Council - Regular Meeting

All right, we are we are recording everybody just so you know. Grace [clears throat] and Hillary, I'm gonna get started. Council on my right, I'm gonna get started. Good good evening everybody and welcome. So, we're get started for the final budget meeting of the proposed 2026 budget. It's called to order tonight and I'll ask the clerk to call the role. Mr. Callahan, Miss Grampy Smith, present. Miss present. Miss Leard, present. Miss Leon, present. Miss Wilhelm present and Mr. Cologne present. Mr. Callahan did message me. He's running about 10 minutes late, so he'll come in during the public comment period.

So for tonight at this final budget meeting, members of council, by a motion, there will be a lot of procedural things going on up here tonight by a motion followed by a second and then we'll take it to a vote may amend what the administration and the mayor proposed for the 2026 budget bills. Members of council can also amend the mayor's proposed We will vote on pardon we will vote on the proposed 2026 budget either as stands or as amended if we amend it tonight at our final reading of the budget which will be at the December 16th city council meeting. That meeting will start at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, December 16th. I'll provide the procedure for tonight's meeting. I'll start with public comment. We have about a dozen people who had signed up. I'll [snorts] remind everybody that our council rules, it's a five-minute time limit for anyone who'd like to speak. I ask that you keep any comments related to the budget and budget amendments as this is a budget hearing. Anyone who had signed up will go first in the order as they're signed up. And then I'll go around the room as is typical and invite anyone who didn't sign up but wants to uh make comment on the budget. I'll rec then recognize members of council who want to offer amendments to the 2026 budget bill. And as many are probably aware, we have six proposed amendments from a member of city council. If there is an amendment put on the floor, I will accept a motion to consider that amendment followed by a second. And then if there is a second, then we'll discuss it where council talks amongst ourselves and may ask for clarification from someone who put the amendment forward. To my left is our solicitor, the council attorney, Stephanie Stewart, who may be here to answer questions if anyone has questions related to procedure, legality, things like that. Members of the administration are here also. Our business administrator, Eric Evans, is at the administration table. If there is no second on an amendment, then the

amendment is not considered. So, if something's introduced and two members don't put it up for consideration, then it dies without a vote. After discussion on anything that has a second, I'll ask the clerk to call the role on the amendment after everyone has a chance to weigh in on that. Procedurally, to increase a budget line item, it requires five votes in favor for it to pass. So, it needs five of the seven to increase a budget line item. If the amendment decreases a line item, it's a vote of at least four in favor to require to pass. So effectively, a motion needs five to to pass because the budget has to be balanced. If I take $5 from over here, I need to put $5 over here. That's how that works. As mentioned, the second reading of the budget will take place on December 16th and then the budget will be amended if needed. So we'll start with public comment. Uh please again now I know what we're talking about tonight so there may be some different opinions shared up at the lect turn. I do ask members of the public members of council to be respectful of everyone speaking. I don't know what everyone's going to say. I just ask that we we as council, we as the public, the administration, everyone who came out tonight, please keep your comments to me as the chair or council as a whole as this is a council meeting for the budget. and and I ask everyone be respectful of each other in here tonight because I plan on being respectful of everybody. Thank you. So, we'll start uh as I had mentioned with public comment. And our first person signed up is Scott Slingerland. And uh whoever comes up, if you don't mind just giving your name for the record, to my right is our city clerk, Mr. Miller. He keeps all the uh minutes for us. So, if you don't mind stating your name before you give your comments. Good evening. Scott Slingerland with CAT Coalition for Approp appropriate

transportation. Uh I'm here to speak up in support of the important things that the community recovery funding program is doing for the residents in the city of Bethlehem. Uh we are one of the many uh programs funded by the CRF. Um while I 100% support the fire department and their role in public safety and emergency response, I also completely support hiring additional firefighters as needed. Um, and the application Miss Cramps mentioned uh to apply for the safer grant and get more funding for the fire department. I support that as well. CRF funding supports local nonprofit organizations like CAT to do our work with community programs that offer transportation, safety, outreach, and education. With the help of city CRF funding, CAP provides bicycle education programs in local schools to parents and children at the CAT bicycle cooperative and at citywide events in partnership with the city police department, recreation department, and often the fire department as well. [snorts] Um, in 2024, we reached 1,663 youth participants at 42 bicycle education events. Our holiday bikes program going on right now in its eighth year has provided over 1,000 bicycles, helmets, and bicycle education for families with financial hardship. Um, with the help of the city CRF funding, CAP provides opportunities for marginalized individuals, lowincome, unhoused in addiction recovery and or undergoing mental health treatment to volunteer and engage side by side with the broader community, which has also provided them with self-sufficient transportation. CAP provides this service year round, four days a week to over 150 individuals and supports over 2,400 visits to the CAT bicycle cooperative annually with the help of city CRF funding. CAP provides ongoing advocacy for active transportation through the city's sea committee, the city's climate action

plan, blue zones Bethlehem, and the link trails network working to bolster a web of off street trails that go places uh including the upcoming connection of the south Bethleam greenway, the DNL trail and Monoxy Way trail. So therefore, 2026 CRF funding is especially critical for all these programs and additionally for us as we expand our operations back into downtown Bethlehem on Walnut Street. Support from City Betham is vital for families, for adults, for youth to experience the joy of biking, the utility of public transit, and the peace of mind to be able to cross a street safely in a crosswalk. CAT needs your support. Betham community needs your support. Please support CRF funding for community organizations like CAT and also I hope you can find a way to also support the fire department to to do their needed work. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Our next speaker is Becca. I believe it's Echelberger. Apologies if I mispronounced it.

Thank you. Um yes, my name is Becca B K a H. Um and I work at Touchstone Theater in Southside Bethlehem. Um I'm here today to express some concerns about the budget amendments as they are proposed um specifically around the cuts to the community recovery fund. Um I like the gentleman before me very much in support of increasing um the number of firefighters we have in the city. Um but the work of the community recovery fund is deeply essential for so many nonprofits in the city of Bethlehem. Uh Touchstone's been very grateful to be a beneficiary of this program. Uh and with this city's support, we have grown our festival unbound community arts initiative. Uh Festival Unbound works to bring our community together through art while also informing say the conversation between neighbors and between neighbors and local leaders like yourselves. Um it's really hard to quantify um all that festival has done for the city in the past few years, but I will give it a try. Um, in 2023 and 2024, we've hosted 26 events as part of Festival Unbound, including community music jams featuring musicians from around the area, explorations of nature on our beautiful nature trails, writing workshops, book clubs, story sharings, and live theater. um over 5,000 people participated in these 26 events over the past uh two years, which is equivalent to nearly 7% of the city's population um engaging in the arts and civic discussion for the city. Um and the programming really helps community members feel heard and represented. Uh we've gotten feedback like sharing stories as a group naturally fostered community, helping us empathize with and connecting to each other. I've been exposed to art and ideas that I wouldn't otherwise be exposed to. I saw areas of Bethlehem I'd never been to before. It gives pe folks the opportunity to tell and listen to stories through both conversation and art about who we are,

what we do, our interests, our struggles, and our dreams. I think having the arts take a leadership position on the civic values and future development of the city of Bethlehem is an important function of the arts. Um, I think however FUBS or Festival Unbound's greatest strength is the way it elevates community concerns to local leaders like yourself. Uh, for example, our festival in 2023 focused on the region's affordable housing crisis, which I know you guys hear a lot about. Um, as part of that year's program, Touchdown hosted a regional convening of municipal leaders, residents, academics, nonprofit professionals, uh, to talk about some regional solutions to this issue. And the convening that Touchstone hosted was the first time many of these people met. Um, and those connections are still in place today. And the things discussed at that meeting are still informing policy around affordable housing for the region. Um, and the 2026 budget increases the allocation for the community recovery fund, which is deeply essential in this time as so many nonprofits are struggling to meet the growing need of for the services that they offer. Um, and we're going to need that support as we've seen um, cuts to the federal government budgets, um, the whole fiasco with the state budget where we didn't get any money for like five months. Um, so I ask that as you are considering these changes and helping to find a way to uh, fully staff our fire department to not do so at the expense of essential community services. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next person signed up is George. I think it starts with DZ. I apologize from Maple Street. Uh George Sepinka, 738 Maple Street. Sorry.

Um I'm here to talk about supporting the amendment for four additional firefighters. I [clears throat] live one block from Lynen Market and I can tell you that EMS, police, and fire department are passing by all the time. Most of the time with their lights going and the sirens going. So they're definitely working and they're working hard. Um, I'd like to see four additional firefighters so that it's adequately staffed and um, you know, when it comes to emergencies, you have the right people and enough people. In addition, um, it's obvious that this city is going to become like Manhattan. So, at the size of Manhattan, we're going to need four firefighters anyway. So, I would like to see four fighters. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Our next speaker is Bob Rap Jr. [laughter] [clears throat] Hey, I'm Bob Rap Jr. I'm here on behalf of Bees and our unhoused folks here in the city of Bethlehem in support of the community recovery fund. When I first heard about the issue that came up and judging from um Mr. Clone's first remarks this this evening. I'm I'm a little irritated, I guess, in the fact that we've come to a place where we have to argue against each other for certain funding. And that's where it seems like it's come down to tonight. It seems to me you have two specific different issues that both need addressing. And yet here we come in opposition to one another. I am not here to argue against firefighters. I think they do an awesome job in the city of Bethlehem. They're they're awesome servants of our

communities everywhere. And so my talk tonight is just in support of the recovery fund. Many times the folks that I refer to are given the title of these people and they have no voice. They have no presence in our community. First point I'd like to make out tonight is they are our street neighbors. In operating the shelter here in Bethlehem, less than 15% of our folks that grace our doorstep come from elsewhere. These are folks who have many of them were born here, went to school here. Some have gone to college here, some have raised families here, and yet because of u issues in their lives ended up without a home. last year. Historically, um over the years, the number has grown. Last year, throughout the shelter season, we averaged 65 folks a night. From 2020 to 2025, the increase in our shelters has been 128%. And that number keeps continuing to rise. This not only affects the shelter system, it affects every facet of transitional living in the city of Bethlehem all the way up to being permanently housed. And so with that housing crisis in mind, like someone mentioned, until we tackle that big issue, we are going to be warehousing folks in shelters and in transitional housing units. And because of that, our numbers are historically higher than they've ever been. And we were at our limits in funding prior to that. And so it makes it almost impossible to continue operations. And so there will be cuts in the future if we keep cutting funding. Historically here in Bethlehem, most of that burden would be based in

organizations that are are faith-based churches mostly to uh contribute much of the physical and financial support necessary to be able to have a shelter. With a decline or failure, depending on what you look at, of the mainline church in society, cities are left with the question on how to best cope with the homeless issue. Coupled with the housing crisis and the fact that we keep speaking of affordable housing and we leave out entrylevel housing, which is what is most needed, the numbers are going to keep growing. 48% of our population last year, 48% were firsttime homeless persons that came to our shelter. So, we currently work on a budget, too. Right now, average folks um right now are 65 in shelter. We still have 30 to 40 folks in encampments here in the city of Bethlehem. our our funding, our budget will go to the board here shortly with 71% of our monies coming from foundation grants, corporate grants, or faith-based organizations, heavy on the faith-based side. So, it's only a small percentage of our funding that comes from government entities, and yet we still need every dollar we get. The city of Bethleam here in the recent past has done some awesome work in supporting our shelter, applying for grants that we cannot apply for as individual organizations, helping to support having the shelter open for for lengths of time that were not available in the past. Um but but we need to continue as part of that work. We need to figure out this housing crisis so that folks can flow through our system, which is how it's supposed to happen, so we can get them to transitional housing and

then back into permanent housing as quickly as possible to reduce the numbers in in beds or at least increase the flow of folks back into permanency so that they too can be a a contributing member of society uh paying taxes and helping to solve some of the issues that we talk about here tonight. Thank you, Mr. Rap. I we do have a list so I want to keep on with the list. Thank you.

Our next speaker is Mike O'Hare. Hello everyone. I um thank you all for being here. Um, I favor a more moderated approach to this this issue and I think it's really the approach the administration was talking about was to use the unused salaries of the open eight open positions for the Bethlehem Fire Department to try to encourage retention and recruitment. Right now I think there's people signed up they don't even have enough people to to go to the fire academy. So, uh, maybe some of those unused salaries could be used to reach out to find out, you know, for qualified people and get them to attend the academy and maybe to help, uh, retain some of the firefighters that we have in the city. And I think that would and I do think that was the approach the administration had. And then they were going to do a study uh, starting next year. They were getting uh different uh uh people to, you know, participate in the study to to to see what the actual needs of the fire department are, which I'm sure they'll find they do need additional positions. But why not fill the open positions now before you're adding four more positions that you probably won't be able to fill within a couple years anyway? But more concerning to me was an email I got this afternoon from forwarded to me from Mount Ary Neighborhood Association and probably went to a lot of different community groups across the city from Miss Collins, the director of the uh community and development economic I can't whatever that department is. Um, she sent this email, but it was totally out of context. And the email made it sound like city council just wants to cut funding to these nonprofit groups willy-nilly for no reason because they're trying to save money. It lacked

the context that the reason they're looking for additional funding was to supply firefighter positions. And so I thought that was very inappropriate that Miss Collins would send that email out. She's acting more like the mayor than the mayor who isn't even here. And so I I just felt that that was inappropriate. That that's kind of crossing a line. And if you uh if you're looking for, you know, uh you're fully funded as a nonprofit, what difference does it make if your building burns down? Unless you go to the non-operating Bethlehem Co-op. You could use that building maybe. So, um I just felt that that was wrong. Um, also, um, I think there's probably been a little bit of mischief on both sides, but I would just ask that, um, everybody have above board communications, get to the solution that we need to get to. Make sure we make sure we're protected as a city. I don't ever want to see what happened what happened on Sunday. You have a fire in the city, you have two other uh, fire calls, and there's nobody to respond. That should never happen in our city. So, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Thank you, Mr. O'Hare. Our next speaker is John Ruff. [clears throat] John Rof, 15-year veteran of BFD. I grew up in this city. I talked to you guys a couple times before. I've seen the city go through tons of changes. Is great. It's great to see where our city's going. We're growing. The only thing that hasn't been growing is the fire department been shrinking. I counted on my phone over 20 there's 25 or 26 overtime since last Wednesday as of tonight that we had. So obviously there's a need always robing from Peter to pay Paul with our overtime budgets between 1.2 million uh two years ago and pretty sure we're going to break a million this year.

[clears throat and cough] As you can see we have a big turnout. We're a brotherhood. We're there for everybody. We don't care about race, color, creed, religion, or anything. We're there to help you in your in your worst times, your times of need. That's what we do. I thank council that's been working to try to figure out a way how to how to fix this situation. As we say goodbye to I I think there's two of you guys are leaving. I'm not sure. Um we thank you for your diligent work while you're here. But before you go, I challenge you to leave this city better than when you got in. Make the right call. Vote. Help us out. Help us be able to help the community even more than what we do. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roof. Our next speaker is Lou Gimenez.

Good evening, Lou Jimenez. Um 7:35 president. Uh thank you to all the speakers tonight. Uh, and I appreciate everything city council has done and being receptive to our requests and our advocacy. Uh, tonight I heard I heard a lot of good things and a lot of things that we have in common. You know, um, I heard [clears throat] a lot of numbers about events and and things like that and I heard, you know, that we shouldn't be arguing about essential services. You know, I've heard the key words, essential community services. CRF is very essential. So was the fire department. We talk about increasing numbers. I'm going to give you a number for the fire department. We ran about 2500 calls a couple decades ago and present day we run twice as much, 5,000 calls, yet our staffing has gone down. We talk about affordable housing and we talk about, you know, we talk about our unh unhoused. Well, as firefighters, we see her unhoused every day. We respond to medical calls, uh, various types of fires in these areas, and we've established relationships with them as well. So, they're seen by us. What we're looking for is to be seen by our city. We talk about taking away from CRF and placing in the fire department. At the end of the day, we should have everybody happy. Our fire department staffing is low. It's low than it ever has been. We're asking for four positions and that's just a start. But the thing is is where's the money going to come from? You know, we talk about rob for Peter to pay Paul. That's how we fund our overtime. That's how we fund our lack of staffing. You know, um but we have something called the rainy day fund, what I understand. And it's higher than it's

ever been. And I'm sure we're going to hear some excuses as to why we can't do that. And that's pretty sad. We've paved sidewalks with this. We've bought fire trucks. You know, we've done all different types of projects in this city. Yet, we cannot hire four additional firefighters under that rainy day fund. Isn't that what it's for? A rainy day. We're having our rainy day. You know, we talk about housing. They're going to be they're going to be demolishing the Marvine Pemrook Village and they're going to be doubling in occupancy size. Over 400 units. Those units are not going to be built like the units that are there now. They're going to be built. They're cheap. They're going to be built cheaply. And you know what? That's going to take more firefighters. You know, I shared a I shared a lot of uh personal thoughts and feelings on my social media post because I only get five minutes to come up here. But we're human just like just like unhoused people and just like un unprivileged people. We're all human beings, too. And when I said we were being treated like numbers in our last meeting, I meant it. You know, we're nothing. We're not we're not just a budget line item, okay? We're not asking for four firefighters just because we need them. We need help. Look at what happened at Pints and Pies the other day. That happens more than you think. [clears throat] That happens frequently every time we have a fire. We have one other call. Our department is pretty much done and spoken for. What would have happened if there would have been a true emergency that day? I'm not sure. We don't have enough people. But I tell you what I have. I have

383,000 of my brothers and sisters that would come into this room and tell you exactly what I'm saying. You know, this is a problem in Bethlehem. This is a problem in the state of Pennsylvania. The problem that we have is that we do not have our subject matter experts looking at our fire department staffing. Instead, they're looking at a budget line item. Our city's growing. Our city deserves the fire protection they need because guess what? Every nonprofit that we go to, every nonprofit we've probably gone to and provided service for. So, at the end of the day, we're deserving of these four positions. Our city's deserving of this protection, and I ask you kindly to consider adding the four positions to the Betham Fire Department. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Jimenez. Our next speaker signed up, Robert Emboden.

Robert Emboden, I'm one of the VPs for Local 735. I'd like to thank our brothers and sisters for intending this meeting tonight uh to show support for our cause. Um this staffing issue for the city of Betham and our fire department and our local has been going on for quite some time. Um what I want everybody else who spoke here tonight to understand is that I understand what you're asking for, but at the same time when you need somebody when you need someone to come for you to help you, every one of your associations were the ones that come. We don't have enough people to do this job continuously. Two chiefs ago, a grievance was filed by a group of officers that led to an overtime policy change. That change was made after we were threatened with a withdraw of the grievance. Said grievance was um excuse me, said grievance was not withdrawn at that time. A member was threatened with discipline. We did not withdraw that overtime policy change. What led to what we know now and what we seen was an overwhelming amount of retirements based on how our overtime was administered. That's why we sit where we are today with our staffing levels. This staffing [sighs and gasps] shortage was engineered from day one and beyond. And if you'd go back and look at the dates and the numbers that we could give that I don't have enough time in five minutes to explain, I could spell it out very easily for you. The city's business administrator knew about this and knew it was coming because he was part of it. I sat in these chambers. Councilwoman Leon asked one of our former chiefs if we needed firefighters. That chief was Chief Ay. You asked him, he said no. That was a blatant lie. We all in this department knew it. [snorts] Overtime budgets are being used as a shell game. We're using unfilled salaries that are being budgeted that shouldn't be used to cover down and pay for overtime. That's not a balanced budget. If I see a line item and it says

overtime, then I would look at that and say that that's what our overtime is. Just because we have unfilled seats sitting here in these fire trucks doesn't mean we pull from that to pay overtime. Does that really make sense to any of you guys sitting there? Doesn't make sense to me. I can guarantee every one of these other firefighters that are sitting here would tell you the same thing because they're all dealing with it. Just like my president said, it's not just Betham. It's not the state of Pennsylvania. It's every fire department across this country. Another thing I want you to take in consideration, if you haven't looked at it yet, is the fact that when we talk about overtime, we look at money and line items in a budget. It's not about the dollar amount. What you're not seeing is the man-hour that go into it. As we've had these retirements, we've had to hire. As we've hired, we'd hired younger guys who make less than those guys that were here that retired. Now, all those young guys are getting paid less to do this. They're still working the manh hours. It's not about salaries. It's not about money. It's the hours we're working. We're putting in to serve this city, the people, all the people that's sat here and talk tonight in these communities. All we're doing is asking for some type of creativeness. We don't want to pull money from any other department's budgets. You can go to all the other bigger cities in the United States. FDNY does this down in Philadelphia. They have programs that we could be taking small small percentages to some of the college tuitions around here if we wanted to because we provide a lot of service to them for what we do for the community. We respond to the colleges in this city a lot. That's an understatement if I could be any better at describing it. I want to let you know this meeting here, this everything that we spoke about, this is the beginning. The councilman and council women sitting here now, the ones coming after you, this is not the end.

You are going to see more of us to push for this in the future. Regarding our staffing, this is just the beginning. We are not going to go away. This is not right. And as my president said earlier, we are not a number. We are a human being. We're just asking to be treated like it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next signed up is Shelby Carr. I I do want to recognize apologies. Mr. Callahan joined us a couple speakers ago.

Hi. Um my name is Shelby Carr. I'm here representing Monakasi Farm Project. I'm here to speak on behalf of the community recovery fund to which um some budget amendments tonight could cut some funding from. Um I'm aware that cutting funds from the CRF to pay for more city firefighters is only one option to pay for those firefighters, but to be blunt, I find any proposed cuts to the funds extremely troubling, especially at a time when local nonprofits have been experiencing a scarcity of funding opportunities and an alarming rate of funding and programmatic cuts on the federal, state, and local levels. the optics of borrowing from a fund set aside to support local nonprofits is especially when the safer grant that would be hypothetically repaying borrowed funds is not a surefire thing. Um, as a community partner who works for an organization that has received CRF funding in the past, I ask that these funds stay intact and are not used to fund anything else but for what they were initially set aside for. Um, many of the city officials who I've met through this fund or who I've worked with in the past were really excited to direct the initial ARPA funds to the CRF. Um, many of these people were also excited and proud that the city and its council were invested in making the CRF stable enough um that it could survive for many years to come. To consider cutting it to pay for other costs really stings, as many of you were the very people who championed this funding and its longevity. So, I urge you all to find a solution that leaves the CRF funds intact as is and also gets the fire department the stuff that they so desperately need. Thank you.

Thank you. That exhaust [clears throat] the list of who had signed up in advance. So, as I'd mentioned at the top, I'll go around the room. Is there anyone to the left who want to make comment who hasn't had a chance? Serve in front.

Good evening. My name is Kyle Dalton. I'm a Bethlehem [clears throat] firefighter and one of the labor leaders with local 735. I wanted to express my gratitude for everybody that's come out tonight. Um, firefighters and community partners alike. It has spoken in support of the fire department, community recovery fund, and the city. Um, there's a passion for service in this room that makes me proud. Um, everybody here cares about people and that's why we're here. U, one word that I've heard a lot is colleagues. Um, and like I said, we're colleagues in caring for people, and I don't want anything that's happening here tonight to diminish anybody's ability to do that. My concern is that our role as a fire department has been and will continue to be diminished. Um, to the people of this community, you're safe because your public servants make the difference with their effort. There are shortcomings in the system, but I'll push a wheelbarrow to your home if that's what it takes. It doesn't matter if I'm getting paid or not. We're coming for you when you call. You're safe because we make the difference. We've talked a lot about the impact of finance and something troubling happened last month that I wanted to share with you. U if our pleas and concerns aren't enough for you. Um maybe a lawsuit would be. So in Sterling, Illinois two years ago, a fire lieutenant was killed in a fire. He lived for 15 minutes in a basement. And the litigations for that lawsuit, wrongful death lawsuit, just ended last week. His widow and two daughters were awarded $31.5 million because his fire department was not following command procedure, safety procedures, or staffed appropriately. My question is, will you as a council or administration take responsibility if one of us is killed, or will you be in a courtroom telling my wife and my widow that it was my fault and trying to save yourselves the money? Um, there are things that need to happen here and my

hope is that regardless of what happens tonight, as we move forward, our role can be empowered and we can feel safe. Uh, that's all. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else to the left who wants to make comment who hasn't had a chance? I turn to the wide center. I'll start with a gentleman in the brown jacket and then Mr. Royston, you'll be next. My name is Sean Telerico and I have been in Bethlehem since 1985 and I wasn't going to speak tonight but then somebody mentioned colleges universities. Um without them Moravian College of which I was the chief of police for 25 years would have been in a lot of trouble. [cough] We needed them and we continue to need them. And I appreciate the fact that arts are important, that entertainment is important, that hospitals are important, but I just want to remind people from a passionate point of view because I don't have the numbers and I don't have the eloquence to talk about what you do in terms of overtime and things like that. But without them, we're not going to have art and we're not going to have music fest and you're not going to have the things that require people to be protected. Something burns, who you going to call? If somebody needs help, who you going to call? Public safety is important. Police departments are important. Fire departments are just as important. And I'm a little discouraged that I haven't heard any civilians, and by that

I mean people of the city of Bethlehem coming and speaking to this. And that's why I'm doing that. I think it's important that we treat them with respect like we treat everybody else with respect, but understand that without them when the balloon goes up, somebody's got to bring it back down. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mr. Royston.

Hi, my name is Doug Royston. uh 4212nd Avenue. [clears throat] And uh I'll just run through the first part uh that I wrote down before I came and heard all the wonderful things being said here today. But first of all, I'm here uh to just make sure that everybody knows that the ICE House is really appreciative of the finances that uh has been provided over the uh last two years for the with the community um recovery fund. They've been very important. We are at a place now where we're having about 300 shows at the Ice House uh between our work with the with the Ice House Performing Arts uh collaborative and uh the other arts organizations about 300 shows in that nice old mill down there by the by the Lehigh River. And um we we are very proud of what we're what we're doing. Uh in in essence, the f uh Ice House Performing Arts Collaborative is dedicated to growing the next generation of artists in this arts town. And I want to use I I want to use the word arts town as many times as possible tonight because that's what we've become as thousands and th thousands of shows a year go on in this town called Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. And it is also very interesting that we now with the UNESCO u u Moravian uh historic designation and with the new uh building that Arts Quest is putting over on the south side. We have just ready to become branded on the

whole on the east coast as an arts town the one that we should be. That's what we're up against here tonight. And that's fine. Uh the all the I'm I'm part of all the little groups that create this varied artistic cultural destination. And it is the future of this town to have that grow the way it has for the last 45 years that I have actually been part of it. And I just want to make that one thing very clear. It's not just about the money. Uh receiving these funds. Uh it the arts exist in a very fragile state both emotionally and financially. Getting this money is not only financial for us. It tells us the city is with us. and how quickly this people can can drop back and say, "I guess I'm alone. I guess the city is not with us anymore." Uh is is what we're up against now. We we exist on a shoestring to keep the growth and the variety of the arts in this town alive, which will at some point along the way truly be leveraged economically on a broader scale. And uh but but you know, that's what I was going to say. All right, that's on my paper. But but I'm sitting here listening to the firefighters. I mean, how can I say anything against what the firefighters are saying? Uh, how in the world did we get uh in in up against the firefighters?

Who how did that happen? Under what circumstances did we suddenly find ourselves at odds with the firefighters? That's crazy. Uh, no one's at odds about the firefighters. Here's the arts community and here it's growing and here the fire. Two different things. How did this happen? My understanding was that this money was allocated for nonprofits and that's what and that's that's how it was intended to be spent. But I certainly uh the firefighters need to have uh the taxes raised in Bethlehem if the situation they're describing is true. Uh that has to be a raise in tra taxes and not taken away from this fund. Um okay that's you know it's it's I don't see how we wound up being at odds. How did that happen? Thanks.

Thank you Mr. Royen. Mr. Callahan. You weren't here. I had asked everyone to be respectful of each speaker. Hold applause and comments. Everyone has. All of council has. Thank you. Is there anyone else in the wide center who has anything else they want to add? Yes, in the back. [clears throat]

Okay. Uh again, I came here not planning on speaking. Uh last time I was here I told everybody that I've been a citizen of city of Bethlehem for almost 76 years. Uh my family has been in the law enforcement and now fire uh department uh my entire life. My dad was a cop a year before I was born. Now my son is on the fire department and I've had uh an ex-husband and a daughter in law enforcement. uh every day. It's not something that is constantly on your mind, but it does hit you every once in a while when they're at work. Are they going to come home? And that's the thing that always got [clears throat] got me the most. And you can't let them know that because they have a job to do. Um, but I just want you to know that I don't want somebody to not come home when there's not a reason for it. It should there should never be a reason. Uh, they need the help. They need the equipment. Um, I just want everybody to come home and be safe. Um, I know a lot of the guys, some of them don't know me. Uh, a lot of them don't know me, but uh, I just want that um, out there. I want everybody to come home safe and I want everybody that's in a situation where they have where guys and women have to deal with it. I want them to be safe, too. You have to stop and think about that. If they're underst staff, that means they can't do their job to save the citizens of our city. Okay. Thank you.

Ma'am, do you mind giving your name? Carol Anders. Thank you, Miss Anders. Was there anyone else in the center who wants to make comment?

I'll turn to the right. Was there anyone to the right? Anyone that's in the hallway want to make comment? Just want to make sure. Okay. Thank you everybody. That's going to conclude our public comment. [clears throat] So, and again, I thank you as I shared at the top of the meeting for the courtesy and respect that everybody showed each other. I will reiterate what I'd said at the top of the meeting. I hope we as a council could and administration could continue to show each other that respect. A lot of the folks that are in here tonight were here when we had an eight hour meeting uh a little bit ago. Tonight, you're here to hear us vote because at the end of the day, these amendments pass or fail based on the votes. So, I'd like to move forward and you know, in sake of why everyone came out tonight, everyone have opportunity to give their comments, ask their questions, and we'll get to the voting and I'd like to get home on today's date. So, we'll continue on. So, we'll now discuss and then vote on the council proposed amendments to the administration's 2026 budget. As had been previously presented, tonight we have six council proposed amendments that have been introduced by Councilwoman Grace Camy Smith. What I' what I'd like to do and uh I'll make a motion rather than I think it'd be more effective and give Councilwoman Cry Smith an opportunity because we're going to be talking about all six and I think having I might reference amendment one or someone might want to talk about so I'd like to make a motion like we do at other council meetings to group amendments one through six together as a group and then um if there's a second we'll have discussion and I'll give further thoughts. So I make before I kind of read them and go through, I'd like to make a motion to consider amendments one through six as a group. If there's a second, then I'll have discussion.

Can you clarify [clears throat] the purpose of that or what what process will be if we group them? If there's a second, then we'll have discussion on it. Second.

Second by Councilwoman Wilhelm. So now we're up for discussion on it. So I'll clarify for Councilwoman. So this way we could have one I will I will give you the floor in a moment. Councilwoman I'll I'll read kind of the what Mr. Miller normally does. How do we do at a normal council meeting and then give you the floor to introduce the amendments all six of them reference the the page number the amount what what it is that you want to change for each one. Then we can have a discussion about all six all together. Otherwise we're going one through six voting on one through six one at a time. Once we vote on amendment one, it's done. When we get to amendment five, we're not talking about one through four. This gives us an opportunity to have a broader conversation about all six alto together. And if someone wants to reference um you know, amendment three and amendment two al together, it it's one broader conversation when it's time to vote. If any member of council wants to vote on one, because essentially all six amendments are to accomplish the same goal. Fair to say. So if someone wants to then uncouple a particular amendment to vote on that in practical sense, not more than one of these amendments could pass if that's the will of council since they're all, you know, have the same goal in mind. So having one broad discussion if there if the will of council is then to support one particular amendment we would be able council or whomever on council can make the motion to remove whichever particular amendment after everyone's discussed give their thoughts feedback ask their questions to vote on that particular amendment that someone would be willing to support and then the other the rest of the group would remain or if none are removed from the group we would just have one one vote. I mean, that that that's up to council and see where the discussion goes, but that way we're having I I hope I'm making sense and I'm

happy to clarify as we have discussion, but then we're just discussing all six amendments together rather than going one by one by one. Okay. And then that's my feedback on it. We're still up for discussion. Councilwoman, if you have discussion is that we have three amendments that are dealing with hiring firefighters in July, which um I believe perhaps we can get um Chief Griffin's input, but I believe that is most feasible. And then we have three to hire the firefighters in January. The problem being we we're not sure that we can get them to the fire academy in January. So then that would be a mute those three amendments would be a mute point if we cannot do that. Do you know what I'm saying? So and I don't want to interrupt.

I'm just I'm just thinking do can we get clarification? Is it still a possibility to have if if any amendment passes to hire them in January that we could get them to the academy in January? So I so the discussion is on grouping them together and I think we we will have typical discussion like we do and that question that you just posed can be asked of of Chief Griffin um when we still have discussion on the floor.

Procedurally what we would do is talk about all of them. Someone can ask chief or whoever any questions and then if there's a particular amendment because as I said at the top of the meeting effectively you need the support of five council members to pass anything. [snorts] So that particular amendment would be uncoupled from the group. We'd vote on instead of having six votes we'd have one vote on the group or two votes if there's one amendment that has support. So the so your question still stands. It would just be during discussion, okay, a matter of, okay, if you're going to eliminate three from consideration, which of the remaining three do you want to consider? Because there's there's obviously options here. Did that give some clarification, Councilwoman? Somewhat. Okay. Any other discussion, Mr. Callahan?

But we're still going to I don't mind having discussion on all all six of them at one time, but we're still going to have individual votes on each one of them. if if if there's a further motion to separate them into individual amendments because again we're not in in practice we're not passing six amendments if if you know the wolf of council will be what the wolf of council is but if an amendment passes you can't pass another amendment that is the same thing. So it would be to essentially identify a singular amendment to vote on and then vote on the rest of the group. Or else we're having six individual votes. You can't pass we can't pass all six amendments because they they all ultimately satisfy the same objective or the same outcome or involve the moving the same money around. Did you want to clarify anything? Attorney Stewart,

can I try with your microphone, please?

Sorry. So essentially we're starting with a pot of six to discuss generally because there's some overlap in the six and then if somebody wants to take one out and vote on it they can make that motion. So you would do that one by one as you kind of talk through and see, you know, is there of these six, is there one that a council member would like to advance for a vote? And we'll vote we'll have to vote on the group regardless. So there there's we're voting on the amendments. I guess it's just a matter of I don't want to go one by one for something we can't pass more than one of if that makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah. I just I just would uh I mean I I just hope that we're not this is important to all of us, you know, to all of us up here and everybody here. And I just think that um obviously public comment which everybody thought was going to be the lengthiest part of the meeting today probably uh is over with. And um I I don't think this meeting the way it is right now is going to last more than another hour and a half to two hours. So, I don't think there's any rush uh for us to get out of here. At least I I hope there isn't any rush to get out of here. Um, so we also have the right uh, correct me if I'm wrong to still if these are if this is grouped together and it's the will of council to group them together and vote on them together and then or maybe separate them into two different groups, we still have the right individually uh, to um, propose amendments here at council.

And I spoke about that this week, Mr. Callahan. Correct. the and um well one I will be respectful of everyone's time. I'll be transparent about that. But I also think it's a bit redundant if I'm being honest to have six individual votes when in practice you can't pass more than one thing. So I'm just trying to if there's a way to identify a singular amendment that has the support of five people to do that during discussion and then go from there because if you if you pass amendment two, you don't get ever you don't ever get to amendment three. If you if amendment one through five fail, by default, you're stuck on amendment six as we eliminate them. So, this gives us an opportunity to just have the discussion and hear from council where the um where potential support is.

But if a if amendment two passed, right, then someone can put out uh um a proposal um to get rid of the the the remaining four or five. We don't have to move on from there. I just think it's really important that we take each individual uh amendment and have a vote on each individual amendment as we're going along. It's only six amendments. It's not going to take an extensive amount of time. And if we do have a situation where amendment one passes, great. Um I I I I'll propose and I'm sure I'll get a second from uh someone up here that we don't need the other five amendments and and we'll be out of here in a half hour, an hour, you know. Again, Mr. Ken, this isn't about time. This is about procedure. So, well, I understand where you're coming from. So, those agree to disagree. I just put the motion out there. We're we're in the discussion phase for those following along. And I hope I've been succinct in my explanation. Um, any other discussion for members of council? I'll start with Councilwoman Lair.

Just a clarification. So if we do not group these for discussion, we cannot say um I really like this part of two compared to this part of four. Correct? Because we'd only be talking about two. We wouldn't be allowed to reference anything in comparison to the other amendments that we're passing. I think it's most effective to group them if we want to do that and and offer and and offer comparison while we're jumping around and um comparing and contrasting.

Okay. And additionally, um, if people pull out multiple amendments to vote on once we get to the voting portion, if if we would pass one and then someone would, for whatever reason, call out another one to vote on, what happens if we pass two? Because they they don't overlap. They conflict. That's I mean, that's that's that's remarkably impractical, Councilwoman. Yeah. So what what that I I we would have discussion and I would advise against it is what would happen just in terms of Yeah. Yeah. I just I was like I I get what I understand where you're coming from but that's why we have discussion

to to talk through things while things are on the floor. Thank you. Yeah. Counciloman Leo. I was it was a similar question that I was going to ask. It makes sense to me for ease of discussion, not necessarily ease of voting for but for ease of discussion if we want to reference multiple parts of each one. Like if there's something about amendment four that I want to discuss, but we're on one, I can't bring up four. So that makes sense to me for ease of discussion, not necessarily ease of voting. But I I see the ease of voting part, but

and just to clarify, we're still going to have discussion. No one everyone's going to get the floor, reference anything you want. I just think then to have the conversation about all six, ask questions about all six. Then members of council, I see Mr. Cat, give me give me a minute here. Um then if people have questions of Councilwoman Camy Smith regarding one and four they could ask her at the same time as we consider questions of solicitor question Mr. Evans question of whomever I don't want to keep interjecting but any other discussion before I give the floor to Mr. Callahan again Mr. Callahan.

No, I just wanted to add and let both you know if there's a certain part uh if they all get voted down but there's a certain part of one that you like and a certain part another then we all have the right to propose another amendment multiple amendments you know tonight. So if there is something that you like in one amendment and another and you want to combine them then you have the right and we all have the right to propose multiple amendments uh after these amendments are discussed and voted on. Correct. Correct. Any other discussion? Mr. Miller, please call the role on grouping amendments 1 through six together. Mr. Callahan, I. Miss Grampy Smith, I. Miss Quiet, I. Miss Leairard, I

Miss Leon, I, Miss Wilhelm, I. And Mr. Cologne,

I. The motion passes 70. So, I'm going to read through just a brief introduction of the six. Then I'll give the floor to Councilwoman Cra Smith to give a a broader insight to the to the motion. And after that, I'll invite a second for discussion on them all as a group. So, for the first amendment presented, Councilwoman [clears throat] offers scenario one in which she proposes adding four firefighter positions after 6 months, promoting four firefighters to lieutenant positions. Amendment two. For the second amendment, councilwoman offers scenario two in which she proposes adding four firefighter positions for the last six months of 2026 and promote and promoting four firefighters to lieutenant positions also for the last 6 months. Amendment three, the proposal would be adding four firefighter positions and after 6 months promoting four firefighters to lieutenant positions. Amendment four, scenario four, in which the proposal is to add four firefighter positions for the last six months of 2026 and promoting four firefighters to lieutenant positions also for the last 6 months. Amendment five, which I'll call scenario five, and the proposal is adding four firefighter positions and after 6 months promoting four firefighters to lieutenant positions. And amendment six, scenario six proposal is adding four firefighter positions for the last six months of 2026 and promoting four firefighters to lieutenant positions also for the last 6 months. So that's the the summary I had. Councilwoman, I'll ask you, Councilwoman Cry Smith, I'll turn it over to you if you would like to uh more formally introduce for discussion u amendments 1 through six as is in our packet. if you don't mind

referencing account and page numbers for each amendment and then after you introduce them then I'll invite a second and then we'll have our our discussion on them.

Thank you. Um, amendment one, like I said, is for six months because it seems most feasible that we can get four additional firefighters to the academy in July. And because we are missing an officer at engine 9 whereby we have one officer having to float between two stations, um the other prop the additional proposal in this amendment is once the um four firefighters complete the academy and are on staff, we promote four current firefighters to lieutenant. So then we will have every station staff with an officer and the firefighters that um is really um necessary according to national standards in all of my three first um well I'll talk about the first one. I looked at the budget and

Councilwoman I I don't mean to interrupt you. I'm sorry for just introduction for the motion and then the second can can you just go over line by line what what we're adding what we're eliminating? Okay. And then can I give a reason my rationale to if there's a second which I anticipate when we go to discussion I'll give the floor right back to you to to open up to this is just formally introducing the amendments to the discussion.

All right. So amendment one um I am proposing um eliminating or reducing the following sums. Code plan reviewer position eliminate that to the sum of 80,987. It's from the general fund and the department is DCED. It's on page 63 um bureau 0305 code enforcement [snorts] eliminate secretarial position um 44,000 um 444 the general fund from the department of community economic development um page 53 of the budget book and I must note that both these positions do not currently exist they are proposed new positions in the department of community and economic development for the 2026 year so it is not eliminating current positions is just eliminating proposed positions. Um, also eliminate $5,000 under the general fund for the Department of Community Economic Development. This was a new line item. Overtime was never um a line item in the DCED um department under the general fund. So, I would eliminate $5,000 from that. And that is on page 63 of the book. Overtime reduction. the general fund again under the fire department $125,000. We had um earmarked 500,000 for um overtime, but we are at almost a million this year. If we the rationale certainly is if we f hire more firefighters, the overtime budget should be reduced and we could use money from that budget um to towards the new firefighter positions. And then the community recovery fund, a reduction of $76,448. There is currently $1.6 million in that fund. And that is from the general fund, civic expenses, page 175.

Councilwoman, I don't mean to interject. I apologize. I think you're on amendment two if I'm not mistaken. I have amendment one here. Oh, I apologize. Mine reads amendment two for that. 260,000 something. Okay. I put Okay. could I have all the six-month amendments first? Oh, so let me let me get the um [clears throat] I guess continue as you were, Councilman. I don't mean Councilwoman, excuse me. I don't mean to interrupt you. I think maybe you're reading through what you presented and I'm I'm looking at what Mr. Miller gave us. They're all six going to be talked about and considered. So, as we discuss them, then we could confirm that we're on the same page about what

Do you want me to repeat this? Because that first amendment was for a full year. Do you want me to repeat that one? Um, just just continue where where you were and then move on in the sequence you were of the six. All right. Let me do I'm going to do the three six months and then the year um

again the community recovery fund reduction is on page 175 and then to create an ad uh the general fund in the fire department for firefighters. Um the academy will cost $80,000 and the salaries for six months will be 121346. and also in the fire department promote four firefighters to lieutenant for 6 months at at the uh cost of $10,46. I also included the medical, the pension and the 27th pay which would occur in 2026 and the total amount um needed for the addition is 3 thou 30031,479. I'll go to proposal amendment two which is again um number two for six months

number four is that for the six months number two was six months and then so what what we're going to do is count because all six are being discussed as a group so I'll allow councilwoman to introduce them in the order she was going to when we discuss them and should we choose to pull any out we're going to use what Mr. Miller gave us as the reference amendment. I'll just go back to just so we know we're looking at the right one. Can you can you name they are numbered at the top amendment one through six. Can you just let us know which number you're looking at? We know you're going in six months and then full year. Well, I think Councilwoman might be looking at her own what she submitted in Mr. Miller distributed.

To simplify it, I'll go and I'm going to do amendment one now. That is for the full year. Okay. Okay. And when I get to the one that I already did, we will not repeat it. Okay.

So, amendment one is to propose um hiring four new firefighters for the for the fiscal year 2026 by eliminating and reducing allocations from non essential services and light items. Eliminate and reduce the following. The plan reviewer position in the DCED department page 63 of the budget book from $80,987 to zero. secretarial position in the DCEED um department page 53 the budget book um minus 400 44 44,44 overtime in the DCED um department again page 63 in the budget book eliminate that [laughter] $5,000 to zero overtime um in the department fire department page 155 and that is from $500,000 to $327,000798. $327,798. [snorts] Community recovery fund, Department of General Fund, um civic expenses, page 175 from $1.6 million to $1.3 million um by reduction of $260,184. The total adjustment or reduction is $562,417. With that, we would create and add the following. Um, in the fire department, four firefighters to the academy at the cost of 88 $80,000. Four firefighters salary for the year at the cost of $242,692. Promote four firefighters to lieutenant for six months, the cost $10,46. Medical $104,220 pension $114,964

and the 27 pay in 2026 $10,135 for a total of 562417. Amendment two again hiring four new firefighters for f fiscal year 2026. um eliminate or reduce the following um plan review of position in DCED from $80,987 to zero. secretarial position in DCED um administration page 53 $189,260 under secretario to 145216 for a reduction of $44,44 overtime in DCEED code enforcement page 63 $5,000 to zero for reduction of 5,000 overtime in the fire department um page 15500,000 to 375 5,000 um for a reduction of 125,000. And the community recovery fund under the general fund civic expenses page 175 1.6 million to 1.5 million for a reduction of $76,448. Total is minus $33149. Create the following. Um in the fire department, the academy for four firefighters is 80,000. The salary for four firefighters $21,346 and that is for six months. Promote four firefighters to lieutenant for 6 months $10,46. Medical is 52,110. Pension is 57482 and 27th pay in 2026 is 10,135 for a total of 331479. And again, this is for four firefighters for the six-month period. Amendment three is the hiring of four

firefighters um for the fiscal year and this is for the full year starting in January. Eliminate or reduce the plan reviewer position in DCED code enforcement pay 63 80,987 to zero secretarial position in DCED page 53 189,260 to145216 for reduction of $44,44 overtime in DCED code enforcement page 63 $5,000 to zero for a reduction of 5,000 overtime in the fire department page 155 5 $500,000 to $250,000 for a reduction of $250,000 and community recovery fund in the general fund page 175 1.6 million to 1.4 million for a reduction of 183386 for a total reduction of 563,417. Create the following in the fire department. The academy for four firefighters, $80,000. Salary for four firefighters, $242,692. Promote four firefighters to lieutenant for 6 months, 10,46. Medicalico 104,220 pension 114,964 27 pay in 2026 10,135 for a total of 562417,000. Amendment four to hire four firefighters for fiscal year 2026 for six months. Eliminate and reduce the plan review of position in DCED. Code enforcement page 63 80,987 to zero for a reduction of 80,987 secretarial position in DCED. Page 53, 189,260

to 145216 for a reduction of $44,044. Overtime in DCED code enforcement page 63 $5,000 to zero for a reduction of 5,000 overtime in the part department of fire page 155 $500,000 to 29852,000 for a reduction of 201,448 for a total reduction of 331469. Create and add the following. Fire department, the academy for four firefighters, $80,000. Salary for four firefighters for six months, $121,346. Promote four firefighters to lieutenant for 6 months, $10,46. Medical 52,110. Pension 57,482. 27th pay 10,135 for a total addition of $331,479. Amendment five, hiring four new firefighters for fiscal year 2026. And this would be for the full year starting in January. Eliminate the plan reviewer position in DCED code enforcement plate page 63 from 80,987 to zero for a reduction of $80,987. Secretarial position DCED administration page pits 53 189,260 to 145216 a reduction of $44,044 overtime in DCEED code enforcement page 63 $5,000 to zero for a reduction of $5,000 overtime and fire page 15500,000

to 327,798 for a reduction of 172,20 and create and add the safer grant which will cover 75% of salaries in medical for plus $260,184 total incurred is $562,417 create the following in the department of fire academy for firefighters $80,000 salary for firefighters $242,69 92 promote four firefighters to lieutenant for 6 months 10,46 Medicalico 104,220 pension 114,964 27th pay $10,135 total incurred $562,417 and amendment six again to fund the hiring of four new firefighters for fiscal year 2026 for 6 months. Eliminate the following. The plan reviewer position DCED code enforcement page 63 $80,987 to zero for a reduction of $80,987. Secretarial position in DCED in administration page 53 from 189,260 to 145,216 for a reduction of $44,044 overtime DCEED code enforcement page 63 $5,000 to zero for a reduction of $5,000 overtime in the department of fire $500,000 to $428,644 4 a reduction of $71,356. Add the safer grant 75% of salaries and

medical at $130,92 for a total incurred $331,479. Create and add the following in the fire department. Academy for four firefighters, $80,000. Salary for four firefighters for six months, $121,346. From 04 firefighters to lieutenant, six months, $10,46. Medical 52,110. Pension $57,482. 27th pay $10,135. Total incurred 331,479.

Thank you, Councilwoman. Have us up. Not really. But but thank you. So that that is the the motion on the floor as we group them together for the the six amendments introduced by Councilwoman Camy Smith. Well, that's them being read. Is there a motion to consider? I'll make a motion. Councilwoman Leon makes the motion to consider. Is there a second on the group on for discussion? Yes. [laughter] Second. Second by Councilwoman Quiet. So now we're on discussion of all the amendments as a group together. U Councilwoman Camsey Smith, I'll turn I'll give the floor back to you to elaborate on what you presented.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Well, first I feel like I need to clarify because I think there's a lot of confusion especially regarding the um community recovery fund. Um, I have to say that yes, an email did go out from administration and I'm very discouraged by the attempt to undermine me professionally and personally by falsing falsely accusing me of dismantling the community recovery fund, the fund that I had a huge role in establishing it. Um, I just want to state that in 2020 when we got the um the ARP of the COVID money um we had 35 million in COVID money and the plan was to earmark 1.5 million of that for housing, homelessness and the community recovery fund. And I was the only council person at that time that demanded that we at least double that or more than double that that fund for those three entities. Um the current mayor was a council man at the time and you know he was fine with the 1.5. I was able to double that to $3 million. So I advocated for that fund to be created and to continue. The only reason I have that fund in here is because with the budget is very difficult. I had to look at the general fund and see where I could take money to hire for firefighters. Very difficult. Um, as you all know, and with the community recovery fund, we now have we have 1.9 in it. We'll now next year have 1.6. I'm not sure why the administration deleted the 300 um,000, but nonetheless, we have 1.6 million in that fund. And there's so many possibilities that if we needed to take money, the 76,000 from that fund for the six months, which is more feasible and hiring the firefighters, there are many options whereby we would get that money back. One is the safer grant where if we apply for that um which becomes available in May, it will cover uh significant costs of the salaries and benefits for those firefighters for the first three years. So if we get the grant, we can then

transfer the money back in the community recovery fund. Additionally, we have overtime that the last year it was 1.3 million I believe in the firefighter budget. If we hire more firefighters, we'll have less needed in the overtime budget. we can then transfer back to the community recovery fund. Um, just need to look at my notes. The other issue is we have 31 firefighters that are eligible to retire right now. In the next three years, I think it's very likely that we're going to have at least four firefighters retire. So again, we should be able to recoup that money and transfer that 76,000 out of 1.6 6 million back into that fund. And if administration wants to say we can't do that, as the chair of the finance committee, I know for a fact I've sat here frequently throughout the fiscal year and we transfer funds from one department to another. So, it can be done. As far as the community um development and community um department of community economic development, as I stated in my memo to council, again, this is a difficult decision and and I certainly am not undermining that department. I have said I I really appreciate the hard work that they do. However, we have had a significant increase in the staff in that department since 2017. I said 21.5 positions, but I was corrected because some of those positions are contracted workers. But the bottom line is we've had an increase of 21.5 positions, people working in that department and I know that, you know, their work is increasing um and that they do valuable work. However, we have a decrease in the fire department. So, what does logic tell you that you need to do? So, what I'm looking at is taking away the proposed positions, not current positions in that department. They want they want two and a half new positions for this year. I'm looking at taking the money from those positions

and putting them toward hiring fire firefighters. It's a very difficult decision, I know. Um but again, the safety of our community has to be paramount. Now, I've been told that it's it's illegal to transfer money from Department of Community Economic Development because a percentage of their funds are based on fees and permits. So, I I researched and um looked into legal opinions and um our solicitor can clarify if this is correct, but based on the 2023 and 2024 Bethleam audit reports for the city of Bethleam, the city does maintain a clear separation between the general fund and enterprise feebased funds. Enterprise funds are those which are self-sufficient. The fee derived funds like water, sewer, the storm water, and the golf course fund are enterprise funds and they're accounted in separate enterprise funds in our budget book. Okay? They're not coming in the general fund. And the department of community economic development is not an enterprise fund. It is under the general fund. So, how can it be said that we cannot transfer monies from that department's general fund money toward the fire department um for salaries? In the audit, it states money counted under department earnings, departmental earnings within the general fund, which may include certain fees and charges is already part of the general fund and thus could the theoretically be subject to intrafund transfers per the city's budget rules. So, a solicitor um sewer, would you like to can you comment on that because I know that is a that was raised as a serious concern.

Yeah, there is a concern with regard and and this is not a value judgment. It is not a criticism. It's a a legal issue. Um, all of these proposed amendments seek to eliminate two positions within DCED that are proposed to be funded by an increase in building fees. Um, and under the law, a municipality can't use its power to charge fees for the purpose of raising revenue for general government purposes. So the building fees can only be applied to the provision of the service of reviewing plans, doing the administrative things that that need to be done to process applications and and deal with that end of business. So that's the reason that I came to the legal conclusion that eliminating these two positions that are funded by specifically by building fees isn't a viable option. It's unfortunate, but it is in accordance with the law.

The floor is still yours, council.

Okay. Thank you. So, um I guess what I'm trying to clarify is I'm taking this right from our audit report and and it for what I'm reading in the audit report is that it is okay to do so that we can transfer the funds. Um the Department of Community Economic Development again is not fully funded based on fees. It's not an enterprise fund. a percentage in bath in the general fund. The highest percentage of the general fund goes to police. The second highest goes to DCEED and then the third goes to fire. So if a significant percentage goes comes from the general fund, why can we not transfer that money from the general fund within DCED to the fire department within the general fund? You're absolutely right that DCEED is funded. It's it's part of the general fund. However, these particular positions are proposed to be funded by fee increases and fee fees must be applied to the services rendered in performing the functions upon which the fees are based. So again, this is building fees. So the processing of those applications, that whole administrative process is what those fees have to be applied to. If you have any other questions about the the report that you read from, I would pose those to the administration.

If I may, just to s Councilwoman to to I hope to provide a point of clarification. So on page two of our budget book is the grants and gifts. That's that's the general fund summary, but those those are restricted dollars, too. So something like, you know, account 30405 is car's act. That's health bureau money. The car's act can't go to pay for um Mr. Evans's health insurance. The So we have while the while there are enterprise funds and what we're talking about in enterprise funds, and I'll let Mr. Evans correct me if I'm wrong. So enterprise enterprises in the city of Bethleam are self- sustaining that enterprises the golf fund. You go play golf, you pay a fee, they use those fees to pay the people that cut the grass. You turn on your water tap, water comes out, you pay for the water, that money, as we reviewed during budget season, as we always do, goes to pay the water department and put in new piping. Same with sewer. The these are enterprise funds. The general fund is a is a larger fund that is, you know, tens of millions of dollars. And there are different revenue sources in the revenue fund, but those are not I I would say those aren't all unrestricted dollars. Some some of those dollars are tied to general fund expenses. and and I don't have the the um excuse me the memo in front of us for when we voted uh I think two and then three council meetings ago about raising DCED permitting fees and then tying those to these positions and forgive me as I don't have those available right now but I believe there was a breakdown of raising these fees and then tying them to these new positions if they're fully funded I won't speak to that with confidence in fairness Councilwoman But there is a state statute and this has been referenced over the years here at council that says exactly what attorney Stewart's saying that if we

need to balance our budget I can't say and similarly I don't know if you pay for like a fire inspection fee but we can't raise a fire inspection fee to pay for new positions in DCED. It it it works both ways. Any raise in fees or permits have to be tied to the service, the people getting paid to provide that service in simplest terms. I I hope that provided clarity.

Yeah. And I'm aware of that. And I know we we actually raised fees in the health department um I think it was like two meetings ago also in addition to DCEED um for um inspections but the health department isn't putting in you know they're getting increased fees and they're not getting increased staff and part of the reasoning major part of the reasoning besides the fee increase was that it's been some time since the fees were raised within both departments and in looking at the ordinance that we passed to raise the fees there is nothing in that ordinance whatsoever uh that ties it into the positions because it really couldn't the ordinance is only about the fee increase and I understand about the positions being based on fees. However, um there are many positions within that department and you know some some of the positions are paid by the general fund. Many of them could be paid under the fees like even like the the um director because they're directly responsible for overseeing the people that that do the inspection. So, what I'm saying is that since it's not an enterprise fund and self-sufficient and it does rely on money from the general fund, um, is there not a way, and I think there should be, I I could be wrong though, that we can take money from the general fund portion of that that we're saving on not do not hiring two and a half new positions. [snorts] And that might mean just within that department, you know, the way the line items are as far as the salaries go, making sure that those that are involved in um that which they're providing the service for and the and getting the fee that they're being paid by the fees and then you know the others are are being paid under the general fund.

I just want to clarify is that a question you're posing, Councilwoman? Yes. I'll turn to the administration for an answer to that. Mr. Evans clarify the question. I'll I'll allow councilwoman to repeat the question. Okay.

So since the um department of DCED is also um funded by the general fund, is there not a way because like I said we transfer funds throughout the year all the time with with um within and with uh intra and intra departments. Is there not a way to assure I mean do we the the the positions that we were proposing were proposed for DCED is that anywhere in the budget like a line item exactly where the money is going to come from those positions revenue or expense the well where was where how were we going to pay for those okay let's um page one

budge of the categories, you'll see real estate taxes, act 511 taxes. When you get down to city licenses and permits, second line 30221, permits are moving from 1.2 2 in 2025

based on the votes of council to increase fees to 1.4 million. That was those fees were increased to pay for the positions that you're speaking to. So it would be administration's position if the reducing the positions that those fees would need to be reduced. You know you and that's what the memo explained that we provided. Those fees are directly to provide services, a plan reviewer, secretarial support to help the code bureau, the positions that appear in your budget come out of the code. The code bureau's position, there's five employees. Total expense for that bureau is $661,000. In addition, uh we use a maximus report to understand what's the total cost of bio. That's only the their salaries and maybe longevity include nothing else. You want to pick up the cost or the expense of the fringe benefits, anything along. Then we use that maximus report, the internal cost study that we do each year. And on um when we looked at it this year, the maximus report for the code bureau is $63,000. Adding them up, it's $1.2 million for of of expense before adding anyone else into the code bureau. So by adding new new employees, you need to do that to increase fees. The decision was made to increase the fees and the employees to keep it balanced because this again this is a a service. It's a fee. It's not a tax. So if you have a recycling fee, it needs to go towards recycling. You can't increase

recycling fee and add police with that or fire or anyone else. So be is to support if it's a fee fee based user based has to be attached to the the recycling stream or in this case the permitting process. So revenues equal to expenses. So either they go in together they have to come out together. Yeah I understand that. So c can you tell me so everybody that um is employed in that department and involved in um the services provided you know by the fees are they are there all of their salaries covered by the fees or are part of the salaries covered under the general fun

code bureau that's what they do so it's all all of code itself but there are there's additional support in in other areas like uh that's what the maximus report would pick up that 600,000 I spoke of

that picks up the additional support from administration that's not that's the administrative bureau not the code bureau it would pick up support services of human resources or the medical or the fringe benefits. So that's the way the calculation works. Yeah. So are you are you saying just so I'm clear that the fees cover all the salaries of those involved in in code or involved in providing the service for which the fee is for. Do you understand what I'm saying? So for the salaries of the people in that department that are providing the service, I know we we can only we can only pay um we can only use the fees for whatever that within the department where the um services are being provided. Okay.

So are are the fees paying for all of the salaries of the people in that department that are providing the service for which the fees are are for in that bureau. In that bureau, that's a code bureau. They're the ones that produce, process, follow up. So in under code then all of their salaries under code and then under DCEED um there's other bureaus that do other things. Okay. Yeah. So is positions were going to be aware and that's what the memo that three-page memo that was sent. Yep.

Earlier during the budgeting process and it was voted on at council spoke to. It's a lot more descriptive than I am right now. What about the increase under health then? What are those fees going to go for? Because they're not getting any additional staff. Yeah, I I'd ask you to come to the microphone, please. And same for anyone who's going to answer a question. So, if you just don't mind going to the microphone. We weren't recouping all the money to pay for our personnel because I think it had been like 14 years since we had raised the fees. So, obviously salaries have increased during that time. So this is bringing us and we still aren't recouping 100% but it's bringing us closer to that. Okay. Thank you.

So I guess Mr. Evans my question is I know this is really complicated but um under the department of DCED um we do have salaries that are paid for by the general fund. Correct. The whole is in the general fund. It's again it's complicated because there are a number of grants that cover some are partial positions, some are fully covered within that department. You're talking about a department that has is it 10 bureaus, eight bureaus, seven bureaus within it. So it's not just straight one for one, one for one. But if we're talking about these positions, these two process code, it's to us it was very clear-cut. We agree with what we heard from the um legal opinion

that they're tied together. Those fees were designed and increased and based and justified to the citizens. We're increasing fees because we're providing you additional service, right? We and now you're saying keep the fees but don't bring the people that it doesn't add up. The numbers we have don't support in any way. So what we would say is if you're reducing the positions, you just need to it's a budget neutral because you need to reduce that revenue or reduce the fees. put the fees back where they were, call it a day, or keep them both.

Okay. So, given that we had um in the budget proposed funds for the new positions um and we we have an increase in fees, is it possible that we assure within that department that everyone who is involved in providing the service for which the fee is for that they are paid for with the fees and there's others that are paid with the general fund. And then can we can we transfer that part part of the general fund, you know, the salary part of the general fund for people that are not being paid with the the fee?

I don't I really don't understand the question. I mean, right now, the five people that are 100% involved, the fees that they collect and they process, it's directly tied. So, I don't know. It's unless it's a shell game or something. It's the It's not. So, what I'm saying is if we if we if we um amend the budget and we don't hire the additional people in DCED. Okay. Um we're going to have additional money in that budget because we're going to have increased fees and we have money earmarked for those additional positions. Correct. What we would propose if you're not hiring the people to then amend the fees and reduce the fees so it's even because now uh you've increased fees and not provide service.

Yeah. But we've done that. We're doing we're doing that in health. We're increasing the [clears throat] fees, but we're not adding more staff even though I'm sure they could use it. I I So that I don't understand. I I rest administration rests on this one. Thank you. Understood. I [clears throat] can I just ask my question again or is I think I'll let attorney Stewart I'll take another give her opinion.

So yes, the health bureau has raised fees. They're not adding positions, but they are raising fees because they haven't for years, and they're trying to recoup some of their losses. So, that is a completely separate situation than what's happening under in in the code department where fees are being raised and positions are being added. You cannot raise fees, code fees, and then not spend them on code. Mhm.

And I I think what you're saying, if I'm if I'm understanding correctly, is is can't you somehow take money from the general fund because you're getting this additional money for code and put that toward the firefighters. But I'm not quite clear on what line item you would then propose to take it from because you can't take it from code.

It would have to be from the general fund. And that was my question. That's why I was trying to ask if there was something we could do as far as transferring money within that department, but apparently I'm not getting an answer. So the floor is still yours. Councilwoman, if you did have anything else while we're on discussion. Um, [clears throat] that's if I could still for [snorts] [clears throat] you have anything, council. Okay. No, I mean I'm good. We'll just Are we going to go through discussion?

We'll discuss as we go through the amendments then. Okay. I just wanted to clarify. Well, we're having the uh this is time for discussion on the amendments as a group, but I will go back as I do for everybody. So, again, we're on discussion for the group of six amendments. So, now is the time for comments, questions. Mr. Callahan,

I I just want to have uh I wanted to have a question on on on the topic before we move on to another topic. I think isn't it fair to say that Miss Collins and her uh her the people in her department underneath her authority that are uh they they work at times on on on code stuff there. I mean that's her department. She spends time in her normal day, right? Uh dealing with code issues all the time. So all of her salary comes from the general fund. Correct, Miss All the general fund. Right. Correct.

I think what she's trying to say is is that since she works in on on the code enforcement a lot and has to deal with that, a portion of this new money, the the new fees can be used. I don't want to cut her salary. I'm not trying to do that. But we could take I forgot what her what's her salary.

She got $135,000 salary. We could take $100,000 or maybe I don't know how much you know she you know she spends with permits and codes and zoning but we could take half of her salary uh and take h half of it provide the funds for her salary half of it out of the general fund and then there's no reason why no legal reason why we couldn't use these new fees just like the health department is to get caught up. we we could use these new fees to to supplant her part of her salary because she does work in on code and it's under her department and I'd say a a substantial amount of her time is on on code issues. I would say you said there's no legal reason. So I will let attorney Stewart respond to that as none of us council members are lawyers and that's why we have one up here. But as Attorney Stewart takes a sip, I'll just recognize as we move through discussion, these are remarkably complex budgetary discussions as it relates to and I invite everybody if you've never looked at the budget book, please do. Um, as Mr. Evans referenced, page one that talks about the revenues that all go into the general fund and where they come from. Page two, as I talked about grants and gifts. So when we're talking about positions in the budget book, we're recognizing how much they cost the city, but it's not always clear and that's why we have these discussions of where that money always necessarily comes from. So that's why it's just important to understand the complexities with it's not just necessarily taking a dollar from here and putting it there when there are restrictions or state statutes tied to where some of this money comes in from, how that money needs to be spent. I just wanted to make that point, but Attorney Stewart, um, to Mr. Callahan's point, if you'd like to

clarify. I think what's being asked is can the increase in fees be allocated to say cover a portion of a salary and and Miss Collins salary was used as an example um an existing salary of someone who works on on code um and the portion that is funded by the fees be taken from the general fund budget to fund firefighters. So that's I think more of a budgetary question than a legal question. [clears throat]

If if the fees the new fees are used to uh I mean there there's obviously a headed director of this of of of the codes department. So the money has to be used in codes. We could there's no reason why we can't have the director uh uh pay and salary covered up. I'm not saying 100% of it because obviously she does a lot of other things besides uh code enforcement, but she spends a a significant amount of her time in code enforcement. There's no reason why as a city we couldn't use that money, especially with you know the not only her but the other people that are directly underneath her and and just just for this just alone just for the salary increases. I mean, it's it's at some point we just can't keep on uh feeding that department more and more money and and and if the codes is part of her uh department and under her watch, then there's no reason why we couldn't legally use those fees to to supplant some of her salary, which is being funded by the the general fund. I mean, it's it's it's not that hard of a transfer. It it would just basically be um we we don't get the two positions. We increase the fees and then Miss Collins and and Mr. Evans and and and the mayor, I wish he was here tonight. I don't know where he is, but um if he was here, I think uh he would agree and I think Mr. Evans would agree. We have uh finance committee meetings all the time during the year. It's very easy to move money from one fund to another. So, Miss Collins's salary is 135,000. Her her her assistants are 113,000 each. We could

I'm sure they all work on code also. There's no reason why we couldn't take I'm not saying all of it because I don't think we could legally say that she spends all her time on code, but there's a jud a rational justification that yes, she spends time on code and and and so do her her her her two um uh assistant directors. I just want to pose a question to the administration and allow them a chance to respond. I think I understand what you're saying, Mr. Callahan. So, Mr. Evans, Miss Lassar, whoever wants to answer. I just want to clarify for council in the room. Mr. Evans, I think the question on the floor is

we we voted on permit fee increases to fund two positions that were tied to that. Now, what we're talking about is if we eliminate the two positions, can we keep the permit and fee increases and use that revenue to replace money that's being used elsewhere and then presumably, I guess, whatever money is used to pay for other positions, free that money up to be unrestricted. I think that's fair to say.

Yeah. And and there's a clear disconnect here. There's a horizontal argument and a vert vertical argument. You're talking about getting the fees and then moving moving around moving around this way. The point is from a legal point of views that if you're collecting fees for a service, the total number of expenses for the city should be close. Doesn't matter where they're coming from or who you're sliding it to and taking it from. When you look at the fees, they were 1.4 million in the book, right? Were there one two before we increased the code bureau? What does it cost to per to process permits? We need to come up with what that number is to begin with. What is it? All right. It it What's the number? Well, the code bureau itself is $600,000. That's out of the budget book. Look on that page. Then how do you find out how do we get to 1.2? The maximum study is a study we do each year. They are professional cost accountants that figure out what's the total cost for the code bureau to exist. There are five employees, the director and right then and the sports system inspectors. That's your bill 600,000. However, they get assistance from human resources. They do get assistance from the administration. They get secretarial support. They get it um uh from financial services. Uh when the permits are processed, all those all those calculations at a very high level are calculated in the maximus report. That's why we pay for it. It's done. that report which is 261 pages long. When do you open it to append on page C2 schedule A you'll see here's a code bureau what does a code bureau cost besides the 611 direct those are direct to salaries how much else that number is 661,000 so we know 1.2 is what it is and now we're collecting 1.4 foreign fees. So yes, we can't reduce. So if it's one foreign fees and we know it's one two

which includes the support of different people in CD and everything else if we're adding two people, right? It was one two and one two. We just added fees to 14 because we add expenses with these two positions. So it's very clear and we're it shouldn't be this foggy clear. This should not take this long to come to the conclusion and I hope it's not we're not stuck on this particular item too much longer because it's you can't do it if you keep the fees, you keep the people or or you disconnect or find another something else to move on to. But this is is in no way close to something that that makes sense. Understood. I can't be I can't be more clear.

And just to just to clarify, yeah, that that 1.4 four justifi it takes in or the increase takes in administrative support from the department financial support all those other supports that's what that study does so Laura's salary is already part of the equation there's a lot to that

and is it fair to say just for the the sake of clarifications and then I'll give the floor back over that the health bureau redu the health bureau raised fees but there's still a shortfall in the money that comes in for the health bureau But if we eliminate these positions, now we've created a surplus with the revenue and we cannot essentially overcharge the public. That's a legal basic principle. That's what

that you cannot use fees for general fund purposes and that's essentially what you would be doing. And thank you for shedding a little light on that for me in terms of the fact that the Maxima study takes in into [clears throat] account all of the sources that that go to fund code and that makes perfect sense. And when we talk about the health because the health bureau was referenced the health bureau was raising fees but it's still not covering operating costs where the maximum study excuse me it's all comprehensive but the for codes the the raise in fees and permits essentially was to cover close that gap. So it's not necessarily a onetoone between codes and the health. We

looked at that extensively as part of the proposal we brought back to you months ago how we got there. I hope that provided some clarification. Mr. Callahan, you had the floor. No, I just That was just one question. I didn't want to move on to another top. No, we're When you have the floor, you have the floor. We're have the We have the group. Like I said, I like to get to voting. Ask your questions now. Get them answered. Speak your speak your opinion, and then we'll we'll move on to voting.

I I I want to thank everybody for coming here. uh especially all the people from the um um social services and and and and the community outreach programs. I everybody um is here to try to do the right thing. Um I think uh I I had walked in on your on your discussion, so I I apologize for being late, but um I think what we really ought to understand is this. Probably the most important thing I think we can all agree on. We we want to take care of people, but the most important thing is our health and safety. Um, and without a police department and a fire department that is um appropriately funded, we're going to be in trouble. Um, this department has been working not uh I I think in in one of the memos from last the last uh council meeting is that there was 26 hold on one second here [clears throat] just between 9:18 September 18th and November 18th there was 28 instances where mandated overtime time was put on the fire department. That doesn't mean overtime. That means there's hundreds and hundreds of hours of overtime being asked of the of the department. That's 28 times that they're burnt out and they don't want to do any more overtime. 28 times they someone was told it doesn't matter. You have to work. That's just from September till November. So we can do all the studies I talked about to this other day about you know I the study is look at the amount of overtime and the mandatory overtime that these gentlemen are being forced to

work. They don't have a choice. Normally people do want to work overtime but they're so burnt out on overtime. There was 28 times in a three-month period where they were forced to. You don't want to do it? Tough. you got to work overtime. That's what we're that's what we that's the situation we're in. And it's our job to either help alleviate that problem now so it doesn't get worse in the in the coming year and morale is going to go down and down and down if it's not already down. So we try to alleviate this problem now before it gets worse because next year if we don't do something now next year at this time we're going to be right back at the same position probably worse. So how do we do this? We got to come up with I don't know if uh you know from what chief said you know at the last meeting there was it's highly unlikely if we proposed the funding right now it's highly unlikely that we'd be able to get four firefighters in for January probably we wouldn't be able to get them into um for six months you know last six six months a year so my goal tonight to everybody here on council is let's try to find a way I don't know if we can. I think it's a harder pull to get four new firefighters for the whole year. That's like 500 and somehat thousand or it's almost $500,000. I think six uh six months because we we're not going to get them to this June anyways if they go right chief. They I mean they they wouldn't if we funded it right now. It's highly unlikely that we're going to be able to get those four ready to go for January. Correct. Yes, that is correct. I spoke with our human resources director uh Vishah Haki either I'm sorry today's Thursday so it was possibly Tuesday maybe Wednesday. I'm sorry they all blend together.

Yeah. Um but uh she has confirmed that based on the timeline of December 16th when the budget would be settled that we would be unable to add additional firefighters to the January fire academy class. So by the time they got done with the academy they wouldn't be even ready to go until like June or July. That's correct. it would be late June.

So, so my my my plead to everybody here on council is that we try to find uh I don't know what the number was. I think it was, you know, for four firefighter positions for six months, it's $331,000. We have got to find $331,000 in this budget somehow because we if we don't, they're going to be asked over and over and over again for mandatory overtime. Ask yourselves this. What if your what if your employer was wasn't asking you nicely if you want to do do overtime? They're telling you you have mandated overtime whether you like it or not. Is that how we treat them? So that's my my my plea tonight is let's as a council come up to an agreement I hope 70 to try to find $331,000 and then next year's budget season. We won't have to go through all this again. We're going to have to hopefully the mayor at that time or or or you know and in and the people that are on council and I already talked to a couple people that are coming on council. They're they're for this. So, I'm pleading you please. Let's try to find $331,000. I don't know how, but there's a lot of different amendments here and I'm going to propose some. I have never in in 10 years on council. I voted one time for a tax increase. I don't want to raise taxes ever, but if we can't find the money that's already in the budget book, which I know we can, it's a huge budget to find $331,000. It It's I mean, we do that all the time, Mr. Mr. Evans, last year we budgeted $500,000 for overtime, right?

Yes. And what's it running right now? Almost a million, right? Yes. Close to that. Yeah. And the year before that we budgeted $500,000, right? Correct. And what was it last year? 1.2 million. Correct. Right. 1.23 million, I think. I think the numbers. Where did we magically come up with the extra $700,000?

I've explained this a couple times. It's a it's a inverse relationship with salaries and overtime, right? We budget that the positions are filled. And when we start the year, if people leave, like right now, next year, we're sending eight to the academy right away. So when we start the year, these eight that were down, they're all going to be on salary. They're going to go to the academy, but they're going to be collecting a paycheck. So salary is rolling. That account is rolling. If people leave during the year, salaries drop. The positions are open. That's what drives overtime. So it does this, right? So this year salaries down 500.

Overtime's up 500. It's balanced. We're not going to balance them both. Put them million dollars because we know overtime won't be up. It's just down. Okay. So, doesn't it make sense then instead of forcing people to work over since the same amount of money at the end of the year, doesn't it make sense to add the four firefighters and it's a wash at the end of the year? It would be a wash.

Of course it would because it's only going to be 300 $331,000. Last year, this year alone, we're going to have to add the last time we spoke about this, I think you said it was at at $900,000, right? [snorts] Right. So, we're going to have to we have to find some way. Did you already find the $400,000 that you budgeted $500,000? It's going to be 900. Where's that $400,000 coming from salaries? People left this year when they left and did that. Now, you're adding those positions the same salaries plus another 400 on top of that. It's not going to lower. If you add If you add I'm not listening to the financial gymnastics of this.

No, I'm just trying to ask you a legit question. I answered it and now you're telling me you're repeating the same thing I explained to you. The difference this year, it's spot on. It's 3/10en of 1% off. Salaries and overtime are equal, right? They're equal. They're going to work out as we budgeted. Budget works. I'm telling you, if you do that, next year's budget doesn't work. So, if you create a false narrative on that, go ahead. You create a deficiency and next year someone the council can get stuck with a deficiency you create tonight through some shell game. It's not going to work. It's not a shell game. Someone's going to get stuck if you do that. So if if you just do it and add it, it's not going to work. So do it.

The the the the question that I have, and I'm trying to have a rational discussion. I really am. This year for the 2026 year, you budgeted $500,000 again. Okay. Somewhere we're finding this money. And what I'm saying is what you were saying is there there is a a a coexistence between hiring more firemen and payroll goes up a little bit but then fire overtime would come down. Correct. Opposite. Yeah. It's the opposite. It would come down. Overtime is not going to go up if we add more firemen. It comes down a little bit. Right.

I'm just saying it doesn't it make more sense to alleviate the pressure off these guys? It's it's it's at the end of the year how we move the money around is is up to us. But at the end of the year, it's still going to be the same amount of money. It doesn't it doesn't make any sense to to spend all this extra money, $1.2 million on overtime. You only budgeted 500. You got to spend and you got to find an extra $700,000. Let's spend let's find instead of 700,000. Let's Mr. Evans, you're you got to find an extra 600 700,000 hours.

Find anything. the salaries were not spent because when people if they retire and open the position which creates the overtime those those salaries that were not collected because they left pays the overtime when it's backfilled it's equal I have to find any money move it's it's the same so I I think Mr. Evans has made his point a few times. I I I don't agree with it, but I And you have the right not to I mean interrupt. You have the right not to agree. I I'll move on. Thank you. Um why why do why do we have I'm not I don't know the person in this position, [clears throat] but when you start adding community coordinators,

Mr. Callahan, I I want to stick to the amendments that are proposed. Is the community coordinator part of any of Councilwoman Crazy's amendments? Or please tie it back to the amendments, please. I I'll bring it up later. Again, for the sake of because we're kind of muddying the waters. No, I know. I if we you know, Mr. President, I'll bring that up when we when we're allowed to present our Understood. Let's stick on uh on the $5,000 overtime for a community and economic development. Miss Collins, there was no money in that before for overtime. Why now? I'll let Miss Collins answer, but I believe this was brought up and answered during our eight hour meeting.

That's that's correct. Um because we used overtime this year, we do need overtime. Our permit process is such and we are busy enough that we do need our permit folks to work occasionally on the weekends to catch up. So this year we did pay out in overtime around 4 thou $5,000, a little less. So, we added that line into the budget for $5,000 to cover situations that may arise in the future. Aren't they all salary though? Salary positions. They are salaried positions, right? Yeah. There's there's a mix of of of TAMs and and union employees in the department.

Yeah. But the people that have salary, shouldn't they? I mean, they have a job to do, right? So, why are they being being paid overtime? Because they're forced to come in on the weekends. Like, they're forced to come in. Thank you. Are you done, Mr. K? No. No. I'm not even I'm not even starting. Well, again, um Tony, you know, I I continue to ask everyone be respectful of each other, Mr. I am. I I I I don't like being snowed on in my opinion. Okay.

But I'm I'm just trying to I'm trying to find out why why are they I I thought they were exempt from from overtime. Because of what? [snorts] I saw exempt salaries. They're not They can't get overtime. I don't know. The secretaries in the department are union. Non-exempt. They get overtime. They're hourly employees. The secretaries in the department. Yeah. And they're the only ones getting overtime. [snorts] None. None of the other salaried employees are getting overtime. This past year, we did make an exception for the plan reviewer who had to come in on the weekend. And how much how much of that did he get?

It was I mean it was less than $5,000. It was a few thousand. I don't know exactly the breakdown per employee. All right. Um I I'm just hoping tonight that we can try to find the funds to um hire four more firefighters by the end of the year. We we we can do it. If we can't um I would then suggest that we either go into our our rainy day fund which is how much is that Mr. Evans? 26 million. We don't have a we don't have used the word I've never used the word rainy day.

Mr. Evans I like to interject just as for council purposes. No one has ever until recently started saying rainy day fund in here. It is a c from from a budgeting and accounting purpose. and Miss Lassaric had uh a cash balance. Correct me if I'm wrong. This is a basing budgeting principle. How much money do we have in a cash balance fund?

Well, at year end, it's enough to cover the bulk money doesn't really come into the city until March 31st. So, what we end from January 1st to March 31st, we have seven payrolls that are about $2 million a piece. debt service payments, um, medical weekly, city insurance packages. So, it's our year-end cash balance. It's not a rainy day fund. It's our first quarter cash fund to get through it until the real estate taxes come in on the discount period, which is on or about March 31st. Bring bring it back to the amendments, please, Mr. Callahan.

All right. I I'll bring that up later, too, then. Um,

Mr. Callahan, I ask you to keep asking questions or I'm going to move on to another member of council. Okay. Um, I'll wait until uh these amendments are voted on because I I have several other uh amendments that I'd like to propose from other departments. Understood. We're on discussion for the group of amendments. Any other comments from members of council? Can we go off? Can we go this way or Yeah. Councilwoman Cleek.

Thank you very much. Um first I would like to thank everybody who works for the city um for all the hard work they do. Um, I know that some parts of our workforce maybe get a little more um, you know, uh, a little more attention and and praise because what they do can be very dangerous. Um, however, the work that's done in bureaus and departments like public works and DCED and other places is just as valuable. Um it changes lives. It uh keeps taxes flowing into this city by developing our uh infrastructure, by developing our economy. Um there are innumerable ways uh that all of these departments and bureaus work together, which is why I was extremely heartened to receive numerous memos from um people across the city and this administration, people who've been here for decades. has nothing to do with, you know, where their paycheck is coming from in terms of who the mayor is at this particular time. People who've been here from long, much longer than this particular administration took the time to write to us to emphasize that they are all interdependent. All of the departments are interdependent. They all work together. They're all working towards goals like eliminating, you know, homelessness, uh, helping with building affordable housing, uh, our recreation, our parks, all of it, right? All of the things that actually do also keep us safe. And I want to re-emphasize that code enforcement is public safety. Um, I I heard someone say tonight that um that the new buildings at Pemrook were going to be more dangerous because they're they're going to be built cheap. That's not true. We know fire structure fires are are you know down. We new new

infrastructure is safer. Yes, things do catch fire. Even new buildings do. But in terms of sprinklers, in terms of code, in terms of all of the things that go into that, um our infrastructure, [snorts] our built environment is safer uh than it's than it's been. Um Chief Griffin, can I ask you a couple of questions?

Oh, he just stepped out. Okay, I will move to my questions from for for Mr. Evans already. I know he just missed my you know um so Mr. Evans um so uh you you answered the question quite well about the relationship between overtime and salary and I understand exactly where the money comes from. Um because on the finance committee, what we do when we when the overtime is depleted is we vote to move money from the fire salary into the uh fire overtime. And and so we've watched this happen for the last four years. Um if you're paying attention, if you're reading the budget, if you're talking to the people who are experts on this, like Mr. Evans, like Miss Lazaric, you understand how all of this works. One of the other things that I understand is [snorts] that the general fund does not equal paid for by taxes. There are like a dozen varieties of revenues that come into the general fund. So when we say well that's in the general fund, that doesn't mean that that's like paid for by property taxes, right? So 96% of the DCED budget is not paid for by taxes, but it's all in the general fund because what we do is we we put everything in the general fund, but there are very specific, you know, line items both for revenue and expenses. So we know what what is connected. We know what where the money is coming in and how that connects. And so one of the things we do is to pay for things like public safety, we use tax dollars in and that also goes into the general fund. And the reason we do that is because everybody it's for the common good, for the general good. It is something that at any moment anyone could need. And so we all gather our resources as taxpayers and we pay for these things. And so what

makes the most sense as we did two years ago when one needs uh when one needs to increase the number of paramedics for instance uh or potentially firefighters is to increase our revenue on our in our taxes um because that is a reliable source of income. It is a sustainable source of income and it go as it goes up it covers things like 3% increases in your salary every year or pension payments and things like that. So [clears throat] I completely understand the difference between the general fund and what's paid for by taxes. Okay. And that's I think where maybe the understanding broke down a little bit on that. Um so you also asked my I was going to ask what's a rainy day fund? So, I appreciate you clearing up the fact that the cash balance has uh is not a rainy day fund, but rather uh just a lapse in in timing in the way things work in terms of how money flows. We all know the difference between cash flow and right and our and our calendar and and and uh when when our bills are due versus when our salary comes in. Not always a perfect match. [snorts] Um okay, so uh Chief, thank you. You're back. Can I ask you a couple of questions? Um, so we have plans and we have the people to bring 15 more people onto the force this year to fill vacancies. Correct. They're going to fill vacancies. The people who are going through the through the through the academy this year, this in in 2026. So the the administration has budgeted for up to 15 recruits to attend the academy should we have that number of vacancies throughout the year. So currently we're [snorts] going to be sending seven plus one that's returning. So that's eight out of that 15 which

leaves seven additional slots for the remainder of the year. We're not just going to hire 15 right now because we don't have 15 vacancies. Okay. So we have eight vacancies. That is correct. Okay. So when we do get those folks in mid year, you know what? I'm sorry. Actually, we have nine vacancies, eight of which we can fill. One cannot be filled right now. Right. Um, so you've already anticipated the fact that we could get to our full complement mid year and at the same time, we probably are going to have some vacancies develop during that first six months of the year. And that's why we have the funding to

That is correct. We're going to send those eight. And realistically, depending on everyone's personal situation, when they choose to retire or not, depending on where they are personally and with the with the uh incoming raise for the new year, some folks may may decide to retire. And we we built that in and anticipate that some folks will retire and we have money to send them to the next open academy then. Okay, good. That's very helpful to know. Thank you. Um and that and and what you're saying, of course, is that we have money to send them to the academy. That's like the extra money is the $20,000 per person because the salary would be there if someone left obviously then the salary is there for whoever we would replace them with. That is correct. Right.

Is that more of a Mr. Evans question? I'm sorry. That would be more Mr. Right. So I just wanted to have all of that clear. So, we're really only right now nine positions away from being at our full complement of of firefighters as as as our force is constituted right now as we need to hire to fill vacancies. On on top of that, we have five individuals, that number, I'm pleased to say, went down a little bit this week. We had someone return from long-term injury. That's great news. Um, and we're glad to have them back. But uh we still have five individuals who are out on long-term injury or illness that are unable to report and I have no anticipated date on when they may be able to return to work. Okay. And so um but they get paid. That is correct.

I mean obviously right if we're out on on the leave we we you know we get paid obviously. Um okay. So so that's that clears up [clears throat] a lot for me. I really appreciate that. And um but nine people is still a lot right. So can we talk about the shifts for a minute? How many total shifts across the whole uh force are there each week? Well, we work on on a four four day rotation cycle. So, we have four four suppression. Okay. Over over eight days over eight days all four would work,

right? No, but I mean how many shifts is that total? Like you have x number in each platoon and like how does how much does that add up to? Can I just for clarification is every day a 9 hour shift and a 15 hour shift? Every day is a 9-h hour day and a 15 hour shift. So there's two two platoons go to work each day, right? I'm saying how many actual people is that? So currently each platoon is staffed with only 22 out of the 24 uh because we're we're short those individuals. And then each shift is missing a couple individuals. Um they're not all on one shift that are out with long-term injury or illness.

Okay. Um and so if we look at the three months and the 28 uh overtimes that were mandated out of that's like hundreds and hundreds of person shifts if I if I'm do you know what I'm saying like each person each slot on it. I'm not talking about like well there are you know this many firehouses so there's that times two. I mean how many actual people? Yes. Those those instance we're referring to where they you're asking about the mandation. Yeah. Those were 28 people that were mandated 28 times that, right? One time each one. Well, I mean, it could have been somebody repeated. Somebody could have been repeated in that because of the way things flow. That is a possibility. Yes.

Okay. Um, but out of like like I said, hundreds of shifts. I mean, you know, like I go to work five days a week. Um, so that's for me five shifts, but there are another 1,200 people there. So, you know, if we all go to work, if all 1,200 of us go to work, that's six, you know, the 6,000 shifts, man, you know, man shifts or people shift. That's what I meant. Just in terms of the percentage of like overall, it sounds like a lot over a three-month period. And if we look at it in the broader context of how many shifts actually get covered, how many? You see what I'm saying? Yes,

I understand what I'm saying. At least I understand what I'm saying. Covered. Now, keep in mind, we work with 18. So, a lot of times we we do have to go below that 18. So, people voluntarily take the overtime in order to get us close to that number, right? And then if nobody fills the rest of those vacancies, then we have to mandate individuals, right? And that happened 28 times over three months that according to that last roughly.

I just wanted to understand that in the context of the broader actual number of shifts. Um, [clears throat] okay. So, I know we talked a lot about the the increase in calls, you know, um how many calls are answered and and all of that. Um but can you please explain again um sort of the the uh the top types of calls that we get um and you know how you know classify them for me just sort of like off the top of your head the the kind of

Yes. the the majority of the the top top type of calls that our personnel respond to are emergency medical assist calls with our EMS bureau, motor vehicle accidents, automatic fire alarms, um, and calls of of that general nature. Those are our our top producers of of incidents for us. Okay. So, I mean, I'm not necessarily in that order,

right? Thank you. I'm I'm asking for this information and I know I hear grumbling. I'm sorry. this is our job. And I know that a lot of people think that we're just looking at numbers, but I'm also looking at people. I understand that the people are behind the numbers. So, I I just want to clarify these things because I'm trying to better understand the complexity of what the staffing really means. And for me, that's part of my decision-making process on these um on these amendments is whether the time is right to um add these kind of right now as opposed to getting that fuller understanding of of what the work is and you know the in terms of what the mix of the work is and who's doing it and what's the best way to approach that. So, I appreciate your input on all of these things. Um, and and I also appreciate everybody's patience with me because again, I think it's important we get all the information we can. Um, I know I wasn't in the room for the eight hours, but I promise you I was up on that screen for all eight hours of it. So, I, you know, I understand uh that there was a lot already said, but I wanted to make some of that clear. Um, and also, Mr. Dr. Evans, thank you for explaining the concept of the Maximus study. I think there are probably a lot of people who don't understand that. Um, coming from the nonprofit world, what we call that in grant writing is indirect costs. We call them indirect, but they're real, right? I mean, the the the work is real. And if you know, if Miss Lazar is doing something uh with financial uh services for uh the code folks, that means she's not doing something for financial services for another part of the institution. So accounting for all of that work and it's real dollars, it's real work and and it's real people behind it. So I appreciate that explanation and I think it's really

helpful for all of our understanding here on council that um you know that those pieces of people uh go into that overall budget. And so it's not a it's not a a shell game by any means, but rather um you know that money is all already accounted for when you look at that $1.4 $4 million potential for permits um and the straight salaries to code and then the indirect costs. So, I really appreciate that information. Um I just want to say that uh you know I also appreciate our solicitor who I think has been um incredibly competent and helpful uh for us over the last several years as she as she arrived. And um you know when you are handed a legal opinion by your solicitor I think you should take it seriously and uh and respect it. You can certainly have questions about it but uh you know I think that that is uh that is significant. Um Chief, we also talked you you also shared with us via a memo about the safer grants and I and I'm sorry to make you sit down.

No, I apologize. Um, so the the safer grants and and again I did 12 years of grant writing and fundraising in nonprofits of all different sizes. So I am, you know, familiar with the concept that you cannot count your chickens before they're hatched when it comes to fundraising. Um, and also there are some complexities to this safer grant. we actually hired people and put them into an academy 6 months before we even applied for that grant. We could not use that grant to to pay for the people, right? Because they're supposed to be new positions and it's not a new position if they tell you in August you've got you've got the money to to create a new position. Am I misunderstanding that?

No, you're not. Based on based on my discussion with our uh grant administrator uh and our department and the research I've done, this grant is specifically for hiring of new fire personnel. Basically, keeping firefighters who are going to be laid off, returning firefighters from a layoff, or going from part-time to full-time fire department, growing the size of your department. from everything I have read um that you cannot hire prematurely and then apply for the grant assuming that the grant would cover the cost of these individuals and that is why I I submitted what I submitted. We also have to be at full compliment, right? Because we can't add positions if we haven't filled all of the positions that we have.

You are correct. That is my understanding that we we have to be fully staffed in order to grow the department. That we can't use that to increase our staffing to the level it should theoretically be. That is that is my interpretation from researching this. Yes. Thank you. And then finally on the um community recovery fund um Mr. Evans or Ms. Collins or whoever wants to answer this, can you explain why to why the amount of funding in the community recovery fund is lower this year than it was last year? Yeah, the the money was spent. Yeah, it was 1.9. That that's a declining amount as the money in the account is spent down. So the money spent in 2025 reduce [snorts] the number that goes into 2026. That's what's left,

right? And that's on purpose. Correct. This is one-time funds. And while um the administration hopes to, you know, eventually find some kind of mechanism perhaps in the in the future uh to continue this this funding source that's not guaranteed. Uh we know we have what we have and these are one-time funds. Correct. Correct. One time.

Thank you. And and again, this is so funny because I work for um I work for the person who's in charge of, you know, the finances of a large organization. And and we were talking about this today because uh I talked to her about this stuff. And uh and I said, you know, I don't think we can use these funds because they're onetime funds. And if we're going to hire four firefighters, uh, and then we're going to pay their pensions and we're going to give them, you know, increases and all the things that they deserve and that they earn with the hard work that they do and the dangerous work that they do. We can't turn around in a couple of years and say or next year and say, "Oh, sorry. Yeah, that money doesn't exist anymore." Because we knew at the beginning that it didn't it wasn't going to exist forever.

Correct. That's a that's a bond that's a that's a that's a pledge we make to our employees um that we you know are not going to be like oh well next year you know so you might have a job um now when you're on a grant funded position you do know that's the case there's sometimes when a grant ends that a job ends but you know that going in and I think again going just to take it all back to the beginning um the reason that we use taxes to pay for things like police and fire Um and that is of course the biggest chunk of our of our budget is is public safety is police and fire. Um we use the taxes because it is a sustainable source of revenue. it grows over time. Um, and we have the mechanism to increase those taxes when we have a worthwhile reason such as potentially increasing um, you know, uh, the costs of our, you know, the the the salaries, the number of people we have um, performing public safety and other things like that. So, I appreciate you answering all my questions. Thank you. [snorts]

Any further discussion? I look to council to my right. I'll just go down the row. Councilwoman Leard confusing.

Okay. So, uh my general comments are that, you know, I do want to acknowledge the intense pressure that this council uh has been under from multiple sides in this conversation. I understand why our firefighters feel urgency um about staffing and I do support increasing firefighter staffing uh through the use of sustainable new funding, taxes, fees, safer grant, etc. Um I understand why residents are worried. I understand why the administration wants additional data uh to inform strategic decisions. I understand why nonprofit partners and atrisisk communities are terrified of losing the support that they do rely on. Um those concerns are real and none of them should be dismissed. Um and it's been disappointing that uh this is the way that the debate has evolved into one department's people services priorities being pitted against anothers and into a public narrative that suggests that council doesn't care about safety or community services of any sort uh unless we adopt or don't adopt a specific amendment. Um I think the conversation so far has shown that like this is a very complex uh and somewhat restrictive process that we're in. Um so that framing really isn't accurate or productive. Um it's our responsibility to adopt a legally balanced budget, reliable data within the constraints the law imposes on us. So that being said, I have a couple of questions to figure out what we can actually do um if we're trying to look for things. So um we've already asked a bit about the uh the safer grant funding. Um so uh we asked about the practicality side of it from from chief legally. Can we include that in our amendment

in a balanced budget? You have to base that budget on funds that are in hand or going to be acquired. a safer grant. The grant period last year was for May 30, May 23rd to July 3rd. So that would be putting something speculative in your budget. You can't do that in a balanced budget. So no. Okay. [snorts] So legally we can't take the it's your opinion legally that we cannot take the fees uh for the construction permits and put them towards this. We can't take these safer grant funds that we don't have and plan on them.

Right. Okay. Um, can we at this point in time pursue a tax increase your tax? And that's that's not part of the I just real that's not part of the current amendments. So I I'm going to right

not ask that question right now. Um, okay. [snorts] Uh this is about what got us here and what um [clears throat] what what contingencies we could potentially put in passing these. Um, so it's my understanding that part of the relationship breakdown that got us to this point uh versus sticking to the plan that was previously underway between the union and the administration towards staffing and operational strategy um is that there's an RFP out right now uh that does not include everything that the union preferred be included uh in the study. So, are is council within its uh limits allowed to request for revision of an RFP that is currently out by the administration?

No, it's not. and and that goes specifically um to your ordinances. Um and I I want to find some specific language for you. Um and your question again, so there's Mr. Mr. Evans, is it correct that there is an RFP out uh presently under the city's administration to uh seek a a study on staffing and operations for fire and EMS? Uh it went out in July. It ended in uh on October 31st. It's no longer out. It's

so it's closed. But even if if if it were out, article [snorts] 121.05A 05A of your codified ordinances would preclude that because that vests the city um the administration with the preparation of specifications letting of bids contracts and such. So, okay, that's not something that we're allowed to

It is not um Okay, just one moment. I've got a lot of notes I'm trying to filter through to make sure I'm asking about specific things relating to the proposals on the table. Um, oh, we were talking about moving things from general fund um and that we do that um through the finance committee um and that we move things sometimes from other funds through the finance committee. So, um, is there a difference between what we're allowed to move during the budget season versus like during, um, like outside of budget season when we have done that through the finance committee in the past?

Right now, you're going through the budget pass passage process, which is statutory, and you you have to, as I said, pass a balanced budget. The budget amendments that happen during the year are adjustments for things that do or do not happen. So, you know, so if we were to I'm sorry. Okay. Uh if we were to get a safer grant Mhm. could we then adjust the budget to account for it? Yes, you could.

Okay. And if we were to um find any additional streams of revenue outside of the budget cycle, whether that's fees, taxes, etc., we could adjust the budget to allow for it. Okay. Um in terms of other amendments to the budget, like is there a time frame that that's allowed outside of past December 31st?

You have to pass a balanced budget by December 31st. There is a mechanism by which the um budget can be amended by council for a brief period of time in the new year and that's under the third class city code but there is a deadline for enactment of any budget amendment um any budget ordinance and that's February 15th. So that's that's taking into account you know amendments being proposed being advertised being you know first reading second reading vote and meeting that deadline. So it's a tight tight window but yes it it is provided for. Okay. So I think we've covered that we cannot spend money from restricted funds whether that's because of designated revenue sources or because of enterprise funds.

Correct. Like the golf course, right? Um we can't I believe uh we said we can't really hire before July realistically additional beyond the people that we're already planning to send. Is that that's correct? According to my conversation with the director of human resources, that is what I was informed. Yes, that's correct.

Okay. Um and so really we don't have a practical or viable legally viable route without taking from existing services within this budget. Correct. Um, but there are options outside of the budget season that might not require taking from existing services. Correct. Okay. I think that that's all of my questions for Oh, this in it's tell me if this question is permitted.

Just ask your question. Uh so the situations that happened last Sunday where there were um you know multiple calls happening at the same time we had to pull out an active engine from from somewhere that obviously like nobody wants to hear that. Um and I'm wondering I think that I like I don't know the details of how this works. Do we have a mutual aid agreement where other departments come in when we're slammed with a bunch of things?

So, we do not have an automatic aid agreement with any any other agency. Okay? Which would mean or they're called automatically. So, uh we're bound by part of the collective bargaining agreement that states that our personnel must be called out before I call resources from another municipality that are not specialty pieces of equipment. like for example that we can't get from somewhere else such as like a truck to refill our SCVA cylinders. That call out can happen simultaneously with a request being made by the officer in charge for a unit from for example the city of Allentown or the city of Easton to provide us mutual aid assistance uh which is in accordance with our collective bargaining agreement. But I could not just request or that person on Sunday could not just request an engine from Allentown without us doing a call out of our personnel to come into work to backfill uh our stations and our reserve equipment.

Do we have to mandate overtime before we're allowed to call in for extra assistance? No, that's separate. That's in an emergency situation. That would be what we consider a an emergency call out. And for that, every firefighter is on the table. they they're called, they answer, they have to come to work for the emergency at hand. Okay. That has nothing to do with with an overtime and overtime is more of a a scheduled shift change issue. Okay. Um and what is the rationale for not having automatic uh call in from from other departments? Well, one, it's it's in the collective bargaining agreement that we must adhere to. Mhm.

And two, we we run into an issue from time to time. Um, it's not automatic. We have provided aid to other municipalities and we have received aid from other municipalities. The problem that we run into as the city of Bethl and a career fire department is sometimes municipalities who don't have their own resources that [clears throat] border our community will want to rely on us for some smaller incident calls that they may not be available for or have personnel to respond to. for example, it's very easy for them to call the city of Bethlehem because the city of Bethlehem is staffed. However, we can't be on automatic dispatch to every municipality that wants or needs our help for these small incidents. We reserve that and our posture has always been for for a long long time that we will provide mutual aid to any department when available. When we're properly staffed and we can provide proper coverage for the city of Bethlehem, if we have resources available, we will send them to assist that municipality. And as soon as that municipality has the incident under control, we will pack up, leave, and come back to the city. When we leave the city to assist another municipality, we're obligated by our our collective bargaining agreement that I have to backfill those positions. So, if I send four firefighters on a piece of equipment to another neighboring municipality and they become committed to that municipality, then I have to call four firefighters in from home to fill their vacancy until they return. So, we will help them when it's absolutely necessary and they have a severe event, but we can't be running out of the city every day to help somebody with a small event. And that's why we don't do automatic aid.

So, it's the other end of the mutual side that makes it correct. It's it's most and and we have received assistance from other departments, which we're very grateful for. Um, and and we have provided assistance, but it just can't be on an automatic basis for for minor incidents that unfortunately we just can't be their resource to assist them. Understood. Um, okay. Thank you very much. I I That puts that in. Any other discussion from council on my right, Councilwoman Leo? Hi, Chief. How you doing? Good. How are you?

Well, living the dream every day. Um, I want to talk about your your numbers a little bit. Um, these are the numbers that I got from you. Uh, our last budget meeting. We're b we're budgeted for 106 10 exist at city hall 96 and four platoon. Uh platoon one has two vacancies three away on health. Platoon 2 vacancies two on health. Platoon 3 two vacancies one health related. Plat platoon 4 two vacancies which is about 83 if we add the one person that is has just come back.

That is correct. I believe one came back and I believe we lost one. So I think we're I think we're right back to where we were two weeks ago. Yes.

All right. Love [snorts] that for us. Um so that's we should have 96 in four platoon. We have 82 in four four platoon. 82 people. Um and I think that we keep asking the question is 104 enough? Um in this case it would be 96 and the four platoon which I think it's obvious that 82 is completely not enough. like seems 22 per platoon, which is four suppression platoon plus the lieutenant inspectors and the captain of inspections. That's how we get to the 96. So there's 22 on each of the floor platoon, which is 88. Okay.

So if when we have the eights that go to academy at the beginning of the year, how close are we going to get to that magic number of you being at full compliment? So theoretically theoretically if on January 15th when they report that nobody has retired between the 1st and the 15th that day they won't be on the line but they'll be employed. We will have that number employed if no one retires. I it's going to take as we said six months to get them through the academy but on payroll if no one retires between the 1st and the 15th when they report numerically we will be fully staffed. So halfway through the year, we'll be [snorts] in a much better situation than we are currently right now.

Depending on retirements, you're correct.

And I'm asking that because I believe that I agree with certain points that the the year-long amendments do not make sense. I think the sixmonth amendments would make more sense if if any of the amendments were to go through, it would be the sixmonth ones that make the most sense to me because we will understand our positioning a little bit more six months into this. So I'm looking at the six amendments. I've taken three off of my my uh thought process because they're the sixmonth a or the one-year amendments. I took the other six-month amendment off that cuts community recovery fund because I have had the privilege of speaking not just with you but with a lot of members of the union um a lot of firefighters, a lot of our community and most people have said they do not want to see that fund cut. So I have removed that. I have two amendments, amendment four and amendment six. Um, one of them is the safer grant. I feel like we've talked about this a lot, but I will ask you again. Um, let's suspend all reality, say we apply for the safer grant. All of those rules don't apply. We apply for the safer grant anyway. What is that safer grant cycle like? When would we know if we got the money? Like would we know in July? Would we know in August, September?

So, um, last year the application period for the safer grant was May 23rd to July 3rd. The announcements for the award can be made any time between August the 18th and September 30th. So, we would know in August or September if if if the way they did it last year holds true, that is correct. Yes. I'm I'm taking extreme liberties here with with the safer grant. Understood.

Um Okay. When does that midyear academy start? Uh, as of right now, I am not sure because the city of Allentown may or may not run a second academy and we would have to talk with our partners at uh, Harrisburg Area Community College. That would be sometime July. So, it would end before the holiday season because it follows the college semester, but I do not have an exact start date. July. Yes. And we would know about safer until August or September if they follow the same format as used in previous years. Yes. Okay. Um, which leads me

to one amendment, amendment four. Um, but we've discussed uh the plan review position and the secretarial position and how you cannot use fees from one to another. I was looking at that that course case that you sent us, solicitor Stewart, and uh it seemed to me that it dealt more with the restricted funds, but it does go into like if you use fees, it's considered an illegal t tax or like a misappropriation of funds. [snorts]

Correct. in that particular case and that case case law is very very fact specific but the I sent it to you for the broad premise that that fees cannot be uh used for purposes other than which they are collected.

All right. Um so I mean I I agree with Councilw woman Leard about a lot of things. I feel like this has been um I mean if council's in a pressure cooker cooker you're in Dante's Inferno and I just I really I feel for you. I feel for the position that you're in. Um these are difficult decisions that we we have to make. I'm definitely willing to continue to listen to what conversations we are going to have. Um I don't just because we're talking about these amendments um on face value. I don't see how these are balanced or appropriate for all the reasons that we just discussed. I'm very anxious to hear anything else that might be um discussed as willing as I am willing to talk about the ideas that I had that fell very short. Um but what I what I won't do is is pit community member against community member. I'm not not interested in it at all. Many members of first response were were in the military. I I was in the military. It's it's one ship, one fight here. We're literally one team here. And I I'm not going to pit a first response person against a community member, just like I wouldn't pit a soldier against supply. You can't have one without the other. It's very important that we maintain respect for each other because we all want to see what's best for our community. So, I'm I'm willing to continue to engage Councilwoman Wilhelm,

I'm really only have a couple of questions remaining. Um, one is for you, Chief. And so we have three cadetses who recently graduated. Yes, that's correct. Do you anticipate or or what impact do you anticipate that will have on the mandatory because you've been referring to that 3-month period where there were 28 incidents of mandatory overtime. What sort of impact do you think that those three new cadets will have on that?

Once they're up and running, I think it will will have an impact on they do have some training uh on the job training and field training to go through, for example, before they can be mandated because there right now they're not apparatus operators on the street. So there's only certain jobs that they could be mandated for. Um but one one additional thing we we did implement on the first of the year was um working in conjunction with local 735, we we added another step in our mandatory overtime process um as a combined effort. And what's going to happen this time is overtimes are going to go out. Everyone's going to bid on their overtimes. And before anybody is mandated, we're we're made the decision to allow that overtime to go out for a very short window. Again, letting people letting all the firefighters know that, hey, somebody's going to be mandated. this is your last chance to take this overtime. Um, and actually today was the first time it was put into place and we did have somebody take the overtime. So that individual did not have to be mandated.

Okay. And that was that was something that we worked on together to try to try to alleviate part of this problem for the guys because we understand nobody wants to be mandated. Sure. So in the previous system, other firefighters were not aware when somebody's overtime was being mandated and you've sort of made it that it's more of a transparent sort of a call out to say, "Hey, we're about to do this and then giving someone [clears throat] the option to make sure I understand you correctly to then step in voluntarily for the overtime."

That's correct. What what was happening is um when it went out and nobody bid on the overtime, they're kind of watching the texts that come out through the system and they're seeing that nobody bid on it. And if if if there's a firefighter, for example, who's like, I can't be mandated. I I have something going on with my family, they might text some guys and be like, well, somebody please take this tonight. And uh you know, we identified from from some feedback that that that was a real problem or issue. And we were able to put this step in there. Now everybody gets a text that says, "Hey, somebody's about to be mandated." So if you were on the fence about taking this overtime, you have five minutes to make that decision or 10 minutes to make that decision. Got it. Okay. Thank you for that. We're just trying to do [clears throat] what we can to help.

Absolutely. Um and thank you for that. My my other question is for uh you Mr. Evans and so [clears throat] moving forward as planned with the city study. What do you envision and I know we haven't selected the firm who will conduct the study so this there's some sort of um speculation here but what do you anticipate that the timeline would be for potentially recommended staffing increases um as you envision it right now? So are we imagining a two-year wait? Is it something we could potentially envision bringing in in the 2027 budget? Where do you envision those those additions potentially being uh implemented?

Well, depends what the study comes back with your Sure. Assuming it's recommended. What would happen with the study then? Um, yeah, it would be in time for next year's budget season would be the plan. We are looking to have the study completed in five months was the ask there

people that want to talk to us about that. So what that's some of our pressing questions when it comes through that they can stay they have the capability and capacity to stay on schedule and deliver us some conclusions and recommendations because again he can't do it this time of year as we you can see the complications and you know we the mayor was very clear about that that he wanted to stay on that timeline so that that is our goal. It's a ambitious study because it's fire and EMS, right?

There's a lot to it. Um it's very comprehensive, but uh if it's done in that May, June, even with a little buffer there, it still gives a time, you know, July, you still have enough time leading up to budget season to come to conclusions from administration to share [clears throat] it with council and deliberate and whatever uh would come of it could be then worked into the 2027 budget. Okay. So giving council potentially months to have these discussions rather than weeks which has been the case. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All this kind of started the after the budget address. Actually, I mean we've had five weeks. Yeah. Five weeks. Right. Right. Yeah.

The budget came out the next day. I'm talking timeline. I'm talking about the day after the fire the public safety committee meeting was was called. So I'm I'm obviously I'm not going to be on council next year, but I just want I just for the sake of this work, I want to understand that you know the plan that is in place to move forward with the the comprehensive study you have in mind for fire EMS looking at those many layers of things that you do imagine the possibility should it be recommended to add staffing from the results of that study that that the council at that time will have months to h to understand the situation, help assist in conversations around, you know, sustainably um you know, sustainable funding for for positions not just for a year, not as a stop gap, but as permanent funding that those firefighters can count on for years to come and we would have month they would have months to discuss this.

Yes. Okay. Thank you. I just I really want to understand that sort of like very on the ground. Yeah, it's a much different approach. It's um again that was was in the RFP that's what would be in the contract and it will be a battle to keep like any study or any contract or any um building project to keep it on on schedule will be part of the you know one of the larger prior larger priorities of the uh entire project itself.

Okay. And also just to clarify um because I I know that not everybody who is is paying attention tonight or at any given step is necessarily sort of aware of all of the information. The study the city study is happening. This is not whether it's not on the table to be we are we are conducting a study of our fire and EMS. The plan at this time we haven't signed any contract yet that the RFP is out. RP is received. The goal will be to bring it to C. It needs to be approved needs to be approved by council study.

So, uh we would come to you at the end of the at the last council meeting of the year to for the funding and uh set the funding up and the idea is once the selection is made probably in in um it will be after the deadline to bring that by the next meeting, right? but um early in January in order to keep us on schedule to make the selection and then and enter into contract because we have to get under contract as well. So there are a couple steps. So it relies on on selecting the qual most qualified right firm to conduct the study. Correct. Okay.

Thank you. Um President Clone, will [cough] we have the opportunity for further discussion when we come to the vote? I'm gonna open it back up to another round of discussion. So I'll go around as I customarily do. I'll reserve my more extensive comments for that.

Okay. I'll make comment before I open it back up to another round of of discussion. Um you know I'll I'll just lead with the headline. I will not be supporting any of these six amendments. I want to be very transparent from from the beginning about that and I I'll share my thought process with everyone to respect to things that we that we heard already as it relates to you know budgetary deficiencies in some of these amendments with including safer grant which there's no just because we put it in the budget. I will explicitly recognize the administration is under no obligation to apply for anything. That is why we cannot prospectively put something in the budget because there's no guarantee that it would be there. This would have to be applied for. That's a process just like any other process. As it relates to the cutting of the positions where council voted on raising the permits, we heard about the complexities of that and I do recognize those complexities. That is not to to take away from anyone's efforts because I I am could not be more forthcoming with that. That is not my intention with any of my comments. My my comments are meant to recognize the complexity of what we're talking about, the complexity of the budget. And again, I implore everyone if you never have to go through it. And when you look at identifying the different revenue streams, um, secured grants, and how everything's tied back to each other, it it's not necessarily just a move $5 from here, put $5 there. So again, it's just more of a recognition of the complexity of the budget, which is why Mr. Evans, when when do you as an administration, you and Miss Larch start preparing the budget?

Labor uh pre-Labor Day. Pre-Labor Day. Understood. And then we, you know, we receive it uh we receive it around Halloween.

Yeah. Preh Halloween, you know, in in late October. the just the speaking more broadly um and I've never been a firefighter and I so I'm not going to pretend to understand everything a firefighter does but I was a dispatcher for the county for a number of years. I dispatched with a number of firefighters who currently work for Bethlehem. I've been to multiple weddings for firefighters who are currently on the job. They've helped me move. I've helped them move. I grew up with them. We all this is one community. So when you say things like you hope you're seen, I I hope you feel seen because there are people in the department today who I consider friends. I hope they consider me friends and and we remain in contact when you know we we have different things going on in our friend group. The issue as it relates to what we're talking about because the conversation has turned into adding four firefighter positions or do we need four firefighter positions. Th this is about budget amendments and there is no and and I'll invite our solicitor to feel free to interrupt me if I misspe at any point. There is no legal necessity nor action that I believe council could take to compel the administration to expend any of these funds. These are simple and our our controllers here too. If Mr. Raso ever wants to chime in, I invite you as well, sir. But you know what we're doing is talking about moving money around to essentially authorize certain expenditures. But just because those expenditures are authorized does not mean that they they have to happen. And I don't want to move money around and say, you know, and really give a false sense of what we're doing because there is no we did this now this is going to happen. I haven't heard an explicit yeah give us that money and we're going to do this. That would have already been in this budget if that was the plan. What I've heard for months now was that there was a process underway to put a plan together. A process that my understanding the union was involved in some capacity. I you I won't speak to

that capacity. I'm not involved in that. But that then there was a process underway to put a plan together and then come to council next year to present that plan. I implore the administration to should it be the will of council whether as it relates to how the budget shakes out and then council will still have to vote on any contracts to continue down that path to present a plan because you any budget amendments are not necessarily executed. We're talking about adding lieutenants. I've heard stationing people out by my house like Katosaka Road, things like that. That that's not what we're voting on. We're voting on the the dollar amount, but the the spend, it's like it's like giving, you know, my brother 20 bucks. He could do whatever he wants with it. Not whatever he wants, but he doesn't have to necessarily spend it on what I give it to him for. So, I I don't want to have a I want everyone just to be on the same page with that. And again, Attorney Stewart, correct me if I'm wrong, but just because something's in the budget. Now, of course, it's an explicit kind of ask of the administ of council to say, "Hey, we're budgeting this. We want to see this happen." But effectively, that's all it is. It's a it's an authorization to spend that money. I haven't heard I've heard from the fire department and I recognize, you know, your your wishes and your asks and how you would want to see what you want to see happen and how this these budget amendments bring that to reality. But this in in my in my perspective is a is a labor relations issue as it relates to the the request of the the union and then the administration and how they want to expend that. In the study that was shared at the public safety committee meeting, it it recommends things like minimum staffing for for a shift and I believe [snorts] minimum staffing or staffing per apparatus. The these are subject to collective bargaining. Mr. Evans, correct me if I'm wrong. The contract is up at the end of 2026 for the fire department.

Correct. Correct. So you when would you historically start negotiations and sit down at the table? Sometime after the new year. It varies. Yeah. So sometime after the new year, union leadership, whoever represents the administration during those negotiations would have a an obligation in good faith to to come to the table to negotiate a a new collective bargaining agreement just like you have one now. Chief, is overtime covered in the current collective bargaining agreement? Or Mr. Evans, I would have to assume such that there's at least some provision about overtime in there. or or let me scheduling is the schedule in in the collective bargaining agreement?

Yes. Uh the schedule is in the collective bargaining. Overtime is addressed in a collective bargaining agreement as is uh part of it falls under administrative order as well.

Understood. Understood. Thank you, Chief. [snorts] But I I guess as as I bring it back to being a labor relations issue is at the end of the day what what you know a perspective that I have and I'll just share my own is we're talking about how many people are on duty at any given time to respond to emergencies when they come in. Again I referenced the study that was presented at public safety that has a recommended staffing per shift. It's my understanding that that is a subject of negotiations that can be bargained and that's council has no role in the collective bargaining process. I'm just recognizing from my perspect this is what I do for work. I work in government in HR and administration and trying to figure out I haven't dispatched for 15 years but now I'm responsible for staffing our 247 operations uh where I work and I recognize things like mandation. You know, again, I've I've been out of the chair of dispatching for a long time, but I remember what it's like to get mandated and and I have sympathy for the folks who I try to avoid mandations for today and what I do. So I recognize those things but I think the if we're trying to achieve a goal that that goal is to be in good faith hash you know try to be met from perspective of how many people are on duty at a time or how the manpower per apparatus that rolls out um through the collective bargaining process looking at things like the current schedule and and what options there are to how we deploy resources things like that so that that's my perspective on that again I referenced that process that was already underway, which I interpret as, you know, coming up with a plan to present to council to hopefully incorporate that into next budget season to see how. Now, I know that delays things. We heard no one there's not really a potential to send additional firefighters to the academy for January. We'd be looking at best case scenario the summertime. I know this process sort of delays that with the plan for, you know, review a study and and see what we do. But again, that

that's where the that's where the decisions are made in in a a city like Bethlehem where the form of government is the mayor and the administration are the chief executive. Council has no authority over the hiring. We have the authority over like I said appropriating funds, then those funds are exhausted as or spent as the administration sees fit. And [snorts] uh you know I just think those things are worth mentioning that while I I don't want to be one to you know arbitrate do we need more people in the you know more people on duty at any given time or things like that at at the end of the day I just don't feel that taking money from one place to put it to another to try to meet these goal it it's not it's [snorts] not going to meet even if we are able to come to an agreement of council it's it's money in a budget and unless there's council doesn't have the authority to send people to the academy, promote, decide where they station, everything like that. There are powers vested in the union and administration as is their role and duty to in good faith try to come to an agreement on how these things are managed. And I uh truly believe that that despite good faith efforts up here too. I I'm not saying anything was done in in bad faith or anything like that because I think there's a genuine desire to for members of council to to grant the wishes that we've heard for the last couple weeks. And I also recognize we're under a tight window here. Like I said, the budget is a complex document. It's not as easy as just lower this number, raise that number. So, it's for those broader reasons that I would say I'm not going to support these amendments. And then I would be hesitant to support anything else without an actual um action plan that's going to bring any of these requests to fruition other than us doing the gymnastics of moving money around to say we did it and then we're still, you know, it still comes down to

the union versus administration about how do we go about um using these funds. So, and and I I'll probably not have any further comment. [snorts] I we still are on discussion. We're not voting yet. If there's anyone else who wants to add to the discussion, Councilwoman Camy Smith,

thank you. Um I just want to reiterate, um in the 1970s, there were 26, I think, to 28 firefighters per shift. In 2012, it was 22. Today it's 18 to 24 and sometimes less than 18 because each shift is missing some people to long-term injuries. In 2011 um the minimum st manning of 22 workers was eliminated and two firefighter positions were eliminated as well as a fire station. In 2015, two firefighter positions were eliminated. In 2016, a Mayday fire almost killed three of our firefighters. Nothing changed. In 2019, the city used rainy day or cash barons, whatever you want to call it, funds for trucks, repairs, paving, but not staffing. 2021, four firefighters were eliminated. In the recent um firefighter study, it states that Betham should have 30 firefighters per shift. The city again has 18 to 22 and sometimes less. The bottom line is that even if we are at full compliment, our full compliment is not adequate for the PY of department study. As this past Sunday totally proved to us once again, the National Fire Protection Association states we should have between 120 and 141 firefighters given our population, not the 94 that we have. Obviously, the firefighters have been waiting many years to have their staffing inadequac inadequacies be addressed, and I think it would be pitiful as well as especially dangerous if we have to have them continue to wait. I've said this before, but I'll say it again, especially in spite of the false information that was sent out to the nonprofits, and I apologize to all you that received the information. I think it was really again um discouraging that you had to have fear instilled in you. um needlessly.

Myself as a counselor and an administrator of social services as um as well as a case worker and administrator of social services as well as a counselor for well over 40 years. I know firsthand the importance of funding for community services and resources and I have consequently been a very fierce advocate especially during my time on council. I've advocated and provided vital services to those who are homeless, substant dependent, mentally ill, developmentally disabled, LB, LGBTQIA, etc., etc. Concurrently, I remember myself as an 8-year-old girl when I had to go to the hospital and see my dad who was a first responder and I had to see him in the ICU under an oxygen tent and I was told he's probably going to die because of injuries he suffered responding to a work emergency. So, I know firsthand the stress incurred by these first responders and their family. And that is why I have really advocated for hiring for new positions. And again, as far as the community funding, I'm sorry for the stress that it may have incurred to the nonprofits. My intention was just to take that money temporarily until we could get the money. Otherwise, some overtime and the safer grant council. I think that people need to realize this and even on council and especially the administration that we have the right to propose and pass budget amendments. It's our duty. Our country was born upon balance of powers and we live we in the city of Betham need to adhere to that balance of powers. Mayor Reynolds has continually state continually stated that we are we live in a safe city and he even started one of his most recent budget addresses that said we define our work as a clean, healthy and safe city. Yet, how can this be continually? How can we then continue to overlook the inadequate staffing within our fire department? Again, look at last Sunday, three incidents and not enough firefighters to respond. Thank God there were no tragedies. Some may look at the cost of firefighters as not a real priority. But

for me and those who have needed their services, it's vital to the safety and our existence in this community. In the past six years on council, I have seen us do whatever it takes to to do certain projects, hire more staff, etc., etc. But for the life of me, I cannot wrap my head around why there to not appear there does not appear to be the same level of effort to adequately fire the to adequately staff the fire department. I would ask the mayor if he was here, but since he isn't, I'm going to ask Mr. Evans in his absence. Why is the administration so reluctant to hire additional firefighters? I mean, is it just I it appears to me that there is a huge reluctance and quite frankly, I think this whole process has been so discouraging because I've got nothing but been undermined by administration, emails sent out to people trying to undermine me as a person and a professional. And I really resent that. And I truly believe that for some reason you don't want you just don't want us to do budget amendments, but we have the right to do it. But why why on earth are we so hesitant to hire more firefighters when the proof is in the pudding that we need more?

Can you answer that? Fully respect the amendment process. When I was on council, I made number amendments myself. uh we just don't support these amendments because regardless of the merit or motivation as it says in my memo, these don't hold water. What you propose don't work for reasons stated. So that's that's my statement there that in your in your mind they don't work. I think it was each one we and many other people may may think they don't work. I think those two don't work. The fire overtime is what you want to reduce fire over time. It's not what you proposed it to. We hire more people so we reduce fire. You don't want to repeat what was spok and Mr. Evans, I understand. I She asked me a question. Her her I don't think her question

and I would like the response to the question. The why is there a reluctance in administration to hire more firefighters? That's my question. That's my only question to you.

There's not a reluctance. There is a study that was an ongoing fullyear discussion and agreement in a room with multiple people that we are looking at it. Our number one priority is to get it back to staff to we've sent and we again we prioritize under $300,000 to send 15 more to make sure there's enough money to fill up the academy to get the full rank at the same time conduct the study and that was agreed to along the time. Let's see where is it needed. Is it needed at at Northwest on Kataka Road or somewhere else? Where where are the uh site locations? Where are the deficiencies? Now, we would like an objective study for that and EMS and that was agreed to all along until somewhere right around budget address. Then everything changed. So, there was not a reluctance. There was an agreement to take a look at it. But the mayor wants more of a study than just 20 people in a room saying, "Yeah, here or there or there." I've worked with five fire chiefs. They've all felt different. And there's some things they're all in agreement with, but from Barcenic to Noatnik to Reich to Griffin, they're all and AI all of them had different ideas in some ways and we would like to have some of that clarified and that's what we talked about that was agreed about. So that's it was all good until five weeks ago and now it's here we are. So that's that's my answer.

Okay. Thank you. I think that again all that all that we need to know is look at what happened on Sunday. Um, in the interest of time and to try to simplify this, I'm going to make a motion to resend amendment 1, three, and five because those were for full year um, positions for the firefighters. And since it's not feasible um, for them to go in January, I make a motion to resend those amendments. Amendment 1, three, and five. There's a motion on the floor to to resend 1, three, and five. Second from Mr. Callahan. Any discussion on the motion? Can we just clarify because there was confusion at the beginning of the meeting about which numbers like can we confirm for sure that those are the correct numbers?

I believe councilwoman clarified that those would all be the the one-year scenarios. Correct. Councilwoman, it is correct. So then the only amendments um to still vote on would be amendment 2, four, and six, which are for six months positions. And and Councilwoman Ramsey Smith is referencing our face sheets that Mr. Miller provided for tonight's agenda. So the the motion is to the the motions came from councilwoman and she wants to resend her motions for the essentially the scenarios that involve one-year funding in simplest terms. Any other discussion on the motion? Mr. Callahan, did you have a question about what we're about to vote on? All right, Mr. Miller, call the role. Mr. Callahan, I. Miss Grampy Smith, I miss. Hi.

Miss Leard, hi. Miss Leon, hi. Miss Wilhelm, hi. And Mr. along. I passes 70. So amendments 1, three, and five are are no longer in the group. They're no longer being considered. So the the group that we're still discussing are amendments 2, four, and six, which are essentially the six-month funding scenarios provided by Councilwoman Crampsy Smith. Any further discussion on the group of amendments? Mr. Callahan. Uh Mr. Cl, I I just have a quick question, too, though. Did the mayor tell you that if we council funded the positions, he wouldn't hire the additional staff?

No, I I have not had a conversation with the mayor, but just understanding budgets and the division of powers and the form of government Bethleam has and administrations that that that discussion has not been had. I mean, I think Mr. No. And I I would share with you we have not had that discussion. I think Mr. Evans just shared the administration's perspective though as it related to what their plan was. I I wish he was here to answer the question, but I would find it very hard to believe that if if it was council's will to uh fund it that I would hope that the administration would fund those positions and not um establish in the back. I mean, that's what I uh that's what I would hope, you know, and I would say hope is not a strategy.

Yeah. Well, I know especially with this guy. Well, and also that it's not necessarily stabbing in the back. It's it's a clear that's previous administrations, this administration, next administration. I don't know what this government subdivision that one like a strong air form of government chief executives. I know, but I don't ever remember. I've been around a long time. I don't ever remember council funding positions and a mayor not using those funds to hire those people that that that I mean, this is an equal branch of government to the mayor. So, I mean, I don't want to get in I understand. I just had a quick question whether he had actually told you that. Mr. Evans, the $60,000 study, is that in this year's budget? I mean, in 2026's budget. No. Where where is that money coming from?

We're [snorts] working on it now. We don't have anything. We'll bring a memo. See how money just pops up in a couple. It's amazing, right? So, well, at at the end of any given year, there's free money is savings. There there's money there.

Some years there's not. And and now let me complete this. when you go each year and you get to the end of the year like I I can make maybe examples on a personal level too but we get to the last week of December there's only one left then you can look around and see if there's funding year or not but would you project the beginning of the year you don't know that so in January February March April no I don't know would I have moved uh attempted transfer money for study in July and come do then no but in December with one payroll left we just made our 25th out of 26 payrolls that goes tomorrow there's so little time left then we can make an adjustment but we can't plan that all of next year that that's going to happen because some years you get to the end, medical is over, budget, gasoline, you uh Ukraine's invaded goes over and we're we're upside down. Yep.

So, it's 50/50. So, you know, that's not the way we budget around here, but All right. So, right now at the end of this year, we have a 26,000 26 million cash balance. Um, where we at? I don't know where we're at now because we have all we I it's I don't want to quote you today. I mean, the last year's not over. Just the last two weeks our total medical was 602,000 for a two week medical. So as of now though I mean I mean to the best your knowledge I don't honestly know there's still a lot we have to close we have to

I I think what you stated the other day was it was either 23 or 26 million. Let's let's just I'll go with the lower number. was the was 26 was um 20 2023 29 was 2024 29 million was 2020 was 2004 2024 was 29 million and of that 29 million we're using 10 million of that we already in n utility as capital funding for um 2026 through 2029. Is that correct? In this budget.

In this budget. So that gets us down to 20 million again for year end which was um recommended by GFOA and um that is the correct amount for bond rating agencies. Right. No, I appreciate that. I just want to I want to bring up an article here. So, uh Mr. Evans, when you were uh serving in the same capacity under Mayor Donz,

um you uh there's an article and I'm reading right. Betham officials hoped the sale of the casino was going to bring in $5.9 million in cash windfall and you had said that o for over a year and then eventually we got $317,000. That was a huge difference. Yeah. Yeah. So then the administration, you uh proposed at that time um to to tap I'm going to read it here. To what?

To to here, I'll read it. Now the administration has crafted a plan to still tackle some of the big ticket items that keep getting kicked down the road by tapping its $15 million rainy day fund. That was that was in the paper. Okay. And then another 1.48 48 million left over from its 9 911 uh center consolidation. On Tuesday evening, Betham's Council finance committee heard the pitch to fund 3.98 million 3 almost $4 million to these projects. Um some of it was for street paving and a variety of other things. And and and you had proposed that to full counsel to move $3.98 million from it's saying in here it's my it's not my term. The rainy day fund. Okay. It's not my

No, it wasn't your quote. Okay. But this this is your quote. All right. The city typically borrows $5 million every year to tackle capital repairs such as a cost rise from the money doesn't go that far. Said Evans, Eric Evans, city business administrator. We at that time at the end of the year took almost $4 million from our rainy day fund. Okay. From our cash, three four million. Okay. This is here critical condition. This is a rainy day. And the $331,000 is a small small percentage of our uh cash balance compared to what it was. It was only 15 million back then. And that's that's your statement, not mine. So, we took out of

Mr. Call. Is this part I don't mean to interrupt you. Is this part of this amendment or a future amendment that you're going to propose? because we're still on the group that that councilman I just don't want to I don't want you to go so far down the road and then have you repeat yourself later, right? I don't mind repeating myself. You know that. Yeah, but I I I think Well, and again, for the purposes of people here, they're here to hear us vote and see what what's decided. Okay. So, let I I'll bring that up. Okay. So anyways, um so there there's so later on um I'm going to propose about moving $60,000 from the study since it's already you're going to find it somewhere. We don't have to find it now because if we I think it's more important

again that's a later on action. Mr. Callahan. So um the um can I ask about uh or or should I wait on this? How much and if you don't have the number maybe you guys can calculate now how much of a millage rate would we have to increase our millage rate to raise $331,000 if you can work on it. I don't I would say that's not relevant to what what Counciloman CR I just want to give them some time so they have the number eventually right you know like within like a half hour. Half hour. Yeah. Continue with this group. Right.

Um Before we vote on this, I just want to say this. Okay,

this is to all the council members here. This is our budget. This is our main priority. He proposes it. The administration proposes it. It's our money to budget. It's not his budget. It's our budget. We had we have a department here that has been struggling and stressed out and they're telling us not only by their words but by their actions that they don't even want the overtime anymore. They're overworked. They're being forced 28 times in three months, in the last three months, they were forced to do overtime. And we're gonna, if we just sit here and keep on telling them and thumb our nose at him, say, "Listen to me. We can't find the $331,000. Keep working your keep. If you don't like it, tough. It It's under the law. It's mandatory." That's a hell of a thing to tell our department. So, I I I would hope before we vote on this that we all seriously think about what they're telling us and look at the data. Look what just happened last week. We are not, this city without a doubt, the bottom line is we don't have enough of our resources to staff our own city properly. That's the bottom line. And and I think we I'm not mistaken, but I think there's a fireman here that was forced to do mandatory overtime six to eight times already. Six to eight times. Forced to. And Mr. Evans knows this. As a school teacher, policeman, fireman, EMS, when you get near the end of your career, you want you want overtime. They don't want it. They're being forced to do it. and it's ar and we're going to sit here and can't find $331,000, but we can afford a um a community uh um

uh coordinator. That's a luxury. This is not a luxury. And shame on us if we don't find a way to find a $331,000 for this group. They're telling us not only by their actions and in rejecting the overtime, but be they're being forced to it. How would you like that if your boss did that? It's not It's not It's not up to you. It's mandatory. You don't like it, leave. That's what they're saying. Please. Well, let's work together and find this money. It's $331,000. It's nothing. We could on the overtime alone. There's $500,000 in there. Every year, he comes up with another $600 700,000 somewhere. He's coming up with another $60,000 for for for for for the uh a study. You tell me we can't find $331,000 to resolve this or we're going to say, "Hey, screw you and keep working your mandatory overtime. If you don't like it, tough." That's what we're telling them. Please help me. Help her. Help all of us. Help them relieve the stress from their department. We're talking a fraction of the budget. Mr. Callahan, I think that point has been made. Thanks. I don't want to interrupt you, but I want to give other people. Is there anyone else who hasn't spoken twice who wants to have the floor?

Councilwoman Lar.

Yes. Um, so I'd like to come back to that council as a whole has been working for weeks on trying to find money. Councilwoman Krampy Smith knows that we were up until 11:12 at night texting back and forth looking at different budget lines. Solicitor Stewart knows that we sent dozens of questions over the past few weeks. Councilwoman KMC Smith is the only person who met the deadline to submit amendments. And while it doesn't seem that they are able to stand unfortunately because like I said I do support adding positions even prior to an administrative study because I do find it hard to believe that it won't recommend some increase in staffing even if it's not the full amount. It does not appear that there is a legally viable way to do that in the budget season. But once we move past these specific amendments that unfortunately do not appear to be able to stand, there may be ideas to consider that would expend extend beyond the budget season. But to say we need to work together is a disservice to the work that everyone up here has done. And to Councilwoman Crampy Smith who submitted amendments by the deadline. I would welcome other people's amendments. I tried to put some together. We can't take from the $2 million golf fund. I learned that. It infuriates me that we can't. But show up and do the work. find the money together on the timeline that we have and then we can solve the problem. But,

you know, and and I would like to thank Councilwoman Cry Smith for regardless of how the vote turns out, doing all of the work that you did. Any other I want to thank you for assisting me like you did and responding. I appreciate that. Councilwoman [snorts] Wilhelm.

Um, thank you, Councilwoman Leard. I fully agree with everything [clears throat] you said and since it seems like we're getting close to the vote, I I just really want to take a moment to share some of my thoughts uh again as we approach the vote. First, I I actually want to thank all of the individuals and I see that many of them have left um for various reasons, just making observations at at their their choice and and when they chose to step out, but I hope they're still paying attention. And I want to thank all the individuals in the department with whom I've had the opportunity to speak not microphone to microphone but human to human. You know who you are. I'm grateful for that time. We had honest conversations and uh we both heard and shared perspectives respectfully. I'm very grateful for that. I want to thank you all of you fire nonprofit employees who are here, city administration, all of you for your service to the city and thanks to everyone who came to speak tonight. We've heard from solicitor Stewart, Chief Griffin, Mr. Evans and others that much of what's being proposed tonight is highly unadvisable or simply not feasible. I don't need to restate all of those things. We've been through them many, many times. But there's another perspective I'd like to share, and that is that public safety doesn't exist in a silo in a city like Bethlehem. It it does not only live in the the budget lines of fire, police, and EMS. And so much of the work of DCD, for example, and I bring that up because that's the department that's in in essence been targeted for cuts in these proposed amendments, the the work of DCED is the work of preventing emergencies before they require an emergency response. So, we're looking at building code enforcement, blight, thanks for moving over so I can see your face, Lou. Blight remediation, supporting safe housing, providing extensive preventative health care services. You too, Kyle. Thanks. This is work that helps avert conditions that put people at greater risk before fire, police, and EMS need to be called. The point being that public safety is deeply interconnected and it's

strengthened when we honor and support that full ecosystem of services that keep our residents safe. DCED is a crucial component of that public safety ecosystem. It's a partner to our first responders, not their competition. And the very framing of these amendments, I I regret that it pits the two against one another. But I will note that the only messaging I've heard from individuals in the department and including Chief Griffin is that neither the manufacturing of departmental competition nor the taking of funds from one department to fund another is your wish. Um and I I'm happy about that. Um the question in front of us tonight is not whether we value our firefighters or even tonight whether additional staffing is needed. That's not the question tonight. It's been stated. The question is whether we as a council should rush to hastily make a half million dollar change to the budget 5 weeks after this was brought to our attention by taking already allocated funding from departments and programs who are relying on it, including dollars that are budgeted to support organizations who are working on the front lines of housing, food access, public health, and safety and serving residents of the city who deserve to know the city stands with them in times of hardship. And because of this last minute rush timing, the city's being asked to balance these proposed amendments by either using unavailable or legally unadvisable methods or by putting other essential community services at risk. And I can't support that. But fortunately, the alternative is not saying no outright to additional staffing. It's not denying the importance and the value of the work of our fire department. And we heard no lack of support for the fire department tonight. As President Cologne said, I hope you do feel seen. Even the people who came here to speak in support of the community recovery fund made a point to say we support you too and there are ways to do this. This the way this has happened is not that way. Five weeks is

not that way. I would have spoken to 50 more of you if I could have, but I couldn't. It this is this was not ideal. And I said this to all of the individuals that I had the opportunity to speak with. I wish so much that had it had gone differently. But saying no to these amendments is saying yes to moving forward with an existing plan, a plan for a comprehensive objective study that we expect to look deeply and holistically at all levels of the work. Yes, staffing, but also apparatus, equipment and maintenance, staffing, site locations rather, response times and more. That plan is is expected to move forward. A study that will be guided both by data and the lived expertise and experience of firefighters and it will give the city the information that it needs to make sustainable decisions that you deserve that also do not force cuts to vital community services or cut into necessary overtime or jeopardize our ability to apply for outside funding. So I think even Miss Crampy Smith, you were also forced to work at a a very rapid speed and and you had to retract three of the amendments you proposed because of that. I wish that you had had more time. I wish that we had had more time to discuss this to deliberate to facilitate productive conversations. I don't know what happened at the negotiation table. I wasn't there. But I know that whatever happened it devolved quickly and recently and that is not ideal. So, for all the reasons discussed this evening and all the things that I've articulated in my statements, I can't support these amendments tonight. I think that's obvious. But I will be supporting a resp by not supporting these amendments, supporting a responsible process for determining sustainable solutions for your department needs and for maintaining the full network of services that keep our residents safe.

And that's how I feel about this. Thank you for listening. Thank you. Any other discussion? Again, we're on amendments 2, four, and six as a group. Any further discussion? Council, Councilwoman Leo.

Um, I want to thank Councilwoman Crampy Crampy Smith for retracting the three amendments that were the year-long thing, but I do think that it does shine a light on something that Councilwoman Leard and Councilwoman Wilm Helm have said about the the compressed timeline of this. We know that we cannot change the first half of the year. There's there's nothing that we can do to change the first half of the year. We've talked about it when it comes to police or to positions to the academy to all that stuff. There's we need to figure out a problem. Like we need to figure out a solution to this problem. It does not need to be in a compressed timeline. A compressed timeline is not going to give you a good sustainable solution. It's going to give you a solution like safer which last time we used safer the positions went through attrition anyway. We want positions that we can give you that sustain that you don't have to get cut in two years because we don't have the money for it. It's like I [snorts] we want to do right by you and as as the gentleman who left said the last time I asked do we need firefighters I was told no. I have asked four questions in the time I've been on council. How's the apparatus? Apparatus sucks. First year did apparatus. Uh how's academy? Academy sucks. So, we streamlined academy. Um, and I thought we were good. Uh, and I didn't know that we weren't good until about 5 weeks ago. And I want the opportunity to make it good, but I need time to make it right. Right. And sustainable so that you don't have to worry about four people that you hire that might fall through attrition anyway. So, I just Yeah.

Any other discussion for members of council? Seeing none, uh, I'll just conclude with again, I also want to share my thanks to Councilwoman for and I've already stated how I'm going to vote, but it it it's not light work to to put these amendments together and and have a good faith effort. And as I encouraged everyone beyond two weeks ago to use their resources, our solicitor, Mr. Miller and such and one member of council who who has stated a goal here tonight submitted amendments. So I that that says something itself but if there's no further discussion Mr. Miller I'm going to ask you a call the role on the group of amendments 2 4 and six.

Mr. Callahan Impy Smith I miss nay. Miss Leairard nay. Miss Lem, nay. Miss Wilhelm, nay. And Mr. Cologne, nay. The group fails to four with five against.

Bear with me one second. So, that concludes our agenda for this evening. I will ask, as has already been discussed, are there any further motions that anyone wants to introduce on the floor for the budget this evening? Mr. Callahhan. Now, I will I will ask just like Councilwoman Grahamy Smith did. If you're introducing any motions to reference the page that council's to look at, the account and the amount what we're increasing has to be balanced with what we're decreasing. Five votes to increase, four votes to decrease. So, effectively, five votes are needed. You have the floor, Mr. Callahan.

Thank you. I'm trying to come up with $331,000. Mr. Callahan, this is not a workshop. I understand you want to come up with the the votes, but let me speak. I I think you're being rude right now. I apologize.

Yeah. So, um in order to come up with the $331,000, I'm going to propose um and I understand Miss Wilhelm's uh comments at uh um uh unavailable funds and and legally not possible. Well, let's switch to the legally possible and available funds. Um, I propose taking uh 100 and 65,500 move it from the o the the overtime fund for fire p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p page number, M Mr. Yeah.

Uh 155 and it's uh account 4 00003. It's currently at $500,000 and I'd like to move $165,000. Uh so that would leave Wait a minute. $334,000 $334,000 334500 left in the overtime account which was more than enough to get us through the beginning of the year. So, I want to move 165,500 from the overtime fire fund. And then I want to move $165, $500 from our cash balance. We have uh in the past moved uh just recently with Mr. Evans, uh, $3.9 million from our cash fund balance. Moving $165,500 from the cash fund balance, it will not even be missed. It is a minuscule amount of money.

So, I'm not I don't want to deplete the overtime fund. We're still going to have $345,000 in there to get us through the first quarter, maybe the first half of the year. I mean, the the administration only budgeted $500,000 and I'm going to assume that they're providing a real budget. And so, if $500,000 is going to get us through a whole year, the remaining 365 should get us through at least three quarters of the year for overtime. So, I don't know if you need those page numbers again. It's It's page 155, account number 4003. I'd like to change that from $500,000 down to um what was the number I gave you there?

33 [snorts] 334 $334,500. So, we're moving 165,500 And then I'm proposing moving a very very small amount from our cash balance because again I don't like raising taxes either. Uh but I've only voted one time in 10 years to raise tax and that was because our second year we were hurting from money and would have had to get rid of fire and police. I think this is this is probably more of a of a dire time than it was uh eight years ago when I voted for this small small tax increase. I do not vote for tax increases, but this is this is dire [clears throat] when we have people doing mandatory overtime. I think it's it's it's so important right now for us to step up and do what's right. and and I and all I'm trying to do is fund for uh four positions for the last six months of the year because according to um chief and many other people that I talked to, even if we have came up with the money right now, it would not be we wouldn't be able to staff those four firemen until June or July. At least we're giving them some hope and light at the end of the tunnel that hey, help's coming in July. Stay there. stick with us. We're going to help you and and when when the in the summer come the beginning of summertime comes, there's help on the way.

Mr. Callahan, I need clarification on something. Yes. You you want to add 165,500 from the cash balance, correct? Correct. Where where are we adding that into the four fire positions? I want to add that. Those are those are and Mr. Mr. Evans could correct me. Those are expenditures on page 155. So where doesn't that have to go into revenue somewhere? Go to the revenue side. O1A. There's not an account in the budget right now. So it would be O1A 3. What page are you referencing? Not because it's not in the budget. There's no cash used in the budget. Yeah. For obvious reasons, but we have this proposal would add the line. So it' be a new account.

So where where would you want to you have I don't know the whatever account he took the 3.9 million from years ago. But we're t but it it has to be capital account by the way for your projects not to hire new people. I'll speak to that should we discuss the amendment but the there has to be a corresponding revenue line item. Mr. Callahan, what would it be? What would it be? I haven't looked at these amendments, Mr. Callahan. You're writing them down as we're talking. What what what account would it go to? Do we have to add it on [clears throat] on to page 155 as four additional firefighters? Yeah, m Mr. Callahan. 155 is the expenditures, right?

We'd have to put it somewhere in revenue. Where would we put it? I if we move the $165,000 $500 from overtime, what account do you suggest we move it into? If it's council's will, it I would say it's your amendment, Mr. Cal, but I'll allow them to ask. I don't know. I don't know. I I I don't It's not It's I'm not the I'm not the budget. I'm proposing to move 165. You tell me where it's got to go. This what I hoped four days ago by the on proposals were due here. Uh,

no, they weren't due. We've always been allowed to do this and I asked for permission many many uh days ago. If they didn't tell you that's right. So, I'm asking you where should we put it? Uh, well, they're they're positions for part of a year. So, right. Is this six months salary? So, it's going it's going to be mix for us to put together. It's going to be a couple minutes I put together because you have moving parts. You're adding cash as a revenue. You you are decreasing an expense of overtime. I President comment on that or do I add my editorial? I have the floor right now. What are we doing? So we

I'm asking I'm asking if I can ask a question. Wait, I guess is it Mr. Callahan and Miss Wilhelm? I don't even I'm going to try to be polite. Mr. Callahan. Yeah, I had put a memo out and advised everyone over two weeks ago, right, to get amendments together as a courtesy to Mr. Miller, right? And all of council as Councilwoman Camy Smith did. So now we are and oh congratulations cuz all you've done is created confusion in a room. No, it's not. Where where you are listen this is not that big of a of a deal. It's a it's a budget transfer where we put this all the time. I

Mr. Evans where where question where are you proposing we men you're the expert in you're the business man where would it be pro where would we move it to there's there's a bunch of different places because if you're hiring it's going to be under salaries right um salaries medical pension is that item 40001 be four or five different accounts that look at the accounts that Mr. Ramsey Smith use are using the same four. So page 155. No, don't look look to her amendments. That's you just voted on

to uh look at amendment 2, four or six at the bottom. Which one is that? Two. department is 7 days between training medical. So there's going to be $80,000 be you know there's there's two transfers for 1655. You with me? 16 Yeah.

Okay. 80,000 goes into the academy for four firefighters. 121,346 goes into salary for four firefighters. 10,46 goes to promote the four firefighters to lieutenant. 52,110 goes to medical. 57,482 goes to pension. And 10,135 goes to 27th pay in 2026. Is that good enough? Thank you. I I looks I defer now. Can you Can you restate

Sure. the the re restate what you're motioning for, Mr. [clears throat] I am I am proposing that we move.

Yeah, I know. that we change on page 155 that we change line item 4003 overtime from $500,000 down to $334,500 which is a difference of $165,500. And then I'm proposing moving $165,500 from the cash balance [snorts] to the uh to add into the money moved over from the overtime fund to the academy for the four fighter. You want me to repeat these again? short

these numbers $80,000 to to the academy. It it it's actually the same exact uh bottom part of Miss Crampy Smith's amendment too. Okay. It's I mean everybody has that there. So you can It's half from fire overtime, half from cash. Right. Okay. Right. Understood. So half and it still leaves uh a substantial amount of money in overtime. And as the years going on, I I I think the $334,000 left in overtime. So I just want to clarify, you're making a motion. There has to be a second for discussion, right? So is that your motion, Mr. It is. Thank you.

Is there a second to Mr. Callahan's motion? I second that motion. Okay. Now it's open for discussion. Mr. Calhan, I complete your thoughts, please. I I I neglected $479. I had it at $331,000, so I've got to I got to come up with the extra $4. What is it again? So, are you amending your motion, Mr. You want to come over to your cash? Uh, I'll take it from overtime. How much extra is it? 349. What's 479? All right. So, here we go. Mr. Mill, you ready?

Mr. Callahan, hang on. I want to make sure. So, there was a motion. It was seconded. Now, we're amending the motion. Right. So, are you I want to withdraw I want to withdraw the motion. Okay. Re restate your Right. We don't need to vote on that. Right. Right. I didn't get a second. Anyway, council, regardless, I'm going to consider your motion withdrawn. Okay. Thank you. You could restate. I want to move $165,979

or $479 165479 $165,479 from the overtime fund

which is on page 155 and it's line item 4 03. It's at 500,000 right now. And we're going to reduce it 165 479. And that leaves the overtime fireman budget for the beginning of the year, which should get us through the first six months at $334,521. So that's the overtime change. Mr. Miller, do you need me to change those or or repeat it?

Yes, please. All right. It's all right. Just the last figure. The the I want to move it from $500,000. I want to move $165,000. It's 979. My bad. 979. 165,000. He wants to reduce it. Why 979? You just changed it again. 979

9791 165979 and then that leaves $334,21 in the overtime budget and then $165,000 from the cash balance. It's 165,500. I'm sorry. 165,500 from the cash balance into those four funds that are listed on amendment two under Grace Crampsy Smith's um amendment two. So to clarify the academy for for firefighters 80,000 salary for four firefighters 6 months 121346 promote for lieutenant for 6 months 10406 medical 52110 pension 57482th pay 27th pay in 2026 10,135

correct and that's a total of 331479 Mr. Callahan restated his motion. Is there a second? Second.

Seconded by Councilwoman Camy Smith. Discussion. Mr. Callahan. I'll let I'll give you the floor because you brought the motion for it. Listen, I this is this has been stressful for everybody. I I I get it, but let's step up the small amount of money. The the the the overtime fund will not be will not be affected. And if and we won't have to even consider moving any money from the over from any other fund to the overtime fund at least until June or July when the four firefighters are then going to be brought in from themies. It's telling our fire department, hey guys, we hear you and helps on the way. It's not everything you needed, but we're we're trying. And we're going to take a small amount, a sliver amount of a cash balance, which a few years ago was 15 million. And I don't know, I I know it's I um Mr. I think I I think they want 15%, correct? Ideally,

and for for 16.78. Yeah. So, we're already over the 15%. Right.

So, we have the money there. It's a small amount of money and we're trying to tell a department the city keeps growing and you keep getting smaller and we're trying to help you out. But, we don't have the ability or or we actually do. Uh whenever community economic development wants to add people, they come and propose to us to add fees. And this is what we're trying to do. And if if this doesn't go by, if this doesn't pass, this is a last resort. And I don't even want to do this. But it this is how desperate it is. I would want to propose a small tax increase. And if you could figure out how much uh uh uh increasing our millage rate would be, which is a last resort, but for us to have to raise taxes even $25 on each family or $40, I don't know what it would be. It's ridiculous that we can't, you know, that we can't come together and find this money. It's sitting there. You know, he he's going to find $60,000 for a fund somewhere. He's going to find $600,000 to, you know, for the the remaining amount of the overtime um bill, which they only budgeted 500. They only budgeted 500 for next year. They're going to come up with another $500,000 from somewhere. So, please, let's work together. This is not This is not a big ask. This is not a a big ask. So that's my my spiel. Understood. Further discussion on Mr. Callahan's proposed amendment on the floor.

Councilwoman Cleekch. Thank you. Um I just hate to go over this again, but um just to clarify, the uh eight that we have coming into the academy in January are going to start drawing salary. Correct. Correct. Yes. But they won't be actually working shifts, right? Not until they graduate. Until they're available, right? Sometime after the gradu assimilate from the academy, assume they all graduate from the academy, make it through

and enter the ranks. So this is actually kind of a tricky moment for us when you look at taking money from the overtime budget because we are going to be drawing down on those eight salaries uh at the which are for to cover vacancies current vacancies. Correct. Yes. Yes. So right now we've been having salary savings because of those vacancies. But as of January when they start in the academy we are no longer going to be having salary savings from those eight positions. Okay.

That's correct. So, if we reduce the overtime budget, excuse me, I'm talking. Excuse me, I'm talking. Thank you. If we reduce the overtime uh budget, we don't have we won't have necessarily the funds in salary to replenish the overtime. And let me make this crystal clear for the 80th time tonight that the way Mr. Evans finds money for overtime is from the salaries of vacant positions in the fire department. It is a balancing act we all recognize. Okay. And we've we've talked about yes it would be great if we could have more right firefighters right now. We're going to train you know eight so that we get to our current full complement. But if we start paying cadetses and we're drawing that salary down, but we still need overtime because they can't work shifts yet.

This is actually the most delicate moment for us in terms of the balance between salary and overtime in in the um department. Mr. Evans, can you I mean, I could be wrong, but if you could just either clarify what I said or No, you you state very clearly and correctly. Okay, thank you. Because that is that is where the money magically comes from is from the salary line, right? And yes, and it's there because we're not drawing it because those positions are empty. However, as of January, those positions will no longer be empty and we will be paying people who are not actually fighting fires yet, but we are paying them. Correct. That's correct. Thank you.

That is correct. as to the cash balance. So my question for you is um generally speaking from what I understand from discussions and and all of that um the cash balance of course you need that 16.57 8% whatever is what's the generally recommended for our bond rating to keep our bond rating strong and then there may be some um left over but there's also the again that carryover where we've got the first quarter we're going to be drawing down until we start getting our property taxes in. Right. So, you're making that estimate all the time. It's a dance.

And on top of that, um we're we have we're um we qualified for all these grants and we have to spend the money up front and then wait for reimbursements. And last in 2025 [snorts] um we were waiting for the general fund support pays for the um expenses up front and then we get reimbursed and do a due to do from from a non-U and at one point the non-utility owed the general fund over $6 million. So we need like a little buffer there too to support all these projects that we are currently engaged in.

Right? Because again, as you said, a lot of grants, and this is very common, are on a reimbursement basis, especially the big federal ones and the big state ones. It's very typical. And so, again, having cash balance is, you know, part of that dance between

uh having it in the in the capital fund, moving it into general fund, etc. Thank you for clarifying that. And so generally speaking, when we do have things, we do have money left over out of all of that, we we tend to put it into um you know, if the non non utility capital fund and then we move it in for one-time purposes, for projects, for major projects, for major expenditures like fire engines, for if the revenue is a one-time um occurrence, it wasn't budgeted. It's like a large like a deed transfer tax that we didn't expect, right?

We put that thought it was prudent to set it aside so we wouldn't have to borrow. Right. And that was the other piece is that we have not borrowed in in quite a few years now, 2019. Right. And so by not borrowing, we're not adding to our debt service.

Yes. And we're saving on interest. Millions of dollars of interest payments we no longer will have to pay. Right. And so it sounds like that's all great and it it is, but every year there's like another $2 million we need to find. So yes, paying down our debt and not adding to our debt by using, you know, using those one-time funds for purposes that we would have otherwise borrowed is sound financial management to me. So we can afford the salary increases, the pension increases, the medical increases because our expenses aren't um stagnant. They're they're slowly going up and our revenues aren't. So those onetime um receipts will support that.

Thank you. And so the reason I'm asking these questions is that half of this proposed amendment is funded by cash balance which as as I said we use for one-time things if we're going to use it at all. You've been stowing away little bits of money for the uh 27th pay next year for instance. There's these things that are kind of oneoffs. Um, and Councilwoman Leyon, um, you know, made the point about, uh, not, uh, making a promise to, and, I think I made it too, and I think maybe Councilwoman Wilham, not making a promise to add positions and then not having the money for it the next year. Um, and so I just wanted to clarify those two things because it seems that taking money out of the overtime would not be prudent in this particular moment. um where we're we are putting eight firefighters back on the payroll, but we're not actually getting shifts out of them. And so we are going to continue to have an a a larger overtime need and we're going to need that money um in there. Uh and and then the the the other piece of it is onetime funds and um I'm [snorts] you know not comfortable um taking half of you know the half of the expenditure coming from one-time funds to me makes it a precarious uh plan. So thank you.

Any further discussion on the motion? Councilwoman Camy Smith.

Thank you. Um I just want to bring up a few points. um that as [snorts] far as the the cash reserves, I mean, I think we have to consider that like the article in 2019 stated that the administration decided to use the cash reserve funds because they didn't want to have items keep getting kicked down the road. And this is a prime example. I mean, I talked about stats from like 2012. I mean, the fire department has been kicked down the road for over 10 years, even longer, on staffing. So, again, I don't understand how in 2019 it was okay to use the fund, the rainy the cash reserve fund for, you know, fixing the floor in city hall and the and the library columns and and this that and the other where we have like a perfect storm here with with the fire. We already know that we don't have adequate staffing. Um, it could have been a real tragedy on Sunday. I won't go there again. But the other thing to consider when we talk about the overtime and the staffing is we have 31 firefighters eligible to retire today. They don't have to give us notice. They could come in tomorrow and say, "I'm out of here." In the last couple years, the chief has said that we have had more people retire at a faster rate than ever. No wonder there's inadequate staffing. The morale is low. They feel not supportive. mandatory overtime and I believe and you could corre someone could correct me if I'm wrong but I think in the past three years do we have something like 19 retirees is that correct chief or do you know how many [clears throat]

just approximately I don't want to put you on the spot unfortunately I don't have that number tonight and I wouldn't want to guess

right but I I believe that was but my point being that you know we could end up having many firefighters retire and then to get to the academy it it could take at least 7 months to a year and a until we get them in the academy, get them out, and get them back. So, what do we do? That's that's a that's a perfect storm. And that's something that is really something that we need to really consider. If we have all these firefighters eligible to retire and we have them retire next year, even not even half of them, even a quarter of them, and then we have to wait to get them in the academy, we have to start, we have to be proactive. And even hiring four firefighters for next year is far far far from being proactive. So, I I I think it's um you know, it's it's vital that we we do whatever we can to hire them. We just we can't just keep kicking this down the road. You know, I mean, I don't know why we can, you know, we we can do floors and garages and library columns and everything else, but having enough firefighters, you know, somebody somebody's going to get hurt and, you know, we're going to end up paying a heck of a lot more money possibly in lawsuits like the one firefighter noted than we ever will pay for adding four more firefighters. And I I for one do not want that on my conscience. that, God forbid, there's a tragedy and a firefighter or a community member dies in a fire. I mean, this is serious and I I just cannot wrap my head around why we're not willing to do whatever it takes to address this issue. And God forbid, I just hope there's not a tragedy because it's not going to be in my conscience.

Thank you. Any other discussion on the amendment? Councilwoman Leon,

I mean, first [snorts] I'd like to say I don't think a single a single one of us want that on our conscience. And just because we can't find the positions for the first six months when we can look at this at any time, not just tonight, at any time, it doesn't mean that we're saying no. It's just like it seems like we're doing math like math homework 5 minutes before it's due. I'm just saying let's let's take the time necessary. But to to that point, like when you get on council, you get offered all these trainings. I went to a dozen budget trainings immediately. And it was my understanding that you don't pull from the general fund or from the rainy day fund cash reserves because of GFOA and because of bond rating because it really messes you up there. And if you do pull, it can only be for like one-time expenses and not like not reoccurring expenses. Is that the case?

Yeah, that's correct. That's finance 101 and it's a cardinal sin to do it for operating expense for creating new positions. That's not what happened to to what was referenced earlier was that transfer was for 30-year projects as Mr. Alcohol is confirming projects and infrastructure. So if you have in that case the 911 there was residual funding from the 911 center when it consolidate and that was transferred for long-term projects. We hire people with that that are going to be ongoing reoccurring expense, right? like this this current transaction that's before you for consideration buys you 6 months. It doesn't buy anything past that. So if council moves on this one, I'm going to tell you you have the same problem staring at you next year. Uh some this is a deficiency that will need to be solved somewhere and hopefully it's solved by the council because it's that's where it would be created if this one was recommended.

So in 2019, none of that borrowing had any or none of that that taking out of the money had anything to do with any kind of reoccurring expenses? Nothing in the operating budget. No, it's it was an account. It went into the capital account for capital projects, long-term projects. That's the way it should be done. That's what was completed at the time.

Uh in your recollection of how long you've worked here or you, Mrs. who's worked here quite a bit, have we ever taken from rainy day funds to No. Um, and I just like it's it's not that I don't want to see the stunt. It's just like I mean we understand that the the library columns are not pension obligations. The library columns don't have medical necessities. The library columns aren't something that we're going to pay for in perpetuity. I I want to do something. I want to do it right. It just this doesn't feel like the right way to do it. And and there's nothing that says that we have to vote on absolutely something right now when we h like you say, Councilman Callahan, this is our budget. we could address it at any point. Like why why rush? Why do something that can end up where we don't find the funds next year? Um and I mean we're basically the same council. So it's a question we're going to have to address again. Like we have time to address it and and I want to address it and I want to address it right in a sustainable way that doesn't put their positions in jeopardy again. That that's all I'm saying. I'm I'm fine workshopping. I just don't think that this is the appropriate way to do it is all.

Any further discussion? Councilwoman Leairard, then Wilhelm. I'll let everyone speak once before I go around again. Um yeah, I mean it's [clears throat] a few people have said this is not a workshop and it shows a real in my opinion lack of caring about the issue to not do any of the work to present ideas before we're sitting here trying to scramble down numbers and ask questions that we're not going to be able to get accurate answers for because we didn't submit it with the appropriate amount of time to research. church. So, you know, I uh I was also going to ask about what the uses of uh you know, any draw downs against the um the cash balance have been for. But I also am not going to really trust any specific numbers that are tossed out or specific lists at 10:00 at night when something was just scratched out on a napkin with no prior preparation. Um, I do not support using capital funds or cash balance funds for ongoing expenses. I would support, but we were not given the time to do this, a tax increase to fund firefighters. I I w I am committing on record. I would support that. I would support you uh applying for the safer grant. If we could require you to apply for the safer grant, I would say let's pass that. We can't require that is what I'm told. But, you know, I I absolutely will support initiatives to get sustainable funding for firefighters. I am not going to support haphazard drawing down from inappropriate funding

sources on the spot. to do so. Councilwoman Wilhelm,

um, Ditto, you know, I'm not interested in making a decision of this importance with back of the napkin math and on the spot. It's been said it's but it's also very difficult to hear the um the passion for this subject which in essence is serving to like create manufacture a pitting of council people against one another. We discussed pitting departments one against one another. Now you're looking at it happening up here. Um it's very difficult to hear that passion when it's been said many times this evening that these conversations could have happened months ago. If you're that passionate about helping, genuinely helping, then you do this work then when you can have many meetings with your colleagues, [clears throat] help them understand your perspective. But I hope you understand the position that we're being put in tonight. And as I've said to many of you personally, you know the many angles with which we need to look at every decision we make on behalf of the 78,000 residents in Bethlehem. And I'm, as my colleagues have said, am not comfortable making a decision like this as we're quickly scrolling down numbers and asking administrators and chief of of of fire to fire chief to to answer questions that that we're going to then say, "Yes, here's a multi,000 decision we're making. We're going to assume we're going to be able to figure it out every year after that. I'm not comfortable with it and and I I can't vote in support of this." Any other discussion from anyone who hasn't had the floor yet? I'll just [clears throat] one time make comment. I'm going to reinforce my earlier points. I think this is a process best solved through labor management with the contract coming up putting in the parameters of the contract what's been asked for. Aside from that, concurrently, there is a process underway for a plan to spend this money because regardless if if the

Wolf Council was to put this money in the budget, again, there is nothing binding any administration to exhaust these funds. The budget book as it's presented to us, every line item has a plan attached to it. The health bureau, they have a plan, a narrative how they're going to spend that money. uh DCEED, police, fire department, all these things. There's there's narratives in here. If we just raise a line item, there's no plan attached to that. We can state our wants and our wishes, but our our authority again is raising that line item. There there's no execution to that. And we've been asked to to put together a solution to a plan as it relates to adding one firefighter per shift, making it a lieut promoting someone to lieutenant, stationing someone out out on Katosaka Road. None of that happens by city council. It just doesn't. That's not separate but equal. Equal does not mean equal in powers and authority. uh you know I have as much authority over the HR department as the HR department has over how I vote on anything or how the clerk and I put the agenda together and and that's just there's different duties and powers and functions of the branches of government and and I continue to you know support a plan to address issues that have been presented over the last few weeks. I'll restate that at um 16 days ago city council meeting I had talked about putting amendments together. I believe I encouraged everyone to use their resources. One member of council did and put amendments together, submitted them. Our solicitor has been tasked with less than 48 hours looking things up as it relates to powers that council could do. There there is a real effect on asking people to take quick action on the spot with no notice. If I get home tonight and my

wife says, "Michael, I'm buying a car for $20,000. I need to know now yes or no." I'm going to tell her no. Like, why? What are you talking about? Like, that's just not how we budget money. That's not how we move money around in in a household, in a government, in a business. It's just impractical um in my opinion, and that'll be reflected in how I vote. So, Mr. Callahan.

Well, first off, um most of you don't know uh city council history then because um in in 10 years I was on council, we have um had amendments and moved money around at these type of meetings many times. Many times. Um Mr. Evans just told us five minutes ago asked him where's the $60,000 for the study budget. He's gonna we're gonna find it. He's going to come in and ask us to do that. We have correct the record. Excuse excuse me. And that's what you said. Like the record corrected. Did you keep misating? You said you're going to find it somewhere, right? I got the floor still. So anyways, I didn't hear what was said. Um, Mr. If I misheard what he said,

he just ran. I asked you where's the $60,000 line item for the study. You said, and I'll pull it up on video and play it next meeting. You said you got to find it. So, it's not Can you point to it now? Where it is now? To $60,000 budget. Continue. I'm asking you a question. You're You're the one speaking up. Where's the $60,000 in his budget book? Question. We've discussed this already, Mr.

And that's what I'm saying. He He said it already. He's gonna have to find it. So, my point is, we've moved money many times. And and just for the record, myself and Crampsy, Miss Crampsy Smith, we've talked how many times over the last two weeks, several times, I wasn't going to propose this stuff. I wanted her to because she was the one that was running with it. I didn't We don't have to propose the same things. I I I don't need to share the emails with you, but I have probably 20, 30 emails in the last three days, four days between myself and other people affiliated with this and text messages over and over again. So to say I came here unprepared is ridiculous. But I also know the administration and I think it's proved by what happened tonight. As Miss Crampy Smith said, I don't like giving them notice on things. I like to ask them point blank out in the open. I don't want things done in the background because when you give them notice, they're going to start getting their attack dogs after you. And that's what happened with her. If you saw some of the emails they sent her blaming her for this, blaming her for that. All she was trying to do was come up for some and this is a minuscule amount of money. Lenny, I got a question. You've been around a long time, right?

Yeah. All right. How how many times what's the lowest our cash balance ever got? I would say that's a historical question. No, I'm asking her question. I'll let her answer. But again, we're talking about Has it ever gotten other than $5 million? It's Well, it's not. You can't compare when it was at 5 million because when I first started the salary salary, smaller budget, right? 750,000. Now today's payroll for one week was 2 million. Okay. So you can't

Are you can if we moved $165,000 from from from the cash balance? Are you telling us that there's a possibility we might run out of money that we're that short on money? It's going [snorts] down a slippery slope. You shouldn't be budgeting cash, right? You should just be either increasing taxes, something that's match, you do matching. So you have to match expenses with revenues. So you have if that expense is going to reoccur, you need the matching revenue to reoccur with it. Well, that's our job next year to find that addition. But that but that's how that's how you how you should be budgeting,

right? I I I agree. But like in 2019 when we only had a $15 million cash balance, he moved 3.9 million. I know. I know it was a onetime expense. No, but that wasn't that was 911. The county took over the 911 system and we had revenue in a 911 account. So 1.9 million it was. Yes. Right. The rest of it was out of the cash balance. The other one was a deed transfer from SANS that they got a couple hundred thousand. 300,000. Yeah. So that's what it was. So it was one time expense with the onetime revenue. Yeah. But there was 3.9 million moved total. Okay. One time. Yeah. All one time.

It was one time. So listen to this. Okay. Here's the math. I seriously doubt that moving $165,000 is going to jeopardize our cash balance. I know. Hold on. We moved $3.9 million when it was only a $15 million cash balance. We have over a $20 million cash balance now. Maybe more. Last year you said it was what? 26 million. 28 28 what? 20 29 29 million. And this year we we don't we're not sure where. Okay.

But my point here is in saying this, we moved 3.9 million on a $15 million cash balance. We if if if we divide that by $165,000, which is what I'm trying to move, it would take 23 years to move that same amount of money million wasn't in the 91 wasn't in the general fund. It was in the 911 fund, which was a separate fund, but since the county took it over, we were allowed to use it as we saw fit, which was to spend it on something that wasn't a reoccurring expense.

Right. But I'm just saying though the reoccurring expense of $165,000 that's going to be our job next year to to find it. Yes. It's just a very bad practice. [snorts] Right. But it's [clears throat] only done in dire circumstances. Right. And we're not in dire circumstances. They're not what the fire department isn't.

I don't know what that's I don't work for HR. I don't do the union contract. I think and I would hope the rest of this council thinks that with the situation with the fire department out is dire. And I think moving $165,000 one time is not a big ask. We can find the money next year, the extra $165,000. And I know it'll probably be a little bit more, but guys, come on. This is not a big ask. We're not We're not asking uh a huge amount of money. We're never, if we moved $165,000, I guarantee you that cash balance is never getting under $15 million at any time this year. At any time this year, they're going to they're trying to act like, "Oh my god, if we move $165,000, we're running out of money. It's never getting under I I I guarantee it's not getting under $15 million anytime next year." Let's use common sense here, please. Do you have anything else to add on this motion? M

the eight salaries that Miss uh Quiet Tech was talking about, that's all budgeted already though, right? Those eight salaries for the guys coming out of the academy. Yes. Okay. So that's all all that money is already there already, right? Um that's it. I want I want to wait and until we have the vote and then I got another amendment. Councilwoman Leard. Yeah. Can we move the question forward then? So, it is your [clears throat] motion to move the question forward. So, is that myote? Yes. Okay. Can I comment before we do that?

I I I'll turn to our solicitor, but I believe there's if there's there's no discussion on it. So, Councilwoman Leard motion to move the question forward. There's a second now just to procedurally inform the room what's going on. Um, they motioned to take it to a vote. Uh, Attorney Stewart, is there discussion on a motion to move the question essentially call the role on the vote? There is no debate on a motion to move the previous pre previous discussion. Okay. So, the motion on the floor by Councilwoman Leard, second by Council Wilhelm to call the vote on Mr. Callahan's motion. There's no discussion on the motion, but I have a question. I just

No, but you said we all were going to get another turn to talk and I didn't but they motioned and there was a second. That's a procedural. Attorney Stewart, interject if I'm wrong. No, you're correct. Procedurally, they they ended all discussion. Well, there's a we're gonna vote on their motion. Attorney Miller. Congratulations. [laughter] Mi Mr. Miller, call the role, please. Mr. Callahan, I. Miss Grampy Smith, I. Miss Quitec I. Miss Lair. On the motion, not I. That's it. [clears throat] It was your eye. [laughter] Miss Le I, Miss Wilhelm, I and Mr. Cologne.

I So now that that motion passes, Mr. Miller, call the role on this is to the actual vote on Mr. Callahan's amendment. Mr. Callahan, [clears throat] I miss Grampy Smith. I miss nay. Miss Leard, nay. Miss Leon, nay. Miss Wilhelm, nay. And Mr. Colom, nay. Motion fails. Uh, two, four, five against with two voting in favor. You have something else, M. Cali? I have a couple. I got I'm going do one at a time here. Um, I have a a motion to move $100,000 out of the community recovery fund

page number. Mr. Callahan, give me a second here. I have a a question for um Miss Collins real quick. M I I need a motion on the floor. Mr. Calhan, I I have a question first though. Yeah, but but what but I need a mo What are we I need a motion

I'm going to motion to move uh I I from what I remember from our last meeting. Um, I want to move on page 175 from the community recovery fund. I want to move $165,000, very small amount of the 1.6 that's in there. And I believe that when um we talked at the last meeting, there was money there was some money that was already promised or uh uh to certain organizations, but according to the mayor and Miss Collins, there was $900,000 that was not that's still in the fund that is not promised to anybody. So, all I'm trying to do is move $165,000. Um what was that number again? I want to move $165,000 from um the community recovery fund. It's at 1.6 right now. move $165,976 [clears throat] to the same uh fund that I listed before with the four firefighters for the academy. $80,000 salary 121346

promote for firefighters 10,46 medical 52,110 pension 57482 and it's 27th pay in 2026 10,000 135 and that would take the uh the balance of the community recovery fund, which again that money uh there's $900,000 that is not appropriated at all or promised to anybody. Um that would take that account down to 1,47,152.

Is that your motion, Mr. Callian? Yeah. Well, and then there's uh the 165,000 again from the uh overtime budget. That's so we're not touching any reoccurring funds. Is that complete your motion, Mr. Cal? It is. Is there a second? Second discussion. Can we Can you repeat exactly what the mo the amendment is?

We could have done that before the second, Councilwoman, just for future clarification. Go ahead, Mr. Callian. The amendment is to move um $165,976 from the community recovery fund. Uh it's currently at 1,623,128 and I wanted to I want to transfer $165,976 and that still leaves an enormous amount of money of 1.457152 4571521 1,457,152 in the community recovery fund and that still leaves another $8,000 of that that is not accounted for according to Miss Collins and the mayor.

Does that clarify? The other account because that's the only one the other account. Yeah, the other account was the overtime fun. fire overtime. Fire overtime. And that's the same numbers as before. So now we're not touching any um any uh onetime uh revenues. So there was already a second discussion on the motion. We All right, let's call the ro. I go ahead, Mr. Callahan. I'm not surprised.

And this isn't again this is uh this is done many many times. We will have finance meetings in the distant future where they show up. We have a an hour meeting and we're going to move millions of dollars. So I don't know how people think moving $165,000 at a meeting that we're talking about right now is any different than moving millions of dollars or 200 or 300 or $500,000. And I'm telling you, it's coming up. We're gonna have a finance meeting where they're going to ask us to move some money. It's it's it's moving one line item money from one line item to another. This is not that big of an ask. [clears throat] I don't know why why it's it's not at the last minute. This is our budget. This is a this is the last budget hearing and we're [snorts] asking to move a small amount of money, which we do all the time. We don't need a week and a half preparation to move $1.2 $2 million or $4 million or $3 million. They they ask us this on a regular basis. We're asking for $165,000 freaking dollars, man. Oh, man.

Any further discussion? Councilwoman Crampy Smith. Um [snorts] I guess I just I have a question, but I'm not sure if it's now. I'm wondering. We talked about labor management and that's when we should talk about um you [sighs] know you mentioned President Cologne that's when departments should look for new positions. I mean is that are you implying that every department should do that or just the fire department?

I'm going to briefly clarify because it's not relevant to this amendment but I feel free to. So, as it relates to the collective bargaining agreement, there is a state statute, Attorney Stewart could correct me if I'm wrong, where firefighters have the right for as a mandatory subject of negotiations, either minimum staffing or personnel per apparatus staffing, which is a method to address some of the concerns we heard. Uh the IAFF study um suggests minimum staffing given the current locations and also suggests a potential future location and what the recommended minimum staffing is for that location given the language of what's I've read and has been presented to me. I think that that that could explicitly be addressed at the collective bargaining agreement during uh negotiations. I understand that's what you you meant that they should address this issue like now

as part as part of what's going to be going on in 2026 when I asked Mr. Ev. Okay. Thank you.

Um as far as this goes I mean I I think you know one thing that has to be remembered here is it's not like I don't think any of us or especially I'll speak for myself because I've been accused of trying to pin one department or one fund against another. That's not it. This is we're trying to balance the budget and we're trying to meet the needs of the community. We've said it times. I again have devoted my life to working with people that are in need that are um served by all of our nonprofits and I think many of them here know I have worked with them and I I value everything they do and I'll advocate for those. But the flip side is we have to have a safe city and a community and we don't have enough firefighters to do that right now. We don't and that's reality. So, it's not pinning one department or one funding stream against the other in my mind. It's prioritizing is hard. You know, I know I grew up poor and I know what it's like to try to budget and rob from Peter to pay Paul. You know, when I was um divorced and raising my kids on my own, um not raising them on my own, but on my own financially, it's it's difficult. So, I've had to make those difficult decisions in life. And I just want to say that that's where I'm at. These are difficult and I better not take any money from the community um recovery fund. The flip side is again we talk about you know taking money and just once and done. We have the safer grant. We only ever applied for that once over 10 years ago and we got it. When I the people I talked to at the international and state level firefighters no grant is guaranteed but they feel strongly that we can get it because we're eligible for it because we're underst staffed. We get grants. We get multiple grants. We have some departments like health department that is almost totally funded on grants. grants are not, you know, they're contingent and we're putting in our revenues. So, I think we have to remember that. The other thing we have to remember is we're looking at 31

people that are able to retire and many of them want to retire. So, that's an issue. If we can take the money from where we can at this point and I feel confident that it can go back in the community recovery fund because we'll either get the safer grant or we'll get money from people that are going to retire. 31 people up for retirement. That's significant. So given that, I will support this amendment and any other amendments that are proposed that um you know are a legitimate. Further discussion? Councilwoman Leo.

Um I won't support anything that cuts the community recovery fund as I have spoken to multiple members of the union, multiple members of the community, and they have both expressed the desire to not cut the community recovery fund. That's from the firefighters, that's from the community. I also agree that we would be a strong candidate for the safer grant. But as it was stated earlier, we would find out about the safer grant in September or October and the second academy starts in July. And I will once again reiterate that although we have these meetings quite regularly, we can also have this meeting this one right here in like two weeks, three weeks, four weeks. We we can do this again. I'm going to do four not on the fly. So I mean let them vote for it.

We [clears throat] have four more. Maybe we should just start calling these things to vote. That's not a motion. I think Colleen wants to say something, but let's let's get to to see what else is out there. Further discussion.

Councilwoman Quiet. Uh just again uh something that we didn't talk about in the last one but should be brought up is the fact that it's $334,500 for six months which means we'd actually be looking for um less than 80,000 for the for the academy uh $570 some odd,000 um the next year. Uh so it's not $334,500 that we'd be looking for. It would be over a half a million. Um, again, uh, taking from the community, uh, recovery fund, those are one-time funds. Uh, there are people who have proposed things tonight who don't know how, uh, the overtime gets replenished and don't know why the community recovery fund was going down. So I, you know, in terms of again, uh, just knowledge of how these things work and, uh, considering how, you know, I've been on council for four years. Some people have been on here much longer and didn't, again, didn't know how salary turns into overtime. Uh, it's not a magical uh, you know, finding of money like uh, like uh, the the beans or that, you know, built made the golden goose, whatever the hell that stupid story is. Um, it's late. Uh, so just again, I just have to reiterate it and I know I'm repeating myself a little bit, but these are these are real decisions. This is real money. Um, you know, uh, there have been people on this council who've suggested we raise uh we should raise a tax to uh fix the sidewalks on Main Street. Uh, who's who are now saying that they, you know, never vote for tax increases unless it's for public safety. So I, you know, there's a lot to unpack here, but the bottom line is that again, once again, we're talking about uh the uh the you know, some of it taking from the fire overtime

and and and it being not the right time to do that and and then uh the other half of it coming from one-time funds. And and finally uh just also um with the safer grant, you know, I highly encourage the administration to go for it. Uh however again as we know uh if we hire if we if we put these if we put the the four positions in and we send them to the the academy in July before the decision before the the submission phase has ended and any consideration or decision has been made. We have to start paying them and then they are no longer new employees and FEMA is not going to give us money to put back into the community uh recovery fund. I don't think they would look on that very favorably. That that that money that they are sending us is to pay firefighters. Yes, some money is fungeible, but that I think is is, you know, again, we're going to have to show proof that, you [clears throat] know, uh that we're using their money for new firefighters. Um there was something else there. Um, you know, I I just want to again thank everybody who has put time and effort into this. Um, oh, and I just want to also finally say that, you know, I've been on the finance committee for a couple of years now, and we don't just move money around. There's a lot that goes into the money that gets moved around. Um and we always get documentation of it, you know, weeks before we have our uh finance committee and then uh we have people from the administration come and we ask them questions about why are we moving this money and a lot and not every move of money is the same. It's they they all vary but you know some of them are because um you know um Miss Wenwick will have some extra funds in one pocket that could be used within her division for another purpose. Um, sometimes we get a grant and so we have to create a revenue

line um to put the grant in and then we have to create an expense line to put how we're where we're going to actually push the money through and spend it so that we continue to have a balanced budget. We don't just move things around uh you know sort of willy-nilly. There's there's always got to be a revenue and an expense. It's always got a balance um each time we we each time we vote on one of these things. In fact, Mr. Miller can attest that he has to read this will bring the total of the, you know, and the budget or the general fund or whatever it is that you say to blah blah blah blah million 3335,000, you know, and so we account for every dollar when we do that and uh there is, you know, documentation and accountability from the administration on it. So, I just don't want people to leave with the wrong impression about what we're doing. Um, it's not it's not [clears throat] I know people want it to be simple, but it's not simple. And I know that, you know, again, like I don't pay my, you know, my mortgage with, you know, the money I won on, you know, from a scratch off ticket. So, I, you know, have a job with an ongoing salary to have a sustainable source of revenue to pay for my mortgage and my groceries and my light bill. So, it's it's Oh, yes, I do have a beach house. Thank you for sharing that with everybody, Mr. Callahan. Yes,

I'm gonna ask I would love to tell the story of that to folks after this meeting. I'm going to ask all of very happy to do that. Particularly council on my left to respect property quorum as relates to talking when other people are talking. I'll ask Councilwoman Will. I'm sorry. Please finish. Please finish. Please finish your thoughts, Councilwoman. I'm done. Thank you, Mr. Mr. President speaking attorney Miller, Councilwoman Wilhelm, the um [clears throat] again for the sake of everyone in the room, let's keep this moving. Any other discussion for members of council? Yeah, I'd like to motion to move the previous question to vote. Again, there's a motion on the floor. Is there a second? Second.

All right. Call uh call the role. There's no discussion. Mr. Miller, please call the role on the motion to move the previous question forward. Mr. Callahan. Uh, I Miss Crampy Smith. I Miss Quitech. Hi. Miss Leairard. I Miss Leon. Hi. Miss Wilhelm. Hi. Mr. Cologne. Hi. The motion passes. So now call the role on Mr. Callahan's amendment. Mr. Callahan. I. Miss. Crampy Smith. I. Miss. Quiet. Nay. Miss. Leard. Nay. Miss. Lemong. Nay. Miss Wilhelm. Nay. Mr. Cologne.

Nay. fails, five against, two four. Are there any other motions or amendments tonight? Councilwoman Wilhelm, you have your hand up. Yes. Um, I feel at this point we are all repeating ourselves over and over again. Questions are being presented over and over again as if they've not been answered, requiring the same answers multiple times. For this reason, I would like to motion to adjourn this meeting. There is a motion on the floor to adjurnn. I have one more amendment that I'd like to propose.

Mr. Callian, I recognize that. I also procedurally there's a motion on the floor to adjurnn. Is there a second to the motion there? There is no second to the motion. Understood. The motion fails. Mr. Callahan. Again, the narrative is not necessary from anybody. I Well, you know what? I'm sorry. I have to I have to interject. I I'm not going to allow an interjection, Councilwoman. And I apologize.

Make a comment because it's these under the breath comments made that are rude to colleagues and none of us are doing that. It is inappropriate and I'm not going to be reprimanded for responding to a rude comment from my colleague. You don't get everybody enough Mr. Callahan, Miss Wilhelm, everyone up here. Rude is the time that we've spent here for everybody. Respectful. Go ahead with your last motion, Mr. Callahan. I I I have one other question. Uh your go ahead with your motion, Mr. Callahan. Did uh how much of a millage rate increase would we have to have to raise $331,000?

Point of order. Councilwoman, state your point. Uh there is either make a motion or uh correct Mr. Callahan, state your motion, please. I I would like to make a motion to increase our millage rate um by an amount that equals $331,000 and 400 no 331 $479. Now what I would second Thank you. And I would ask the administration if you are aware of how much that's there. There there was a motion. There was a second. Who second it? All right. Motion by Mr. Callahan.

Hold on. I I need clarification for a second. What is your motion to to raise

I want to raise the millage rate for the f first time in in 10 years that I voted for something like this. I want to raise the millage rate to the millage rate equal to 331,479 to fund. This is going to be reoccurring expenses. So the all that talk about non-reoccurring expenses and taking out the cash reserves and out of overtime, this is going to be a small amount of money. And I I I would ask the administration if if they had a chance to figure out how much um Okay, then the rate.

Where's that money going then, Mr. Hel? It's going to um do I have to repeat these again?

Yep. For the sake of purpose of your motion. Age or um academy for firefighters 80,000 salary for firefighters 121,346 promote four firefighters the lieutenant 6 months 10,46 medical 52,110 pension 57,482 and the 27th pay in 2026 101 $135 for a total of $331,479. I I don't know this for a fact, but from what I from understood that uh that would equal to about $30 a household uh for to raise that amount of money. So, I don't know if that's correct, and that's why I'm asking for advice from

Yeah. from uh I don't know what the millage rate would have to be increased and how much that dollar amount would be. that that's something we'll take about at least 30 30 minutes because there's calculations. There's two different mill rates between the two counties. I'm just trying to explain what goes into it to know what the percentage is and how there's spreadsheets that we do when we make these considerations, but it's not something I could do now. I could tell you it's going to be uh now this is the six six month current proposal. It'll be about 1%. I just want to finish procedurally. Yeah.

That Mr. Callahan formally introduces motion with what we're raising. So on page five, real estate taxes, you're want to raise 331479. Correct. Is that correct? Yes. And then the the 331479 that we directly for no other use other than the four firefighters. And I don't think you could do I can't allocate you can't allocate. You could raise the general fund, but that's why it has to be balanced. I mean, theoretically, it's a balanced budget, but you can't allocate Yeah. where that where that revenue is. I would hope that if council passed it, it would motion second discussion. Mr. Evans, go ahead.

Yeah, it would take care of itself because if you're putting that revenue in, you're going to put the expense in the where you choose the expense, right? Which is those line items I Yeah. Yeah. [snorts] Okay. So, we're in I just procedurally want to talk out loud. So, we have a budget ordinance that we um well, first off, this would have to pass, but just talking out loud. The our ordinance defines the mill rate, Mr. Evans. Correct. For Northampton County, for Lehigh County. Yes.

So, we would have to amend the budget ordinance, which is not in front of us. The actual millage rate is not part of the book, but we would have to amend the actual ordinance that has the millage rate to coincide with coming up with 33147. Correct. Should it [snorts] be the will of council to pass Mr. Callahan's amendment? Then can we um would would that be enough then to essentially amend the language of the budget ordinance that coincides with that? So, I guess what I'm getting at is if it does pass, we don't need the millage rate right now because the number would be amended in the book and then the actual ordinance on the millage rate would simply coincide to amount to 331479. Am I making sense?

Yeah. Yeah. I think on the the night of the 16th, the final vote, there's going to be a couple amendments. It's a millage rate is one ordinance and then the revenue that's goes with it. you know, when you move that up, it's going to drive additional revenue that will need to be adjusted for what we have under the real. So, so can can attorney Stewart, could this motion in cap just [clears throat] be a blanket for the real estate taxes on page five, which subsequently ties directly to the military ordinance. It's a part of the budget. It's a budget amendment. So, yes. Great. Thank you. I just need to make sure that's out there. Further discussion, Councilwoman Leard?

Yeah. Uh, so I've been asking a lot of questions about the tax increase as we've gone along um through this process. Procedurally, do we have the time? Because I believe tax rates, if they're annual, I I was told have to be set by December 31st. We would. It's an ordinance, so we have to vote on it twice. Correct. We Well, we've already voted one time on the ordinance itself, the budget ordinance. This would be an amendment which Mr. Miller would have to coordinate advertising. I don't mean this budget. Sorry to interrupt, but I mean the ordinance that sets the millage rate.

Yeah, it's all tied. We we would have our second reading of the ordinance that sets the millage rate on December. If nothing's amended, we still vote on the 16th on the millage rate. So, if it's amended, Mr. Miller would work in concert with attorney Stewart to make sure we're meeting our um advertising timelines to advertise a change because it's a substantial or significant change to the ordinance. It would have to be advertised. I believe 10 days is the advertising limit and then it would have to be posted for 10 days prior to the second reading. So Mr. [snorts] say again

that's a question for Mr. Miller in terms of the timing of advertisement 16th deadline is Monday. I guess when does it go as we're talking out loud the the the question on the floor is should we amend it? Would we meet our advertising obligations for the 16th of December when? Monday for Wednesday's publication. So, so advertisements go in on Wednesday appeared or published.

When's the soonest we would be able to have the advertisement in a paper of general circulation? That's check on the morning call. I don't know.

The uh Okay. So, we're up against as has been pro as has been discussed tonight and previous tonight, we're up against the timeline. So, I don't think any of us, Mr. Miller or myself, Attorney Stewart, can speak with confidence that we would meet those um advertising deadlines for the second reading. I that that was the impression I had been under, but then I thought since we were like, "Oh, we we don't need the number tonight, then maybe we could because like I said, I would support raising the taxes to fund emergency services because that's what they're for." But my other question is

the proposal was to raise the millage rate to equal the 330 something, which is still not sustainable ongoing. So my consideration would be not to raise it to 330 something. it would be to raise it to the full amount for a year. However, my next question goes to chief. Does that mean that we can't apply for the safer grant if we are funding that full amount? Well, or if we fund six months, [snorts]

could we still apply because we wouldn't be fully funded for the positions? My understanding is we could not if we already hired for those positions that we could not then apply for the safer grant retroactively to pay for the positions we already hired for. That grant would have to be utilized for new positions.

And I apologize, we are being forced to think on the fly about these scenarios. If we raised the millage rate to the proposed number, that could fund six months of four firefighters, right? Or it could fully fund two firefighters. And our job is not to figure out how those dollars are specifically allocated. We're defining here is the money, here's the pot, and you make the staffing. Mo, the administration makes the staffing decisions, which would mean two positions. If you chose to hire two firefighters at a year's salary budgeted, you would still have two unhired for firefighter positions that could theoretically be applied for grant funds to help with I know I'm getting like loopy here, but

theoretically that sounds like it could be correct. Yes, I I would have to research that, but I understand where you're coming from depending how the funds were allocated. I that would be a discussion we would have to have outside of Yeah, I'm just thinking again, this is all on the fly and out loud, but the if you hire them for a full year, there's they can't go to the January Academy anyway, right? First time you would really want them. what are you going to do with them on salar until July anyway? So, right, there's that

we would be allocating more funds than may be realistically spent and could be addressed at the at a later point in the year through a budget transfer perhaps. Um, these were, yeah, these were the things I have been asking about and really thought that we didn't have the the time to do it. And it sounds like we're not certain that we have the time, but we might have the time. So, what happens if we pass? If this would pass, motion on the table would pass. What happens if we cannot meet the advertising deadlines? then we would be out of compliance with the law for advertising.

So, it would automatically fail or it would move forward out of compliance with the law. Like, how does that We've never We've I I'll turn attorney Stewart in in my decade on council. We've we've never knowingly been out of compliance with what our what our Well, we're suggesting that we knowingly go out of then it's an invalid ordinance. So, we would we would need to retract the ordinance and say we didn't have time this year or I would say responsibly not vote on it if we didn't advertise it. Right. That's an option. Okay. Right. [snorts]

Uh [laughter] okay. I think

uh another question that I'm not sure can be answered on the spot. This would be for administration. Would the plan continue to do the staffing study? Because while four positions are being asked for and could be funded, I also said I support datadriven decision-m and I believe that we could since we the city, the union and the administration are approaching negotiating decisions about staffing could be made as that's as the study results come back where they go, where a station is added or not added or closed or opened or where there's leadership, where there's not leadership, etc. So, I would think that the study is still very important to do because one, it looks at more than just fire. It looks at EMS also, and two, it looks at more than just the the data that was presented by the IIAFF. It's broader and more comprehensive. I support that. So, would that plan still continue? with the understanding that there are funds available to hire these positions in the meantime.

That's something we'll have to circle back on. I mean, this changes the perspective of if if this is now the performance or the of the way it will be handled um versus a study. I mean, if this was a decision versus a study not to play one against the other, but I I'm not going to make a commitment right now based on we'll see what happens with you tonight, right? because there was a plan in place to do it. So now, right, my suggestion would be that still happens and then that would be your suggestion. Okay. That the that the plan still move forward at to do a study and to use data from that to make long-term decisions. But what does this knowing that there is still

you understand our concern that if you have a study and then it it gets this happens again. I I um I understand. Okay. We take your recommendation. But there's not a commitment that it would still move forward.

I I'm not going to speak to the mayor on that. Yeah, that's a mayor's ultimate call in the end. So, no matter what I say, it's going to be the mayor's call based on um his decision. Uh I I I do think something that you said though about the the one and 2% is important to do that if council's making a commitment now to fund whether it's the two or the four whatever the math works on it. They should also at this time, I know you can't make the vote on now, but commit that there's another 1% owed to square this up next year because you'd find funded a half a position and we'll create a $300,000 hole next year immediately in the budget that there's one here. There will be need to be another 1% or whatever uh next year. Are we allowed to do something contingent on a future increase?

No. No. No. Okay. It's just a matter of if the votes are there from these council people that push it forward that we would expect that the same people would remain on council remain on council enough carryover that they're making the votes if that's what happens that we're going to come back and say listen there's a there's an unfunded mandate here at one point gave it six months and now we have four if that's what it is um coming back we have 1% we need that other percent tax increase from council to fully fund a year of these positions Understood. Any other discussion on the amendment? Councilwoman Leo.

Um, one I want to say there were some amendments that I was going to propose, but after speaking with the admin, like with our solicitor, they were legally not viable. So, I did not propose them. Um, and I did work with other members of council uh to try and figure something out. So, I just want to make it clear that just because amendments didn't make it to the table doesn't mean that there wasn't a good faith effort to try and make something happen. Um, I will continue to not pit people against each other, but I will put in a very gentle reminder that we have another first response, emergency response department that is just as critically banned. And I, for one, have very strong feelings about what this means to them. I just that needs to be recognized. They're not here to speak for themselves when it comes to this. um a tax increase for first response. It's the reason I voted for a tax increase last time for the four EMS. I'm okay with a tax increase for first response. What I'm not okay with is the 11th hour passing a tax increase in a city of roughly 78,000 people who have only heard we are not increasing taxes. as a council person, they are they are not the 78,000 people are not in this room and they should at least have an opportunity to hear that we are going to raise their taxes which I understand is what the reporting period is for but who reads no offense who reads the newspaper [laughter] like literally nobody sorry

just close your computer [laughter] I'm never going behind a pay never paying behind a pay wall just saying so my question to attorney Stewart is can I increase the millage rate in January or in February, you have to [sighs] pass a balanced budget. The millage rate is a part of the budget and you have to do that before December 31st. Now you have the opportunity to open the budget. That was my question about new admin. Well, it's technically not a new administration, but an election was had like does an oncoming administration have the right to open up a budget? No, you can't do that. and new council for that matter.

And new council members, do we have the right to open up a budget? Under section, what is it? There there is a statutory section of [sighs] the third class city code that enables the budget to be amended by C council. Like I said a couple hours ago, um deadline for any budget amendment ordinance being offered on or before February 15th. Well, it has to be passed by February 15th, but the problem with the taxes is that you're sending out tax notices. So that that is not January 1st and the first installment's already due by the first week of February. So that's not

Yeah. You know, is there a statute that says that? No. But practically, in practicality, it's not going to work, right? And we can't for sure say that we could responsibly inform the public of raising taxes. We don't even have a millage rate. Further discussion.

I'll just say Mr. I was motion to say I'll give you a chance after I speak. Mr. Ken, sorry. The uh I'll just reinforce as it relates to raising taxes that without a plan to actually spend this money, we've heard a proposal from a plan from one side. there's an there's a executive branch that has to execute this plan without a execution of the plan. Now we've just raised taxes and then if that money is not spent it just rolls right back into the the general fund and goes into something like the cash balance. So the from in practice it's not it goes it speaks to my earlier points that again we're amending a line item or multiple line items right to say we're going to raise this expenditure we're going to raise this revenue but that's not a we we heard about the finance committee when we have finance committee meetings we get a memo a plan a stated execution from the branch of government that administers you know day-to-day government and says this is what you know this is the grant that we got in we make this budget amendment or we're going to raise this to do this and and there's more um it's it's clearly spelled out how that balances out and then that there's a stated commitment saying we need these funds to do this. This is council saying essentially kind of unilaterally without a a a full conversation just saying okay here so again if now we've raised taxes we've raised revenues that money doesn't have to be spent it just rolls right back into the general fund. Um I did want just clarify a point that or I believe it would just roll back into the general fund like any other you know money that's not spent or go carry on in the cash balance. I did want to make a point to just going back and um Councilman Cry Smith, you had asked about, you know, my comments. I cited a state statute. Uh there's case law relevant to that. So, it it's it's the case law interpretation of the statute

just to be more clear. Uh a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling on that. the and I'll just close my remarks on on this with again without a uh plan council is simply changing line items without a commitment to one move any you know use this money for any of those stated purposes because there's line items and or at least how it's been asked of us. So I I will not without a firm commitment. It's not that I'm opposed to raising taxes. I've done it before, but I don't just want to do it to say I'm going to do it to do this, and there's no plan to actually do that. I would need to hear more on a process, which I support a plan coming forward in 2026 to address the concerns of our fire department. Further discussion.

Oh, go ahead, Councilwoman Quitech, on this motion. Yeah, sorry.

No, that's okay. I know there have been a lot of motions tonight. Um, I just uh what Councilwoman Leon said about uh or perhaps it was Councilwoman Leard uh about the fact that this is actually only for six months and therefore we would have to double essentially uh whatever the tax increase is. Um and then um the idea that we would do it in two parts um seems kind of um not well thought through. Um, so if we were going to do it, uh, you know, I think the the proposal should be the, you know, to for a full years. Um, and as you said, we probably wouldn't be spending it. Um, and the timing is very very tight. Um, I am also not opposed to raising uh taxes for public safety. I think I spoke about that quite clearly earlier today. Um, earlier tonight rather. Uh, but it has to be, I think, uh, you know, again, planned out. uh considered um give give our community time to uh digest it which is you know important as as Councilwoman Leyon said. So those are my concerns.

Uh second round of discussion. I'll start with Mr. Callahan. Did did you happen to find out how much uh of a millage rate increase that would be or how much it would No, I'm here with No, we we need spreadsheets to do that. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought Oh, you thought she [clears throat] went there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, sorry about that. I I um miss revis when when we were on finance before I don't know I don't remember what it was but I remember if we if we raised it I think it was if we raised it for every millillage point we raised it that raised like x amount of millions of dollars it was like I don't know if it was depends on what the assessment is at the moment so if we raise the do do you happen to know I don't have that if we raised it one point on the assessment we don't know how much that would raise

the mill is going to be a fraction of a mil of of a mill. But percentage- wise, it's going to be again for half a year, a percent, it's going to be between one and a half and 2% to cover a year of of what's been proposed to do the All right. 600,000. So, we can we can get that number at our final budget meeting, right? Of how much? Yeah. Yeah, we would. Yeah. Um when we vote on the when we vote on it. Attorney Stewart wants to weigh in. If you're going to make an amendment, that amendment has to be published and advertised. And so, you need to know what you're So, I'm sorry. We have gone back and forth about do we have time? Don't we have time? Yeah,

I really think no. And that's that's where I started and then I kind of I my bad. I shouldn't have kind of backed [clears throat] away from that. Um, you you need to know exactly what your amendment is in order for it to be advertised. Once it's um if we came up with a a number now, it could always be amended at the final budget meeting. No, because that would be a significant amendment. It would have to be advertised again.

So why are we having these budget meetings so late in the season when the reason for we have these budget meetings is so we can have these discussions. I mean, it's almost tying our hands from doing what we want to do. Um, I mean, I I know for a fact when I was on council before, we made budget amendments uh at this last meeting and they got passed and there was no problems with advertising or nothing. Um, I know m I'm pretty sure Mr. Reynolds when he was on council proposed some under Mr. Donz and I think I proposed a few and I think Mr. Evans even proposed a few. So,

um, it's been done before. I mean, I'll answer I'll answer that, Mr. So, we'd have to I mean, we're going by memory. I know we've had budget meetings where nothing had passed. These are not typical. I'll just say I worked with Attorney Miller on a timeline. attorney attorney Miller had volar. I mean, I'll just say I I worked on a timeline in conjunction with my resources as I encourage everyone else to use resources. We looked at sort of historical dates of when we've when we've had things. So, I just followed historical dates that we've used before.

Um, off the top of your head, do you think a half a percentage a half a point would raise over I think it raises over $600,000. What is it? What you're talking about a fraction of a mill in the Northampton County or the Lehigh County? I I we can't commit to what that is tonight if you know um percentage wise. What's our mill rate right now? It's 19.64. And how much money is coming in through the general equal? Northampton County and then there's a Lehigh County.

Yeah, they have to equal. So there's math. to figure out which one you have to get the report to figure out what assessment is in Lehi and what's in Northampton so I could get it run it to EIT tomorrow. So couldn't we just right now add in the Do we have to have the millage rate average right now or do we say

no I I spoke about that Mr. Callahan, we we we would and we would have the Attorney Stewart, correct me, is I thought this is why I brought up. If we amend the budget, couldn't we then just doesn't the mill? So, the budget amendment has to correlate with the millage rate. So wouldn't by passing the budget amendment we sort of also adopt a new millage rate since it's all without having I guess the raw number on page five for real estate taxes and again this is contingent on if this passes 331479 so we raise that 331479 the military can't not balance out so

you you've advertised you've adver Well, but we would have to need that as soon as possible. But do you have to I don't know this question, but do you have to advertise what the mill is changing from and to because there's a there's a number a revenue number an ordinance and then the one ordinance actually sets the millage rates. Does that right and that ordinance has been advertised. So this is a substantial amendment to that ordinance and it would have to reflect the new military and be readvertised. Can I ask a question? Go ahead, solicitor.

When we talked about this throughout this process, you said um annualized taxes have to be determined by year end. Um what at our dis at our disposal, what are the non-anualized taxes? [snorts] [sighs and gasps] And yes, I recognize we are like you're doing this on the fly. For example, your um deed transfer your real estate your you're your yes your deed transfer but but I believe we're already at the max for that well and we we looked at that too it would be like Miss Crampy Smith and I looked at that and it was this much money that we'd get from it was not it's not it's not um it's 500,000 it's not 10,000 it's 500,000

oh okay other discussion on what's on the floor

I would just say I would just ask that we we vote on changing um you know, if if we don't have a number right now raising it uh a half a millage point, uh I I I'm pretty sure that it's going to raise well over $500,000 for half a millage point. So there there's two and not to interrupt you, Mr. Calan, but there's two conflicting things going on here. So there's the page five real estate tax. There's a general fund ordinance. Correct, Mr. Evans. Correct me if I'm wrong here. There's a general fund ordinance we vote on. So that's going to have the revenues, real estate taxes, and a number. But then we vote on a set millage rate. So I think I'd feel more comfortable if our solicitor says, and again, this just for the purposes of the voting. This is so just we get that part right. The if we could just say the millage rate ordinance will then correspond with the appropriate millage rate increase to increase the real estate taxes line item by 3314 $479,000 rather because because if we say half a half a point or half a it's not points it's not percentages it's mills. So you would be half a mill if that number doesn't correspond with

you know the the general fund. Now there's an imbalance there. This is that's not Yeah, that's not a I think I would have actually raised more money than we would need. It's about matching. It's about balance. Mr. Cali, again, this is why this this would have helped to have had earlier. This is why we I know, but this is why we're having these meetings so we can have it discussed. We No matter if we dis if we discussed it earlier, we're still going to vote on it at this meeting. You have the number. You'd have that number, but but people would know what they're voting on.

Yeah. But what um if we pass let's say hypothetically uh solicitor let's say we we raise it a half a millillage point okay and then we have our final budget meetings we are allowed to have an amendment to that at the final budget meeting we have to readvertise you have to yeah exactly you have to readvertise

so the state the state is required to have a budget by a certain time too and so are we so if we if we if we have to readvertise guys, that it it was in it wasn't uh out of um a lack of due diligence. We we we had a a a millage rate that was advertised. We had our final budget meeting. There was an amendment made to it and the amendment was passed and and uh and then it's it's it's uh it's it's you know, we we have we're going to have to advertise whatever we pass tonight, we advertise it tomorrow. But but if you say but my point is you saying half a mill it's not a a millage point. It's half a mill that does not fall in balance with right the revenue of 331479. That's why I'm saying

but my point is at the final budget meeting we'll have that number and we can have an amendment to it. It's going to go down. So not up. But once you have that amendment you have to readvertise before you can vote. Right. So, I guess my point would be why why are we having these budget? Why wouldn't we have a budget meeting when we can't make an amendment to it? That's crazy. I'm gonna say Mr. Miller would just have to advertise it tomorrow. We would have to work on the advertising part. The point of what the amendment is though I want to make clear is keep whatever revenue you're proposing 331479 and then if it's permissible just tie the millage rate into it

to get that number from the administration so that we have the appropriate but I guess that's not you need advertise an ordinance that states your millage rate for Lehigh County your millage rate for Northampton County. So, we would need that right now. Timewise. Yes. You have 10 days before you vote has to be readvertised if you're making a change. Understood.

Well, we could have a a special meeting then if we had to because didn't didn't we say or have a discussion that this would be our final budget meeting unless we needed another budget meeting? Theoretically, you could always have a special meeting. Mr. Callahan, could I ask a quick question about that? I'm going to give the floor. Well, Mr. Callahan still has the floor. I I want to get to I'm going to propose I'm going to I'm going to give a millage rate. Go ahead. Question. Go ahead, council. Could I just ask what time frame do you think you would know what millage rate we're looking at? Like how when like how many days? Oh, tomorrow. Yeah. have done that. You mean to to run these calculations,

right? And to know what millage we to get to the 331 to know what we would how much we would have to increase for how much time you're saying we would need. Yeah. How much time would you need before you have that answer? Oh, we could get that tomorrow.

Okay. Yeah. Because that's what I'm asking. I'm wondering about that because I'm wondering I know in the past we did say we would have other budget meetings as needed. So I'm wondering if it's better to wait and then have another meeting next week just to do this. I hate I hate to do that, but then you know as early as whatever. And the other thing I just want to say is I know we talked about other departments and how that would look especially like emergency responders and all but the one thing and I people have asked and I keep saying is the police department coming from a family of fi of police also um unfortunately for them is we have the money to hire police but we just can't get the police to we can't get people to apply or to pass all the tests. So it's an opposite problem with the police. If we had the same problem with the police that we needed money, I would be here advocating just as strongly. So, I think that needs to be cleared up as far as, you know, that's the difference between the fire and the police department. It's not like we're prioritizing the fire over the police. If they were in the same situation, I think we'd all be doing the same thing or I, you know, but I wanted to clarify. So, is it worth it to do a motion to

people would like to talk? Hang on. Let's if there's still people who'd like to have the floor before we make any other motions here. Councilwoman Leo, quick question. Quorum. Do we have to have quorum for a special session if we're going to be doing the budget amendment? Because I mean I I have travel plans because you're supposed to be well outside of the budget season. I physically won't be here and I know at least two other council people won't. If you're making a change to the budget that you're increasing it, you have to have five person quorum people. You have to have a vote of five people. So if there's five people at the meeting, you need five people say yes. Cool.

Other thing I will say and I'm I'm sorry um Mr. Miller just very astutely pointed out that if we add a meeting, we have to advertise that as well.

Wonderful. Um second point was Oh, Mr. Yeah. So, please don't go away. [laughter] Um, uh, the second point wasn't that we were, and this is why I don't want to pit people against each other. We weren't prioritizing fire or police or anything like that. All I'm saying is I have very gently worked with the administration for four years for added positions and this will change how I operate going forward. It fundamentally will. Question, Mr. Yaso. Whenever I get a little antsy about what we're doing, I look to you and say, "Are you [snorts] antsy, too?" Because I'm a little antsy. Mr. Evans's hair is on fire. Miss Lazaric has lost five pounds just sitting here from stress. [laughter] How you feeling about the discussions that we're having? I'm I'm concerned about all of it.

Yeah. [snorts] Well, I I mean I would say I and I I spoke to Miss Crampsy Smith uh you know, as [snorts] she was trying to prepare the amendments as well and and we spoke about it. I knew it would be an uphill battle for her. I knew she would be up against it when she showed up here tonight. Um so I'm not surprised that this is going the way it goes. I wish that you guys had more time to discuss and and and come up with the amendments and have a little more back and forth to make these numbers balance. Um so when we go back to the discussions of like all the different things that you guys have considered um yes for the most part the administration has stuck by their paying recurring uh expenses with with recurring revenues and one-time expenses with onetime revenues. So um you know I my role typically is not to choose the path forward. That is that is for you guys in the administration. My role is really to uh make sure that once that path is chosen that we stay on the straight and narrow. um you know, as a as a citizen in in the city of Bethlehem with a baby and a senior citizen mom who lives by herself and another sister who lives in a row home, um yeah, I want more firefighters like everyone else here does too. Um but as far as it as far as it comes to to the budget, um I really do leave it up to you guys. I don't think um to Mr. Callahan's point, uh, $165,500 in against the cash balance is a drop in the bucket and will not have a serious effect. However, it does go against the principles that they have for the most part stuck by.

Okay. Okay. So, you know, I I agree with that. And and as far as the all all of this the advertising stuff, I mean, again, I just I'm frustrated that that this conversation has to go this way and there's so many complications instead of just being able to get the the the right thing done, you know? That's how that's how I feel. I don't know if that helps you at all. All right. But it would be it would be night it would be nice to be able to just get get the right thing done not not contingent upon all all all of these

deadlines right you should it should not be uh you know at the deadline but unfortunately here here you guys are so I don't know that that answer helped you even a little bit um but that's that's our branch government might as well hear from you too we hear from everybody else tonight so got it and I'll I'll be here till you finish

all right and Mr. Evans, uh, last question. Um, cuz we've talked a little bit about, uh, the condensed timeline here. Um, in your recollection, and and I would agree that it doesn't seem that there was more time, maybe the the budget season should start earlier. This is good discussions. We've talked about this before, and we've talked about why it's a little bit later, and all the agreements we with that we have with all other municipalities. It seems like the problem is that we are advocating for a tax increase on the fly. In your recollection or anybody within the administration's recollection, has council ever advocated for a tax increase after the administration has not proposed it? I.e., are we in a situation where we've never been in, so we wouldn't have run up against the timeline constraints like we're running up against right now?

Um, no, it it was I think it was 2012. It's been a long time, but [clears throat] in 2012 it was done and uh at that one, but the numbers were brought in. They were known. They were known. They were set amendments prior to the

Yeah, they're actually set and running. The change in the mill rate, all that cuz that's is a complicated maneuver. It's not just a number like the reductions. We've done a lot of reductions. It's easy because it's those just the line items reductions, but adding is a different animal that the fact needs five votes and especially if it's a tax increase because it's, you know, there's a sensitivity to the community about what it is, there is some calculations that need to be run. And so that was um set set ahead of time through the clerk's office. So when this meeting happened, it's about the same time, but everything was that things that you're missing tonight were were there. it was this is what it meant so people could deliver. What does that mean as as Mr. account. So, what does it mean per household is as a miller, but also what does it mean to a family? I those things we can get, but not

not off the not off the top of our head because you you're back in based on the number you're looking for. You can adjust up and down with the millages, what for each county, what what the percent are. Those are all things people need are going to be asking and need to know. Of course, you want to know, but that was done came in and you had that, you know, decision A or B was in front of us at that time. But I sat on council when that happened. Yeah. Thanks. Uh, Councilwoman Lar,

um, I I I was going to ask if, you know, if this is moving forward and, uh, you'd be providing an updated millage rate number for us if it could include that per household cost. um procedurally if we would pass this tonight and then we would get this number and it would be a significantly higher per household number than we were expecting. Wait, so what happens if we get to that final vote and then there's then we don't like if votes flip and it doesn't pass.

So is that clear? Yeah. So I'll I'll to amend the budget you need five votes but to pass the budget you just need a simple majority. So you can amend the budget with five and then but you need five votes to amend the budget. Mr. Mr. Miller would work advertise and I've I just looked and we would he would advertise tomorrow for the Sunday paper and then it would be in 10 calendar days. the 10th calendar day would be Tuesday of the ne of the next council meeting looking at the calendar but the on election night so but taxes aren't raised on a per household basis right

just I want to clarify that so it's it's you know a raw number in the budget book and then a millage rate that is a form you know your millage rate is your formula your mills so you would still you could support or vote against every single amendment tonight and then support or vote against all the budget readings at the next meeting. So, does that make sense? You'd have to vote against the entire budget. We couldn't let's say say again if we pass this tonight and then somebody changes that. So, the so the budget that would be presented on the 16th would be the budget as amended tonight, right? And that's what we're voting on,

right? Okay. Um, my other question is, you know, we talked about when it came to some of the other increases that were proposed or transfers that were proposed that the administration would not be required to act on those dollars. Is that the same? Is there a chance that we raise the taxes and then the dollars are not spent on hiring additional firefighters? I referenced that earlier. That's correct. That we would be raising the revenue without a plan. Right. you did without a plan.

Um, would I be correct to assume uh I'm going to point this at Mr. Evans, uh, that you are unable that the administration would be unable to make a commitment to put the dollar to make good faith effort to spend the dollars on hiring those additional positions, [cough] however that may look. at this point. Phrase that again. What's that? Sorry. I know.

Oh, that's um again that's that's a question I would take Yeah. Yeah. That's a question I would take back to the mayor. It's something from 6 months from now because this is a hire that's not going to happen in January. This would be a you're talking about if this decision is made, these are cadetses for the academy in July. We run the study. what happens and there's a lot of whatifs. Study comes back and has something, hey, what about this that and there can be all kinds of changes or not, you know, I I don't know what's going to happen the next six months. There's lots of of things planned, but uh that's kind of where I'm at. My again, we're doing a lot of speculation, a lot of uh throwing things out there live right now.

Yeah, it's it's definitely not ideal. Um, yeah. Okay. Can I add a number? Any other discussion, Mr. Uh, Mr. Callahan? The the calculations on this um 0.1 of a mill in Lehigh County raises $200,000. That's that's there's no way. Are you talking about Lehigh County? Lehi County as in Lehi County or Bethlehem. Lehigh County. Bethlehem Lehigh County. Okay. Right. And then.1 one of a mill raises 210,000 in Northampton County Bethl. Can you clarify where where you're getting these numbers from?

I'm on uh I'm on uh AI right now. And it it's actually listen you can say what you want. It's it's uh it's it's it's pretty accurate to what it is right now. It it it it's listing uh all the assessed values in in Bethlehem at 4.1 billion and the calculations and um 1 mil increase in Betham would generate about 4.1 million per year. Okay. And uh it's got it broken down as far as Lehi Bethlehem and uh Northampton Betham. A restatement

0.1 not one.1 and I and and Mr. from when we were on council before I remember like raising it one millage point raised a few million dollars. So based on you know it's it's right there. I mean I listen for sake of purposes of moving this forward I'd like to I'd like to propose that we raise it 0.1 of a mill and then tomorrow we vote on it tomorrow we find out from Mr. Evans what the there's already a motion on the floor Mr. Callahan. That's so it doesn't have a millig number on it though. Okay. So that's what I'm giving.

So you're amending your motion to include the 0.1 of a mill and and if if the uh I can't imagine that if if Mr. Evans gets to us tomorrow morning, we can correct it and then we could if we have to we have another budget, we have our final budget meeting coming up. So there's no reason why we couldn't have uh an amendment if we have to change it at our final budget me meeting. That's what our we're voting on the final budget and there's solicitor we are allowed to make amendments to at our final budget meeting when we're voting on it. Correct. There we've done it in the past. We've had

we have not at the final budget meeting though because we have to readvertise that Mr. Cal. Yeah. So we do that. Okay. That's what we're going to have to do. the state. Hey, I need you to finish your motion for Mr. Miller. You made a motion to amend your motion to Right. Tell Mr. Miller, please. I want to add a 0.1 of a mill to Northampton and 0.1 of a mill to Lehigh County. And it raises 400. I mean, that's not different mill rates. Yeah. The Northampton County mill rate is in the low 20s, high teens. Yeah. The Lehigh County Military is like four or five or six. Yeah. Yeah. It does. It's not there'd be an imbalance. Yeah.

6.21 or something. Mr. Callahan, if I may, and I I'll revisit it to our solicitor because I'm sorry if I've repeating myself. I just want to understand. Can the motion simply be raise real estate taxes 331479 along with the appropriate military to balance the general fund to that amount? and and and then whatever number is provided at some point you're going to have to make a motion to amend your military military ordinance and revert it if okay let me ask another okay half

too much what do you do if you appreciate I'd like I I'd like to put um the motion up up to a vote and finalize the number. There's I I can't see any reason why any judge or court wouldn't allow us to make amendments at our final budget as long as we pass it in time. Oh, so your mo your your motion, just so I'm clear, is the raising the real estate taxes 331,000 479 and then the corresponding um expenditures, right?

Academy for firefighters 80,000 salary for firefighters 121340. And if someone wanted to fight it, let them. But I I don't think a court I mean, we're doing our due diligence now and we're going through the the process. We're we're telling everybody right now that what what we're doing. We're not hiding anything from anybody. And we also have another meeting coming up where we have to we have a chance to uh vote yes or no and make amendments at it. Mr. Callahan, just so I'm so clear, you made, as was done earlier, did you just make a motion to just call call a vote on your amendment? I did. Is there a second? Second. All right. Mr. Miller, please call the role on the motion to move the question forward. Mr. Callahan, I miss Grampy Smith.

I Miss Quitec. I miss Leairard. I Miss Leon. Hi. Miss Wilhelm. Hi. Mr. Cologne. I The motion passed to 70 to move the question forward to call vote on Mr. Callahan's raising the real estate taxes and then also bouncing it on the presented U expenses. So this is the vote on the motion itself. Call the role. Mr. Miller. Mr. Callahan. Hi. Miss Crampy Smith. Hi. Miss Quiet. Nay. Miss. Leard. I. Miss Leon. Nay. Miss Wilhelm. Nay. And Mr. Cologne. Nay. Fails. Four against. Three in favor. Is there any other motions tonight?

Thank you for coming out everybody. This meeting is adjourned. And just a reminder, our last budget or our last council meeting for the year budget bills will be read on December 16th at 7:00 Yeah.