City Council - Special Meeting

Welcome to tonight's version something of budget workshops.

Thank you, council, for being here tonight and staff. We feel like we live here now. So appreciate all the time and effort and things that you guys put into these meetings, especially our staff putting this all together. With that, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to our Acting Finance Director and Treasurer.

So tonight I've prepared a few documents for you to look at and some final numbers at where we're lying right now. It doesn't mean that we can't make any final changes or requests tonight, but after tonight if we do have changes I'll be busy updating those tomorrow and then Thursday I will be getting all the documentation to the clerk's office for the notice of hearings for August 11th and so Thursday will be No changes after that. As mentioned before, if something comes up after that and we do feel that it might have a large enough budget impact, we can always discuss it. We can't change the amount of property tax that we levy, but there's potential throughout the year to look at that and identify whether it should be or it needs to be on a budget amendment that we can propose throughout the year. So I gave everybody a packet. The front page is essentially just a summary of some of the things that have been asked. And so I wanted to go over that first and then look at the numbers so that you knew what was in the numbers. So we were able to add two new police positions. One of those was a frozen position that was frozen a couple of years ago. So it's not really a new position, but it's an unfreezing of a position. So it will be a new body coming onto the police department. So two new bodies. And then $2 an hour raises for sergeants and below. That includes the $0.85 COLA. And that was what we were able to kind of fit within the scope of the additional funding that they could get through some of the 1%. Some of the 1% was reserved to assist with decreasing the deficit as well. We decided that we didn't have enough room for incentives. But we will be looking at that throughout the year to see if there's cost savings to be able to provide other bonuses and stuff. Those are cost savings can be used as bonuses throughout the year. And so I identified we would be working with the police department to hopefully be able to give something to help retain some of those essential staff. The fire positions, the numbers here include six new fire positions. One of the things that we've been continually asking of fire is to delay the hiring. They will need 12 firefighters to man their new fire station, fire station number four. Originally, they proposed 12 new firefighters coming in mid-year. Then we came back and said, can we do 12 new firefighters July 1, so last quarter of the year. And then in this proposal, we came back and said, can we take a staggered approach, do six new firefighters July 1 with the intent to hire the remaining six, 10-1, which would put us into the 28 fiscal year, which is why they're not in the 28 budget. But there will be a proposal next year intentionally to come up with the additional staffing needs for the fire station. So that's going to be a A heavy lift on the city's part. And on the fire's end, it will take up probably quite a bit of their additional property tax revenue for the 2028 budget. So just keep that in mind. That's how we're planning to do that.

So I have a question real quick.

Yeah.

Is that all right, Mr. Mayor, if I ask a question? So when we talk about the six that are going to be hired this July, that is included in the 13 general funded positions? Yes. Okay.

I did have conversations with the fire chief as well. Again, we're going to be looking at that closely. Because things are so tight with fire, we're going to be trying to do a phased approach, depending on the timeline of the build of the fire station. So as we get closer to knowing exactly when that will be completed. I'll be working with the fire department to strategically bring on personnel as the completion gets closer so that we can make sure that we have staff and time. And we'll communicate with council throughout the year if anything changes. The numbers that we're going to look at next also include the removal of the $800,000 for the sewer extension to serve the Canyon County property.

Does that have to go into any specific pot or is that just general fund money?

That wasn't coming from general fund money to begin with. That is from our sewer funds. So that is not... It's going back to the sewer fund to be utilized for other potential projects for the year. We have a lot of sewer projects for the year. And right now it's just not in the budget at all. But we have a lot of other projects that we have planned. I don't think it's going to allow us to get more done. No.

Yeah, and so we decided not to reallocate it to a different project specifically. As Rochelle said, we've got a lot going on already. And so we decided to just keep it there as we try and keep that a comfortable base for sewer in case there's ever a catastrophic failure where we need some money. So we decided not to allocate.

A follow-up question to Chris's question, if that's okay. So when you don't allocate it, it just goes back into your balance, or whatever balance you have in that fund, and then you have a capital improvement list that eventually, if you got down far enough on the list, that would be brought up to fund for one of the projects on the bottom of the list. Is that a correct assumption?

Yeah, on a long-term planning scale, yes. Okay. We did reduce the city projects. The original ask was 700,000. We reduced that down to 500,000. The $200,000 does make us really tight. We're concerned there might be some cost increases throughout the year that might cause us to go above it, but we can leave it at $200,000. If you guys are okay with it, we would like to ask for another $50,000 just to cover some of those excess costs, but currently in the numbers we're about to look at, it does show a full reduction of $500,000 down to $200,000 from the $700,000 originally requested for City Hall.

improvements clarify for council we don't have a exact estimate on those security improvements for city clerk filling the door and it was further explained council chamber modifications for these area so don't have an exact number so just in case we run into an overage if we were able to have that extra room nothing second floor just simply first floor just in case because we've had issues of overages in the past on things so if that was acceptable for those particular safety projects that would be appreciated. And if not, then we'll just move on and give us a little room just in case it goes over. But we've kept it at 200 unless we're allowed to do an extra 50. And if it doesn't get spent, then it just stays anywhere it's at. So we're not going to go on a fishing expedition for additional projects other than just making sure we have enough for these to be completed.

No.

Okay.

We would, excuse me, any appropriation of those funds would come before council anyway, correct?

Yes. Yeah, they would. Yes. We can make sure that those projects specifically, if you'd like, would come before council. The next item I just wanted to kind of reiterate that these numbers still include the 85 cent Cola. That's the citywide Cola that we're doing obviously fire and the Sergeants and below and the police department are going to be getting a little bit more than that but for all other city staff these numbers do include an 85 cent Cola and And then I gave a little bit of a position summary that just gives the total number of positions. And just for clarification, the second line item does list the six fire positions on hold. I just wanted to have that in there. Those are positions that are not included in these numbers. These numbers include the 13 general fund positions, the library position, the two parks and rec, the six water, the four wastewater, and the one electrical.

Where does that leave us on our rainy day fund or fund balance, whatever you want to call it?

So the next page shows the general fund total and where it leaves us. The very bottom of the page is the fund balance use. The projected fund balance use for 2027 would be $1.1 million. So that's how much we'd be using of our savings bucket, essentially.

What will we have in our savings bucket after that? Say we have to use it. Fifteen million? Ten million?

We have approximately 15 in there now, so it would bring it down to 14 if everything played out this way. Within this, we have the breakdown, so the top section identifies the administrative portion of the general fund, which is mostly city hall services and facilities, attorney services, HR, IT, the mayor's office, economic development, and things of that nature. I did delineate, at the very top you'll see the revenue, and I did identify how much of that revenue is identified in property tax. I know that got brought up last time, so I just kind of wanted to break that out. So within our general services, there's only about $137,000 of property tax going to that. Very little of that goes to covering the general services within the general fund. Most of that's covered by internal cost allocation, where we charge other departments for these services, as well as sales tax for revenue sharing. Those are the two main contributors to fund those services. And then police and fire are identified separately. Again, I did break out the revenue so that you could see how much of the property tax is going toward them this year and then how much of their revenue is other fees and contract revenue. It does put police at a negative 919,000. It's a little bit better than last year at a negative 1,053,000. So hopefully we can see that decrease over time. The same for fire. Fire has a little bit of a decrease, but these decreases are not huge. There were a lot of asks this year, and so in trying to balance things, You know, our goal is to decrease that deficit each year moving forward, and we'll continue to work toward that. Building services, there's no property tax revenue going here. This is all fee-based revenue to fund these services, and that's our building service revenue, mapping, building engineering, fire safety, and planning and zoning. So this is kind of an overall view. This includes all the things that I just mentioned. If you were to allow us to have the additional 50,000 for city projects, that would just increase the deficit by, you know, bring it from 1.106 to 1.156. Anybody have any questions on that? How we're looking so far.

Are we taking foregone?

This includes foregone. Yes. One percent. The next page is just another kind of recap. This was provided by Ray Lynn.

It was a list of positions when we had originally started budget workshops.

I pretty much just updated it to kind of identify what is now on there, showing the six firefighters on there, but at the zeroed out dollar amount for the ones that were reduced and put on hold until 2028. The two positions, the unfrozen position and the additional position have been added. Just for some detail for you, if you want to see specifically what positions are being added by department.

So regarding fire, I have a couple of questions. Are we done with the fire contract? Do we know what that's costing us this year?

I believe those are completed and done.

So we have a dollar amount?

I believe we do.

Those are completed, and they are voting on that this week. So the union membership needs to approve that.

So our dollar amount that we're looking at is pretty accurate then? Pretty accurate, yes. OK, thank you. And then we've already been put into this calculation, correct?

Right, Kelsey, yes.

And then the second half of that is early in our budget, we were trying to decide, because fire was considering going to a district, whether to fund them with one-time money or normal. This looks like normal funding to me. Is that right?

Yeah, I can talk more about that. I have one more page to show you. That's the last page here, and that's how we're allocating the property taxes here. Okay, cool. So yes and no, I guess, is the answer to your question. I did give them – I'm not fully funding police with all the property tax revenue like we had planned if they were going to leave. to make them whole. As you can see, they're not whole. And neither is fire. So I did look at that and split that. This year, it's a pretty equal split. The only difference is that police department is getting the foregone. And so it's a little bit more than what fire's getting in percentage of increase from previous year. So I think that... I think the percentage increase is 13% for fire, so they're getting a 13% increase in property tax from their previous year, and fire's getting, I mean, sorry, fire's getting a 13% increase in property tax from the prior year, and police is getting 14, because they're getting that 401. So pretty much split even. That wasn't what the original proposal was. This is actually a little less in property tax than that was originally presented. I looked at some franchise fee revenue, and that was going in for general services. Our general services, as you know, it was showing a positive. And so I did shift a couple hundred thousand dollars. I think it was like $187,000 to fire. And the reason I did that was because of this transition that it that's a revenue that will come back to the city It's hard If they were to transition now I don't know I Knew what it looked like if they were going to annex in with a rule of fire district not doing that It's a it's a totally different impact on the property tax I believe when they go and create their own district and that they're allowed to relevy. I do believe that we still have to reduce our budget by the amount that was proposed to them. But having so many things up in the air now that are contingent on whether or not that happens, the voters, other other agencies that have to go through that approval process. I didn't want to make any decisions assuming anything. Whereas with the rural fire district, it was just one party that had to say yes. Now we have multiple factors, and I think it would be a little risky to assume that all those factors would play out. So until we know more, I decided to give them as much as I felt comfortable with without decimating them, but also giving us the opportunity to come back in future years. That's where my mind was on that.

Did the higher union understand what kind of a deficit position we're in when they were? Who's on that ?

It's myself, Chief Gerard, Councilor Dittmer, and . Who was brought up?

It was brought up at every meeting. Still 13%.

I think that 13% is the overall budget increase.

That's the increase of property tax. Like, if you take the property tax last year they got and you times it by 13%, that's the amount of property tax they got this year.

Okay, over that 13% then how much went to union from raising?

How much of it went to raises? Three and a half percent was the average.

On wage increases? Yes.

There are some other things that happened in the in the union negotiations. I'm not I'm not sure where that everybody is fully aware of. But the union representative made chief and give me the signal if you don't want me to talk about it. But the union made great strides to say We understand the financial difficulties, but we think some of the financial difficulties are caused by some pattern and practices of collecting huge amounts of comp time. and people taking excessive amount of time off at the end of their career without being on a truck. Is that fair to say? And so they made some serious concessions about giving the chiefs some additional management capacity in exchange for putting more money in their pocket to save the money, to save the city long-term.

Is that a fair assessment for those of you who are...

I just want everybody to understand that they didn't get a 13% increase on wages. I'm trying to get a 3%.

So this final sheet shows the actual property tax levy, as well as our kind of breaks it out. It shows previous years as well, so you can kind of see a comparison there. The final column is for 2027. It lists how much we are giving to each department within the governmental funds. And then it has a total there. So the actual amount that we're levying this year is $34.6 million. But then the fire bond levy is also an additional piece. Of course, that goes away once we pay the bond off. But that adds to it about 1.2, almost 1.3. We also get $254,000 for property tax replacement. So we don't levy that. It's collected and then given to us through the state, I think, is how that works. So that's just an extra amount that we do get, but we don't levy in relation to property tax, which brings us a total collection of property tax of 35.9 numbers. So I just wanted to kind of show you guys the amount we're levying in comparison to what we show on the books so you guys could see that. So those are the changes I've made. One thing that was brought up in previous council sessions that I don't feel like we got some good direction on was there was an attorney's position for the paralegal that was kind of discussed. And I wasn't sure if you guys want, knowing where we're at now, if you want to stay with that or if you had any additional questions regarding that position.

So does this number reflect that position or no?

This number does reflect that position currently.

My opinion is all the stuff we've got going on, I think we need it. Offers are full with legal stuff, so we don't have the help. If we don't, it's going to cost us more money. And the city attorney agrees. I hate government. I agree we need it.

So Chief, I have a question. So you feel comfortable with the 6th in July and then the 6th in next December. That gives you the time you need to open your police department.

Fire department.

I'm here, sir.

He wants to be a cop. It does, and I worked with Rochelle to actually craft this message so that we can time the hiring almost to the date of when we open doors for Station 4. There will be probably some conversations maybe next summer about how close we are and how fast we need to hire these people. I think the funding for those personnel can wait until we turn the fiscal year. There may be a chance, though, or an opportunity or an ask from the fire department to bring those folks on early. And so we'll just keep managing that and setting our expectations forward towards fiscal year 28. But we may come early in 27 to start the hiring process.

So just a question, Michelle, then. So if they're planning on bringing them on in December of 2027, which puts them in fiscal year 2028, and you're talking about a 16-week lead time to get somebody fully trained, would it still be in fiscal year 2028 if they hired them by the 1st of October?

Well, I think we'd actually potentially start preparing to hire prior to that.

So in fiscal 2027?

Yeah. Yeah. So we'd have the positions prepared, everything kind of going, and that way we could be ready to actually initiate. We would need to make sure that in those discussions they knew that their start date would be. Again, though, we are going to be looking at it really closely because it's going to coincide with the Station 4 build out and how that plans out. So as we go throughout the year, we'll know more are we needing to add one now. If there's a reason that we need to get one sooner, say we get all six on board and we feel like this is going faster than anticipated, then we will come to council and ask to add that position. But that would be brought to you, and you'd be aware of it, and we'd be asking for that ahead of time, and it would be incorporated into the budget. I mean, 28 budget. Excuse me.

So, Rochelle, what do we need to do to work on now, in between now and late next year, to help fire and police out? What needs to happen?

So some of the things that we did in the budget, one of the asks from FIRE was to have a kind of like an accounting assistant. And we didn't have the money to fully fund a position there. So we currently have a position for the police department that assisted tremendously this year in really honing down on costs for police. And they are actually located at the police department. It's been really helpful in really just kind of getting on top of every little thing. I know fire and police are really tight and they probably hate the finances getting so involved in their stuff, but that's what happens when you have really tight budgets. And so we were able to work really well together this year and I told the fire chief that we are allocating 30 of that position to fire to assist just with the budget so they can share yeah share that that same person um and so i'll be working with them this upcoming year to really uh look at their budget really um just make sure that we don't have any i mean when we did it with police we found a few duplications you know in softwares and just some cleanup that we were able to do it's not a ton of money but every every little bit helps and it also just helps maintain tracking throughout the year and making sure that you are catching items that maybe aren't in the budget and so it's just getting really detail-oriented with that so that's one way that we plan to do it strategically I would like to you know as soon as I have estimates on what next year looks like property tax wise I'll probably start talking to both of the chiefs right away and saying okay this is what I'm projecting how much are we gonna hold on to to decrease our deficit and how much are we going and how are we gonna spread the rest of that we have to hold on to a little bit to decrease that deficit unfortunately to bring us whole and depending on where fire goes in the next year we'll make some huge impacts to where that discussion goes so we're just going to have to keep an eye on things so will that person report to you like once a month or something or uh right now we meet every other week okay good yep and they do uh reports right now it's just for pd but it would be for fire they give me a budget comparison every Two weeks, so we see, and they share it with the department. So the department heads see the same thing. Overtime reports, budget versus actual reports. So we can see things as soon as they come up. So they're very, it helps tremendously. So hopefully we'll be able to have that for the fire department as well, this year as well.

And if we increase commercial industrial, that will too.

Yeah.

Substantially. Yeah.

That's all Robin. But yeah.

I hate to beat a dead horse, but.

Marshall, I have a question for you. Chuck Stoddick asked earlier about our fund balance. He said our fund balance was down to about $14 million.

That's the excess on top of the 30%. So that's not our full fund balance. OK, so that is on top of our 30%.

So how much has that fund balance drawn down over the last couple of years?

Yeah, last year, um, you know, we, 1 of the things that we do in our budget practice, we're very conservative with our budget and we don't budget for investment revenue and things like that. Because it's not necessarily smart to. But we have seen excesses in in the general fund that have been able to accommodate some of these deficits. And so, but last year we got really close to being there. And so that that did concern me this year right now, and in looking at current projections, we're really close. Close closer than we have been in previous years and so I'm keeping an eye on that right now. I'm hoping we come in. I think we're going to come in this year pretty close to last year, just right around breaking even. If we do see dipping into it, I don't think it'll be a ton. 500,000, maybe a million most in the general fund. It's hard to say because those internal allocations, we true those up too. So if other departments in the services divisions have cost savings for whatever reason, That gets passed along to all the other funds as well. But I think we're going to come in kind of really close. Last year, we had a $500,000 gain. But when you're talking a budget as large as ours, that's a really small amount.

What are our biggest threats this year? Nothing happens, hopefully. But what are our biggest threats to our budget?

trying to think of the general fund projects that we have i i'd say i don't have a lot of projects this year that that's been my concern in the past like with the pool cost overruns if we have large projects in the general fund those are definitely big concerns because we have inflation issues right now and projects that take longer cost longer But we're not budgeting this year. I mean, we've got the projects for this building, but we don't have any major general fund projects that we're planning. I, unless there's something that comes up that we need to entertain now, I know there's been discussions about library moving and these kinds of things, unless there's some kind of, something that comes to light that creates an immediate concern for one of those projects, that would be my concern, is where are we gonna come up with that funding? Is it gonna be from the general fund? And depending on what department that is, how are we gonna be able to do that?

So do we need to work with urban renewal too on commercial, industrial versus residential, or what can we do with those people?

I think that urban renewal is definitely a good tool in steering the kind of development that you want in those areas. I think it would be advantageous to work with them and be on top of what they're planning and... Yeah, I think that collaboration in that sense is advantageous.

Thank you. So I realize this is a whole lot harder than it is to talk about it, but the fire and police overtime has just gone nuts. And we have got to figure out a way to bring that money from fire and police into full-time positions for fire and police instead of spending it all on overtime because overtime, you can't budget. I mean, you just got no clue what you're gonna run into.

So being a former police chief, what affects overtime? The body count or crime rate or all these things?

Back when I was there, the average was about 67% of the time you had a full crew. The rest of the time, somebody was working An extra shift or 33% of the time, somebody was working an extra shift or filling in somebody was gone. And and again, you know, you, you. A lot of times during those times, uh. We were getting robbed by middle Meridian and Boise and stuff. So we were losing people. Commonly, but but we've got to figure out where that break point is so that. When they have somebody off, they've got somebody to fill that's not costing us time and a half or double time. Because those dollars cost a lot more than the salary dollars, at least time and a half minimum. And then like I said, it's a whole lot easier to talk about than it is to get it done. But I think that needs to be a priority at some point, is trying to work those overtime dollars into regular time dollars so that we're not, again, paying time and a half for the same hour. that we could be paying straight time for.

But we've diminished the losses to other departments, haven't we or have we not? Personnel. Yes, sir.

A lot or not? I can go on that. Thank you very much. I just want to say, first and foremost, on the record, that Rochelle and Kelsey have done a tremendous job this year in the budget, working through weekends and holidays to get this dialed in because they understand the priorities of the council and the community. By putting public safety 1st, so thank you Rochelle. Thank you Kelsey. But, yeah, to answer your question, sir. We, the executive team at the police department has a very good grasp on overtime. We are all overtime Nazis. If you want to put it that way. We have systems and controls in place to regulate that also officer burnout is a huge factor for us officer wellness. But simply put the demands of the community and the, the explosive growth since 2020, we haven't kept up with that. The city's grown by almost 20 to 30,000 people. We've. grown by you know two dozen so um we're significantly we are the lowest um officer per 1 000 rate in the entire entire state right now the average we're at 1.11 we should be at 1.5 to 1.7 um and so we're asking everyone to do more with less and uh technology kind of helps us do that but it's still not a replacement for boots on the ground so that's why my myself and my Captain and my lieutenants are foregoing any raises this year to officially give our people, our working people, a pay increase because they deserve it. And that's just not the officers. That's all the civilian professional staff that work around the clock to keep us safe here.

So could you just thank you for that, chief? Thank you for all the hard work. Can you just briefly explain the difference in overtimes, too, between ones that are reimbursed for, which do show up as overtime, but absolutely repaid, and additionally, ones like our call-outs and such?

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

So there's obviously different. Anytime someone works past their shift, it's considered overtime for FLSA purposes. uh but we do have a lot of events in the city that we can get reimbursed for so we have contracts with like destination caldwell for example if there's a private event uh for-profit business that's coming into town to do an event like group fest or We will get reimbursed there. There are several different vendors throughout the city that we get reimbursed from. I don't have the exact list in front of me, but we changed that about a year and a half ago. There was obviously some political fallout with certain stakeholders in the community, including the rodeo and the fair. And we've since been working with them as well to try to mitigate that relationship and make sure that we're all on the same side and same team. But. When officers are extended into watch meeting, like, they have a late arrest or something, or there's a critical incident happens, they are working until they go home. But what we're trying to do is have active supervisors that go out there and send people home and do the report or something the following day. the expectation of the community and the prosecuting attorney's office now is that things have to get charged. So for example, we had two officers that got hospitalized on Sunday, and by Monday morning at 10 o'clock, the PA needs the information, but those officers are injured, so they can't type reports. So that that's a strain on the whole criminal justice system and it's an overtime burden on us as well. So, having to work with all of our partners in the community is not just a police thing, but it's a whole criminal justice problem and it impacts everyone. So that's why we're. When we do technology rollouts and stuff, those things can help the entire system or cohesively together. The other thing too, we've had an increase in in 1st amendment demonstrations here and. We cannot have an event that happens across the country in big cities where we have officers shooting people. Whether it's justified or not, that's not what I'm talking about. We cannot afford to have that here in Caldwell, and we will not have that. So we over deploy those days. We cancel people's days off, just like the storm event that whole weekend we mobilized the entire department to come in. We can't have a catastrophic failure on our watch. And there's just too much going on here, and it means too much for us. Since we've created such a safe environment and called well for businesses and people to come exercise their 1st amendment, right? People feel safe here and when they feel safe here, they continue to come every single weekend. And it's a resource drain. We are not collecting the money on those. Those are not private events that we can collect and get reimbursed for. So we're trying to pivot in a direction to. maximize what we have, including drone for first responder program, including the ALPR technology, to try to identify the people and really just keep people safe without having an actual footprint on the ground to reduce that overtime cost. But there's a lot of moving parts in it that we can talk offline if you'd like to.

Thank you. Just so you guys are aware, too, obviously we'll have some conversations if this one's coming for council. I'm actively researching the Star mitigation fees so far have not been challenged. Additional funding mechanisms, we'll have to vet that heavily. But we're trying to find additional revenue sources to help out our first responders and such. So at some point, we may have a workshop or something like that. But we just got to do some more research on that, but we're trying to find ways to help fund that and pay for growth. So I do know that at some point we'll get some more information to you, but we are looking at additional ways to help these folks out.

And I know, Mr. Mayor, Rochelle and her team are working literally around the clock to find every single penny they can of revenue to offset that deficit as best as they can. So I appreciate that, and so do our men and women.

One of the things that we did also discuss, and I don't remember if we talked about it in budget, but we always budget in the general fund for contingency, which is emergencies. And this last year, we had quite a bit of protests that were unplanned, I guess you could say, that required police staff time. Because those protests are emergencies, our police officers do have to adhere to them and they're not really planned within their operating budget. We identified that if there are protests that happen that require use of police staff time, that the costs would go into the contingency to assist in unplanned, I guess you could say, overtime costs that might occur in relation to those unplanned emergency types events. Similar to the FEMA, or not, I guess we are getting FEMA funding from Canyon County, but as far as the city goes, we might get a little bit of that. 75% reimbursement of any overtime. that went toward mitigating that damage. So those spreadsheets have all been sent to the county and whatnot, but my plan is to pull that out of the police operating fund and use contingency funds for those types of things if they're emergency related and require the use of police's overtime staff time. So you might see some requests come forward to use that contingency fund if we do have unplanned emergencies that require additional police overtime.

Do you agree with that, correct?

Yes.

Forgive my lack of knowledge, but when these groups come in, we can't charge a fee for protection. Is that correct? No, sir. Not for a first amendment.

It's a constitutional right, and we're proud to support that. Okay.

And I think it's worth noting, too, that fire's in the same situation, but you have to have four firefighters on an engine. When you have someone out or you have something happen, it's difficult to plan. You can talk about your overtime better than I can, but we are entrusted with the care of our citizens, and we can't just... shut down a fire station because we've got people injured or sick or on vacation or other things. And so sometimes overtime is an animal that is beyond our control. And I think we all understand that. I appreciate the question.

Well, no, I understand overtime. My point is that we've got to reach a point where We have enough bodies, enough boots on the ground so that our teams are staffed enough so we can absorb a loss of a person or an extra duty here and there. We've got to get to a manning position where if we have a couple officers off that are injured, We're not having to bring in more. We still have a significant team on the ground. That's where I'm getting at. Operating at the bare minimum costs us a lot of money.

Yeah, and I couldn't agree more with you. I mean, officer safety is the most important thing because if we have officers that aren't here, they can't protect the community. So we have completely reorged in the last four years our whole department structure where – Our minimums have gone up, and so we do have flexibility. The short shift crisis that has plagued every department in the country, I'm not going to say it doesn't exist, but it's not really at the forefront because we've kind of minimized that a lot. So it's the spontaneous protests. It's the critical incidents. It's the expectations of we've got to have people out at the parade, different things like that that come up that And then, too, I'm proud to say that this is something that is not measured, but we don't shoot people and harm the community like other agencies do in the country to the same magnitude. We still have armed, dangerous people in the city of Caldwell, and we have officers that are fully trained that prioritize de-escalation, reverence for human life, and I'm proud of that. So if it takes 10 hours for us to have a kid with a shotgun to his head drop the gun, I'm proud of that. I'll pay as much money because that's a human life. And so where other people, you know, other agencies, I mean, they're quick. And not to say there's anything bad or anything, but we prioritize that. And that affects overtime. And people will complain about that. But I'm proud to say as the chief, we value human life over the cost of overtime.

I think following up on all three of these conversations is part of the conversation with the mitigation fees is we have to at some point decide to establish a minimum level of service across our departments, but we need to service the city. That would require a study and some other factors of plan. With that, if we do have that standard, we do go in a direction, whether it be a levy or mitigation fees or a combination thereof. Now we can start to play to exactly what Councilor Allgood and our former chief actually hired me, so thank you, years ago. To establish that, what do we need? What does that look like? Our PAM is, what, 30-something or officers, right, or ideally?

But where should we be at now? What are we looking at?

five, 10 years, instead of just adding none like last year or two this year, can we find ways to significantly increase? So then we do reduce burnout and overtime. I mean, I think if we can really up that, but we're gonna have to establish that minimum level of service required for the city at each population level, and then go from there on how we can fund that.

My only point there and bring this up is we, as councilman, when we sit here at each of the meetings that we have. Approving residential, commercial or industrial, whatever. We can have an impact on that too, to help these folks out by what we approve and what we don't approve. So, we need to really concentrate on that. Yes, sir. And police that as much as we can.

Yeah, well, and I was every 1000 houses. officer and then how does that look for fire every 10,000 people one station yeah that's no right now we have ten thousand five or six hundred houses on the chamber so you know we got to start looking at that what are we gonna be at in the next couple years we have to have the right development yes all right

Are there any other I just have one more question more for council if there's anything else you want Us to look into or address Before finalizing things and having and getting things ready for our budget hearing on the 11th of August So

We had a lot of discussions over the last six weeks, maybe even up until, you know, Ray Lynn was leaving about this conversation about pulling the trigger on bolt barrels of a shotgun. That would be the fire department separation and possibly also a public safety levy. Are we still then talking about a public safety levy for next May or where is that discussion? Are we comfortable enough with this budget that we expound talking about the public safety levy or is that still on the table?

I think it's definitely still on the table. Next year is going to be a heavy lift for us to take them on. I'm already concerned about what that's going to look like for us as a city. We added six positions this year, but that's only a quarter of the year coming on. So next year, we're going to be taking those entire positions plus these six other positions. So this year is just a precursor to those six positions. The true cost for those 12 are going to come on next year, and that could potentially take everything that fire has in additional along with increases that are uncontrolled you know insurance and things of that nature but so we'll see when we get there but they and we're capped we hit our 8% this year so I think for sustainability for the fire department if they want to continue to meet the

Now I have a bunch more questions. You said we met our 8% cap. Once we meet our 8% cap, is it likely that we're going to meet it next year or the next year, that once we meet it, we're at full capacity?

Unless we see a decline in new construction, I think that it's likely that we'll hit back. The new construction, the amount of the new construction is kind of what puts you over to that 8%. And so I foresee that continuing.

So you need to get your budget published by the 23rd, and I think we're going to wind this meeting up soon. Do we need to talk about the public safety levy before the end of this year, or is that something that we've decided is best next year, considering what we have going on this year?

I think the November election, I mean, let's be honest with the people that are going to be voting, right? A lot of voters out this election. I mean, it could be a challenge to get it through. I mean, we can try and push it in a short time frame. I think really it's the ballot language. But if we want to go for May, conversely, then if we're looking at two things in May, Or do we want to split up the fire district discussion and the levy to be in two separate? I think it's also risky running at the same time. But that's up to the council. We can try that and then. Don't you think we should test the waters in November to see?

I would.

Yeah, I would too.

Test and see. And then if it doesn't pan out, we press harder.

Let's be a little bit proactive rather than reactive like it's been.

So I'm not familiar with how a public safety levy would work. Is it just a voter-approved additional levy rate on top of what we typically levy?

Is that what it is? I think so. For a two-year period.

Yeah, it's a temporary.

So we would be going for the temporary at 60% voter approval, which would be a temporary two-year.

There are a couple of options. There is a temporary override levy for up to two years that the council could approve and moving forward with that, that would be in effect for just two years. that then using that revenue for ongoing budget needs or permanent budget needs could create a gap then after the levy expires in the future. The temporary levy has the lowest voter approval threshold at 50%, and so that just requires a simple majority for the two-year. The permanent levy at the 60% voter approval threshold would take you up to 0.004, and so that that exists for cities that have very low levy rates. And because of the huge increase in property values over the last couple of decades, that now firmly includes Caldwell as being in those very low levy rate cities. And so because its levy rate is under .004, the city could have a permanent levy increase to that level that would be approved at the 60%. thresholds. And then you could have an increase beyond that that would be at the two-thirds voter approval threshold.

Temporary level is just like ARPA funds. They run out in two years. That's why I say we'd have two years to get our act together relative to how many projects we Meridian did succeed in passing the 60% voter approval levy for their public safety and so I

Yes, that is correct.

So just a comment and then a question. So I think if I understand correctly, if I understood you correctly, Justin, you categorized us as a low levy rate city because we're under 0.4. And I think, if I'm not mistaken, this last year we were at 0.352, 0.355. And so I also think that if we meet our 8% cap, it would automatically reduce our levy to even a lower rate. Is that correct? Is that fair to say?

I think it is going a little bit lower because it does reduce our levy and capacity, but I don't have the official number.

Okay, and that's okay, but we still have a low levy rate. I mean, if we're talking about making our public safety whole, maybe going for the permanent override is something we try to sell.

That's solid information we can use as counselors to justify it.

So Justin, how do you determine how much the supplemental levy, how you draw that dollar amount? How does that determine?

It would be the for the temporary it could be whatever the city decides that it needs at that point. There's not specifically a dollar amount that can be levied. So it's it's you're allowed flexibility under the temporary levy to do that for the 60 percent voter approval threshold increase at point zero zero four. that would just take you up to .004 in the future, and so your budget authority in the future would be capped at that level, and you could continue to have temporary overrides and other kind of voter-proof things over that threshold, but .004 would become your base budget in the future, and then that would be the number that the city would use from that point forward.

So then I have another question. Sorry about that, but we're here.

Over here for. Over here for.

So can we go back and see when the last time we were at 0.4 or 0.004 was? Yeah. Because our levy rate has consistently gone down over the last six, seven, eight years in large part because of the growth and greater distribution of levy value. So can we go back and see when the last time it was? Because probably still affordable back then.

Does our current fire bond?

It would be considered separate and that levy would be separate from the city's operational levy under the property tax. And so the fire bond would not have any impact on it. It would be made in addition to the city's regular budget authority levy.

Justin, you ready for one more question? Sure. So if we decided to go this route and council decided to go this route, are we at the same constraints that let's say the vehicle registration levy is we can only put out factual information? Is that the limits of our involvement in

That is correct, yes. So as with any election levy or ballot question, that is correct. So the city would be limited to providing just factual information on that ballot question. And yes, that is correct.

Well, how soon will we need to put that together to get it rolling?

I believe it's August 28th. Yeah.

So there's a deadline, right?

That is correct.

So you'd have to have a resolution. I would recommend the first meeting in August, so that way if there's any issues with it, you can adjust it at the second meeting in August before I have to get over to the county court.

That would be the next meeting.

And we can also have a special meeting if...

yeah absolutely but yeah i would just recommend having some extra time because there are very specific words you have to put in the levy language itself and and the amount of No, it's set by statute of what can actually be in there. And then the word limit just has to do with the ballot limitations that come from the county. So I can reach out to Jess and Haley at the county and figure that out.

Because we're not approving it here. It'll be at the council for an agenda. That's correct.

You'd have to have a formal resolution with the ballot language in it. And then that goes to the county for their approval.

Do you have any comments? We'll just have to make it a priority.

If it's a priority, we'll devote the resources that need to be done to get it over there.

Aren't you getting a new person?

Not yet.

Are you going to let me get it before the ?

Do we need any sort of a consultant on this? No. We could. Clarifying. That's your job. This is the time to ask. all right we've received that direction we'll prepare that and then keep in mind there is some other interesting things on the ballot this year so hopefully the voters will be gracious for us and support our first responders um it goes and we have may or i think may for fy 2028 if that were to not succeed too then it would be looking at fy 2029 correct okay if we don't make it by the main one so we do have that little bit of time

And there is a year lag between when the election happens and when the revenue starts flowing with property taxes. And so you would have a year lag between the election and when the first revenues would start showing up in the first fiscal year thereafter in January.

I just think it's important, just like Chief Ingram talked about, understanding the additional tasks that our emergency services being tasked with so we didn't when I was chief we didn't have those we didn't have the protests we didn't have all the extra events that we have these days and and besides the heavily increased cost as the chief spoke about the the burnout of our of our personnel all the work they're doing I think the public needs to know that I

Sir, back then you didn't have radios, right?

I'm kidding.

Smoke signals.

So I always ask this question of our public safety personnel every time I leave a meeting. Do you think council's adequately represented you guys here tonight? I mean, we know public safety is probably one of our most pressing issues. Do you think that you then...

I believe that you guys are doing the best with what you have, and you are adequately representing us. That is my honest opinion. Thank you.

I would echo those sentiments. We got what we got. You can't make money come out of trees, right? I would like to take an opportunity, though, to have a conversation about a public safety levy and what forming a new fire district look like and how those are different and achieve very similar goals. And so to avoid voter fatigue, to not oversaturate ballots, I think we need to pick one option. And I think, in the end, your police department, and your fire district, if that's created would both be successful. We talked about the 8% cap, unless you form a fire district, unless we form a fire district, we will not be able to capture any additional revenues above that cap. So, essentially, by keeping your fire department, which pains me it's been in Caldwell since 1891. Would need to separate from the city to capture those funds. So, by keeping us in the city umbrella or under the city umbrella, we are leaving.

Most of the legislation changes.

I don't think that that will happen for cities. So we have an opportunity, and also forming a fire district is up to the voters, but it requires a 50% plus one vote as well.

And before that, it requires several hearings for the county permission to move forward on that? It does. It does.

However, in the state of Idaho, no county commissioners have ever turned down a fire or EMS district being formed.

And I have.

Welcome to Canyon County.

And to be clear, I think if we move forward with that, I think we would see success. I think public safety is also important to them. So if we move in that direction, hopefully they would graciously allow us to move forward in that. continue that reign of zero denials in that. So I have full confidence that we would be able to work that out.

Thank you. And with Oscar's position, we need to get Justin right on that.

So Justin needs a raise. That's what I'll say.

Justin needs a raise.

Oscar didn't hear that. Well, he's the expert at the state legislative level, so that's important knowledge to have for us.

All right, anything additional tonight, council?

I have an action item before we adjourn.

Yes, I just wanted to see if budget-wise we were... We have instructions and... Are we good to add $50,000 for this project?

Projects with the way the numbers stand now? Add the additional $50,000 for...

I would be fine with that.

But obviously any project requests would come before council. Other than that, let's move forward with our action item.

Mr. City Engineer, did you want to explain this cell tech item that's in front of council tonight?

10th Avenue, yes. Yeah, we had skipped that out. Haley was leading that one.

Do you want me to?

Yeah, I just took that over from her.

Can I promote this guy and he won't even come see? So LTAC is leading a 10th Avenue overlay between the the railroad bridge and the interstate so that portion of 10th avenue is going to receive a pavement overlay as part of that overlay project they're going to be making all of the sidewalks ada compliant all those all the sidewalk crossings they also will be restricting left turn movement as everyone knows it's a little bit of a free-for-all on that section section of 10th avenue As much as I'd love to be able to keep that left turn movement open for all businesses, as this is an LTAC project, they are requiring us to restrict those to make it a safe corridor for people. So part of the overlay is going to not just be that pavement, but sidewalk and left turn restrictions um so what's in front of you tonight is ltac wanted to proceed with this project this fiscal year however they realized that they needed a couple of agreements signed by some property owners in order to move it forward this fiscal year so what's before you is just getting those agreements signed by all of the property owners that are are us working with LTAC and the property owners to be able for them to proceed. It's pretty basic, but they needed this to be approved this month. I can't remember exactly. I think it was next week they needed it approved.

August 1st was the deadline, and the paper was sent to us Friday at, I believe, like 3 p.m. Yeah. We weren't able to get it on the agenda last night, but we've got it here in front of you tonight.

Is LTAC doing the Kimball Bridge replacement?

Yes. A company.

Yes, LTAC is the lead agency on the Kimball Bridge.

This project was from Belmont to the freeway. Not the 10th Avenue bridge. It scared me a little bit when we started talking about 10th Avenue over the train tracks, how extensive. So we did look at that and discuss that. But it's from Belmont.

Belmont. So at the bottom of that.

Yes. Yes, yes. All right. So the abutment.

Yeah. So Haley, when you talk about limited left turns, we're talking about raised islands? So the kind of situation?

Correct. So left hand movements will be limited just at the road intersections.

During construction.

Permanently.

Permanently. So potentially Denver, Elgin, Freeport.

Yeah, so the roads that are, I'm trying to remember all of them. Yeah, Denver, Elgin, Newt, Freeport, Chicago.

New Way to Buy Marks?

So those will all be only at the roadways will you be able to turn left. You won't have driveway access anymore for left turn.

Do you know if those are going to involve U-turns, potentially?

I don't remember them having U-turns in them. I don't think that that roadway is large enough for it.

I'm sure we'll see tire marks over them.

So with that... And just one more question. LTAC's going to handle the public outreach?

It is an LTAC-led project. So anytime there's an LTAC-led project, they typically, they're the lead agency. But we still get involved with the public because it's happening in our city. So similarly with the Kimbell Bridge, we'll still be participating with them.

Didn't we pay a consulting firm?

Yes, we have RBCI.

We paid them for that, right?

Yes, we did. And if council wants to consider using a consulting firm to assist with public outreach on this project, I'd be more than happy to put something together.

Not sure what to expect, but.

Yeah, so it'll be a pavement overlay. So as far as like the actual construction work, it'll be similar to the overlays that we saw in the downtown. And then they are going to be completing it so that it's not a full road closure. They're going to be doing portions at a time so that there's still traffic flow along 10th. It'll just be limited so it won't be two lanes.

I think the bigger deal is the businesses that can't have people making left turns into their driveways as they've been used to for the past 30 years.

Yeah, and the engineering department can certainly work with the economic development team, the community outreach team, so that we make sure that the businesses are all aware and we can do some social media type work. You know, working with like RBCI, that's when they start going door to door, they put flyers together, they start doing like flyover videos. So if we just want to do like a couple social media blasts, send some letters out to businesses, we can certainly handle that in house.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a big deal. Does council have further thoughts on that? I mean, is that any sort of a stipulation that we can request if they're not on board with that? Or is that?

Do you have the language, Scott? You're going to make the motion?

I mean, that's engineering standards, right?

Yeah, that's the design. So LTAC is receiving funding, and so in order to receive the full funding amount, they have to bring the roadway up to current standards, which would be spacing requirements, which is national standards, ADA requirements, which is going to be fixing a lot of pedestrian routes along that corridor, including just sidewalks, but then also roads. I think it's all of the pedestrian ramps need to be taken out to get them up to five.

And if you look at how our downtown is looking right now, if we can match that, I mean, that's the main corridor right in the city. Ready?

So I move to approve resolution authorizing a state-local agreement between the City of Caldwell and the Idaho Department of Transportation. for construction of the North 10th Avenue ITS and overlay project, key number 13905, with a city contribution of $227,104. Motion. Do we have a second?

Second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye.

Thank you.

All right. Motion passes.

I don't think you need a notion.

Good evening, Councillor.

God, is that you?

Who has the brightest shine? The heavens. It's a wonderful voice to hear. Anything else from Council? All right. That concludes our workshop, and we're out here at 6.14, and Tuesday on the Greek is happening.

It's the short season down the drain.