliance is getting, you know, probably a little more out of hand than what you'd like to see in a in a neighborhood. Um if that if that enforcement arm isn't available.

Questions? Council Duvall? Uh yeah. Can you just detail some of the things that you think would be involved in that last uh bullet? The re just stripping. What kinds of things would you strip away? I think it'd be good just to hear some of what that is.

Yeah, currently you have you have regulations regarding um junkyards as it pertains to what people can have on their properties. It could be a a maybe a non-licensed junkyard or even just somebody's home that's becoming a junkyard. They have a lot of um trash. They might have um junk vehicles like we talked I I was talking about earlier. There's those items, but then it also has to do with um and I can have Eric come up if I'm if I'm missing something here, but there's there's um compliance issues regarding uh licensing that even though the licensing is done in the clerk's office, the enforcement of some of those restrictions regarding certain businesses is are done in code the code office and also done within um each of the other departments like fire, like police. Uh there's a there's an element to that. So um marijuana licensing, there's an inspection that takes place from the code office to go out to ensure that they are meeting our our standard within our ordinance. We would have to go through there and say maybe we don't have these certain standards because we can't enforce it. And so um so maybe they should come out of the ordinance. And um some of it has to do with um parking and loading zones. Um no parking on certain streets. Even though there's an element that's within the the police department, some of the violations actually go to they start at code. Um Council Walker gave me a photo of a incident this weekend as it pertained to um I think it was a multi-unit building that had their trash on the side of the road and had been collected and it was the weekend. Uh we have an ordinance regarding what you can put on the side of the road. It needs to be in a container. It needs to have a lid on it so that that waste isn't being spread throughout the neighborhood. Maybe we don't have that ordinance any

longer because we can't enforce it. So it's those types of things. Council, can you also speak a little bit more the vacant building registration program? I know that there's benefits from the compliance side, but my recollection there was also um solid benefits from a safety perspective for our public safety staff.

Yeah, I think you know definitely benefit on the on the safety component. We're ensuring that some of these buildings are secured. We're not needing to go in because somebody is now um squatting in some of these places and starting fires in them or whatever else that we had been seeing. The other benefit that we're seeing by the registration program is that um the initial outreach that we had done with I think um we hadn't even completed I think a half of the the city at that point but we had already had just under 10 locations that they immediately once they received that notification they put those b those buildings up on the market because they're not they didn't want to pay the the the vacant registry. So yeah, let's go ahead and offload this where they might have been sitting on it in the past as far as well, we'll wait till we need to address it or get it on the market, whatever that might be. So we've seen those benefits. We should be getting another report probably in the next uh by next month, another report of the update on where we are on the registrations.

Other questions on this item?

Couple observations here uh to follow up on councelor Cowan. My recollection is the last report there were two buildings that were inspected and tagged as no entry that but for the ordinance and but for code enforcement inspecting them if there had been a fire there or some other emergency police or fire personnel might have been at risk by entering into those buildings. So um the other thing I would say is in the course of the year code enforcement's on the top 10 hit list. I get calls every single week, multiple times a week about quality of life issues related to codes. Um, lots of things that the manager talked about, business operations uh that people are undertaking in zones that don't allow business operations, things that um seem a little inconsequential until you're living next door to this thing. And um it we get a lot of calls. Um the last comment I would make is that um reducing permit review times is going to have an absolute effect on forward-looking revenue. Um you only have to go to any of the meetings regarding housing and development whether it's on the governmental side or whether it's on the private sector side and one of the top five items that steers developers away from a community is delayed permit review times. So, you know, we can we can cut the budget and you're going to have decreased revenue going forward cuz they're going to go someplace else.

Yeah. Yeah. Great point. Um, yeah, when I was talking about the parking, the piece that I left is it's an abandoned vehicle maybe on the side or somebody that's parking an unregistered vehicle on the road and the code needing to deal with that. But Eric, did I miss anything else? If I could just add, when we're able to address abandoned vehicles or junkyards, when they're small, um they're much easier to get cleaned up before they become more of a problem. Um and the vacant buildings, one thing that we'll never quantify probably as a as a revenue um that we weren't anticipating is we found nearly 20 vacant buildings that still had a homestead exemption. So, the people had moved out. They didn't notify the city. So, we're finding these vacant buildings and taking those exemptions away. Um, so the taxes will be collected. And one of the other ones that happens a lot in the winter is um addressing no heat complaints quickly. Having staff that can deal with it the same day prevents buildings from freezing up and units from becoming unoccupiable. So, I think the quick response is key.

Anything else on planning a permit?

Okay. information technology 1025. Uh this one, you know, we're it's a very small department that we have. We don't uh there are certain elements of this department that we do outsource that are as it pertains to some of ouri cyber security efforts but there's a lot of work that takes place as far as support for uh internal and external as it pertains to our vendors that we use and being able to use the IT department to process um some of those uh troubleshooting that takes place with a lot of our software applications is a big element of what it does for us. Um and then whenever we bring a new building, new facility or changes in facilities online, it is part of that process, part of that planning for the work that involves on setting up everything from the phones within that facility to wireless access, ensuring that it's secure, all those things. So this actually eliminates our IT support, some of our IT support, but then it also eliminates some of our uh tools that we have uh for um um software programming like the open uh open finance um is a good good example of a program that we would we would remove. Uh there was just in 2026 there was an average of about 30 users. Um for the Oh, thanks. Appreciate it, Steve. Uh 30 users for open finance. Um the average time spent on this site was 2 minutes. That's because staff sometimes goes in just to see if um you know Kelsey or Jill might be going in just to see is is the data transferring over as it's supposed to and that might be a quick hit to go on to take a look at that. But so it shows that it's also counting staff entering that that

program. Um and then we we see a bit of a uptick when it comes to budget season. somebody might want to go to the uh this is the open portal finance uh button that you see on the the uh website um as it pertains to budgeting. Um so we have we have a few amount of people that actually access this system. So we'd recommend uh removing that and as well as um it would impact um the um legal view uh piece that we have with GIS. This is the fly over that we do that um impacts what we have available for aerial uh digitizing for uh for some of our layers of of reporting much like what what Kelsey was speaking to earlier. This is another element of that. So

questions on it.

Okay. Uh 10:30 recreation department. The goal here was 93,195. Um, this has really have an impact on our leadership over our wreck program as well as um we have the new uh PAL center operation. We're probably um seeing a steady increase daily in the amount of kids that are coming to the PAL program. Um what we would need to do is to meet this target we would reduce the hours of operation for PAL uh down by about 31%. Uh that's after school programming as well as our summer programming at PAL. It would eliminate the teen uh program at the PAL center because we wouldn't have the staffing to be able to uh provide that service. It also eliminates all the senior service programming. That's a when you get to these levels of departments and you have to eliminate an entire person, obviously that has an impact on all the programs that they run. So the the senior programming would need to be eliminated as well as some of our um um events that we do as well as some of the lunchons that are held as well as age friendly outreach initiatives because what we would need to do, we haven't got to the facilities line item yet, but part of the facilities uh reduction was actually closing the uh senior community center. So that building would just be would come offline. We'd have savings with utilities. We'd have savings with um you know heating uh maintenance of that building uh operation of that building. So we would need to uh close that center. We would also um that would eliminate you know some of our special events and outreach that we do within Wreck because we wouldn't have that staffing to be able to do that. And then

I think one of the largest pieces here is youth uh programming. youth program really requires it's very different than the adult programming. Adult program somebody could come in, register, and they they'll run, you know, we have somebody that oversees a lot of adult programming um and a lot of adults, but when it comes to youth programming, you need more oversight of our staff that are trained and certified and um to the level that's necessary for youth. And so volunteers are great. We can't run our programs without them. However, they need a staff position that's overseeing that to ensure that there's proper vetting, everything that takes place. Without that position, this would eliminate uh the youth programming uh services that we have um within the city. So, some of the as we talked about some of those eliminations, it's especially within the PAL position, it's about reducing people that are full-time down to part-time to help offset some of those costs. But then there would be these other impacts regarding um lack of capacity to be able to manage programs.

Question about Grat.

Not a question, but I in the in the um interest of prioritizing some of these things. I just want to state my interest in prioritizing this department and also looking at it in the context of um the last two years, not just this year. I think there was a an impact on this department last year. Um, I think that obviously we're talking about cuts to all departments. This one to me feels particularly catastrophic. I think that when you start talking about the loss of services for our our youth, especially at risk youth as well as seniors, um, I think that, you know, I don't want to cut anything out of this budget. Unfortunately, we have to. Um, but when it comes to paying taxes or registering a car or supporting our youth and and elderly, I think that um, personally, this one is a priority for me. So, I just wanted to state that.

Council PL, I think you made a good point regarding the previous year. That's something that I didn't highlight, but when you get to a level where you've stretched your resources um, pretty thin, it doesn't take much to then have to eliminate a complete program because you just have no bench. you've got no one no one's available to be able to provide that. So yeah, it's a great point. Council Randle, I just wanted to I just want to agree with you. I this is priority for me as well. Council Garrett,

I want to be respectful. So I'm trying to choose my words very carefully. when I was able to participate more at the senior center, the the different groups that come in, they took over a lion share of running the senior center. So I I resent the fact of trying to cut services for those that are most vulnerable. When they put on meals and things, the age friendly did it. They did it pretty much all by themselves. Councelor Walker leads the age friendly group. I'm a member of the age friendly group. So I know how hard he's worked his butt off doing a lot of stuff single-handedly. So for us to say, "Oh, because of budget cuts, we're not going to do this." That's crap. We still should be able to do it. Even if we do cut something somewhere marginal in the recck department, we still should be able to take care of the young folks, the kids, and whatnot. Same as the PAL Center. We knew we would have to have at least a minimum staff to be able to to house all the kids that we need to take care of in the neighborhood and run programs. I know it's a tough budget year, but I think we're pulling at the heartstrings trying to make sure we don't cut this or that. So, I resent that fact.

Council Gary, I would just say that, you know, one of your recommendation was for us to get at 2 and 12%. So to get to that, you're you're decimating every department and every program we run in the city. It just would be impossible to be able to do that. When it comes to facilities, I have to be able to keep the facilities operating that are providing life safety measures, right? That's that that's that challenge. So I can't necessarily shut down a fire station 24/7 because there's going to be times when we still need to operate out of there. Although we're going to get to that line item in a minute where we're talking about one station being reduced 50% of the time because of staffing, but I still need to keep that facility open because of emergency priorities. I I would agree with you. Our our senior volunteer program, we can't pro we can't provide what they do. We don't we would never have the staffing to be able to do that. I think when you say line share 100%. When you look at our our senior programming that's done with our age friendly group and some of the different senior um programs like for seniors and some of the other groups, they run their programs, but what I'm talking about is facilities. So, I'd have to take a facility offline and that would be the facility that that as we look at prioritizing what buildings can you close? I can't close public works. I can't close uh some of the other buildings. But when we took and said there's an equal proportionate reduction in every line item, that's the difference in this process that we did. I didn't I didn't say where are our priorities across the board and I could take more out of one department than the others. This was a proportionate reduction. And so facilities to be able to get that line item, it required that extra. And I I'll find it here in a minute. I think that uh within

facilities and we'll cover it uh soon, but you know that's that's about $17,500 just to operate that building just to to put the lights on and to to heat it. And so uh so to get to that amount, that's what that required. But it's it's certainly not I'm not looking to pull at heartstrings. It's about what are the priorities that we have and where can you make the reductions that best meet the goal that was given. That's that's really the only part of this exercise. Excuse me. So would like to cover

just to follow up on that. One of the challenges that I see here with parks and recreation is um a substantial amount of their programming is feebased. So it it's a situation where if you reduce feebased programs, it does nothing to affect the tax levy. So you have limited opportunities within parks and wreck because of the split and the revenue sources. Council Garrett.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I mean no disrespect. We knew for the last year or more since the the referendum passed for the public safety building that it was going to lead up to this where we are today a a world of hurt. We could have and should have done better in the last couple budgets. We also should have held firm to the not filling any vacant positions. Even if we needed some of them, we should have had that crystal ball to look in it and be more mindful of who we've hired. Respectfully, you have said that when we've lost a position and we try to fill a position, we can't hire a person for that same salary. We have to give them more. And that's partially what's catching us in the butt because we have to be so competitive. I love our city. I love our the people. I love our employees. I deeply respect them. When I first came on the council, which was back in 2000, the city employees were more like a family. when we were in budget crap, instead of taking a salary increase, they held firm and they didn't get a increase because they didn't want their friend or neighbor that they worked with to lose their job. Today, things have changed and it's on its ear. And I'm and I'm sad that some people, some employees, even though there's a lot that make up for the sour apple ones, it's more like what my dad would say, the huray with me and the heck with you. And I want us to get back to where we really care for each other and be one family like we used to.

Councelor Gary, I think you're completely um you know off track when it comes to our staff. Our staff uh work very well together. They're they're a strong unit. I think that they uh do a lot of sacrifice. Uh we have staff positions that could easily take a position in any other municipality and make substantially more than what we pay here in Auburn. They like the environment here. They like the public that they serve. Some of them don't like living in the community that they work in. So, I think that when you take a look at this, I think having that broad stroke regarding staff, I think, is inappropriate. I think that we have staff that um really support what's going on here. And they're taking minimal wage increases. We're not even our wage increases aren't even meeting the CPIU within that's set each year. They're coming in less than that. And then when you take a look at the assistant city manager sent me the uh main municipal association just sent out a study um and they do a wage and benefit study and I just got that today and as I was looking through it I was looking at some of the positions that we have. Every position is is kind of middle or at the lowest end comparable to other municipalities. We're we're not we're not overpaying our people. We do have staff positions that I um that I've in instructed the HR director to hold. I don't want to hire someone right now. If if we're just going to have to go through a layoff process for an employee, that would just, you know, it's not fair to them. It's not fair uh to um the the department. And so um so we're holding some of those positions. There's certain positions that I know through this process based on priorities where we've kind of identified that I'm like you still have to fill that position. Can't go without that position. Even if the after the budget process, I still need to fill it. So that we can't just put out a blanket. We're going to have a hiring freeze

because all we're doing is we're creating more costs. especially if we're talking about a firefighter position or um the code the the fire prevention officer which does a ton with code that we have a vacancy now they've got to fill that position. I would never recommend that position to be eliminated uh through this priority process because that is a priority position with the city that has to be filled and so so we we have done that. We're it's not we're not filling positions just to get them filled. um we're we're holding a line on those. But I think it goes back to what you know what I said originally to meet your your recommendation when we started this. You'd be looking at a lot more elimination of departments to be able to meet this. You know, the council provided the I think the average that we came with we settled the council settled on 7 12%. But if it was at that 2 and 12% I you we'd be having a very different conversation within the city right now. Counc

just to follow up on the the for those who haven't been looking at the numbers as much as we all have. Um you know a reminder that a huge part 40% of the increase in what we're looking at to have to then work with to to adjust down. 40% $3 million is for the public safety building voted by public referendum uh by the majority of the of of the uh residents who voted in 2023. That puts a big challenge and and when I calculated based on the most recent numbers that you pass that you sent to us uh it's 12.95% increase 7.7% is the increase without the public referendum. I mean we're and we would really have to be cutting into this is why we're talking about draconian cuts here that we're it's just but I would also say that this is the beginning of the process and and the comments we've heard right now about the value the quality of life value of of Rex. It's the same thing for public library and many other the other programs that we have to think about. It goes to the challenge that we have here, right? It it's there's the safety first, but then it's the quality of life and and why people have chosen to live in Auburn is not just the police and the fire and and water. It's it's those quality of life program. So, just to follow up on councelor Cowan's um comments and provide some clarification. So, when you're looking at this, whatever number the council is looking at, take five points off that, right? So if you want to get to 7 and a half% that's a 2 and a.5% operational impact because the as council cowan mentioned in 2023 um when most of us weren't here the citizens voted 55% in favor and 38% opposed with very clear instructions on

the ballot about what the impact would be on the debt service. We have uh large county tax increase. We have increases at 911 and we have very significant increases at main waste to energy. Over two years, the tipping fees are doubling. These are all things outside the council's control. So, you're going to be at 5%. And in thinking about this, 7 12% that we're trying to get to is only a 2.5% uh increase. You talk about all the drivers in this. We have tariffs. We have health care increases, all the inflationary pressures, two and a half% means you're having significant cut to services to meet that number. Um the other comment I'd like to make is that I understand that um counselors that were on prior councils may or may not have agreed with what the budget was. That's immaterial and it's inappropriate to bring that up at this point. Prior councils voted by majority vote and passed a budget for this city. It is what it is. They're in the past. We should be spending our time looking at this budget, finding out how we're going to try to solve the challenges that are right in front of us today. And we shouldn't be going back trying to litigate past budgets. Are there any other uh questions on wreck before we move on? Thank you. Next line item is line item 1050, public library. Again, the reduction goal here was 127,689. Um, we uh I'll go through some of these bullet points, but the treasurer uh for the uh library boards here to answer some other questions that you might have, but based on the information that was provided regarding the impacts. This would reduce uh the weekly open hours. It would include a full closure on

Mondays, an elimination of evening access to the library. It eliminated or decreased access to programming which include children's literacy programs, teen engagement activities, and adult and senior learning classes. It had a significant reduction in uh new materials acquisitions which included uh books, ebooks, uh digital media. uh obviously would require longer wait times for interl loans and research assistance and reduce the technology support um including some scale back uh public computer access and digital support uh within the library questions regarding the library. A couple quick clarifying question that what what's the hours reduction? Um I I see the treasurer coming forward. She might be able to answer this. So the the notes here are closures on Monday and elimination of evening access. What what's the hours that we're open today and what would they be after this?

We're open 50 hours now and we'd be open 40 hours. Monday is the only night that we are open till 7. And then the other question I had in the second bullet here talks about the elimination of adult senior learning classes. Um, could you clarify? Are these classes produced by the library staff or are these um classes provided by an outside provider that's using the library space? I believe it's both, but I can get you more information if you like.

Yeah, that that would be great. Thank you. the ones that we do host, we are providing resources, materials, technical assistance if we're hosting, but we also do some, but I'm just not sure what the ratio is. Yeah, that would be great if you could follow up on that. Council PL, uh, in a similar vein, can you share some examples of the um, children's literacy programs, teen engagement programs? I have a similar reaction to seeing those things as I do the recreation department. Yeah, I can get you more information. And I know um Donna Wallace shared some details in her her uh response um that may be helpful to you.

Yeah, I I can give some of your highlights for some of this. So the Monday closure also means the loss of uh the uh popular Tiny Tunes program. That's for children five and under. There also loss of funds for popular programs like the adult wellness programs which is the slow yoga and also the Auburn uh senior community center book club and uh craft programs for for children, teens and adults as well as uh access to um the library provides access to parks through park passes. So it eliminates uh that um opportunity um to be able to go in and be able to access that. Council,

will there be any impact to staffing salaries? Yes, there's a reduction in hours full-time staff would go from 40 to 38 and there are 12 full-time staff and there are eight part-time staff that will go from 18 to 60 hours. We did make a big push this year on wage comparability and so we are not reducing we actually increasing their wages but we are reducing the hours. Other questions on the library. Thank you. Thanks.

All right. Line item 1015 which is the facilities and engineer uh I'm sorry energy um department. So the reduction goal here and again this is one of those line items where there's a lot of fixed costs. So that line item amount was it's this is a large department because of utility fees. So when you take the 195,000 this gets to the point that I was sharing with councelor Gary regarding um where could we cut but still be able to maintain the uh the fixed cost. If for those remember over the last couple years we've been we've been taking elements out of some of the department budgets and placing them here in facilities. Some of that had to do with building repairs. Some of it has to do with uh fuel costs uh for uh the various uh departments um as well as not just fuel meeting uh fuel for the building but also for some of our vehicles as well. And so um this eliminates some of our contracted service regarding uh generator maintenance. Also shifts certain complex work um onto in-house mechanics that we would normally outsource uh for some of this work. It also raises our risk of generator failure during critical events. Obviously during that when you're going to have a critical event is when the rest of the community is also having a critical event. And so for us not being able to have that immediate emergency response uh becomes challenging especially if we need to keep all of our facilities operating to deliver services. It eliminates engineering consulting. Um this is um this means that we have limited technical uh enterprise uh support for some of our complex building issues. When you take a look at just our HVAC systems, this isn't, you know, you just can't go in and just turn a few knobs and get the HVAC system back up and operating. These are very complex systems that require um outside

resources to be able to make sure that we're maintaining these to the highest level. Also reduces our general uh municipal uh property maintenance. Um, we know what takes place when we don't maintain our facilities well, our equipment well, is that they begin to wear faster and we have uh we're reducing the the life of that equipment, but we're also seeing significant breakdowns. Once we have breakdowns, then we're taking some of our rolling stock out of service. When when that's happening or our facilities out of service, then that's impacting other departments. So, it has a a ripple effect as that as it pertains to that. I already mentioned the closure of the senior community facility with the utility shutdown on Lake of HVAC maintenance. Um, doing this obviously degrades the condition of that building faster than if it was operational and being used. And then um and then there's a significant cost to bring that facility back online if if this if the city budgeted for it in the future. And then um already talked about vehicle replacements and then increased maintenance demands questions on facilities and energy council.

I um I just thought of a question for the senior community facility. Um how would that affect polling locations? Have we do we already know what we would do there or would we have to study that and figure out what we do?

We'd have to take a look at it. You'd have to vote on the new location. Um, we've, you know, we've talked about Norway Savings Bank Aarita in the past. We've talked about Hasty. We've talked about several different locations in the past. Um, I think our goal is to keep them out of the schools. That was part of our our initiative when we did this. I don't think we want to revert to that, but then we'd have to take a look at, okay, where's that next facility that could be able to um handle that type of volume? There's also the potential for consolidating polling locations, but that reduces the number of available places for people to go to vote. Kind of seems against the spirit of access. Yeah. Right.

Other questions on facilities and energy.

My concern on this item is you you're just pushing cost out into next year and the year after. I mean, we're on the edge on vehicle replacements now. You can go up to the I mean, some some of the council saw this on the tour. There's vehicles packed cuz there's frames rotted out. There's vehicles that are jacked up at the rear end out of them just sitting there. So, this will not only impact services, it's going to get us in a situation similar to what we're in right now with a debt service where people kicked the can down the road in prior councils year after year after year didn't fund capital improvements and then you get into a crisis and here we are with the problem we have today because you had no choice but to fix these things. So, some of these items in here, I' I' I'd like to see a lot more analysis, a cost analysis on this because very little of this 195,000 is an actual cost savings. It's just a a deferral. You're going to get to the out years and you're going to pay a lot more.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, that's why if you look, I think when we did the tour with public works, um the public works director talked about how we have all these plow trucks that are coming due because there was a time when eight new trucks were purchased all in the same year. That was in response to years prior to that where those weren't replaced. And so that's you can you can see over time when you take a look at our our vehicle equipment um age um list and you can see over time when there was no no one you know there wasn't money being spent on these capital items and then it got to a critical point. There was a large purchase that took place and then you see it slowly backing down again and then another large purchase and that's that's exactly what you see. It costs more in the long run. Yeah, council count.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just in addition to the costs because buildings deteriorate, my concern is uh the the the everinccreasing costs of maintenance and repair and supplies already. I mean, just if the buildings stay miraculously in the same condition they are now, and we worked on them three years from now, we're still paying more for the costs of these things. And right now my my understanding is that these costs are raising much faster than what we would expect from just uh you know inflation. These are things that were they're going way well well above that. And so there's there's two parts to that. There's deterioration cost means more construction or reconstruction and there's also the costs are just going up. So if we wait too long we're paying a whole lot more. I think we learned our lesson from Maro Road and and Engine 2 on that.

Other questions on this item.

Okay. Next 1014 is engineering. This is this is very small department. Um three positions in this department. So what we would uh end up doing is shifting a portion of the project manager management responsibilities uh to be supported by this the state's uh transportation funding. Currently our model has always been we take the full amount that we receive and we put it towards the project. Um but we would we would need to now designate part of that much like we were talking about with grants. we need now need to designate part of that funding that comes in to offset the um uh the project managers uh the project management position uh within the department. So it's reducing the funds uh for those construction projects.

Questions from the council.

Next is 1016 workers compensation. This is a a fixed cost. We're not making any proposal for reductions on this line item. Uh the next one is 1017 regarding fringe benefit impacts. Again, this is um just for council for the public to know that uh within each of the departments, there's not a fringe component within their budget. We have one department that covers all fringe which includes our health insurance which includes retirement plans um Medicare, FICA, all of that as well as emer um as well as um salary reserve line item. So within this uh reduction to get to the 942 there's a there's actually a greater reduction here that came as a result of all the departments having their individual requirements to meet their goals. That means that that that came to a a total position reduction of 28 positions. There was a requirement for us to go greater in the fringe component because we you just can't make that happen today. there'll be costs that get carried into uh the next fiscal year. So we're we're recognizing that in in this and so um so that's determined we meet this goal but we also have what we factored in for some other costs as it pertains to unemployment and some of the other impacts.

So is it fair to say that this item is in effect calculated based on the program and services cuts that the council decides on? It's it's not calculated separately. It's just derived. That's right. When you eliminate or reduce programs and services, if positions are eliminated, that's how this is derived. That's correct.

Questions on this item by the council. Emergency reserve uh 1018. And this is just as a result of the uh if the over overall appropriation for the city and school would now be 134,962791. The uh the charter requirement is that this is 1/ half of 1%. Um it goes into emergency reserve. So we'd reduce that by 11,000. It's a floating number as we start working through the budget process. Next is 1021 fire and EMS transportation department. Um this department alone had a $737,558 reduction. This um the impacts here as it pertains to um reducing the operational capacity um by placing um fire suppression services out of um out of service. Um this uh results as a fact that we would um if the um if a fire apparatus was below our if we were below our minimum staffing within a day one day operation each vehicle apparatus requires a certain amount of firefighters to operate that vehicle. If that apparatus does not have the staffing level that apparatus has to come out of service. The fire department would then uh the uh team would then the supervisors would then distribute their staff onto other pieces of apparatus. And so uh so the chief determined that based on to get to that calculation, we would reduce uh one apparatus would be coming out of service 50% of the time throughout the year to be able to meet that. That's basically eliminating all

your overtime costs because those overtime costs come as a result of us dipping below minimum staffing and they need to hire up so that we don't take an apparatus out of service. Um so that's the first item. We would obviously delay um I'm sorry. So just on this the result here also means that you would then if you did not have an apparatus at a station. So it would be engine two is where historically we've talked about if an engine comes out of service based on location within the city engine 2 which is on South Main Street, the fire station that we're currently building. Uh that would be closed 50% of the time because there would be no apparatus operating out of that facility. Um, we'd obviously still have facility costs for that building. Um, but we would not have personnel necessarily there 100% of the time. We would delay the schedule uh for the ambulance remount and then any major EMS um equipment. This is shifting. Um, we currently bring in revenue through our EMS uh transport services. Uh we have over a million dollars that we budget for for revenue that comes in on your revenue line item. We would bring the 150 that we would pull out from the EMS um transport. We would put that back into the general fund and not fund the the remount and we would not fund uh some of the other equipment. We would delay the delay that um so that's the shifting when I talked about sometimes it's revenue. Uh this is one of the ones that would be a revenue off off um shifting because we would offset this in the um in the general fund. And then uh we'd eliminate the fire prevention programming. This is just because of reduction in staffing. You just don't have the personnel to be able to uh

visit schools, do education programming. You wouldn't have u um building safety outreach programming that they do. we would have uh fewer non-emergency inspections. As as I mentioned before, we'd have to really go through and say, "Okay, what are code mandated? What are not?" But the fire department doesn't just operate on here's a new facility, go out and inspect. They also do a lot of proactive inspections as it pertains to multi-unit buildings. So, in in some of our commercial buildings as well, but when you take a look at some of our build apartment buildings, they're they don't want to go there the first time when there's an incident. They're going and they're doing an inspection there. They're they're assessing, they're documenting that facility or that building. They're determining, you know, where's the best access to this if you need to use the fire escape and the and the back and is it in good standard or is there is there um you know because you have tenants in some of these buildings, they just sometimes think I can just store things in the hallway and block an exit. Well, fire department goes in and inspects that. They inspect the proper lighting. They they inspect to make sure that there's proper railing that so that can they get in with an emergency um equipment. And so there's a lot that takes place as those preventative. So that a lot of that preventative work would would be gone and we would eliminate it. And then um we would also discontinue the operation of the third rescue unit that the council uh voted and brought online. We would remove that to also lower the overall EMS response capability. uh it would extend response times for medical calls and we would limit the enrollment as part of uh what was negotiated when we moved uh towards um it being more h have an EMS uh department was also requiring that uh there be paramedic

training requirements for staff and so we would actually delay that training uh as a as a cost-saving measure. So the fire I think it'd be important for the fire chief to come up be able to answer some questions because you know I just summarized for you in four bullets 700 plus thousands here. So the chief can certainly address some of the specific um reductions here. Questions from the council council plot. Thank you. Um yeah I'd be curious I understand what it means to have a an engine offline you know 50% of the time. I'd like to know what that's going to feel like for a taxpayer. what what's that going to mean when a call comes in at a certain time of day?

Yeah, there's really there's really I mean many many effects, but on the major scale the the two major impacts you're going to see um the standard for us to respond to a single family home is to respond uh the NFPA standard is to have 17 firefighter minimum at a single family home fire. um this reduction in taking an apparatus office. We c I should say we currently meet that uh with our 14 on duty staff and we get automatic aid from um Lewon with an engine for three. We reciprocate that and we go automatic aid for them for their structure fires. But that's how we meet the minimum standard um for fire response. What you're going to see is that we're going to show up with significantly less than the minimum standard. Right? We will be arriving with 11 um assuming we don't have any other calls at the time, right? And and heavily dependent on uh additional units from further away, you know, Lon for two for potentially two engines. Um that really inhibits our ability to get in make fast attacks, knock fires down very quickly, keep them before they get get to them before they grow. Uh as we as we develop the appropriate manpower to do more advanced operations. The second piece would be um general response time and that's both for fire and EMS. Um I I ran some numbers earlier today. U you know it's very rare u or it's very often that we have multiple concurrent emergency calls going on. Um and so you know some of those numbers we had get my sheet out here. Um just in the last 6 months of last year there were 692 occurrences where we had more than one emergency call going on at a time. Um that equated for combined there were about 1564 incidents just in 6 months where we were already reduced on staffing because we were handling multiple calls at a time. Um that's 115

times that we were running three calls simultaneously. 25 times that we were running four calls simultaneously all the way up until incidents where we had an incident where we had six simultaneous calls going on. And so this reduction in staffing not only affects our ability to respond um that initial call and having the right manpower, but it's going to mean that in certain neighborhoods when we don't have an apparatus in place, those response times will go from, you know, a benchmark that we try to hit is is around 6 minutes to more like 10 to 11 minutes. Um that's really important for both fire and EMS. Um the American Heart Association says that uh for every minute that CPR is delayed, the chance of survival decreases by 7 to 10%. Right? So minutes count in the job that we do. Um so it's important that we've really reached some important benchmarks of having resources, the right number of resources stationed around the city to get response times um on average on aggregate to to those benchmarks so that we get good good effective results. So, you're going to see us showing up with less resources and waiting longer for mutual aid, and you're going to see longer response times because we're not going to be located where we traditionally have been um to respond quickly to fire and EMS calls.

Other questions? Go. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh, Chief, following up on on the the the less than desirable idea of having to go to brownouts, could you speak I mean you just spoke about what that would feel like. Appreciate that. Could you speak more to a little bit more on how that impacts the kind of symbiotic networking relationship you have with our other communities? um and and what their response might be, their reaction might be to us having to reduce.

Yeah, it's it's hard. Um I don't want to speculate necessarily on the reaction because the the network that we have, everybody does what they can with each other and tries to help in the maximum, but there's no doubt we would put a greater burden on on those agencies. I think there's there's two sides to that coin. uh we're going to have to call for mutual aid more often from further away uh and have communities that coming to our aid much more frequently. Um but it's also going to reduce our ability to aid them, right? We're going to have to be very mindful about um us helping um a turner or a minor mechanic falls and and thinking that we're already in a compromised position. How much more compromised do we want to make ourselves by sending an engine out there to those fires?

Thanks. Just one other question related to the advanced life support service expectations bullet. Um could you speak it in past uh presentations chief you've mentioned um we have a really good um success rate with uh heart attack and and keeping people alive and that's largely because of the number of people you have to bring to a site. This reduction how how what's your guesstimate on what that impact would be?

Yeah, thanks. Um yeah, our um survival rate, which would be u surviving discharge from the hospital for cardiac arrests in Auburn, um far outpaces the state and national average um on data that we've accumulated over time. Um that's a result of both our quick response times and um our our response model, which is called we pit crew CPR, right? We're bringing more than just the two people on the ambulance to do that job. That's an American Heart Association standard. You know, five to six people running a code. Um, and so it'll be negatively affected in two ways. When a station's ground out, you're not going to have a fire apparatus, which has EMS providers. I think it's important we all understand that our fire apparatus are also EMS providers. We have EMS providers in those neighborhoods. So now that response time and the start of of resuscitation is delayed an extra 5 minutes for response, as an example, potentially. Um but in in in any sense um you'll also if we got there um say there was a rescue in that area and they did get there in a timely way. We're waiting now for for a fire engine from a further district um to get there. So we may get there with two, but we're still waiting for that full complement of people that have lended themselves to our success rate um to muster and to get there and to be able to do that job. And so I would expect there to be some negative impacts to that. Be very hard for me to quantify. You could certainly look, you know, in the rearview mirror, you know, if we got put in this position and try to tell you what the impacts were, but right now, um, just simply to say that we know early response time saves lives and we know that our model of having more than just those two providers there saves lives and that will be changed.

Council Duval, yeah, two things. First, um with regards to mutual aid, um do you have any sense of actually what the impacts of this um budget season are going to have on the on the broader network of um systems around like sort of the regional

I think one of the things I will say is I think we we had this discussion I think a week ago uh when we talked about u the EMS system at large and it's statewide the EMS system is quite fragile. And we're really dependent on an inter um cross capability, you know, intermingling mutual aid uh to do that because um nobody has the budget to staff so that they can be sure that they get even 90 95% of their own calls. They're at the cost of having that level of staff to ensure that. So what we do is we depend on each other uh and some level of reciprocity so that as as a system we get a surge, we've got the ability to ramp up for that. But we're all relatively trying to keep our staffing and cost at a at an equitable level. Um so that system certainly is is currently strained. It's strained enough that um that's why we had the initiative last budget year to try to add a peak hour third rescue truck um that we took on for 40 hours a week during peak hours because we were just seeing that not just Auburn but as a system during those hours we were struggling to meet response standards. Um and so you know my expectation is that as we take that third rescue out um that becomes problematic for us. Um it also by having you know one less engine responding to those EMS calls um and having a greater dependence on mutual aid to help us with EMS transports and those types of things. It's further strains the system. Um it's going to put more more pressure on us. It's going to put more pressure on our staff. Um you know one of there were a couple of drivers for that third rescue and one was staff fatigue, right? It was we were wearing we were wearing them out, right? We're trying to balance the system. We were trying to manage for peak excuse me peak call volume, but we're also trying to strike a u a level where staff it was

sustainable for staff, right? And they'd stay with us and stay employed. Um and so there'll be more strains.

Councelor Dval, I think I'm sorry. I was just going to follow up on your question. I think you make a great point. I I spent the weekend one of the counselors had asked regarding some comparison data. So, I was taking a look at some other communities and and I knew we were obviously we're at 12.95, right? I knew that was going to be driven by our public safety bond, but when I was looking at other communities, they're at 16, 18, 20% budget requests currently. Now, we would have been in that same boat if the directive originally wasn't just come in with current programming, right? So, cuz if we had done a normal budget process for you, and we would have said, "Here's the demands that we're seeing and here's the impacts. This addresses the fatigue that the chief is talking about, not just within that department, with other departments." If you're if you're if you're on the entire time that you're you're check you're punched in for that department, then you're going to get that fatigue. You know, I think our numbers would have been similar to that somewhere around 16 18 20% increase. And so the fact that we're at 12.95 and we're comparing with these other municipalities now, we're we're all very early in the process, but I think you're absolutely right. I think some of our supporting municipalities, they're going to be their services are going to be diminished and that's going to have a direct impact on us. So I think that's a great point.

And following along on that, um what are the financial implications of bringing that uh third ambulance out of service. Are there any other than or and the the pushing off the deferred maintenance on the on the trucks themselves?

Yeah. So, um on dropping the third ambulance out of service, I didn't come to you expecting that we would get a revenue increase by adding the third ambulance because the calls volume is what the call volume is, right? We were looking for a way to meet that call volume uh in a better way. Now, are there occasional calls that we're able to pick up when our other two ambulances are are busy? Yes. Um but but I wouldn't say that there's a direct revenue decrease for taking it out of service, nor was there a revenue increase when we put it in service. There were a couple of things that we gained. One was a staff balance. Um meaning our that fatigue piece and and the call volume that that our two rescues were running. Um and and it improved customer service by having another unit available in response times. Um, but the other piece to that was, um, it's important that we remember that we're a dual purpose department and all of our staff are trained in both firefighting and EMS. Um, and we're also very young. Um, I've you've heard me say that many, many times. And the need for us to train and be safe and meet those skills, especially in a tight budget year where I can't afford to sp send people out for training because that costs money brings all of that training inhouse. And so that third rescue has often given us the opportunity um to, you know, we on average take two calls a day during those peak hours, you know, off of the other two rescues that we're spending training and trying to get those folks up to a level playing field that are new with us and need have a lot of uh growth left that they need to make.

Other questions? So, Chief, I have a few follow-up questions for you here. So, um, the reduction in an engine company, what's that going to do to the ISO rating? Uh, it'll have a significant impact. And if the ISO rating drops, people's homeowners insurance is going to likely rise. Correct. It's it certainly would on their on an assessment, the next assessment where they pulled that data. And you talked about mutual aid, but some of these communities that you talked about, they basically are volunteer companies. Correct. Absolutely true.

And um that goes both to firefighters but mostly to EMS. I think in the our last meeting or the one before you were talking about how we would have to intercede with advanced life support because transporting ambulances inbound were only trained at the EMS level uh EMT level and not the paramedic level. So some of these it it it's not equal, right? When when we're calling for mutual aid for an ambulance company, they very well may be staff with EMTs and not with people that have the advanced life support training or equipment.

Yeah. in a very a very uh similar analogy. Often there there are times in which we may get an engine in support. Um and for some of these smaller communities um we get somebody that can operate that truck but may not come with two individuals that are qualified to do interior firefighting. Um so right in smaller communities they're they're they're leveraging their volunteers in the ways that they can and it it's uh it's not always apples for apples. I appreciate your answer to councelor Platz's question where you referenced a a residential structure fire, but I I think in the past couple years you've um given some more detailed uh description about other fire types. So, um I think it's important to recognize that we can't respond on our own and and take care of a residential a single family resident structure fire, let alone multifamily, commercial, some of these other um uh events that that don't happen every day, but they're not uncommon.

Yeah, absolutely. you know, um you know, the standard for uh an occupancy like a strip mall, which we have plenty of. Um apartment buildings, garden style apartment buildings, we have lots and lots of those showing up. You know, that's 27 to 28 personnel. Uh industrial occupancies, the standards 42 to 43 personnel. Um and so, you know, we're we're heavily dependent. And uh you know again I I love to talk I I I feel it important to say reciprocity when we talk about mutual aid because the communities around us also need that from us right um Lewon needs us um to help them with their threetory apartment building fires just as we need them and and that really is how the fire service has been formed because of the financial challenges with it and that we all have to scale to a point where we can take care of some of our min minimum basics and and in my opinion you know, we've built our structure that we ought to be able to uh you know, fill the lion share of the roles for a single family home in our community, right? And and when we get above that, we recognize we have to reach out and most communities are built that way. Um um turning to equipment um so my understanding from the prior discussions here over the last month that these remounts that we're doing are in lie of purchasing new equipment to try to extend the life of the equipment that we have. So I I think this is like some of my other prior comments about equipment is just kicking the can down the road, right? we're going to have more breakdowns and we're going to get into a position where we can't do a remount because things are too far gone.

Yeah. And I apologize, Council Duval, you had asked about that piece and I missed it, but thank you for bringing it back up. Yeah, with regard to the remount. So, I I think for the sake of education, um, and I think the city manager alluded to it, but but in general, what what typically happens is, um, when when EMS was taken over, uh, in Auburn, uh, in an effort to understand its true cost impact, um, planning for capital for EMS was factored in there. Right? So what happens within my budget is I carry a line item um for EMS capital reserve and it transfers from my budget into a reserve account that we then build and draw down for these EMS capital purchases. Um and so not necessarily the $225,000 that I had requested is being spent this year. Some is and some is going for next part of next year's purchase, right? and it's used as a so so in an effort to try to minimize the browning out with regard to possible ways to get to this 700 and something thousand one of that was for me to say hey can we not do that capital contribution this year or or limit that by to uh to 75,000 reducing it by 150 um in a way to to reduce the amount of brownouts and it but to the mayor's point what that does I think it's very s very possible for us to be able delay that remount the one year, but it's building a cliff for us because if I don't then restore that capital next in next year's budget, which is an automatic $150,000 budget increase before any inflationary factors, right? Then then I won't be able to do that remount then either, right? So, we're putting it down the road, but it's got to be funded and it's going to be a shock to that budget when we go back up on that amount.

Yeah. and not specific to the fire department, but I think for the council that the way to think about it is a lot of these things that we're talking about are in operational recurring funds. What's going to happen is if you have certain cuts this year, it's not a one-time thing. If you want to bring it back next year, you've got to spend this money just to get to the prior year before you take on any of the new expenses. Um uh just a couple more uh so with the discontinuation of the third rescue on peak hours and the the less reliance on engine companies because they've also been reduced. Um are we going to be in a situation where we're stacking ambulance calls? I I get it. you can call somebody and some some of the neighboring towns, you know, Lewon, they don't have excess capacity anymore than we do. Some of the neighboring towns have have onduty EMS folks, but a lot of these are volunteers. So, given the rapidly increasing volume we've had over the last four or five years in medical calls, what's that going to look like? Are we going to be having someone call and we say, "Hey, when the ambulance clears the hospital, the call we're on now, we'll head you away."

That's exactly where we will be. And this this is part of what we were trying to get ahead of with staffing the third ambulance, especially during those peak hours, was us having multiple calls going on at the same time, um having to call in other agencies. Um there are we we often will hear on the radio instances in which both uh during non- peak hours, both of our ambulances are on emergency calls. um we'll be notified that we have another emergency call and we're calling for mutual aid. Sometimes that's coming from say Turner um and we will be able to finish the one of our ambulances will be able to finish the EMS call that they're on, deliver that patient to the hospital. Now they try to expedite, right? Because they know they've got a call waiting and then get back and do that pending call even before we're getting a unit from Turner, right? because we can and and so and they those patients might have waited 15 to 20 minutes without any EMS service while we were trying to roll that call. Um and so um that that happens and that'll happen on a much higher frequency uh if we don't have that peak hour peak hour call uh peak hour ambulance

and that and that long delay isn't because Turner is not absolutely willing they started the minute that they got called. It's travel time. Yeah. Well, and it's they've got to bring people in and then they've got to get to Auburn. Yeah. Yeah. For some agencies, you know, Turner has some staffed hours. Um but a lot but some agencies don't. Yeah.

Um and then I guess the last minor point, just an observation, this is like some of the things on planning and permitting. So, if we're going to delay completion of um some of these housing inspections, you should expect tax revenue to go down because we we've seen in the time I've been mayor, we've seen two substantive developments go to New Hampshire, not because of the fire department, but because of other permitting delays at the state level. If we if we'll just compound this if we have these the developments will go elsewhere. They they're not going to wait it because time is money and you're going to be decreasing your future uh tax base. Uh anything else on fire? Council.

Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Um, Chief, can you remind me the in general the the the level of increase of the of our uh EMS calls over time per year? What percentage? Uh, yeah, I've got a chart for that. Excuse me. Thank you.

Yeah, just got to put my hands on the right one. Uh, yeah. So, um I'm trying to find a good place to go back to. Uh well, in 2020 we did total calls, we did 5,000 total calls and in 2025 we did 6,400. Um so it went from 5,16 to 6380. uh on the EMS side that was from 3,869 calls to 5,035. So we see almost a 10% increase year-over-year of EMS calls. Um and so we're going to be you know like I said that so much of this was the motivator for trying to we recognized by um for cost reasons that starting a third rescue uh had to be done uh a little bite at a time, right? And we were trying to think how do we do this in an economical way and and the approach we took last year if you remember was to try to hit peak hours right to bring it on for 42 hours a week. Um because it was where it could have most impact for the least cost peak hours, peak demand hours. Those daytime hours also are the most beneficial time for us to use extra time for training and those types of things. Um but certainly that growth in call volume is a driver for us to need to do it. Um, and you know, it's got to it's got to it's got to continue one way or another. Um, we it's actually kind of u coincidental, but uh the main fire chief's uh email list serve, they started circulating an email today asking for the total volume of um calls that each ambulance unit was running across the state. And so chiefs have been chiming in for this and it's not a full data set. Um but we today there were responses from many many firebased EMS agencies. There was only one Portland fire whose ambulances were

busier than ours. Portland Fire was the only one whose ambulances were busier than ours. Our ambulances far outpace um on call volume uh any other firebased EMS agency uh in the calls that they're doing. Do you remind folks the number of engine companies or for lack of a better term fire trucks that we have? Because when I talk to people in the community, I have people all the time that think we have 8, 10, 12 fire trucks in the city of Auburn.

Sure. Yeah. So, we we staff um two fire engines. There's a fire engine located on Center Street and there's a fire engine located uh in South Auburn. I'm sorry. There's a fire engine located in South Auburn. There's a fire engine located on Minadav. We run our quint which is an engine and ladder combination out of center street currently. Um and when the public safety building is done we hope to move the ladder truck to mine at a and then we would have an engine both at center street and south Auburn. So when you brown out you're effectively eliminating 25% of your capacity almost. Uh yeah you're you're going from three to two. So a third of your firefighting capacity. Yeah.

Other questions on fire. Thank you. Appreciate it, Chief. Thank you. Uh, next department, we're going to spend a little bit more time on fire, police, and public works because they're making up over 50% of your your reduction here of your $4.5 million. So, I'll ask the police chief to come up. I'll hit the the highlights and I'll certainly answer any other questions you have. But to meet the reduction goal of 6 605,360, this eliminates the school resource officer program which would end the on-site student support as well as immediate emergency response capacity uh within the schools. It also eliminates the PACE unit which includes the community policing initiatives, traffic enforcement, other neighborhood engagement programming. Reduces the investigative capacity within our detective bureau. Discontinues our participation within our human trafficking task force. Eliminates our state and national accreditation programs. Reduces the proactive policing including traffic enforcement, community outreach. We will have a minimum staffing level um which increases liability risk to officers in the community. When I say minimum staffing level, you're probably going down probably back and the chief would probably be able to weigh in on this probably uh 1980s staffing level. That's probably where we would be at. Even though we're probably seeing um probably upwards of 60 70% of the call volume increase since that time, but we'd be back to a minimum staffing level um of the 80s, if even that, might even be before that. We'd have a longer call for service response times due to um reduced operational readiness and then increased uh reliance on reactive policing rather than any preventative efforts. We can certainly answer questions you might have.

Questions on police. Council con. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Chief, I would appreciate your your comments. I I got some great responses, but the the um the SRO um the school resource officer that like the the preventive and longer term, you know, the impacts that we're having and just sort of welcome your thoughts on that elimination.

Uh the school resource officer, that officer is embedded in our school environment. They are there daily. um they've worked to establish relationships with staff, students, and families, and they're often a trusted adult that the students can go to when it comes to reporting issues of self harm, uh abuse, exploitation. Uh the SRO is also there is the first line officer there when it comes to dealing with uh public safety issues within the school, whether it be fights, weapons complaints, threats, or whatnot. So that SRO is a critical part of the school environment. Speaking as a former SRO, um I can explain firsthand that uh the SRO is um a vital part of the school environment and to reduce that program, you are opening the kids up for vulnerabilities, plain and simple. And council to to coin your term of draconian cuts, the city manager was right. We're going back to staffing levels we haven't seen since the 1980s. And our call volume has gone up 60 to 80% since the 1980s. The the call volume back when Mayor Harmon was a police officer here in Auburn is very different than it is now 35 years later. And to reduce that staffing level, you are no longer going to enjoy Auburn being one of the safest larg municipalities in the state. Plain and simple. representative.

I just want to comment on the SRO and I know at least on the high school level that our schools could like our high school could not run without that student resource officer on site. I mean a high school I mean first of all drug usage a huge thing in our high school and he's one of those first lines. I mean, any threat that comes into our school, he's the first person there. And I don't I think that every student can tell you that since we've been able to see the student resource officer have an office in our high school and there every day, I think every student feels so much safer going into school and it makes us want to come to school rather than wanting to stay home with the threat of a anything happening at school.

Council Platt, let's go ahead. Council Butler, could you speak to the impact to um any of the behavioral health or um emotional health calls that your team is working on?

Certainly. Um you know, reduced staffing levels there, those calls for service are going to be uh handled uh without as much quality as there are now. Uh with a reduction of staffing also means potential elimination of our PSY program. And the mental health system in our state is broken. and it's now up to the municipalities and the police department to try to handle some of that. And we don't have the resources to be able to adequately handle those mental health uh calls as our group homes within the city continue to rise. And we currently have about 58 group homes in the city that we uh are dealing with on a daily basis because the staff is inadequ trained. And at the first sign of any issues with a with a resident or a client, their first call is to the police department. So, uh we don't have the staffing levels now to be able to adequately handle it and to reduce those levels even further. Um the mental health issues within the city are going to continue to rise and go unabated. Council PL.

Thank you. Um I it's pretty clear to me the operational impact of of this budget cut and plain and simple it would it would suck for the department. I what I'm what I would like to hear more about is what type of impact does something like this have on the morale of your staff. It's going to drive it through the through the floor. Yeah. because you got a little bit more about retention and

we we've done very well with our retention efforts and our recruitment over the last four to five years and we've made uh significant changes in our in our training programs, our attention efforts, uh career opportun career development opportunities uh for officers with different career tracks and whatnot. By this budget reduction would decimate our retention efforts and our recruitment efforts and um it's going to reduce our training and morale is going to plummet point blank and we will have a mass exit of officers that can go to other places and uh receive better training and and better equipment because of it.

Other questions? Councelor Colin, thank you. Uh followup to that, um what's the general cost onboarding cost uh for a brand new police officer? That onboarding cost is about $100,000 to get them fully trained on their own clear field training. It's about $100,000 between training and equipment. That does not include the overtime back filling for that position though. So that that add to that number for the off the overtime cost. What's the lead time? uh lead time is close to a year. By the time we get somebody uh through the selection process, hired, trained, and clear field training, it's just about a year.

Other questions, please? So, I have a few questions. Um Chief, so um turning to some of these investigative issues, the human trafficking task force, the these are quite complex, uh time-consuming investigations. That That's correct. That's correct. And um would it be fair to say that the Auburn Police Department even without these um budget cuts probably could not take on those cases given the complexity of themselves and that's why we participate with the task force.

Correct. Because um we have a an a detective that works part-time with that task force and every every case that he works has some type of Auburn connection to it. Um, city managers sent you one that happened uh this last month or so where uh an Auburn former Auburn resident was producing child pornography and exploiting hundreds of children had an Auburn connection. So um by reducing staffing levels, we need to pull back from these task forces to focus on our core services. So those federal resources are going to go away and we're not going to have access to them. And um could you explain a little bit for for the public the difference between the patrol division and the investigative division and the actual limited amount of criminal investigation that goes on in the patrol division because of the call volume and and the way cases are triaged already in in the detective division.

Sure. Uh so the police officers, you know, they're that initial point of contact in any type of case. They'll go uh they'll do a basic investigation. They'll collect it. They'll collect the information. They're going to review that with their supervisor, say, "You know what? You don't have the time to be able to fully investigate this given the complexity of what that case might be." Then that case would then go to the detective division. We currently have uh five detectives in that division. And so the supervisors will then uh prioritize those cases, kind of triage them, and looking at the most severe uh what has the biggest victim impact. um or severity of the violence of the crime, those get a higher priority. And some of those property crimes, burglaries, theft of motor vehicles, those get put to the side to focus on uh those higher violent cases and reducing staff uh staffing levels. You're going to get an officer that's going to come there, get the basic information, not even have time to look at it. it goes to the detectives and the detectives going to be overwhelmed with the amount of cases coming in that that haven't been properly triaged and it's domino effect. Uh it's going to reduce the quality of our investigations. It's going to increase the crime rate and it's going to reduce our clearance rate as well.

And um can you talk a little bit about um pace and the um proactive patrol? The reason I raise this, as I mentioned earlier about code enforcement, so in the last two years, the number one complaint that I get every week, multiple calls every week is about traffic safety. And um given the call volume, we have this very limited opportunity for patrol officers on some of these shifts to engage in that work. Right. Correct.

And if we eliminated this In effect, we we've made some progress, right? We it it would be it would be great if we could do more with these cuts. In effect, we would be eliminating traffic safety activities.

Correct. In the last two years that pace has been existence, our traffic enforcement efforts have gone up over 200%. And you look at PACE, PACE is a dedicated, specialized, proactive function. Their traffic work is focused. It's sustained. It's intentional and it's doing target enforcement, direct patrols, crash reduction activities, dealing with specific neighborhood complaints, um quality of life policing and high visibility traffic enforcement. If you remove that, then that proactivity goes away and the police department becomes much more reactive. And the more reactive that we are, the less effective that we are. So, by having the pace there to have that specialized enforcement, we're actually reducing costs for service because we're reducing the number of accidents that are happening throughout the city and we're reducing that workload for the patrol division.

And the last uh thing I wanted to ask about is Chief Chase talked a lot about the fire servicees reliance on mutual aid. And while police agencies will help each other out, the type of network that he described doesn't really exist in in the police world, right? It's if uh if you have um uh all the officers, if we reduce this, let's say we only have three officers working and they're all on calls, unless it's some dire dire emergency, they're just going to stack these calls at the 911 center and somebody will get to it when they get to it, right? Nobody's coming from the sheriff's office or the state police or from Mechanic Falls PD to cover these calls for the TD.

Yeah, they're going to stack unless it's a um very violent uh high-risisk call that officers might be able to break away from what they're currently dealing with or that's when we rely on our our mutual aid partners. We have mutual aid agreements with the sheriff's department, with Lewis and Mechanical Falls to come in and assist us with those. And a couple times a year they do actually come in and help us with those uh types of calls when that call volume is that great and we do the same thing for them. Um those instances are few and far between thankfully. Um but uh response times are going to increase. Um calls for service going to be stacked and the the quick response time that we currently enjoy will no longer be um a factor in that.

Counc. Thanks Mr. Mayor. Uh, Chief, I wanted to ask you a few questions about the um accreditation. Um, appreciate all the the feedback provided to me about those, but just so it's it's heard by all. Um, right now we get a 25% discount on police liability insurance due to accreditation. Correct. Uh, it's about little $10,333. Could you speak more beyond that? What how does accreditation help you as as your lead as a leader for your force and and

so we've been a nationalally accredited agency for over 20 years now and that has helped build us into the one one of the most professional police departments in the state and what accreditation does for us is it brings an externally externally verified best practice framework to the agency that's policy that's focused on policy discipline training consistency accountability uh risk risk management, documentation, and constant improvement. As an accredited agency, we just can't claim that we're meeting these standards. We have to actually prove that we're meeting these best policing practices, and we have 465 standards that we have to meet in order to maintain our national accreditation. So, we're bringing in best policing practices from across the country uh to Auburn, Maine, and we're employing those and we are seeing successes from that. Um when you look at our supervision uh our officers we have a very low disciplinary incident rate because of our policies in place because of our policies and procedures and the supervision that we have. We enjoy that. I talk to my peers around the country uh to hear some of the the performance issues they deal with. We just don't have them in Auburn and accreditation plays a big part of that. Um, so eliminating uh accreditation doesn't automatic automatically make us unsafe or ineffective overnight, but it removes a quality control system that's been in place for 20 years that helps reduce our liability. It improves our consistency and it demonstrates our professionalism on a daily basis.

Thank you. And one followup uh before you leave that if I might. So you would lose access to this best practices information, right? It's not just that somebody comes in and audits you, right? All all the work to develop whatever policies and procedures and guidance you want to give to the police officers would have to be done internally because you'd lose access to this shared body of knowledge that's tested all across the country. That's correct. And honestly, mayor, I am not the smartest person in the room when it comes to that. That's what we have a Kala for. Uh Kala brings in those smartest people in the room to help us uh employ those best policing practices for the city.

Sorry. Go ahead, council. No problem. Thank you. Um Chief, how do you believe that accreditation helps with your recruit recruitment? Absolutely. uh we advertise that uh we are a nationally accredited agency and that signals that the agency is professional. It's well-run. It's policy driven and it's seriously it's it's serious about its training and accountability. That's going to attract quality candidates to our department because they want to work for a professional police department. They want to work for an agency that's well trained, well equipped, and wellrun.

Thank you. One final question. Uh do you believe that accreditation helps with any kind of external funding support programming being acquired?

It does. Um there's no um automatic disqualification if you're not accredited. However, um it accreditation will strengthen our grant applications because it shows that we're following recognized standards. Um we have the man that we have the administrative capacity to manage programs effectively. Um, and it helps the public and the council uh confidence when these funding requests are made because these funding sources are seeing that the funding is going to an accredited agency. They know that agency is wellrun. They know that those that funding is going to be maximized and managed appropriately because of all of the standards that are that are in place when it comes to financing and and grant work.

Yeah, I I probably just add to that that it also has an impact on our litigation. So we have lawsuits that are are leveled against the the police department regarding our delivery of service. Uh when we prepare for uh litigation and we can demonstrate that not only do we you know any department could say yeah we follow best practices but we have an independent assessment that verifies that what we do uh meets our policies and it's meeting these best standards. So these litigation cases go away. We don't they don't get to that level of actual um a prosecution because defense realizes or the plaintiff realizes rather that there's there's not going to be um you know that big reward that they thought there might be because we we're able to demonstrate that uh through not just having a policy but demonstrating that we're meeting it. I think the the other thing I know we're going to wrap up on PD, but you know, this is the one department that didn't have any other um say materials or um equipment uh that they could reduce or um a large overtime budget. So, this is really people. So, you're looking at we have currently we have two vacancies. This would also reduce not just filling those two vacancies but eliminating six other positions. So when we talk about staffing level, that's the that's the dramatic impact that this this budget reduction has

out of a current sorry count current 60 is that uh 54 54. So that reduce that would reduce it to um 46 again 1980 staffing levels. You currently have one frozen position that's it was 55 is their authorized for you have one frozen. Uh we would keep that MDA. Remember we talked about that. So that position would stay within that because it's 100% um reimbursed but then it would reduce another eight eight positions. So anything further on the police department?

Thank you. Thanks chief. Next is public works. So the reduction goal, this is 1042 reduction goal here was 676,489. This reduces uh reduces our in-house uh vehicle repair capacity. This would impact uh longer downtime of police, fire, um city vehicles, public work vehicles. Reduces the staffing for winter operations. So our our plowing cycles that we talked about in the previous meeting uh would be expanded. The time for those would be expanded. um our storm recovery. Um so after a storm, being able to open up sidewalks, being able to get to some of the non-emergency uh parking lots, schools, even that would all be reduced and impacted as a result of the reduction in staffing. Um sorry, Scott, our public works director, could come on up on this. Uh we reduce our in-house electrical and facility repair capacity. If you rely heavily on contracted services, you get in the queue and then they'll come to you after they've worked through some of their other uh demands for services. You don't have somebody readily available to go and address that. It also uh reduces maintenance coverage at some of our uh buildings and facilities like recreation building and some of our other public buildings uh the library where we also provide maintenance services. It's uh results in a slower uh issue response, reduced cleanliness. Um eliminates our internal inventory, small engine repair, uh maintaining all of the um every small piece of equipment that the public works has for vehicle repair, everything else, all that inventory has to be maintained. It eliminates the

ability to be able to do that. Uh so that means we're less on hand, more calling in and getting pieces of equipment to for repairs. Uh we wouldn't necessarily have that readily available for us. So that delays um field operations because they Scott has somebody that can roll right out to a scene quickly repair whatever piece of equipment might be down. So then operations can continue and not having to bring that entire crew back in uh for an equipment malfunction. And then uh this impacts our supervisory ability to get to these levels. It actually reduces uh supervision. And so we would reduce we would expand rather the span of control for the capacity for the not only supervisor but operations managers. they would expand their their capacity of uh overseeing uh especially during critical events like snowstorms and other uh critical u incidents. Eliminates the capacity for supplemental road projects. Um these are going to slow our road improvements. It also will degrade our roads faster as a result of not being able to maintain and repair. um if we're not sealing some of these, if we're not addressing some of these needs, it's going to it's going to impact and it's going to increase our our um uh road replacement cover replacements. Those are on his schedule. We try to, you know, Scott tries to schedule those the best he can uh with the capacity that he has, but if he has less less staff, that that um those don't get replaced as frequently. That has an impact on on citizens because a lot of these culverts as a result of their driveways. that means they don't have access to their homes. Uh it reduces materials and contracted services for parks, our open spaces, tree removal, um especially any that are non-emergency,

slower hazard removals. Think about debris, equipment and roads, all kinds of things that we come across uh that PW has to go out and take care of. So it delays any improvements along those lines. It eliminates the capacity for long-term infrastructure planning, asset management because there wouldn't be someone in that position to be able to handle that. Reduces forecasting and increase the risk of unexpected failures. Someone who's not monitoring that, maintaining that, then there's some equipment that you don't use until it's a critical emergency. And when that happens, it's no longer no longer available. And then reduces the oversight of contractors. We outsource a lot of work. If we don't have somebody overseeing that, then we're sometimes we're just throwing money away because somebody's not checking to make sure it's done either appropriately or to our standard that we we expect within the uh within the contract. So, it delay it creates more delays. Um Scott will certainly answer any further questions you might have.

Questions about public work? Council. Um yeah, so you know all the things about deferred maintenance and just pushing things down the road apply, I assume. Um can you talk a little bit about uh what level of call increase you see when you have longer plowing cycle times and things like that?

Yeah, I mean it it varies. I mean um this last storm that we had um we had at least three or four calls um that we hadn't been through and plowed. And of course with the GPS in the trucks I can tell but with that type of snow um you know we we had I don't know there was two or three that didn't even think we had plowed it and we'd been through there a couple times. Um sorry I meant um accidents like so what what are the impacts of that sort of thing on police and fire because the road conditions are worse and therefore we have higher call volumes in other places.

Um yeah absolutely. Um, you know, a perfect road that comes to mind is Riverside Drive. If we don't stay on that road, the way it's broke down and pitched and everything else, that road has accidents on it all the time. People can't stay on it if we reduce, you know, that's one road that would probably get reduced, especially down on the south end. Um, you know, the hills, Beach Hill was one last time and we'd already gone over that a couple times, but hills require more maintenance and, you know, it would it would make accidents there. Uh, it would delay police and fire. I mean, you know what? We're on top of it. They could always call us if we had to and send one that way if we knew something was going on. Um, we certainly would, especially if it was a structure fire or something and they needed sand to keep the area safe for them. Um, but it would definitely delay it. I would just add that their level of being able to maintain those roads now does not really require, unless it's a major storm, to peel off from their route to go and address that that emergency response. But if they're peeling off in the root now, you've just you've just taken the whole system and you've you've kind of eliminated that system. So now to get back on that route and back on that timing really reduces that. I think one thing that Scott does, we check as a management team, we have a scorecard on different departments that we we we check on weekly. Uh one of those has to do with uh open work orders and closed work orders. And a lot of those work orders are driven by the by the public. um and it they they impact some of those emergency responses in the future if they're not addressing them when those emergency work orders come in. And so that certainly has an impact on that as well.

Council, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um Scott, the uh reduced staffing, winter operations, slower plowing cycles, could you provide a little bit more in terms of what you would anticipate? Are we talking double the time or not quite so much? or does it more zones so that you can vary that? What what are you at this point in time? So, what what are you thinking?

Everything we do is tied to our winter operations. Even though we're a four season, you know, all our employees have to pitch in on the on the uh winter operations side of things. Um losing these positions would more than likely have a truck parked um you know, on one shift. The way we work it right now is that we have two people on the truck. They work no more than 16 hours. So they might be first and second and then another driver comes in on third. If we lose the amount of people in this reduction, um trucks will be parked on shifts and not get plowed at all. We don't, as it is right now, we have just enough people to put in the trucks and and make them go. If a truck breaks down or we have somebody sick or whatever, we don't. We have to park trucks on some of these on some of these shifts. So it would impact several.

All right. Thank you. And um this like couple other departments I look at this reduction goal and I don't really see that's a true cost savings because you've done a lot of work to bring services inhouse mechanical services. Um guesstimate ballpark. I mean are we how much savings are we really talking about? Do you do you have a sense of that? Oh boy. I it half is it?

Yeah. I would say a half. I mean, I could have to go back and look at a little more, but it it really um you know, it's really going to impact us. You know, mechanic wise, we can send trucks out, but no guarantee they're going to get in there. And how long is it going to take? They don't prioritize us cuz we're a plow truck. Um sometimes the fire truck maybe, but we've had to send those out, so that's going to delay them and park equipment. Um you know, I don't know, Adam, if you got anything to add to that. Some of the problem too is some of our vendors are having the same issues we're having as far as like hiring mechanics with specialized uh skills. You know what I mean? So they're they're trying to work through that themselves. And you know we these new trucks and equipment are all more computerized than ever. Um and some of these dealers are holding on to that um diagnostic equipment and not releasing that to municipalities or the customer to be able to diagnose themselves. It has to go right to the dealer. Um, and then sometimes there's there most of the time there's at least a 2 to 3 week lead time on when you send your truck there before they even look at it.

Um, and then figure out what the issue is before you can get it back. So, yeah, we've discussed a lot of the cost savings when we've we've spoken about actual numbers, right? When we brought some of these things in house, we talked about those at the time and the reason they were brought in house is because of the cost savings. So the contracted rates or hourly rates for these outside services are much much higher than when they are in-house. So it yes, you're reducing that, but when we send something out for repair, we're now paying three times as much as if we were doing it in-house.

And that really is hard to forecast, but with our aging equipment the way it is, it's almost guaranteed that some are going to go, especially with these eight trucks that are parked, you know, are not parked, but they could be because we can't fix them. Thank you. I know these were difficult projections, but the bottom line is we're not really reducing the costs by this amount of money. We're going to be having to do things less efficiently, less cost effectively, and more time inensively. That doesn't seem like a good win-winwin to me.

Another perfect example is striping. Last year, you know, we said we needed three positions to do that. Last budget, I got a position cut. Now we have to still do it even though we got a position cut. So with these cuts will make that even worse, you know, and it's not cheaper to have it done outside. And and my recollection there was substantial unreliability of the timing of when your contractor could come and do that because they're in demand from other municipalities. That is correct.

Yeah. If you take a, you know, some of the cuts that Scott had to make, you know, say there were two positions, especially take a look at our electrical positions, probably a good example. You know, those two positions just in Scott's line item was about $160,000. But he could only realize 60,000 of it because we had to put a h 100,000 back in for contracted services. So that means he had to go deeper within his budget to find more cuts. That's correct. If you can find them. If you can find them. Right. So to sum up

council cowan's point, this equipment is not going to break down any less frequently or need PM, you know, preventive maintenance any less frequently. It's just going to cost more to do it if you have to. There's no outside garage that's going to charge you what you pay your employees. It's going to be a lot higher, right?

Nope. That is correct. And I I know I've said it before is that, you know, if somebody doesn't know who does it, it usually comes to public works. And that is the absolute case. we have more work than you know that but the workload never goes away but we're always trying to cut or take people away um the work still needs to get done so um it is very tough other questions on public works so I I have one follow-up question because this is what everybody's going to ask so so when we cut public works what's going to happen with potholes cuz that's what that that's what people are going to call up and ask right so we have crews now that go around at night, but people complain all the time about potholes, even though there's people out there all night filling them.

That is correct. We still have third shift on right now until we get our sweeping done. So, they do do our areas where traffic is bad. They just did some the other night around the Rotary. Um, good news is hot top plants are opening first or second week in April. So, we'll be able to fill them and hopefully it'll stay longer than the gold patch. Um, so we'll be we'll be on that as soon as we can get some. You know, sometimes it's top some um hot top plant that opens, but we'll go get it just because it's better than patch. But to your point, mayor, that means they won't be doing that because they'll still be doing So my point is what's the reduction?

I mean, we how many hours in the winter we're doing this both shifts, right? There's somebody out with the equipment at least 16 hours a day patching potholes. So what's the reduction going to be if we cut these people? Yeah. Well, that's kind of, you know, we put in the CIP this year, that mask machine, too. That's kind of a oneanddone type deal with potholes. Um, yeah, the material is more expensive, but the the labor time dedicated to that same pothole is minimum now. Yeah. Other questions on public works? Thanks, Scott and Adam.

So, the next few line items, council, you know, you'll notice there's at least five of the next uh handful here. There's no changes because these a fixed cost. Uh we have a we have a fee that's given levied against us based on how many fire hydrants we have on 1052 of the water department. The solid waste uh most of solid waste was fixed. The reduction the only reduction I made was the organic waste collection. That's an initiative that we had started. Uh so that was about $20,000 reducing that. But there's you know that means we're probably going to pay more. You know it's it's a small amount. So it's, you know, we're talking about 25 tons, but we're diverting that, which is essential. We want to get that wet, heavy material out of our solid waist stream. And so that's part of why we're doing that. Is there an offset cost of that? I don't have that, but you could factor in 25 ton being sent back into your solid waste. And based on, you know, we're paying now we're paying u about $88 a ton. So there is some there are some impacts to that, but but minimal. Um, this will force out 25 tons into the landfill, right? Because

the the my recollection is the plant got an air quality license for about 70,000 tons and they're taking in about 125,000 tons now. So, this is just going to be this 25 might not go to the landfill, but 25 tons like more are going to go to the landfill.

Yes. Yep. Tax sharing doesn't change. I did put in here just as a reminder that agreement sun sets in 2029. This has to do with the air park which is up near around the uh Arvin Lewis airport. The debt service uh that reduction goal as I I noted that's a fixed cost based on what we estimated for FY27. So that would change based on what you decide uh to include in the CIP for FY27 airport. As I mentioned before, when we did the budget uh initial review, in accordance with the interlocal agreement, the airport made no request of an increase and by interlocal agreement, you can't reduce that request. So that 205,000 continues. Uh LA Transit Authority where we signed a contract for transit services. Um their total increase for their local share is only $3,700. That's fixed onto a contract that we have. We've been pulling from uh the CARES money that was allocated. Um and so and we're still pulling from that being able to keep our our transit service at 570,000. You're going to see that increase uh next year to close to 800,000. So next year is where you're going to see see the big increase regarding transit because those care funds won't be in there. Um the one of the last of your items is our uh joint program with LA 911. And I'd asked the director Hall to come up. This is a $167,735 for just the Auburn local cost. There's if we reduce uh if we reduce this budget by $167,000 in Auburn, that means Lewon has to reduce their budget by $167,000.

Even if they don't want to set terms with the interlocal agreement.

That's correct. Yeah. So that means that the director would be experiencing a $335,000 reduction in in the 911 service. So again, much like you've heard before, this eliminates the uh the 911 center itself is nationally accredited. So that's removes their program. Also increases our liability, insurance risk, uh has an impact on employment and retention. Um, it reduces training uh to meet the minimum legal requirements only, which is not a point where we want to be at when it comes to uh our dispatchers and their abilities. Eliminates all community outreach and education opportunities. And then just direct public safety impact means that there's a slower 911 response. Calls go unanswered locally or delayed locally meaning that those are being pushed off to another municipality. I'm sorry, another answering point rather. Then that answering point is going to process that call, kick it back. That's going to delay that that overall call. There's an overflow regard getting rooted to outside centers. Um, this impacts the delay of the first responders. As the chief said, every minute that that's reduced has an impact on uh life safety measures. Um, we have unanswered calls and non-emergency lines often go unanswered, which includes alarms, urgent incidents, inter agency requests, reduces our overnight staffing. Um, we'll have three dispatchers on duty for extended hours. Oftent times our dispatchers currently, it's hard for them to even take a break. They're not leaving this their desk because of the call volume that's coming in. Food's being brought to them. They're don't they're not taking their regular breaks because there's just no capacity because of call volume during certain staffing uh challenges that they they're faced with. They have the limited ability to

handle call surges. Um perfect example is you have a motor vehicle crash on uh Center Street and somebody's calling 911 on that crash. Well, 24 other people also called in that that motor vehicle crash. And if you have a major incident, I think a good example would be this would be when Libby fire was taking place. I was on this side of the river. I was looking at the police chief on the other side of the river. I tried calling. I could not make that call. Um I could not communicate to 911 because of the volume of calls that were going in to let them know that, hey, there's sparks hitting up on one of the mills over in Lewon that we could see on this side, but they couldn't see on their side. couldn't access them because of the volume of calls that were going through the dispatch center. So that would impact and that's the surges that we see as well as staff absences. If you're working people to the max capacity, their sick time rates increase. They they need to take that break because what ends up happening is the director ends up forcing people um to stay over on their shifts and they're working more doubles. Um police agencies are forced onto a shared radio channel. Um, it's hard now to be able to get breaks sometimes during peak hours to be able to get on the radio to be able to notify dispatch of a followup on what you might be doing. Um, if you're if Lewis and Auburn are sharing a radio frequency, that becomes even more challenging because now you have two agencies on the same frequency trying to communicate with dispatch and then an increase congestion and just communication delays. Uh, the directors here can certainly answer more questions. question about 911.

Council count. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh, director, thank you for coming back. Um, looking at your, uh, highlights that you provided to city manager, uh, net result of 17 dispatchers when you recommended staffing is 27 to 31. Um, could you say a little bit more like that recommendation? you know, what's that based on, who's making that recommendation, but also kind of back to councelor Platt's uh question earlier to another department. How does that feel uh for your for your personnel?

Sure. Uh so the recommendation comes from about two I would say it was about two two and a half years ago. I used a tool through APCO which is the association or international association now of public safety communicators. So, it's an internationally known organization that writes um standards for 911 centers, training programs for 911 centers. They also have a staffing mechanism tool for 911 centers to utilize. So, using that and our call volume numbers as well as you have to take into account we need um a certain number of people on the desk 24/7, 365 days a year. Well, just because I hire a full-time employee doesn't mean that I have that full-time employee for 40 hours a week all year. They have vacations. They have sick time. Uh that sort of thing. So, taking all that into account is how we arrived at the estimate of 27 to 31. The higherend number is based on our attrition rate. So, what they're saying is on average we replace three full-time employees per year. So, you should be staffing up to 31. And that way when you lose those three people, there's no impact to your operation. Um, so that's where that number came from. And what was the last part of your question? I'm sorry.

No problem. Um, I guess I'm just like thinking about the the impact of morale and and you know how that's going to have the dayto-day work of the the

Yeah, I uh much like the police chief said, people will leave there. I have no doubt. Uh we had this problem when we were running into staffing challenges a few years ago. Once you hit a tipping point where uh we current we're actually down to one vacancy right now. And I have an experienced telecommunicator that just reached out to me today that's interested in that position. I'm like hold up a bit. You might want to wait. Um but when we were having staffing challenges once you reach a certain level uh that's when people say I'm done. I'm not sitting at my desk for 16 hours without going to the bathroom, without grabbing something to eat or just going outside. We're in located right now in a basement with no windows. Uh we're stand staring at carpeted walls and computer screens for 16 hours straight. Um people will do that for a while uh when it's to get through a tough, you know, a tough couple weeks because something has happened, but they're not going to do it forever. uh and we were experiencing that and we would experience it again. I I it's it's not something that I I like to say to my staff and hopefully they won't be watching, but uh when I worked at the desk as a supervisor, we had five or six people on at a time. We're running four on at a time right now, even without reductions. I wouldn't be doing it. I wouldn't do it myself. I I wouldn't continue as is. So, it would be devastating to them. Thank you. Other questions, director, I wanted to ask some follow-ups about this routing issue. So, when somebody in the community has an emergency call and they dial 911, it it rings at LA 911 and I'm assuming if that call isn't answered in some period of time, a short relatively short period of time, it gets routed to another PAP.

Yes. So that could be like DPS in Augusta or it could be Cland County over in Windham. So is a there must be some limited capacity in this system. It's not like these other PAPs have all kinds of people just sitting around waiting to take routed calls. Correct. Yeah, that is correct. So every PAP in Maine is connected and interconnected with each other. So the idea behind it is somebody calls 911, somebody will answer that phone. So So what happens when we where that might be?

Yeah. So what happens if we don't answer it and it kicks to August DPS and Augusta and they don't answer it and they Yeah. It it'll keep rolling to 21 more centers, but by then the caller's going to hang by.

And and to back to the city manager's point, right? So, you know, I've seen this a lot when you have a 24 would be a very low number. If you have a head-on collision up here on Center Street, just many, many, many people just start dialing 911. But these calls aren't limited to just this one accident that's going on, right? While that's happening, somebody else is calling in a domestic violence assault or somebody else is calling in a burglary that that's taking place at that moment. And it sounds okay that we route these and someone will pick them up. But the question is how long does it take? And when you have these peak volumes, how much of this is going to get routed around because I see that as okay in an occasional dire emergency, but that can't be a good standard operating practice,

right? And and I would say, you know, when the chiefs were talking about some of the reductions they were going to be looking at, I got even more concerned because if it takes the ambulance longer to get to the call, it takes the dispatcher longer to stay on the phone. If we're giving somebody CPR instructions or walking through the birth of a child, we can't hang up until the ambulance gets there. So now my staff's going to be on the phone longer. Same thing with police calls. If we've got somebody in a domestic violence situation or a situation where they want to harm themselves, we don't hang up on them. We stay on the phone with them. So the longer it takes law enforcement to get to that call, the longer we're on the phone. The longer we're on the phone, the more our calls going to bounce to other centers. Thank you. Other questions on 911?

Great. Thanks very much. Appreciate it. Sorry, you're the one of the last ones. Oh, sorry. I used to work overnight.

1049 was arts and culture council. If you remember, you increased this u by about 10,000 your council uh recommendations, but through the through the formula, then that reduces this by 2,000. I think it would I think when Jim was here from LA Arts talked about u most likely would be some of the programming that they do within the senior uh programming especially because we wouldn't be providing any senior programming. So that's why that's we would look at that as the priority. county tax. Uh we it's a fixed cost. I put in there just so you know why that is. But it's that's a fixed cost. There be no reductions. You know the council this is you know this was an exercise. I I get that it was an exercise. However, um we will have ripple effects as a result of this conversation tonight. So I really think it's important for for the council. Um is this where you want to be? I mean you've heard all of this information. I you know I I think of as a former police chief I think of news cycles, right? I I want to make sure we're staying in one news cycle as we work through this process. So $4.5 million reduction. If that's not where you want to be, I don't want that to be the highlight in the paper tomorrow. If that if you're looking to be less than that, we need to be able to communicate that. You've heard every department here talk about the challenge with retention and recruiting. If this was an exercise, I felt like we needed to do the uh, you know, the emergency broadcast. This is only an exercise as we went through this. But these are significant impacts that I think the public needs to know if this isn't where you're looking to be. Not necessarily saying what that is tonight because you've got some, you know, time to talk about that. I'd love it if you did, but um, but at least to be able to say this isn't where we're looking to be as a city.

Yeah. So, I appreciate that and that was the same point that I was going to make. Right. We've been through this. the we the the council sent a benchmark of 7 12%. We've been through the exercise to see what that means. I'm interested in what councilor's thoughts are after they've understood the impact of uh getting to that number. Council PL.

Yeah. Um thank you. I'll I'll keep it to the point. Um this is not where I want to be. I I think this is far too drastic for cuts. Um, I think that as I'm now able to see the impacts of these cuts, I um I think it was a little easier for us to say that number in meeting number one of our budget deliberations. I don't believe that the the taxpaying citizens of Auburn when they approved their public safety building, I I don't believe they were consenting to gutting their their government with with municipal services. Um, that's becoming more apparent to me as we go through this. I'm not I don't need to say a number today. We're going to keep talking about that. But um at the numbers you've presented to us and I appreciate you presenting those. I also pre I understand the impact that this has on your staff just hearing these conversations. So I understand how sensitive this this conversation is. U but I would just leave it today personally saying that I'm not comfortable with these cuts. I think they're far too great and I and I don't think it's what the average taxpaying citizen um signed up for when they when they approved that voter referendum.

Other comments? Council Walker? I also agree that these cuts are just way too deep there. And and I was thinking that maybe if you could tell us what a nine would put us at instead of a seven and a half. In in my head, I'm thinking that maybe around a million million and a half. Uh but I don't know if you agree. Is that anywhere's near close? Well, you you back of the napkin, you're going to run about $850,000 a point. Perfect.

Some right something around that. Um so, um I I think it's a good suggestion that Council Walker has made, right? it gives us another target to look at so we could understand what that means. Um I think that um the other thing that would be helpful to have some conversation about tonight um you know we're going to have the school budget on the 6th but um a sense of the council um about what we think about the school budget right now this whole exercise that's before you is making this reduction off of the city side of the budget and Um, you know, I I guess before we get to that, I uh if other counselors have thoughts about the budget in general and perhaps where we ought to get to, we'll just go down the line here. Council, but

I just want to thank everybody for their time and the amount of preparation that did go into preparing um all of the materials that we've been able to hear. This has been a great process for someone sitting new on the council. Appreciate the transparency that we've been able to talk through these concerns. Um, I do think the cuts are too steep. Um, and that we definitely need to look at look at a different solution. Council Deval.

Yeah, I I won't be long in saying I don't think these that this is tenable. It just it's not possible. So, we have to look at at some other number and in addition to what councelor Walker suggested, I would like to look at some other, you know, just having more sort of nuanced stepped understanding of what the cups would be. I would really appreciate. Thank you.

Yeah, just to echo uh the thanks. I know a lot of a lot of work and time went into this. It was really helpful to to see the process uh um helpful for us, painful and to to hear. Uh I absolutely do not support this. Uh it's way too way too drastic. Um I would I too like uh council ball would would like to have an understanding of maybe some some tiered I I think two I I fear that even 9% would be more than what our citizens want. I want to really look at what we can do to cut but um you know we asked our uh municipal um staff programs as well as school to cut back last year too. my recollection both came in around 3% increase. We're not talking about major major increases in the last couple years and we've had some un um costs that we couldn't control. And so I I I just uh in addition, you know, I appreciate the the comparison of the municipalities and and um you know, I think that can be a further discussion for folks, but I encourage my uh fellow counselors to really think about the reality. Um, so this list here, uh, it asked, uh, Phil to put together for us. This is the 10 largest municipalities in the state. Um, the median tax bill, we have the third lowest out of all of them. We have a 17% lower uh, median tax bill than the average for the other for the 10. So, I'm looking at that. I'm not suggesting that I want to campaign that we should be one of the most expensive, but I look at this more as we've done a really good job over a number of years keeping costs low um and efficient um but still high quality. If we cut too

far, we're going to lose all of what's been put forward with quality. um the prevention, you know, if we push things off on um equipment or other programs, if we make cuts and with the expectation that we'll build our staff back up at another time, we're just talking increases down the road. And so I think we need to really think about is that really what our taxpayers want. I don't think it is when they voted for a referendum. So thanks.

I'm basically going to say what everybody else has said. this is this is not what the citizens of Auburn deserve. Um I that the cuts are too devastating. U it sounded nice when we were coming up with a number of oh yeah we don't we don't want to increase the taxes this high but the reality is just devastating and um I I look forward to learning more about different cuts we could do. So, thoughts um thoughts about any type of um uh we haven't seen the school budget yet, but thoughts about um general fund reductions going against both budgets. Council count,

I would um appreciate hearing from the school what that might mean um if they'd be willing to talk about and but to be clear, what I would want is to be thinking about some reduction coming out of their their portion of tax levy dollars, right? So, um we're if someone looked at their their increases of operational funding overall, um they might say, "Oh, well, that's too high." But a lot of it is because they're bringing in more income from the state and so we're we're dealing with that. So I I would just want to make I just want to make clear that what I would be asking for is you know some you know comparable perhaps maybe smaller than what it is for the municipalities but out of the tax levy portion.

Yeah. So, I think that um I think the council's not going to be in a position to think about what a number might be until after we see the presentation of their budget. And of course, the school committee is not going to be able to offer any opinion about what the impact might be unless we provide a number to them. And I guess the the the question tonight is just um one of approach and whether the council thinks there should be um should all of the necessary reduction come off the city side of the budget or is there some discussion that um you would entertain some coming off the school side? I I I I think we just need some direction because um if staff goes back and looks at this again and says, "Okay, what would uh 9% you're you're taking 1 uh five points off this?" You're still going to be at a $3.1 million reduction. So, lots of the things that I heard people in here talk about tonight that they didn't like, you're not going to like it any better then. So, um, I I guess my my thought on this is I don't I don't see a path forward where some of this doesn't come off of the school side. Um, I don't know what that means yet. We're going to have to see from their budget presentation, but I think people need to be thinking about that.

I agree with you, Mr. Mayor. there. Uh, you know, I've been doing this a long time and there's never been a time when they escaped not being asked to cut at least a half a million dollars. So, I think if we're going to do that, I think they need to find a way of doing it as well. Council Plat,

and I I would agree. Um, I also think that's consistent with some of the very subtle talking points I've offered up to the school committee thus far. I've I've said that u without stating numbers. I've said, you know, don't be surprised if there are requests for parody between increases in operating budgets, you know, removing debt service and revenue. I think that's Tim's point. Um the school does bring in a heck of a lot of revenue with with the fund sharing model. And so, uh we can't say we're cutting a million, they need to cut a million, right? That's not fair. So, I I think if anything, the starting point would be a discussion. Again, not to repeat what Tim said, but a discussion on a percentage uh change on the tax levy portion. Um maybe it's not exactly what we're asking ourselves to do on the city side, but I I certainly think it's fair to bring up and it's not it should not be a surprise.

Yeah. So I think uh for counselors to be thinking about that point going forward on your um summary sheet I think the numbers that you want to use for context uh municipal operating expense and school operating expense which is this sits now is a 6.6% increase in municipal and a 7.33 in the school. I would caution against tying um debt service into that. Debt service is highly variable um and um there's you know there's certainly different responsibilities there for debt service. So um I agree with councelor platt when he's talking about parody. It's not a dollar here that means a dollar there. It really is more about the overall increase in the um operating budget.

And I I mean I'll add I mean you heard me throughout the presentations today. We we can all prioritize certain things over other things. You you can say I prioritize education over you know plowing or salt, you know, whatever. But so we can make that argument that it doesn't even have to be the same percentage. Um but I think we need to start somewhere. I I agree with the mayor. I think it would be pretty irresponsible of us to not even explore that. Other thoughts from the council? Mr. Mayor, any Mr. Manager? Any final thoughts?

Uh, thanks, Mayor. Um, I think the the only thing I would recommend is we really need to think about what does this budget schedule look like moving forward, right? cuz typically we're at a very different point right now. Uh actually we would have been um kind of finalizing where we were actually at the last um workshop based on in the previous years. So I'll be presenting the along with the superintendent I'll be presenting the official uh manager budget um on the six as well. Uh but we need to think about what do you what do you want to see for some uh budget meetings uh moving forward because we have some other impacts regarding we have a lot happening with comp plan schedules some of our other um all of you on some of your other committee meetings and so we want to make sure we we get these worked in the best we can. Mayor, I don't know if you

I think at this point the council should presume we're going to be going on every Monday night and we'll see what progress we make and um June 30th the deadline, right? So, I'm assuming that uh the manager is going to present um as a proposed budget where we are at this point with a 12.95 increase.

That's correct. And um we'll continue to work our way through it. Um you know, next week we only have 2 and 1/2 hours. Um but we don't even have that. We have an hour and a half uh before the council meeting to work on the budget. So, um, we we'll try to have some understanding at a high level what the numbers would look like at 9% and see where we go from there. Could you also run the number? I mean, just to give you another mark to go for 11 and a half%.

Yeah, I can provide that for you. Um I think the uh the other piece I just want to note too is yes we have till June 30th on the manager's budget. However, we do have a school referendum uh that we need to hit and so focusing on what is that percentage so that councelor Plattz and the school committee can be working because they're going to need some time to work on that as well. Uh, I know they're still waiting for their uh, health insurance numbers and I think that'll help them in determining where they're going to be in their recommendation that comes back on April 6. They might have that. I don't know if they'll have that, counselor. That's the hope. So, so you'll probably have a more fixed number come April 6th, but

in order to meet the date timeline for the election in June, they'll have to have their adopted school budget by May 4th, right? Yeah. Good. So, we we'll we'll get their budget on the 6th. Um we'll have to um in a short turnaround time if we want look for any reductions on the school side. We'll have to provide the number to the school committee uh so they can work on that and return their um recommendations and impact statements to the council.

Yep. and we'll be sure to uh get calendar invites out to you for just the next two Mondays. We'll get that on the uh on the city calendar as well so the public will be aware. Anything further? I will be ajourned. Thank you. Thank you.