City Council - Regular Meeting

With that, we have a quorum. So, I'm going to going to call to order the city of Burlington's board of finance meeting on Monday, May 4th, 2026. It is 5:31 p.m. And our first item is the agenda. Is there a motion on the agenda? Without the agenda. Moved by Council Farlo, second by Council Carpenter. Thank you. Any discussion before we vote? Heather, do we have any board of finance members online? Um, Ben just joined. Okay, great. Uh, so seeing no discussion, all in favor indicate by saying I. I.

Any oppose? Nay. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. It is next item is our public forum. It's the practice of the board of finance to first go to members of the public in the room and then online. Uh and we'll just spend a couple minutes with each person if there are folks here to address us. I see only city staff in the room. So assume you all are your your type of item. All right. Moving offline. I see former city councelor Sher Busher. Good evening Sharon. The floor is yours. Um, thank you. Um, so this is a media agenda, so I'm going to be very brief. The attorney's um, presentation, which is last and the agenda that I saw. Um, I didn't see uh, is there going to be a replacement for the ACA, director of general government and transactional services? I'm sure there is, but maybe it's already decided, but I didn't see that. Moving backwards um because I chose to do it this way. I apologize. Um permitting. Um so I didn't see any info on the workload on zoning and planning that arm of the permitting um department. Um and you know the DRB um they Scott staffs the DRB the interpretation of ordinances done by Mary Kurt and Scott. Anyways, I think that workload is significant and may be increasing with um development and I just didn't see that addressed and maybe I just missed it. But so that's another statement. Um uh the sewer um water, wastewater, and sewer. Um I know we don't have any money, but I have to say it anyways. A long time ago when I was on the city council, I spoke with the the manager um Megan Moyer about sewer line breaks and

how those costs are astronomical for the homeowner. And I keep trying to put in the queue to have a way of a payment plan for residents if that happens because usually half of the cost is the residents, half is for the city. So anyways, and sometimes it's all the residents. So I'm still advocating for that eventually. Um I wanted to say about the street paving program. Um quite a while ago, um East Avenue, I'm I'm using it. I live on it. Full disclosure, but University Road and UVM facilities is at a destination off of East Avenue. Lots of dump trucks full of snow in the winter. lots of truck traffic, period. And we used to have an agreement with UVM that they would help to pay the costs of maintaining East Avenue because of the amount of wear and tear from their vehicles. And I'd like to just put that out there for consideration when you're looking for money. I think that this is a shared responsibility. Um uh let's see. Um, sorry, I'm trying to rush and not take too much time. Um, the last thing that I think I want to say is, um, I didn't quite understand I understand the swe street sweeping program is moving to water, but I I thought one is an enterprise fund, one isn't. I I couldn't figure out how that worked. Um, and I understood why it was good for streets, but it's a cost for water and water's already expensive. So, I would like to understand that a little better and I'll listen to see if some of

my concerns or my unknowns are addressed tonight. So, thank you very much.

Thank you, Sharon. Anyone else online? If you are, please raise your Zoom hand. from the public would like to public comment otherwise I am seeing no one so we'll close public comment uh public forum excuse me and move on to our first item with our racial equity inclusion and belonging department now before we get into each of these topics just for folks watching at home this these areformational updates from each of our uh departments and we we usually open about 10 minutes of presentation 10 minutes of Q&A uh but there are no items for which there are formal votes So, we'll go through each item um and then uh we have one more budget meeting on Thursday on Thursday and then we'll be completed. So, if you don't see a budget uh for department that you're interested in either on tonight's agenda or on Thursday, we we likely went over it last week and you can find everything on civic clerk that we are moving on to our again REI department and with us online is Dr. Kelly Perkins, our REIT director. Welcome, Kelly. And as I said to our team in the room, just so you know, we have about 10 minutes for presentation. I think I should just said this again, but anyway, 10 minutes for Q&A. And I'll just gently time here and just let you know when you're getting close to the 10 minutes for the presentation. Okay.

All right. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you all. Uh I will not be before you long. Uh the office of racial equity, inclusion, belonging for FY26 um consists of five positions. Um the director position, two manager roles, um an administrative coordinator, and then a vacant role. Uh we also have um part-time limited service, trusted community voices. um currently seven um in our line for FY27 um the uh org chart for REIB will consist of four roles full-time roles and the trusted community voices and I will get more into that a little bit later. So, some highlights from 2026. Uh, stay in power. The charter change was voted up by Burlington residents. Um, 57% said they want to see this work continue and be a permanent fixture of our city government on town meeting day. Um, and recently, uh, after the third reading in the Vermont House, uh, the charter has passed there and so we are on to the Senate. Um and I think some folks in the room will be giving testimony on um Friday. Um REI has taken on some new programming initiatives this year. um started working with the sister cities program um and working on helping them to create bylaws um and figure out how to diversify their efforts um in really uh expanding the opportunities for cultural exchange um and showing off Burlington's um rich culture um and diversity with the cities that we partner with across the world. Um, we

also have been working to restart the aging council with the assistance of uh, councilors Carpenter and Shaker. Um, and we're looking forward to solidifying that work um, with a resolution and moving into implementation stages in the coming fiscal year. um increased alignment. TCVS are now more fully integrated into the fabric of the city government, including um being in the payroll system, for instance, um having uh [snorts] a job description on file. Um we recently established a partner with New Wave Equity Corporation. Um and we will be working with them to um survey our city employees and to get really get a feel and get data around the city's uh culture and how city employees feel about everything from um compensation to the psychological safety um they experience in their roles. Um and then uh Christian Barry is actively working on revising and updating um our language access policy. um and working to re-establish language access liaison in each department. Um so that we have a body of folks, a group of folks in the city government who are dedicated to this work and helping to keep policies upstate updated and training um and helping all of us to understand how we can be um better partners to foster uh increased communication across our city government with constituents. Um and finally we have been working this year to collaborate more with HR on recruitment and developing um internal training specifically around DEI. So cost savings for 2027

that fifth position um that is currently in our org chart will be eliminated. Um eliminating that role does not change anything in the immediate for our current portfolio. Um but we will need to figure out how um some policy work gets more ingrained into the remaining position specifically the director role and the two program manager roles. Um additionally we'll have programmatic cuts of about $23,214. Um these are largely from lines that have been underspent in the past couple of fiscal years um or not you know not even maybe 50%. So for instance travel and training education um you know this should not have a significant impact again on our programmatic efforts. Um but one of the things we'll need to consider is what the Junth celebration looks like moving forward. And again I'll talk more about that later. And so in total um REIB's cut would be $127,710 or about 16%. So revenues um the FY26 budget was built with the expectation that we would raise $40,000 um largely for Junth. to date, um, $6,500, uh, has been raised. Um, you know, so many reasons, but I think we're all across any organizations we're with, everybody's feeling the crunch. Um, that is not going to stop us from moving forward. Um, but definitely we'll have to make some changes. um for FY27 again with the really call that we reconsider festival expenses across the city um we're going to take critical look at Junth um to figure out how um we can

still have a celebration um that feels representative that feels um like this is a priority and it's important but that also um allows us to think more creatively about cost. Um, a potential opportunity that's arisen for revenues um is we've been getting a lot of ask recently from nonprofits um and other small businesses in our area uh about what it would be um you know what could potential cost be to contract with the city for use of wordly AI so that they can um as other folks are beginning to work on their own language access plans and really wanting to make any of their public meetings and gatherings more accessible Um and so that is something um we are looking into as we have gotten that request um a fair amount over the last couple of months. And so FY26 expenses personnel 76% in the budget and we have approximately 191K in operating um and we're at about 80% through this fiscal year. Obviously, the personnel expenses um will not max out because that fifth position had not been hired for for FY27. Um we'll have about 855,000 um in total expenses. And so again, 76% on the budget, about 200k operating. And so this is reflecting an additional 7K um that was previously in the regional programs budget um that for Sister C's program that will now be moved to REIB. Um we have 40,000 for language access which is um again already in the budget in this current fiscal year and [snorts] about 102,000 for community celebrations.

And so moving forward, um some areas of opportunity. I think there is a real opportunity for us to broaden and expand um really the intersectional approach to inclusion and belonging for the city. And so again, we've taken on the aging council. We're working on expanding language access. Um and I think, you know, we're at the point where that should include and we need to make it include folks with visual and hearing disabilities. um we will be taking on the sister cities program again and helping them to uh operationalize further which is what they're really wanting and they're very excited about the possibilities um and then really for looking inward to the city surveying city employees on their workplace experience um and developing um any necessary um interventions that need to happen as a result of that and being able to highlight the things that um employees say we are good at. Um and then also using that information to take a more robust approach to um thinking about what a training program looks like long term in terms of DEI. Uh and then again opportunities always to get the CCVs more integrated um as city employees and thinking about what it looks like to expand that program particularly as our um new American population in the city broadens and changes. So some areas of concern again the elimination of that fifth position um really kind of ties our hands and picking up some additional work and really the sustainability overall. We have a lot of folks in the city and the city government who see the vision um and really want REIB um to be partners and is difficult to meet um the demand. And so we are continuing to

assess and figure out how um we can operationalize our work in a sustainable way um especially as our areas of agency grow. Um and then obviously continue to continue turmoil at the federal level with funding for DEI work um you know means that opportunity some of those opportunities that we've had in the past to um maybe again have dollars for kind of additional programming um will be um not there. And so a summary, some highlights. Um the REIB council committee, um Councelor Sanchez Parkinson and I have a plan to go through some of the resolutions of the 2020s. Um specifically where REIB has mentioned or concerned and BIPO community related work to work on um bringing some of that work back forward. And so that includes um figuring out where to go next with the reparations task force for instance um or the 2021 resolution for economic and racial justice.

[snorts]

Um and again partnering with New Wave to really take on a widespread assessment of the culture of the city government and really um working to do what we can um to make sure that we are building upon those experiences that city employees are really valuing and helping to be uh change agents where we could do some work. Um, and finally, language access. Really wanting to incorporate wordly AI into more public meetings. We are taking a lot of time as a staff to learn more about that. Um, that and just [clears throat] the various ways in which we can utilize that service. Um, and we also want to work towards standardizing things like videos for some city services. For instance, a boil alert, which will never really change. um we that's something we should be able to have readily available for residents um and ready to send out when those type of situations happen or you know uh street closing for plowing or sweeping things of that nature. And so just working to deepen um our like sense of responsibility in the language access world and getting more creative. Um and I think again um with June one thing I didn't put it here was Junth is um really thinking more holistically about that celebration um and having it that our UIB doesn't have the capacity to fund raise right um and so what does that mean um for us if it's a city celebration and so thank you so much

thank you Kelly. All right so we will move on now to uh Q&A. We'll start first with members of the board of finance and then I've shown the other city councilors uh not on board of finance in the room but if you are online uh as a city councelor please uh just know this is what we've done in the past and if you have questions after board of finance members ask then we'll go with remaining time to other counselors so with that speak uh to board of finance questions or comments for REI counc on the translation services. You were talking um about seeing if we get other groups interested, which I I think is a great idea. And I would encourage us to look um outside of just city groups like are there state I think of my old organization, Vermont Housing Finance. I don't know if they have translation services or not. They're statewide, but they might have an interest. So, I'm just encouraging you to look kind of not always small nonprofits, but groups that may not have that service and would be interested in signing on. So, you know, so

what I've had a significant amount of, again, I mentioned nonprofits because that's been the folks who have come to us the most and said, "Hey, you have this thing. Could we possibly buy minutes?" But I've had folks across um many different industries um who again are not engaged right now really in any meaningful language access work but can immediately see the need for again and the value of having access to worldly AI and being able to at least have meeting meetings um and public gatherings that are accessible. So yes, I definitely it's not just nonprofits, that's just who we're getting the most inquiries from.

Okay, thanks. Um the other was on um Junth and has there been any discussion about whether BCA can help out in that? I mean a lot of the events in Junth are music and art related and they're good at organizing events. So, I would I would encourage us to cross departmental that um because we want a good celebration, but with without a major sponsor, I get how hard that is, but I would I would ask us to look to see if they have any capacity. Kelly, do you want to answer that? Do you want me to weigh in?

Sure. I saw um the councelor Grant's hand, so I wanted to pause um and make sure I wasn't out of order. Um and so we do collaborate with BCA but again the main impetus is that you know we're looking at festivals across the city right and so BCA also has again lower budget or whatnot so it's not necessarily just an REI problem but we do we are working with BCA um and again we're trying to figure that out and piece that together long term. We began that last year uh with the collaboration BCA. Um just to build off of Kelly's comments there. Okay.

Any other questions from other board of finance members before we go to council grant? Councelor Barlo and then councelor Grant will go to you I think right after C council Barlo.

Um just to follow on to uh councelor Carpenters's questions on language access. Um one of the groups that I know has also has a a big language access need is the school district and they have their multilingual liaison. And I'm just wondering um it might if it might not be worth exploring uh a collaboration with the school district if we haven't already on those sorts of things because I know they have a lot of translation needs. The other thing is I think you know you mentioned the AI uh tools that and this is one thing that the AI tools are very good at is language translation. So, I'm I'm my question is around the $40,000 that's currently um in the 2027 budget for for um interpreter services. Is any of that for the technology or is that for um a a group or business that would help us with those translation needs?

Yes, it's for the technology. And so, uh there is a portion that's for the technology. This year um we did re-up the wordly AAI um subscription. It formally sat with CEDO um when they held the TCVs and language access. Um and so we did after kind of seeing everything that the they could offer um go ahead and read that up with hopes councelor Barlo to your point that um we can maybe get a little more self-sufficient um as the other pieces of that budget um have been used um for Vermont language justice for other you know trans um external translation and so um really trying to figure out. Um again, we do have a need to update be updating our website and some of the um particularly when it comes to services. Um and so thinking about what it looks like for us to um be able to utilize that technology um in a more robust way to again be creating videos for um services or announcements that are going to be standard that are never really going to change regardless of the day or the year. Um and starting to have those things just ready, right? Just a part of what we do every single day.

Okay. Thank you for that. Um, I'll I'll I'll stop there. I do have questions about the aging council being rolled in, but I'll see if there's time at the end after other counselors have a chance. Thank you, Council Barlo. Councelor Grant. Councelor Grant, can you hear us? Council Grant, I'm going to come back to you. I'm gonna go to councelor Sanchez Parkinson.

Hi everyone, and thank you Dr. Perkins for the presentation and um I you know I I've shared this with you. I was a a bit disappointed to see the elimination of the health equity position. And I think that it's a really critical time to uplift um that work and also I appreciate the way that you've already been thinking about partnerships across the city um to make sure that that work can continue in some capacity and and similar to councelor Carpenter and Barlo have mentioned I think this this moment in time really is requiring us to be creative to be collaborative both within the city like thinking um I think if you were to map out, I think of a network analysis map of the ways that you're touching almost every department in some way. Uh, and I also see the opportunity to expand across the city given that there are a number of organizations and efforts related to equity across our city as well. Um, so I'm excited for the work that you're doing with city employees. I think that that's another great example of how you're touching departments across the board. U, but thank you for your for your presentation and your work. Thank you, councelor. Councelor Grant, are you with us?

Yes, I am. Um, I agree with what councelor Sanchez Parkinson just said um with reviewing the 2020 resolution. There was a meeting in the last few months that started that work and will definitely require a meeting, maybe a joint meeting with the police commission. Um, I wanted to say regarding BCA, BCA really isn't a catchall for all events. Um, I mean they certainly do a good job on certain events, but Junth is is something special and has what I believe to be very specific needs that I'm not sure that BCA can fully meet. So, we have to keep that in mind. Yes, can we use equipment? Yes. Can their team like help set up sound equipment and things like that or help with um uh say social media which they do charge for. We have to keep that in mind as well. But um Junth and other events that that need more specific types of planning for for lack of a better uh term at this point is something that we have to think about. Um, with regards to funding for Junth, wasn't there a a bucket of donations that already existed but required a certain amount of spendown in the budget? I guess I would be directing that toward

um the director. Yep. I was coming off of mute. Um, Councelor Grant, I um I wish that I could answer your question more directly. I am actively trying to uh learn and understand, but right now um we are um I'm I'm trying to understand the history and kind of what's been happening and what's been said. Um and so yes, right now we are spending down um and we I recently did a budget amendment uh to move around some um funding in areas in our department where we know we um will not do any more spending for the rest of this uh calendar or the rest of this fiscal year um to begin to cover our expenses. Um but I think the hard part part with donations is that again um my understanding is that the budget is built with we are expected to raise that revenue um and again that is a very arduous task right for folks who are one not fundraisers um by training or trade um and 40,000 is a high bar particularly in um light of our current I'm sorry in light of our current um just society where we're at right. Again, we this year have raised 6,500. Um I just actually spoke with Hoola who um is looking to make a a donation to us um for this event specifically. Um but I that is about the most that I can tell you at this point.

Thank you, Dr. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate your work. Thank you, Councelor Grant. We're right at time. Um, so with that, if there's other questions, including about the Asian Council, I just hope that folks can maybe email Dr. Perkins and we can move on to our next presentation. Dr. Perkins, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Councelor Grant, did you have a Oh, no. Oh, okay. Moving on. All right. May I just say one thing to council B? You're soon to get a resolution from councelor Shaker and I on the aging council. So, we will have a little time to spend more on that. Okay. And I don't think I don't know if we said that to you, but we can. We did.

Thank you, Council Carpenter. So, we're moving on to our next item, which is item four, which is our Department of Public Works general funside. There's a lot of Department of Public Works tonight. We're going to kick it off with Chapen. Lot of Chapen. We are. And I really appreciate not having it on the night of the DPW Commission for the first time in a couple of years. [clears throat] Lessons learned. Exactly. assist all time.

Um, thank you so much, Chief Spencer, director of public works, and I'm joined by uh team DPW. We have three division directors and a number of uh folks here as well. Um, thank you Sier Sha for pulling up the presentation. I will make it quick. Um, we can go to the next. It's just an hour. It's a great picture. Our annual party, I have to say, Sterling, our uh one-year-old baby staff member is in that picture, too, which is great. Um, the baby's find the I'm pausing your timing. So cute. Yes. I paused for that. Thank you. [laughter]

All right. Next. Um DPW is the uh most complex organization from a financial standpoint is that we have general fund, enterprise fund, special revenue fund and capital fund projects all within one department. I am going to be speaking here to the work groups in blue that run across three different divisions and the Pine Street customer service. uh we comparing this year to last year uh have reduced our impact on the general fund uh approximately 15% when you hold the fleet purchase level flat. Uh you'll hear from capital program manager director Ashley Parker how we are investing more in fleet this year which is great uh but that impacts DPW's fleet budget a bit which is supporting vehicles across the uh the general fund network. Uh some highlights here that uh this budget really does by and large continue DPW's broad array of essential public services and we're continuing a three-year trend to reduce the reliance on the general fund to do our work. Uh we are reducing six positions. Four of those are recycling related. You'll hear more about the other two on the next slide. Um we continue to push taring of staff positions. This is a really great way of not only supporting career growth of our employees but also uh developing a high efficiency uh work environment. So we also are simultaneously as you know implementing generational reinvestments into Burlington's infrastructure is pretty massive to think half a billion dollars worth of capital work is being done by a relatively small team. Two of those projects will wrap up in the next three months and we're tradition uh

transitioning recycling collection to be done by a contractor as you all know mid fiscal year. So we've had to budget for six months of in-house work and six months of contract. Uh and then we're preparing the full consolidated collection fees building uh get ready as soon as this coming year ends. Um number of our cost savings are labor related and no surprise uh the four recycling positions will be reduced to recycling staffers who are currently on board and will transfer to other positions in the city. Uh there is an 11th parking service agent position been frozen. We're proposing to eliminate that position. We can do the work with our 10 great agents. Uh we are proposing to freeze the street maintenance manager position as a cost-saving effort uh in this fiscal year and suspend hiring of a number of seasonal staff or tech services includes inspectors who look at paving and sidewalk quality and our uh and our interns. We're going to get that inspection work done in house. It does distract our team from kind of bigger picture other project efforts. But in a constrained financial time, having our existing staff be a lot in the field away from their computers, ensuring that the city gets its value and paving sidewalks is an appropriate approach. There are other savings non- labor related. We're decommissioning the compressed national natural gas uh fueling facility at 645 Pine and reducing a lot of lines related to recycling show up in various parts of our budget. On the revenue side, we've worked hard to really become a billable uh operation here. We're basically the city's contractor. Uh thanks to how all our

divisions worked well together, water resources storm water program is going to pay for more of the sweeping in the city. you're seeing here all water quality related sweeping, which is basically anything that's not aesthetic or for kind of cleanliness, like we we do a high rate of sweeping downtown, but anything that's related to keeping uh debris and organic material out of our catch basins and going to Lake Champlain, our storm water program will pay for. That's what former council Sharon Busher was alluding to in her call earlier today. Uh we are going to have thanks to our partnership uh with Ashley have the capital budget cover of a portion of our tech services engineering services and pull in more solid waste generation tax revenue from landfill maintenance to solid waste functions that can be billable but historically have not. Things like camping cleanups, lead pickups, downtown trash collection, all have a solid waste component. But we can use our existing solid waste tax without increasing the rate to cover more of that work if we slow down our landfill maintenance. Street maintenance and equipment maintenance can do more billable work once recycling collections transferred. So we're showing that revenue with this budget. Even if it's only six months of the full fiscal year, next year we'll get a full 12 months of that additional bill of work. And we're proposing, we're working with the TUK on how the solid waste generation tax is applied uh to consider its equity approach and whether more people in the city should be paying it uh and potential tiering structure, but we're looking at a revenue neutral approach on that. Next, the expense side. We've talked a lot about the labor. You're seeing some of the numbers for the labor on the top

couple of slides or on the top couple of bullets. Uh the reduced fuel and parts and contracted repair costs in our budget are really due to the recycling transition. Uh we've just presented to the council on our winter maintenance and we debriefed this last season. We are proposing to keep our maintenance costs flat for overtime and salt due to our ability to through oversight to really uh calibrate our salt application and to well manage our do continue to have that $250,000 reserve fund if there's an unforeseen spike in salt boss for example. Uh despite the difficulty in obtaining salt this year, uh we were able to buy uh salt at an elevated price and still operate within our budget. And it's important to note here that uh three over $300,000 of increased plea purchases are in our budget, which vacasillates yearto year. Next, uh, moving forward, the good news with recycling going to a contract is we can do more billable work. The challenge is that our department is becoming more and more dependent on billable work to meet our budget, which just means some programs that aren't always billable, landfill maintenance, traffic calming, bike, pedestrian work may slow down unless we can get grant funding to do those work uh those work titles. We're going to also evaluate uh in this coming year what to do with the frozen positions in FY28. The two major frozen position groups are the um street maintenance manager in street maintenance and the tech services interns and seasonal positions. This next bullet is really important and it's one I'm pledging to work on over the coming year with you all is that we

are not well or sufficiently funded to maintain a broader range of assets in the public rights way. As you all know, we should be uh paving four miles of street a year and replacing three miles of sidewalk a year. You know, the funding for that is challenging. On top of that are all the important but little capital investments that we have not been able to sustainably fund their repair. Everything from chairs, ballards, tree grates, railings, brick pavers are all things we need to figure out a better approach for. So we're proposing to bring a plan to you all to address this gap next fiscal year. Uh we are also trying to unite two soil management areas in the city into a modern and unified site at 2011 Flynn and preparing for the consolidated collection study in 2020 beginning of 2028. Next

Katherine sorry no problem. So just to finish generally maintains current level of service some unbillable work will move a little more slowly. The net position of DPW's budget continues to improve. uh we are limiting our staff knocking down six general fund positions. It's important to note that DPW overall has around 138 FTEES are spread over special revenue uh enterprise funds and the general fund and this last item reflects that work on our street fixtures and items in the right of way. Happy to answer questions under 10 minutes. You have 14 seconds. practice and practice [laughter] if we if I get those.

Yeah, you do. I'll leave those the baby actually in the beginning. That's okay. [laughter] With that, we're going to get to questions from members of board of finance first then to other counselors. Questions from or comments from the board of finance members. Councelor Carpenter, um I didn't quite understand that, but you mentioned the solid waste tax, correct?

And then how to use it more. Can you can you explain that a little bit? The city collects around $1.7 million a year from people who currently have trash service who also use the city's recycling uh collection. And uh recycling program uses about 1.4 4 million of that a year and the remainder goes to uh other solid waste projects like the solid wa the soil management area 201 Flint as a debt service to pay there and then landfill maintenance is the balance we're proposing of that 100,000 landfill maintenance to slow down our maintenance work so that we can redeploy that money to uh solid waste activities we do like encampment cleanup to strengthen the general fund budget It's it's really trying to just figure out where the tax is highest and best use goes

um yes I have three questions but I'll ask two of them I think yeah the reduction in the parking services agent is that because of the license plate methodology you're getting or because of less less need for that uh that position's been frozen we have really good coverage uh most nights until late into the evening and have found that the 10 positions are adequate. Frankly, we we believe we can run with those 10 FTEEs as we have been without um uh any change to staffing. We've had this position frozen. We're proposing to eliminate. So, it's not dependent on any of the decisions.

It is not. And the piece with uh license plate reader technology is really in my mind yes it may have some revenue boost but it also add new product and we're really excited about the new product. Second question was around salt. Um so we were able to purchase salt at an elevated price. I'm guessing we got it late. They have stored for next year maybe. Correct. Yeah. And um do we are we buying ahead in anticipation of another seasonal salt shortage? I know we're probably limited by storage or whatever, but it seems like maybe it seems like a very sort of easy to store material. So,

it's easy to store. We just don't have a lot of storage at 645 pine or bins. We try to to use our salt judiciously, but you know, use enough of it so we can open some of those bins for like water distributions, gravel piles and stuff like that. But our bids are stocked up, so order it ahead of time. We really don't have any place to store it.

This shortage has been the only time in my history that I've seen this. If indeed this becomes a more common problem, we are going to have to look at a capital purchase and construction of more covered capacity. The good news has always been that we're right next to Barretts. I mean, we get service instantly. We've seen when there is solve. This was an anomaly. So I am comfortable with this general approach this year. If if we get into a jam again, we will have to build something. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, counselor. Well, now unless uh councelor Travers, do you have any questions before I go to other counselors? See now. Okay. Other counselors questions for DPW. You raise your hand online. Wave in the room. Going once, going twice. Oh, you're gonna let Chap.

Okay. Thank you, Chapen. Appreciate it. All right. And with that, we will go on to our next budget, which is our capital budget. Welcome, Ashley. I'll reset here. Just a friendly reminder if you didn't see the chat, we uh cannot seem to work on the volume here in the room. Your voices are lovely, those of you online, but just please be mindful that you are very loud in here and we have not been able to figure it out. So, please use your inside voice. It would be very appreciated. Okay. [laughter] Okay. Great. Go ahead.

All right. Um well, good evening everybody. Um I will just jump right into my presentation. I'm here. Here I'm Ash Parker, uh, capital program director, and I'm here to talk about the general fund capital budget for FY27. Um, just in case you don't know, this is the organiz organizational structure for the capital program. Um, it's pretty slim. Um, it is mainly staffed by me and the DFA, um, with a lot of, um, accounting support from Stephen Danahghue. And then it is also made up of our um interdep departmental capital committee which has representation from um all of these groups listed here. Public works, parks, uh recreation and waterfront and facilities, IT, fire, police, BCA, CETO, and uh REI. Just to bring us back to where we were last year, this is the proposed budget for FY26. Um it was our first draw of the recently approved um 2025 um general obligation bond. Um you'll see what we were proposing last year. About 69% of the revenue was bond for last year and it's going to be pretty similar for this year. Um moving forward into FY27. Um cost savings and efficiencies. So, uh, one of the the key items I've been working on this past year and something that I want to continue doing in FY27 is, uh, working on our priorization framework, which I brought to the city council a few weeks ago, uh, to really help us make sure that the projects that we're allocating funds are our limited funds to the most priority projects um, within the city. Um, so it is a weighted criteria. You'll see a little bit more on that in a couple slides here. Um but that is something that I want to continue working on and improving as we go throughout the year. Um this budget is going to again focus on our existing infrastructure, making sure that we're

taking care of our assets that we have um to reduce future capital need um and ensuring resiliency and reliability. I would like to continue to work with departments and project teams and value engineering opportunities so that we can still get really high quality projects but make sure that we're maintaining sustainable budgets. And so that is something that this year I'm hoping to do more of. You will also see in this year's budget um I worked really hard to analyze I think every single budget that exists um within the capital world at this point to look at projects where there was um available bond funds either a project that was completed or funds that had not been used yet so that we could take those dollars and get them to things that we need to do now. So you'll see a lot of that and I have separate materials here packets. You can get more information about what projects those are and u where things are going. I also have been working with our finance team um to make sure that we can um do more investments um with funds that are again not being utilized and that would include premiums and large amounts of bond proceeds before they get spent um to try to just leverage additional opportunities to bring in more revenues. And last but not least, this was another key item for last year, but continuing to work on our partnerships. Um, you know, thinking about our fee for services. It was brought up not that long ago um with Sharon actually. Yeah. So, uh, making sure that we are working out good um, agreements with our institutions to make sure that we can um, bring in additional revenues to support much needed capital work and maintenance work. I would like to also extend this to um, philanthropy opportunities. we have a new position with an expanded um scope that I'm hoping in the next year we can see where that would take us and what opportunities might exist for other types of capital projects.

Um I don't I won't dive into this too much. Um we did talk about a few weeks ago, but I wanted to remind everybody that this is uh the work that we've been doing since about September of this past year to try to create a framework for how we um can prioritize all of the capital asset needs at the general fund side. um create we've created a bunch of um questions to go along with some evaluation criteria that then weights um projects against each other to try to give us a sense of um how best to allocate our resources. Um this slide just kind of goes through this process. It really is, you know, the departments um kick it off by submitting um a form online um answering a bunch of questions, but you'll also see that breakdown in your packet tonight. Um, but that does get evaluated by me. I review submissions and work with each uh department and project team to make sure that if there's a discrepancy or questions, we go through those before before finalizing a ranking or priorization. The goal is if there's FY27 budget requests that this priorization framework will help us allocate resources for that fiscal year's requests. Um and overall getting a project into the capital plan. This is the way that it gets into the capital plan. Um this is not a one and done scenario. Um project indeed will be re-evaluated throughout the year. Um as they change, we know they change regularly. And so my goal is to have folks updating um and reevaluating their projects on a regular basis. And here is the overall um proposed FY27 general and capital budget. This is the revenue side. In your packet, you'll see a budget by project. So, you can see a breakdown of where funds will actually

go. Um we are looking to do to take advantage of another bond draw from the general obligation bond of about 6.5 million. And then also going after our annual borrowing of two, we have unused bond premiums from this past year's bond draw that are going to be added to this budget. You also see that line item there where I've added the unused bond proceeds to help us add additional um capacity for doing additional work. Um our grants uh what I was going to say about the grants line. So we've got a lot of large projects that have budgets that So what you're seeing in this um in this table specifically is all the additional need for capital uh projects. There are many projects that are active and ongoing that have already received uh budget allocations in previous fiscal years or um if it's a grant funded project um oftentimes those budgets get adopted as the grant is accepted um post award. So, a lot of that is ongoing. It's a multi-year capital budget concept. Um, but that is why some of that doesn't show up here. Um, I think that's all I will say for this slide. And this just gives you a little inside glimpse of some of the major projects that are um identified in this year's budget. As I said before, it is another fix it first heavy um uh budget with a significant amount of funding going towards our street and sidewalk work. Um also our local match and soil monies for the Winsky Bridge project. And um as Chap mentioned, we are continuing to invest um another million dollars in our fleet, which is really a big deal. We've gone a long time with not doing that. Um and so these are another a million dollar worth of vehicles that can be bonded for um that will be added to this year's budget.

Um we are as Shapen said there's a total of 58,000 a little over half a million going towards um capital personnels to support the general fund and other folks doing doing good project work. Um, and yep. Um, yeah, we'll get that. My next couple of slides kind of dive into um my update for you all on the five-year capital plan. So, every year I've been going through and updating that plan as we get new project needs added or those needs change or we we kick things down the road. Um, I just wanted to make it clear when I talk about when you see these numbers, these tables, and even in the five-year plan itself, um, they are just requests for funding and it's not a commitment at this point in time. It's just a planning tool to help us understand what we have, um, what we need to plan for, what we need to to think about, strategize around. Um, here are some concepts I'd like to continue thinking through to achieve our five-year plan. Um, I wanted to remind everybody we last year we brought up the concept of an annual borrowing charter change to increase our what we currently have as a 2 million annual limit. Slowly over 3 to six years, increasing that to 10 million would increase our opportunity to to do more work um without having um every single every three years. Um, and I shared this table with you all to see some of the um, some of the many project types and costs that we have coming up in the 27 beyond. It's going to be really challenging with the $2 million limited budget to to hit those targets. Um, it's a little bit more achievable when we have our general obligation plus our annual borrowing, but just wanted to have that there for context. Um we are going to continue to have some challenges with federal grants and even tariffs. About 60% of the capital

budget, the projects that are being proposed in future years are reliant on receiving some kind of grants award. And so uh we have to continue to diversify and think about all of our strategies um for u completing our our five-year plan. and um you know continuing that thought about exploring different financial strategies really working with project teams to break down projects and really understand where there might be opportunities um to to do financing in a different way. Are there re revenue generating opportunities that could help us offset some debt service? Um you know what are some other ways that we can do projects and fund projects? So that is um that is a key for having fiveyear plan. And then you'll see the table here at the bottom. I think I've probably shared this table for the last my last three four presentations. It doesn't really change. The numbers get bigger, but um there's always more need than the revenue available. That's typical I think for a capital plan. Um and so it just gives us um an opportunity to be like, "Yep, we have to keep working at this and keep strategizing around how we're going to achieve um the next five years." I wanted to work with Brad. helped me out this slide just to kind of give you guys a high level overview of where we're at de debt capacity wise as we talked a little bit about debt you know the takeaway from this slide is in FY28 we kind of reach our peak for debt and then things uh taper off after that bringing us a little bit more capacity uh for debt and it does include the school district borrowing in this slide so that's it in a nutshell um you know like I said we're taking care of our existing assets and infrastructure needs. Uh trying to reduce the impact on the new draws by making sure we're using and spending the funds that we've already received. Um I will continue to work with folks to implement value

engineering and really monitoring our project budgets to make sure we're getting uh the most bang for our buck and uh really continuing to refine that priorization process so that we can make sure we have a sustainable source or sustainable way to fund our our work. And um yeah, just make that diversification strategy um a real one for the next year. So that actually we'll move to questions first. We'll start with fin. Thank you Ashley. Is that a real camp then? Yes. Okay.

Um thank you Ashley. Um I had a question about um the increase in in annual uh capital borrowing limit from 2 million to 10 million over period of time is something we discussed last year.

Yeah. Um, but in the context of like the debt policy, if we moved it to $10 million a year, would we I know with the with the school bond still sort of being a large part of or the school overlapping that debt being a large part of our overall um debt service obligation? Um, can we do that still stay within the the debt policy? me. This is a question for Brad, but or do we need to also look at the debt policy if we increase the annual borrowing? Because I am a fan of us getting to a steady state so we're not episodically going to voters every few years saying, "Hey, can we have another 20 million? Can we have another 40 million?" Because it's essentially the same money. I'd rather have it. And it will allow us to plan better, too, if we knew what our our sort of say state replacement costs on capital were. So I'm just wondering if if you all and I'm sure you have considered what this would do to our democ. Okay, director of finance for the record. Uh councelor Barlo, we looked at um exactly [clears throat] that kind of comparison. So knowing what the city's needs are, knowing uh you know estimating out over a number of years the fact that we would either have to increase our borrowing limit or plan on kind of incremental requests to the voters every three years or so. Um, and when we modeled that out because the uh school debt, which eats uh into the debt capacity under our policy um more heavily than the city's general

obligation debt, the fact that that kind of peaks in fiscal year 28 um and then starts to taper off with some other kind want to um oneoff repayments that occur during that from now until like let's say 2030 in that window. Um so if we um kind of ramp up to it the 10 million we could sustainably afford that within our debt capacity uh limit my estimates say by 2030 2031 um with possibilities for increasing between two and 10 in the in the years up until that in in the chart that was included in the presentation. Does it assume that maybe we would do this or is it like absent?

It's it's current law so absent that but we have looked at the numbers the other way and that's kind of how where it fits in. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you councelor Barlo. Councelor Chver.

Thank you. I have a um somewhat related question um which is that I anticipate that you know in the relatively soon to near future that there's going to be some potential opportunities for some uh really interesting sort of public private partnerships. Um, you know, I'm thinking most immediately about some of the presentations that we've been to uh at the library and the substantial resources that the friends of the Fletcher Free have raised for a a new building there, which I think um, you know, a contribution from the city could help move that uh, over the line. I'm thinking about uh the the CCORD development and the city parcel that's there. And um you know back in the day I I sat on the Chittney County Regional Planning Commission study for a multimodality hub there which I anticipate may eventually be necessary to unlock the full housing uh opportunities of of that neighborhood as we uh remove parking lots in exchange for housing. And I guess what I would be interested in knowing is, you know, looking perhaps as soon as next town meeting day, right? Is is there any capacity right now where if the city wanted to put in the grand scheme of bonded projects a relatively small uh bond measure out there to um you know help the library project get done or to help uh any any plans that we have for our parcel in the core development what what the capacity um for that would be within the existing debt policy um I don't I don't anticipate that you would necessarily have answers right now, but that is something I would be interested in exploring.

Yeah, I'm happy to take that question u and get back to you. But no, it's okay. I was just going to say we are also thinking about that as well. So that is definitely on our radar um because if we do go for a larger bond, it should be for a suite of projects. So I think that is definitely something that we'll look at.

Great. Thank you. Go to other city councilors. We just have a few minutes left. Anyone online who is on council but not board of finance, just raise your hand. So, you have entered the room and I didn't even see you back there. So, just please Yeah, just wave at me. Wave back. Okay. Councelor Shak. Um, I just had a question. I had a similar question as councelor Traver. So, thank you for asking that. Um but the community health and safety building is that the combined like police like what are we is can you just I don't know who to direct that.

No that would be that would be me. Um yes that it's it is still representing the the concept of a combined police and fire station building and community health. Um I think probably soon there will be an update on where things are at. you know, it kind of segus into one of the questions councilor Travis Traverse asked about um opportunities with the library project um and things they're having at Memorial Black. So, I think um yes, I think more to come and um but yes, that is that is currently still how I would describe it.

I will just add that there's um as as council does know in the Laurel in general, there's been a lot of moving parts. So, as such, this is also a moving part. there's still, don't get it get it twisted, members of the community, um that there's still a great need to have a much more state-of-the-art police station. Building that they are in at 1 North Avenue was never designed to be a police station. Certainly not a modern-day police station. And we really struggle with that building being up to up to snuff for our police officers and our other professional staff. And similarly for our downtown fire station, it you if you ever do a ride along and it's the winter, they have to scrape out the ice in order for the ladder truck to make clear the bay. Uh so we really it is very much still a need but we're trying to adapt around understanding available downtown space what's happening on the block and of course the affordability the ultimate issue is the affordability and back to the bigger bonding question and I will also just add uh just while I have the floor and I will pause so I don't take away other counsel counselor time um that related to any kind of bonding we would do just to underscore what Ashley was saying this whole presentation is around the acute need we have for so many of the aspects of our city assets that are in great need and this fix it first mentality is really on making sure we care for what we um uh own and operate now. And so anything that we would uh do another uh go bond on or anything like that really needs to be through the lens of what's the most critical need as well as where can we also raise resources in other creative fashions or creative means. So, I just want to caution us um around pulling out any particular project because the less the less exciting ones I will say often get overlooked and then we get to a place like Memorial Auditorium when I was on council where we were born multiple times over but whoever had actually told the time I can't remember and that building is now completely unusable. So, I just caution us as a team to think about our collective needs as a city and I will restart the clock in case any council would like that time because I do not want to take that away from you. Is there anyone online or

council grant or anyone else who hasn't asked a question yet? Okay. Well, Ashley, thank you very much. Appreciate it. We'll move on to our next item. Yes. Welcome. Um I'm Megan Moyer. I'm the division director for the Department of Public Works for the Water Resources Commission. I've got my director of finance here, Jesslette leader here, Chief. Um

um so just going to try to 10 minutes to go over three large enterprise budgets. Um we are 64 FTEES of the total FTEES that uh that Chapen mentioned and it's across three enterprise budgets. This is the very colorful chart sort of showing the wastewater in the brown. The folks who are dedicated purely to drinking water in uh blue and the light blue being sort of the one water folks. They're the ones who get to work on all the waters which is both uh fun but also challenging at times. And then our billing finance folks over there in red and in green is our storm water folks. Um FY26 was quiet compared to some other uh years, but we still accomplished a lot. Namely, we continue to produce clean, safe drinking water 247 365, which I we sometimes overlook, but is very very important. Um a couple of other I guess things that I want to highlight and I have another slide. Um really excited about the importility enhancements that the council voted in uh to align with the start of the 2025 bond related rate increases in FY26. So, we'll we'll talk about those a little bit more because it's a piece that I know that Jessica and I are really really excited about. Um we've also done some good work uh in the legislature this year and I don't think it's it's passed the floor, but it did get voted out of the House um environmental committee. both some tweaks to how water and wastewater connection connections are reviewed. Instead of projects in the future having to go through the state and the state permitting process, they'll actually be able to rely on this on the review that we are already providing uh here at the city. Um that will also enable us to make sure that we're not double charging people and be able to recoup some of the

the cost that it takes for us to do that review. We also um finally have unlocked the ability to have a local pollution prevention program. So that's for the breweries and for other folks who have high strength waste. Um if we hadn't done that, we would have also been in a sort of dual pering situation which we don't think is efficient in this day and age. Um lots of other stuff there, but can ask questions or we can go over that later. So, our affordability assistance program, um, you know, we've been pushing this as much as we can, but you all certainly brought to our attention and we knew that one of the the groups that we weren't able to access weren't able to benefit, but we know who are likely uh impact feeling the impact of our increased water rates through their rents were the renters. And so, we we believe we're the second maybe city in the country. Um, I think second to is it Portland or Seattle? Can't remember. Portland um to do indirect credit. So basically for folks that aren't direct account holders, so we actually don't have a way of discounting their bill, but we know they're paying their um paying their fair share through their rents. We actually uh work with BEED to provide a credit on the BEED bill to those renters. And as you can see, because of that, over 2025 to 2026, uh the number of people that were able to assist has grown exponentially. Um we do still have our uh rebate programs on the water sense side and on the sewer lateral side. We've gotten decent uptake on the sewer lateral side and we've seen a little bit of an increase on the water sense side which is for water sense fixtures largely because we increased the rebate amounts but honestly we need your help to to promote these things and we're going to focus in FY277 on doing additional promotion on ourselves but we're we're hopeful that uh one consequence of us raising our rates is that people will maybe be reaching out to us more about these um particular programs and then another program that

you may not be aware of is our blue BTV which the storm water focus program. Um, and that's really taken off with some tweaks that we've made and we're going to be delivering um over three $30,000 of rebates to folks for them to build practices on their own property that are managed storm water. Um, while while water resources didn't cut any positions, I do have at least, you know, on our organizational structure, we are making some tweaks, but there are no increases planned for the FTEEs. We're moving some people around, but at this point, we don't need to actually increase anything, even though our work sometimes seems like it continues to grow. Um uh probably the other major um major uh issue this year or benefit uh to rateayers is that we've had a long-standing contract with Champlain Fire District 2 for wholesale water. and the limitations in the caps that were in that previous contract actually meant that the cost our cost of producing wholesale water uh we weren't able to capture it fully and we've been successful. It's not signed yet. I need to bring it to you all but our conversations have been fruitful. We've made our case as to what our cost recovery would be. It's in line with what Champlne Water District is. And so they were willing to let us sort of substantially increase the amount that we're going to be charging them to better cost recover um what it means for us to get in that water. Um see like the entire city one of our biggest expenses expense drivers or personnel costs. We have a we have 64 per people and uh all the costs are going up across the board. We have worked in concert with um chapen to make sure that we are supporting the street maintenance team for all billable work. So not just construction related work but the water

quality uh related street sweeping that we meant we we discussed before. Our biggest piece that we're trying to manage, you can see very soon the yellow bar is our proposed debt service that's going to start coming online with some of the projects that we've already implemented and then the big project that is still to come. And one of the things that is the most challenging um with particularly wastewater is our debt coverage uh ratio. So in our bond covenant, we're required not just to generate net revenues. So after operating expenses of we're not just required to generate the amount of our bond payment, we actually have to generate 125% of the bond payment. So we have to sort of demonstrate that we're able to increase um to uh to to recover these these these funds. Um, one of the things as I look out and you can see the sort of cliff dropping off where our debt coverage ratio in that lower graph is strong and then it plummets is right now we cannot use any of our cash reserve for meeting debt coverage ratio. It's not allowed to per bond resolution. Um, but I have had some good conversations with bond counsel and we're going to explore that with you all to see if there's some amount of our debt cover our cash reserve that we are building up that we could use periodically in some of these years where it's sort of hitting us the harder versus having to like jack up our rates just because of one year that's happening.

I'm happy to talk more about that. Um, this is just the overall across the board uh what we're we're looking at. um you know notably in wastewater we are generating a lot of reserve in part that is for projects that are programmed further out but a lot of this is this gradual rate increase that we're trying to do for rate payers um so that we're not getting to one year and then having like a 50% rate increase I don't think anybody would appreciate that um at the end of the day I'm I'm fairly pleased with this if you the the top uh chart is what sort of our proposed um or our planned uh rate increase plan was across uh when we were doing the bond outreach. So originally we had projected a 15.5 uh% rate increase for FY27 and for a number of reasons uh some adjustments to when debt is coming online and so on and so forth and lots of other things below the layers uh the rate increase is um landing more in the 12.4 range. um you can see that it does mean that future years are a little higher, but I actually prefer this trajectory um and slope of the graph compared to even where we maybe had proposed that we would be when we were dealing with the bond. Um what does that mean for rate for rate payers? So um for your typical customer who plays for water, sewer and storm water, they are looking at about a 12.4% increase um or an increase of about 8 8.4 four, sorry, $8.407 a month. Um, for our route customers, those are the folks who get the discount. Um, the direct customers, their bill would be lower because they don't pay the base charge. Um, and indirect assistance folks, those are the folks who were helping through the BED program. They would be getting about a

almost $18 a month credit on their BED bill. Uh, lots of, you know, opportunities to monitor. uh always things that we're keeping in mind um that could change the calculus for the future years. And one thing that I uh let's see the summary I think we've kind of already gone over this. Uh one of the things that I put together was this is very very rough because understanding other communities rates is pretty challenging and for the most part I could only find a lot of communities FY26 rates not their FY27 rates. And if you recall previous graphs, we were in the lower we are below the average uh which is now about $921 annually and we are creeping our way up. But as far as I can tell, we are still below a number of communities. Um but as I was going around the web, there were definitely folks and communities that are starting to experience the rate increases that I know we've been talking about over the past uh couple of years. So with that I will very closing captions. Thank you very much.

All right we'll open up to Q&A from board of finance first. Mind stopping screen share we can see. Yes online finance members questions Barlo. Um thank you. Um the rate of increase is it's changed but like at the bottom of that last slide you're talking about the overall rate. for 5 years instead of 88.9 what it was looking like 86.1 but earlier you talked about the debt coverage ratio

um that needs to be maintained and so I'm just trying to could you elaborate on how the the interplay between those two because if we can't use reserves to increase the debt coverage ratio then we're going to have to increase rates beyond the 6.1

it could yes so I'm in my model I'm allowing our DCR to get closer than I would like to debt coverage. Um, but until I know that the the rate stabilization fund, which Thomas Maloney said is a thing, I've talked with Rafelis, he's talked with some of their experts and um around this particular thing and he says it absolutely is a reasonable allowance, not necessarily all of your reserve, but small amounts. And when I played around with it, we weren't talking, you know, needing to lay a million dollars on the table. I certainly don't want us to get dug into a hole. It's more for these occasional years where we just dip and then we're back up the next year if we stay on our trajectory that I think that there's a role for it. Um, so we do still have some play to I can't promise that the end of the the end of the pot of gold is is now 86% instead of 89, but based on what I can tell right now, that's my best hopeful projection.

And so we'll have better clarity on on our ability to do that before you would ask for council action. Did that cover? Um, because it would be because we would have to resolve something new, right? because it would be for next FY20 28. We would have we would have to do a little bit more catchup probably in 28 than we currently have programmed if I'm recalling correctly for the model. Um yeah, I can I can double triple check and I'm also happy to sort of screenshot what it looks like.

The only reason I raised it and I stepped on it a little bit is because it was a big ask when we went to the voters to ask for this bond. Um especially around the rating phase. We had a lot of discussions around trying to keep it down below some of the earlier protections and we to do that. So just want to be as cons conscientious about holding us to the as we can but I understand thank you.

Yeah my my intention and I will double double triple check is not that if I we are somehow wrong that we would have to shoot past 89%. Now, many many assumptions can change. Japan can throw me additional projects that I need to keep up with, but I didn't plan. There's even already a little bit of that in here to make sure we can be nimble with other city projects and make sure we can do subsurface investments before people do service investments, but it's always a little bit of a a moving target. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Council Mello, other questions from board of finance members? No. Okay. All right, I'll open it up to other counselors then. Counc

I just had a quick question which is um I I think I appreciate the like we further promote our assistance programs and I was curious if there's anything share. I mean, one thing that uh Jess and I talked about was making sure that seniors who are on fixed incomes know about this and we talked about, you know, maybe giving a talk at the Heinerberg Community Center just or even more flyers like we haven't done a lot of sort of targeted direct outreach. Yeah.

Um probably originally we met with CVOE. Um I think when we launched our original program, but we probably need to remind them that our program exists. So, I think a lot of it is just the reminder, but I think for counselors as you get the likely feedback from folks, oh my god, another rate increase may and we can send out a sort of an email maybe that you can easily forward that directs people to the various programs that we do have. That would be great.

Yeah. And folks need to know hope hopefully if they don't already know that our assistance program, they don't have to fill out like we're not going to look at their income. They just have to give us proof that they've qualified for some other state or federal program and then we treat that as like, okay, somebody else has looked at your income. I mean, it's it's probably as easy a qualification process as one one can do. Our seniors, they just have to show their age and test that it's a hardship. Try to keep it as low barrier as possible. That's great. And I think yeah, all of us could be ambassadors. Like Hill is, you know, districts like I'd be happy to stop in there and share some of this if we were armed with that. She has some. It's great.

Just a comment on counters of the building like Fern Hill is not the issue. It's the individual people. And so I still think you know notices in bills. My gut is a lot of those are people still um get a paper bill and pay by paper. And so I I just urge us to more periodically put stuff in the bill if we can. And then I think power of talking to people because I think those are the hardest to individual people not groups.

Well, and they may because our program was limited before and was only for people where it's like one property owner per meter and people who are in larger buildings. um if they don't already know about the BEED assistance program. Hopefully at this point if somebody signs up for the BED assistance program, we're have we're having it be a little bit more automatic that we get those names. It is every month just yesterday. So, but you know they may not even know about the BE one. Are there any other questions for other counselors first? I guess Go ahead. Yeah, probably have to ask questions later.

You're fine. We have testations. Okay. Um, former councelor Busher asked about um if there's any capacity in water to help people with sewer laterals. The $275 billing credit is helpful, but I have constituents who have paid $15,000 every month for a sewer lateral replacement. It's really hard for some of them. So any anything the city can do or water division can do creatively to to assist better assist uh you know a payment plan or some I know that water division doesn't do the work. It's all done by private contract. Yes. But

yeah, I think that's probably been the biggest thing is if we're not paying like the mechanism of I guess setting up an entire separate loan system because like for the for the water one, right? If we're paying the contractor, we're doing the work, then it's easy to put somebody on a payment plan, but if somebody's externally paid BP wastewater, then we're we're somehow loaning them the money. I haven't been able to unlock that. That said, with the cash reserve that we're building up, once I answer some other questions about what we're going to do with the reserve, I think that's going to provide the opportunity where maybe we could seed some sort of revolving loan type thing. Um, so it's it's it's still there. I know every time I see Sharon, even if she doesn't say it, I I I see it the thought bubble on her head.

Ask me about it, too. So, thank Yeah. And just to I think it you should look at I know like Easter credit union has done a lot with energy efficiency loans. So there might be some existing financial institutions and given that the loan likely is secured by the value of the home. It's very possible. It's it's just I think some of the homeowners don't get the concept. I mean effectively it's like a home equity lo and they're not going to go out. You get a home equity loan but maybe it could work one institution or two institutions

and I know a couple of them have done it for um weatherization. So maybe this kind of a way to tie into what they're doing. No, that's that's a good idea and not not try to come experts on these loans, but if there's a way we can partner with somebody or do an R&P and see what they they promote, that's a really great idea. Thank you. Anything else for our water division before we wrap up? Okay. Well, you know where to find me if there's more questions. There's lots and lots of budget lines. So, uh,

thank you very much. All right. We will keep moving and on to our next item which is also in DVW going and parking facilities. Jackie, welcome. Okay. All right. So, I oversee three budgets. Um, treatment did fund 53, which is park services as part of the general fund. The other two, traffic and park facilities are both special revenue funds. Um, I'll start with traffic. um 264 that takes in revenue from all on street parking. Um and those revenues cover crossing guards, lines on the road, signals, RFBs, and all signage. Um so some highlights from FY26. Um we did, this is very exciting, we did sign a federal grant called Safe Streets for All. About $1.4 $4 million grant will cover the upgrades of all signals from South Willer through the Staples Plaza. We just signed that in March and we're we're in the first process of purchasing everything that we need and then we'll hopefully hit one interception this year and then a bunch next year. Um, and this fund, prior to some inventory reduction, profited $35,000 after a pretty challenging budget year last year. Um, so for this fiscal year, we're looking almost right on target for revenues, just slightly shy. Um, and very similar revenues for next fiscal year. Um and

then revenue uh sorry expenses. We are running very tight. Yeah. Um running very tight on on expenses. So we're looking to be net positive um through this fiscal year which is very exciting. Um so some opportunities we have is adding smart meter parking spaces um moving possibly around Champagne College and College Trade as two examples of that. Um we are seeing to tier our traffic maintenance worker into a signal uh technician position um just as career opportunities for some of the folks that we already have on our team. Um and we'd also love to sell more signage to other departments than other cities with our sign machine. Um we've been doing a little bit but love to do a little bit more of that. Um threats for this budget. We do have fewer on street parking spaces from construction um during and after construction. We have a lot of signals that need to be replaced and we're working on it but it's slow going at this point. Um and we're This is just a plug. We really need some seasonal features. So, this worked for crossing guards, but some seasonal line features so you can get crossing uh painted over the summer. Um so, projecting that positive of 450. Awesome. Um budgets would mostly the same as as 26 number of staffs that changed. um sign printer. We hope to make some more money from that, but we are saving a lot of money by doing that instead of purchasing signs and um safe

streets for all grant. We have a pretty hefty goal of completing most of these prior to the window bridge project starting. I don't know how realistic that is, but that's our goal. Okay. 265 is all parking facilities, garages, and [clears throat] park lots. Um we budgeted for transient parking in FY26 a bit too high. Um but we've seen a a huge increase in permit parking options which have a lot of businesses downtown bringing people back instead of working from home. So we've seen a lot of um a lot more permit and and we're definitely shy on the transient parking. That's just uh someone who goes in and pays with you. Yes. Um FY25 saw a net positive of 350 last year. That money went directly towards paying um a 200 $2.5 million revenue anticipation note. So that money went directly towards paying that. Um our projected year end we are a little shy and you can see that that is the the short we are short on on transit parking fees. So that's definitely our downfall but parking permits are way higher than expected much higher than they were last year. Um again we are shy on on expenses so we're running short. So, we both have a net positive this year around 450 or so. Um, we are focusing on downtown Garage South. We're working with an engineering firm right now to make some repairs on that garage. It's the older of the two of the downtown garage. So, we it's time to make some make some improvements there. Um, we're having some challenges

with our elevators. We don't have the money to get new ones at this point, but so we're trying to put some band-aids on the old one. We're having a lot of trouble, but we are definitely working on it. And um with the vehicle mounted enforcement that we're looking to purchase, that is going to give us a new permit option, which I think we're a lot of people are going to take advantage of. So um people who work maybe three days in the office, this is a great opportunity for them or even one day a month or something. this they can repurchase, you know, 30 days or 100 days and use it over an entire year. So, we're excited about that new option. Um, wanted to um chat a little bit about the sheriff because I think there was some questions about that. Um, so right now we have the sheriff four or five shifts per week, four hours per shift. and they they did recently up the rate to $90 per hour, which is $15 more than it was when we signed the contract in September of 2024. Um we with the sheriff, we have um about 20 hours per day of outside security between the sheriff and um our secure contractor. Um and with that we do have 24 hours coverage between city staff and um our outside security. Um this fund very similar more permit parking less transient. Um staff remains the same. We do have one person that's deployed through calendar year 26. Um we're expecting another positive. Um, and if we continue at the rate that we're going, we should have should be debt free, get this fund by the end of fiscal year.

Thank you, Jackie. Appreciate it. Uh, questions from the board of finance members. So carpenter that's more common the questions on the transit parking about in PR abusing the garage and then abusing the um one on your phone. I know a lot of people will get confused by that and I mean basic I think somebody from your own department should go around every NPA talk about it. I think you should do it on front porch forum. Low barrier, not, you know, I think you could go higher with videos, but I think you got to get to the people who are put off. What do you mean there's no need? What do you mean I can't put the money in it? How am I going to pay? You know, and I just think more because it's once you figure it out, it's really easy and it's better. And I think the fact that you can like overstay your parking and renew a lot of I said that to somebody they're like, "What do you mean?" I said, "I can go shopping, be down for an hour, and they'll beat me until add more money." And they're like, "Well, that's a good idea." So, um, I think there just needs to be more conversation again with the group of constituents that maybe a little bit older or just not familiar with what they're getting into. come to hideberg with us while we talk.

Oh, thank you. Well, I I do and you know even senior housing I mean those folks are far they don't and I can see you offline places to go but I just think getting the word out and now with the construction downtown too it's just really confusing but I think all the downtown hours the um what we call this park and and positively because once to figure it out. That's easy. Just got to figure it out. Yeah.

Quick shout out to Andrea from Walenberg Center who is online tonight. Oh, and who has been hearing us if she was in person as she has been for many of the other budget sessions, she would probably be offering commentary, but she has been listening to all of this and will probably be reaching out to you guys. Perfect. Councelor Barlo, thank you. Um, are transient spaces in garages are those ones for people that are just that don't have a per anybody doesn't have a permit. Yeah, that does include hotel guests. Includes hotel guests.

Is um and that's for both garages and is is it down from the 2025 levels?

It is. Yeah. and do me understanding because that's not that's not co um and and there's a lot of return to work now. So I'm wondering if this has it's probably a product of some of the reputational problems we're having in Bron and the construction in people staying away for that reason is I mean do we have any idea or I guess we don't have any way to collect data. We don't we don't have a specific way to collect data on this, but uh I I will say sure antidotally we've heard uh those concerns. One of the things Jackie's team does a great job. There's no graffiti in the garages and the team is on it and they've been doing a good job cleaning and light striping and reopening stair towers. Like we are trying to make the first experience people have when they arrive downtown to be a positive one. That said, this helping people learn how to pay through video or visiting, we're all into that. We want to help be a partner in downtown's revitalization. So, if there's special ways we're talking to the arts folks, BCA about potential murals in the garages, we want to really make them something we can be proud of.

A promotional even if it's like we had a differential rate for the garages. It was a little bit less than on the streets. I don't know if it is or is it right now per hour. It's less. It's less than the core. Okay. So, I mean stuff like that, if we get the word out, people might choose the part there and then we get more people having okay or not like negative experiences. Don't expect people have a positive experience or park garage, but neutral is something we can shoot, right? Um and so like things like that because I think some of this seems solid. I mean, and I'm not in your role so it's easy for me to say,

right? Plus the downtown garage does still have two hours straight. I was just thinking that um advertising outside of like maybe the little papers for South Burlington news or whatever whatever is you know trying to get the word out about the park mobile two hours street not just bro surrounding other council grant

yeah just to jump on that I mean this is really in my mind my vision to the main street issue. Um it was just horrendous to get around and it turned a lot of people off um from driving downtown. So I think it it does require some targeted advertising, social media about the fact that streets are open now

and the maneuverability because at one point we literally had multiple projects intersect. Um so we looked at Ski Rack. They had their major yearly event and literally they were completely blocked up at Pine Street and Le Street and it was it was just very very difficult. I think it's just letting people know, hey, we're not in this situation because when you look at the probably look at the drop, it's at that time where we had these projects going on and had such a y

a difficult time. People were making fun of the jewelry store that had the little lawn signs on every corner because they were desperate to help people find them because it wasn't it wasn't easy. I think that's what we need to to think about and we had all been talking about getting the word out. We need to do something targeted and we need to start to do it now if we want to see um increased M says the weather is improving or getting to spring. Thank you. Thank you, Council Grant. Just a couple more minutes. Any further questions for Jackie? Council Shaper.

Um I just had a question in the parking facilities revenues. What is DIT? downtown district. Okay. That's a just a revenue that is allocated to the promotions for parking. And where where so I remember last year there was some discussion fees being down in in the marketplace garage. Is that where would that be reflected here? And given that we're below both in the parking lots and projections, is that like continuing to be a trend which I can just further read it or since what we're discussing.

So the DID is down because that allocation was changed for some else taxes or some Yes. It's not a use based. It's an assessment of downtown properties and because of TIFF and there a lot of downtown properties are in the tiff districts. Uh there was a reduction in the amount we got was not involved in usage at all. But to your point, you traffic in lots and revenue in garages, you know, the the permits are strong, but the transients weak and we all need to work to councelor Grant's point to revitalize and tell people construction is going to be over as of July. Yeah.

At least for these two big main projects. We're going to do a lot of paving in and around downtown this year. for cross street cost street which should be a big bump as well. Yeah. Well, so when we had set last year's projections, have we sort of done it based on the prior year's actuals or like is this a continued or is this kind of holding steady with how we've seen things paid out? It is a little bit down from the previous year. Okay. Um but we set our goal too high as well. Okay. So that's why that number is so big. Dr. Carter and I'm just saying I see online

budgetwise we've given you all these great ideas for how to encourage and advocate transit parking I just want to make sure there's a resource I'm assuming because you can get some support from say the marketplace or CEDO but I just in baked in there because PR is probably not in your job description it wasn't something you thought you'd have to And so somebody somebody's got to do it and just thinking where you could put that niche somewhere. We do work with jetream market by working with them. Yeah.

But this thing like you know maybe advertising South Burlington or whatever better PR people than I think I just want to make sure there's a little niche for whatever cost. Yes, we do coordinate very closely with them and I agree. They should really be helping us craft the message because we're not the marketing one. Yeah. As much as they are. You and we'll go last question. The counselor is saying online. Hey, I'll try to talk as softly as I can. Thank you. Noting [laughter] that. I appreciate it.

Um do we when you do your parking projections year-over-year, do do you take into account the spaces that are lost during construction? um when you make those projections and um yeah just curious if that's taken into account when you do this percentage decrease of total revenue. Um not exactly because we don't know we don't know exactly. However, um in one of the lines meter hoods um that is uh for example on College Street where they're reconstructing the old YMCA those spaces are currently being paid for by um the company. So that money, if you look at that line, I had budgeted at 115 and it was actually 166 because those spaces which normally would the revenue would go into on street revenue is actually going into the beanerhood fee. So I'm still getting some of that revenue. Um, but it's just going into a different line. So that's just an example of, you know, some of those spots when it's city construction, they don't pay for them, but some of those spots are being paid. It's just going into a different line. Thank you.

Thanks, councelor S. And with that, Jackie, thank you. We'll move on. Are you done? Heard enough from us. DPW nights from other department next year. Uh, thank you DPW. Appreciate it. And now we have two other departments left for this evening. We move on to our department of funding and inspections. The award welcome. Oh, just looking. Yeah, needed permission to share. Sorry.

You had I think I had to log out and log back in twice because problem had a question because I wasn't ready before had to log back in. Okay. Started your time. You're live. when you are ready. Okay. I I'm ready. Okay. Great.

Okay. Um, good evening everyone. Going to be talking about the entire department. I'll start first with this overview. Not everybody appreciates it. It's lined up a little bit differently. Um, you've got the two columns on the left representing the housing division and the zoning division. Those are both managed by Garrison Simino and then Scott Gustin. The other folks are all direct reports to me. That actually is the trades division. When it DPI was set up in 2019 to 2020, um it wasn't aligned the same way as the other divisions. So those folks did and still do report direct directly to me. There are two vacant positions on this. the far right hand side, the permit tech on the top line on the right, uh that is empty because he and one of the four inspectors from the housing division both within the last couple of months have transferred to positions in the city at CEDO. They make uh a little bit more technical work and so they'll make a little bit more money there. They jump ship but in a good way for the city and the rest of the city will benefit. They're great employees. We'll be filling those positions. They're already posted. Um, we'll be filling them as quickly as we can. It leaves us a little short-handed and fill them, but those are critical positions. On this slide, I'll just point out in the zoning column, you'll see the the um the first one up, second one up from the bottom, the code compliance officer. I didn't list the grades because it makes it even smaller to put the name and their job title and their grade, but that's a grade 17 position because of the technical work that that person does with the city attorney's office and doing a lot of court activity. Uh the zoning inspectors are sorry, the housing inspectors are one grade less. They are grade 16. That'll be important in the

next slide because I'll be talking about one of the things that'll be coming in the upcoming year is a sort of a slight transition there. So this is a 26 27 highlight because some of these things started in 26 but we're going to be kicking them into a little overdrive with 2027. But we've started increased problem property enforcement and that essentially is not just vacant properties but it is distressed properties. So those are the ones that are not technically vacant per the ordinance but they are either distressed because they are financially distressed or they're physically distressed uh but occupied or they may also be underutilized for their full capability. So not technically vacant, but if they're 90% vacant, they're still not vacant. So we have to find some other way to deal with them. We're dealing with deal dealing with them in the problem property realm and through some added enforcement attention and I'm grateful for the mayor's direction to the other department heads. I feel like I've got greater authority to get these people into compliance because I feel like I'm speaking with the voice of the city and not just with the voice of the director. It's been really helpful so far. We think this is a good model going forward. It's uh so good. In fact, the second line you see there is a request. That's what I was talking about in the first slide where we're going to be talking about the case grades. The housing inspectors are grade 16, but this budget is going to include a request that we'll we'll make one of those inspectors a grade 17 um inspector or a housing inspector too is what we've called it with HR. They've reviewed the job description. It's with the union per the contract with its final review before we bring it back with our final

budget presentation. But that person will be basically taking over where I've started this work and doing a lot of the leg work because I love doing it. It's been helpful. But I need to continue to operate the department too and not just have a a more of a full-time focus on problem properties. But I've been trying to get this thing kicked off and this will transition to that inspector and they'll be working more closely with the city attorney's office and hopefully bringing in more revenues. They will also be able to focus on short-term rental enforcement. Um, that's something else I think that we'll talk a little bit more about the rest of the presentation. But the third bullet point down talks about tracking overdue balances and late fees. We've done a really good job so far this year. We're going to continue doing that going forward. But as a quick example, we've uh we budgeted for reinspection fees for the housing division. uh $15,000 for the current year. We've already collected uh 29 almost 30,000. So almost doubled that. Those are when property owners are sloppy and don't get things fixed when they're supposed to. When there's a fee that goes with that, it's a non-compliance fee that is for making us work extra. They are paying the cost of that. That's completely appropriate. The other is tracking some late fees. When people are not paying on time, they have to be paid uh they have to pay for the late fees associated with that. And then uh our housing team is filing leans and we are collecting those late fees. It's been pretty effective. We've had some good initial results. We expect that will continue into FY27. We uh a week ago, if those of you who remember, I was there at the uh the city council meeting, we increase the rental registration fees by $10. That brings in

about $100,000 extra in revenue upcoming year. Um so the cost savings, the big thing this year was the reduction in that one of the two electrical inspector positions. This was really difficult for me from the human side of it because you know both of our electrical inspectors are great. The clear uh demonstrated information was that we don't have enough work for both of them to continue at the current pace. We've seen a downward trend in the number of permits. The workload is just not there to support two full-time electrical inspectors. Um, we started before the pandemic where there were a lot more in-person inspections. Now, the inspections are more likely to be either remote or can be done with some other self-certification by the person doing the work sending in documentation and proof with photos. Um, the the two inspectors are not as busy as they used to be. So, to me, this is a very rational decision to reduce that position to a part-time position. Uh but it's difficult of course because it's person. We'd love to see both of them around and we just don't have that specific work to continue to employ them both at full-time. But no work is ending. The members of the public can still expect to see quick results. You don't have to wait for electrical inspection now and you wouldn't have to wait for an electrical inspection under this proposal. Um the other thing that is for FY27 we've reduced some miscellaneous operating lines. some of our telecommunications because of of trends. We've not spent all of that. The same thing in some of training. We've tried to be careful in what we spend for training and for professional and consulting services. In short, those are things like if we need a zoning expert who is not on staff, but we need someone

to talk about slate roofs and we'll have a a budget line that says this person is going to testify on our behalf as an expert that there's no other way to do this. Those things cost money. Occasionally, we need a trades engineer who is uh truly an engineer and not one of our building officials. Something that the city engineer not able to do. We need those a small amount of money to keep contractual services when those experts are needed [snorts] in the um upcoming year. Revenues, we we've obviously seen the the uh revenues come in lower than projections. So the FY27 is projected to be about half a million dollar lower in revenues. That's based on trades and zoning fees both being um traditionally lower. We're not seeing this uh large projects come in as quickly. You heard it in the last ARTA presentation. Some of the funding, it's hard for the uh the financing for some of the larger projects. We're seeing some, but we're expecting that it's going to continue along that trend. On the expense side, this is a um there's an increase from the FY26 budget that is primarily uh driven by salaries, wages, and benefits that have increased. Moving forward, FY27, that's the the second year of the vacant building tiered fee increase. About this time last year, you put into play a vacant building um permit structure that went from a one tier, meaning that the second year would the people would pay essentially $500 more per quarter, $2,000 more a year for their vacant building in the second year going forward. So, we will expect to see higher revenue there. Um, in addition to the work with that we're doing with prop

problem properties, that vacant building activity, the problem property activity that we're pressing property owners for compliance is moving the needle on things like the uh Bose restaurant project. It's really worked to apply some leverage to try to get them to apply when we ask them to. And other properties that have sat vacant for years, there's one at 218 St. Hall Street that may be featured in Seven Days this week. Um, it was vacant for years and it closed last year. There were more than $20,000 in overdue fees that were due to the city from that project. There's already a new person in the building doing some demolition with a permit on it. So, we're seeing some positive activity there. Our core services are going to remain active and we do we do not expect to see any reduction in services. We are working on a customer service satisfaction survey to try to emphasize the core work that we do in building and zoning to try to make it more effective. That's in conjunction with our planning department and with the um innovation technology department. the short-term rental enforcement that I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation. You may have already heard from the city attorney or you may have seen in the news that there was a recent perm court ruling that enables us to move forward with our next phase of enforcement. I met today with the city attorney talking strategy on that. We think we're going to see increased compliance on that and we're going to see additional revenues as a result of that. I was happy to put that picture in that project in there because that's the uh uh city place project in the middle of the courtyard. That's a couple of floors up in the middle there. And if you haven't been there yet for a tour, take those uh builders up on that offer. It's a great spot to be. It does not make you feel like you're in Burlington. It's really

energized energized for me to to be in that spot to feel like this is the renaissance that we've been talking about. It's really happening. There's great things going on. So the we're reducing some revenues. Uh we are we are reducing expenses but we've raised some revenues in some areas. We've reduced on the trades and the zone zoning side because of our expectations of lower revenues. Our staffing remains the same and we're going to emphasize compliance in the upcoming year. Compliance means uh code compliance. the the overdue fee collection helps on the revenue side of things. Uh last thing I'll note is that I did hear through Katherine and the mayor that counselors are interested in trying to get more enforcement officers on our team because I would agree with the counselors who are asking about that. It does we do need more enforcement. Our answer to that is the uh the specialized inspector, the code enforcement inspector 2 position, which will put an emphas emphasis on those problem properties and help again move the needle in that area. Happy to take questions.

Thank you, Bill. Questions for Bill, board of finance members,

councelor Bartley. Um, thank you. And I agree with on on city post building a renaissance in the future. But, um, I wanted to ask about the ability for us to ramp your capacity. If we get the, you know, we're focused on housing. If we start to get housing start, so we start to that activity, is it easy for you to add an electrical inspector? Is that something to go back or would you be able to take part or something? I'm just wondering right now we're sort of trying to address the you know the budget gap and um your current need but you know our policies are looking forward are to increase housing stock in the city which will put um more pressure on how we would sort of square

I think we're we're able to respond as it happens and I and I think because of the way things work. We're the ones who are the gatekeepers on the permits. We'll see that as things start coming in through the zoning side to say we're starting to see a a real trend shift. And I think our trades team is really keen to that. The two building officials are the the key intake people there. They're they are the equivalent of what the they view the team leading for the trades team because building permits are what sort of drives the electrical permits, the plumbing and mechanical permits. Um those two people will let me know. You'll hear from them in a few weeks when we talk about some changes we've got for chapter 8. But I think we're ready to, you know, we could respond pretty quickly if there is that need, but we've got more than enough capacity with what we currently have existing. And we also have great resources within the uh electric I'm sorry the um well the electric department is true but I was going to say the fire department whenever we needed anything in the trades division if there's we've had a shortfall the fire marshall's office has responded as a great partner whatever you need bill that's down there and I think we could respond quickly counselors here

just following up and and a a good mark button I also am pleased to hear we're doing more remote certifications and so in fact I think if we get more work one way to deal with that is is rely you know lots of departments you only had to do it in co so this shifting from having a person person do the inspection to you know sending a picture of it or sort of right in the air signing off it um you can't do that with properties. Um, so I am pleased to hear that you're focusing on code enforcement and hope that you will sort of get back to us if that doesn't doesn't work. I think being hard on those properties is the goal. And it it eludes me why some people don't understand it eats up their equity, but they don't. So I don't I don't generally feel too badly because it it's their choice to waste them and that's a choice they've made and they'll support all the attention that's been put on it has really been helpful because um a lot of the folks that have responded directly to me have felt like some of the things that the mayor and I and council have said about problem properties somehow is directly directed specifically to them. So quite a few of them are taking it personally. It's not directed at any one person, but it's good if they they're feeling that way because the number of non-compliant properties is expected to shrink. Just you know in the last month it's shrunk by two or three depending on what happens in the next week. We're reducing that number of those those problem properties. gives us lad latitude to reach out a little bit more to something that maybe is not as big a problem. But

it also with that reducing number gives us a little bit more focus and emphasis where we can you with Jessica Brown's teams help focus more on the people who are either non-responsive or just um respond poorly. So we're going to continue that. Well just you know helping people understand they're throwing away their asset and maybe they need some support, but selling it might be their best option. Not keeping We're looking to do whatever. We're going to drive people to compliance. We don't have to get them to sell it, but we do need to get them to be in compliance and we'll continue that way.

Any other board of finance members want to jump in before we go to other counselors? Seeing other board member board of finance members, other counselors questions for Bill. All right, friends. All right, Bill. Thank you. Appreciate it. We are on to our final presentation of the night. Everyone to hang in there. And we are our last participation by our city attorney's office and we have city attorney Jessica Brown online. Welcome Jessica. I will time you gently from afar. I don't know if you were on at the very very very beginning since it's been a very long meeting but um about 10 minutes of presentation you we hear you.

Oh can you? Oh yes you can. Yes. You were I thought like oh we suddenly have loud volume and now we are mute but no you are very much can we can very much hear you. So don't don't [laughter] All right. I will start the time for you. Thank you.

Great. Hi good evening everyone. Um, so I think our first slide is uh for the record, I'm city attorney Jessica Brown. Um, I guess this is my second time doing one of these budget presentations. Um, and uh, a highlight is that um, well, last year at this time when I did this presentation, we had just added a couple of new members to our staff, a new attorney and a new parallegal. and we have kept our small but mighty crew intact for the past year. Um, one of the things we did at some point last year, right around this time, I think, uh, was well, uh, we had had when I first started, um, a search for a deputy city attorney. Um, you'll see that that position remains vacant and will continue to remain vacant for the next fiscal year. Um but we did um one sort of outcome of that search was that um I recognized and felt that uh Eric Rama Christian uh position should be reclassified to reflect um a decade of municipal law experience that he brought with him um when he got hired at the city attorney's office in January 2024. Um and

but um

he is uh breaking our record of keeping our full staff intact for the past year um because he has moved to Canada and uh will be it is actually officially um working the balance of this fiscal year on a contract with the city um and leaving his position with the city fully. at the end of this fiscal year. And to answer um former counselor Busher's question from public forum, uh yes, we will be hiring to uh fill his position. So, the deputy city attorney position will remain vacant for the next fiscal year, but we will hire uh will post to hire uh an assistant city attorney to fill Eric's position. Um, and you'll actually be hearing the board of finance will actually be hearing more from me uh next Monday uh about the first steps in that process. Uh, Katherine, I think I'm ready for the next slide. Um, okay. So, I already touched on the first highlight, which was that we had have maintained our current staff for the entire year. Um, but, uh, Eric's going to be leaving us at the end of June. Um, prior to uh my arrival at the city attorney's office, the city attorney's office had never had a uh matter management um system. Uh and so with the support and help of the IT department, we uh entered into a contract with a company called Law View and launched uh that this year. Um which is really an internal uh system for attorneys to manage matters. um but really also has involved uh the participation of staff in all of the departments for which we provide legal support. Um and so uh staff has been really uh engaged and

helpful in uh improving our use of that system to try to make our support of them as efficient as possible. And maybe one day, maybe uh next year when this presentation is done, we'll be able to talk about sort of like how many matters we uh handled in the last fiscal year and how many matters we handle for each department and that sort of thing. Um we have been trying to handle more what I would call non-complex litigation in-house. So that can be anything from small claims cases which we do get uh complaints and letters um filing small claims against the city to uh doing you know filing um initial motions to dismiss in some matters that we think uh may be resolved fairly quickly. Um and so we're trying to do more of that before um referring cases to be assigned outside of the office to private council. Um the city attorney's office was integral in establishing the legal foundation to establish uh city circle which finally launched in January of this year. Uh, I don't know if um you've heard from CEDO yet and or if they've talked about this, but um you know, I was talking with attorney Wood the other day who was really did a most of the uh legal work to establish the City Circle ordinance. and they were commenting on the fact that when we launched City Circle, you know, our first goal was to see if people would actually engage. And I think in that sense, it's been pretty successful so far. Um, with about 50% of the people who've been ticketed or referred to City Circle actually coming to engage. And those who do engage, I

mean, I think probably the most positive takeaway is that those who do engage end up um successfully completing uh their uh commitments in city circle. Um and I would say the next phase is sort of starting now. We're anticipating obviously as the weather is continuing to improve and there's more activity in city hall park and in the marketplace um that we're going to see an increase in cases and so we're trying to be as prepared for that as possible um including the next phase of sort of evaluating the ordinances that we're seeing most commonly ticketed uh and whether we need to do any tweaking of those um to improve our ability ability to um engage people who are receiving those kinds of tickets. Um, I've continued to do a lot of work following federal litigation, um, you know, both by the federal government and against the federal government, executive orders, um, and including, uh, obviously ICE operations, you know, around the country. um and did a lot of work uh that really started in early 2025, but we revisited and worked with staff to make sure that all city buildings uh have information about what staff should do if uh ICE agents were to um come to the buildings with any warrants or making any requests or demands. Um, and so we recently did a training on that. And I always like to include um the numbers that we have for how much um revenue the city has brought in uh from

zoning and permitting enforcement uh based on the work that uh primarily attorney does with DPI and uh this past year that was as you can see uh close to $128,000. Next slide, please. Uh, so by keeping the city attorney, excuse me, the deputy city attorney position vacant for another year, um, that will be $114,000 in savings. And we are also uh reducing what is uh referred to as our professional and consultant services budget line by $45,000. Um I I don't really have much to add to that. So and this is also a very quick slide because um we really don't we're not a revenue generating department. Um you know obviously we support other departments that do generate revenue and so uh the uh department of finance and administration sets uh an amount of interdep departmental revenue that we receive from some of uh from our enterprise departments enterprise fund departments and uh in the next year that will be $220,000. So, our final adopted budget for fiscal year 26 was $1.4 million. The vast majority, as you can see, of that is personnel. Um, and we are right at about 80% through uh that budget for this fiscal year. And what you'll see on the next slide is that we are basically uh level for the next year. Um we there is going to be a slight reduction in our budget from the

consulting line. Um but otherwise we're really staying pretty much the same. Uh these are all points that I've already touched on. Our budget is essentially staying the same. Um the deputy city attorney position will remain vacant. we will hire to replace one assistant city attorney. So, we will remain at a total of eight out of nine total positions filled in our department. And um just in the coming year, I didn't really talk about um any of the charter work that we did in the past year, but we are continuing to move forward with um modernizing the charter. Uh I think the next phase is going to be um kind of addressing things that need to be updated or eliminated because they are antiquated. Um the city circle is being funded for another year by the attorney general's office which is exciting news. Um, so as I've noted, we'll continue to work with the police department and the community justice center to um make more improvements to the program so that we can continue to have um successful outcomes. And um I've mentioned that I will continue to follow federal litigation, executive orders, and memos from the federal government to continue to advise city departments, the administration, and council uh accordingly as any of the above are impacted by those federal decisions. So I think that now I'm up to the questions and discussion slide.

Well, indeed. Thank you, Jessica. We'll open up to board of finance members first for questions for the city attorney's office. Councelor Barlo.

Um thank you. Um I have a question about um what we'll do what when attorney uh Rama Christian is gone and what we're searching for a replacement. you know, he he brings a lot of capacity to your department and I'm wondering if we'll be trying to contract out some of that work uh or just be delaying that work and what your thoughts are on that. So, uh, as I mentioned, um, I'm going to be back in front of the board of finance next week. Um because not to get too in the weeds tonight, but um because we reclassified disposition last year, um we the first step uh to being able to hire or post to hire is to reclassify that position um from the director tier that it's at or grade I should say that it's at to um a starting assistant city attorney grade. Um, and when so I I I hope for that process to happen over the next two weeks um with board of finance on the 11th and city council on the 18th after which um we can go ahead and post for the assistant city attorney position. So I um I think realistically that we will have a period of time a gap between when Eric finishes with us at the end of June and when we have a new hire in place although you know we'll have a little bit over a month lead uh when we get the post up before Eric leaves. But I again,

realistically, I don't anticipate that we will get the post up, you know, by the end of May and have someone starting before Eric actually leaves. Uh so I think we'll have a gap. Um, we're gonna we're actually meeting Wednesday, the attorneys in my office to talk about kind of how to talk about this exact question, sort of how we're going to manage uh Eric's work until we have a uh fifth attorney back in place. And I'll also add that, you know, for example, Eric does a lot of work with um DPW and Water Resources in particular, and they are an enterprise fund and can um have already, I think, talked about continuing to contract with Eric uh directly uh after he officially leaves his position with the city um on projects that he has already been working on. So uh that's one way and then certainly if there was a complex project that needed you know that we couldn't sort of slow down or manage uh like needed immediate continued attention and uh couldn't really be delayed until a fifth attorney a fifth attorney is in place. Um, we could certainly look into contracting out with private counsel.

Okay. Thank you, Councelor Barlo. Other questions for Board of Finance? Yes, of course.

We'll open it up to other counselors then. Other questions for counselors? Councelor Chapter. Um, I've asked this question a couple times with a couple different departments, but with the position you're proposing, holding vacant for another year, the deputy city attorney, and as you're keeping more in-house and all of that, do you anticipate that impacting like having a challenging impact on your work streams um or anything like that? I mean, I think our work streams are already pretty challenging. So, um, with that said, you know, at its most challenging and recent memory, this was pre, uh, me starting, they were down to three attorneys in the office, three assistants, um, Kim, Haley, and Eric, who had basically just started. And I think maybe before they got Eric, um, they were down to three with a different third person, third attorney. So, it's been worse. Um, but, you know, that doesn't mean that we want it. You know, my hope is that it won't we won't be at four for very long. um depending on you know the level of experience that we uh are able to find in I hope a you know a strong pool of candidates um you know we'll be back to five pretty quickly and um and listen you know I'm gonna answer your question with like a specific example because I just listened to um Bill Ward talking about DPI and enforcement and

you know that is the the city attorney's office's role in um you know enforcement is uh important but we re and we really have one attorney in the office who primarily is responsible for that and that's a lot of work and So the dream is that one day we will be an office of six full-time attorneys and that some of that work that we want to see um kind of uh be become more efficient and uh move more quickly um and take on more capacity uh will be able to be a little bit more shared so that all of that can can happen. Um but you know in the times when we dip down to to four or rebuilding our staff um our capacity is probably not going to increase. Um but I would say that our team does a pretty good job of managing the flow that we we have which is pretty intense.

I appreciate that. I feel like um with you all's role and and the way you serve the city in particular that not at a like the cost of one additional team member to me feels low compared to what you know hiring private counsel if the workload exceeds what we're capable of andor just like with so much happening at the federal level um and and when we're wanting to make really sound legal decisions and like the money it it quickly pays for itself I guess is what I'm saying in a lot of different potential contexts. So, I guess um I just sort of wanted to flag that like that stands out to me as like uh is that what is that opening up it up to and could that actually be more costly in the long term than hiring for that role? Well, and I will add that um what I you know in working on this budget with CEO Shod and the mayor um we have specifically talked about the fact that we are planning this vacancy for fiscal year 27 but [clears throat] not for fiscal year 28. Right. So

yeah, like in intending to uh have this not remain vacant beyond fiscal year 27. Got it. Thank you. Thank you, councelor. Councelor Grant,

um I just wanted to make a comment uh to your earlier comment. Uh Cherry Brown, the the issue that it's been worse. I just want to make sure it is fully acknowledged. The miracle you pulled off stabilizing this office because the turnover prior to you being hired was horrible. and there were a lot of temporary positions and the city was outsourcing work and um it hurt public safety initiatives as well. Um, so I I understand that yeah, you the things that you just said about having to uh take a look at with what the workload would be like when Eric left, but I fully remember a time where it was just it was just horrendous. So, I thank you for your hard work and making that um your department a place where people do want to stay uh because it wasn't always that way. Thank you.

Thank you, counselor. Thank you. So, I appreciate that and uh I do want to say that we have a really great team. Um so, thank you for recognizing that. Any final questions? We have time for one more. Not seeing any. With that, Jessica, thank you very much. Appreciate it. And that is our last item on our agenda. So, with no further business, I will adjourn the board of finance at 7 p.m. Thank you very much.

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