Planning Board - workshop

It's time to call this meeting to order. This is the fiscal year 2026-27 budget workshop for the City of Callaway Board of Commissioners. It is Tuesday, July 28, 2026, 1 p.m. If y'all will stand with me, Commissioner Coyoteer will give the invocation. Commissioner Ayers, would you please lead us in the pledge? Yes, ma'am.

Lord, we thank you for allowing us to gather today and help us make decisions during this budget period to benefit those who live in City Calloway and our citizens. We thank you for our first responders and we ask you bless them and their families. Please keep them safe and let them go home at the end of the day. We thank you for our citizens and employees that make Calloway a great place to be and pray you bless them with peace and success. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

City Clerk, please do a roll call.

Commissioner Bergsell? Present. Commissioner Griggs? Here. Commissioner Pelletier? Here. Commissioner Ayers? Here, ma'am. Mayor Higginbottom?

Here. OK, public participation. I think everybody that's here probably has been here before, so you know the public participation rules. Typically, we do after every agenda item. We've only got one agenda item, so at different times through, You know, we get to different funds or something. I'll try to periodically see if anybody has any comment that they want to make. And you know the drill. If I call for public participation, raise your hand, come to the podium, state your name and address for the record if you so choose, and then you'll have your three minutes to talk about whatever it is you want to talk about. So with that said, we will go on to that agenda item, the draft budget for fiscal year 2027. And I'll turn it over to these two gentlemen sitting here before us.

Well, we are here again for what will be my ninth budget . You see that our goal is to try to start working, and this budget will reflect a lot of the things, not only in this meeting, but also in the next meeting, our regular commission meeting, as we're trying to prepare for what might potentially happen with the property taxes. We stated that we're gonna maintain a 2.7. I'm still adamantly committed that we will maintain that 2.7. We do not want a knee jerk, and we will absorb those, It's going to be through less capital expenditures, which is some of the things that we're doing in Tim's budget this year. As we prepare down the road to make sure we have adequate and ample reserves for the city, we're doing really, really well on reserves. And I think that'll bode well for us, because even with our high surplus of reserves, if we needed to dip into it in the future, key word is if. We do not have any intentions of going after our reserves. But it is there for us if we need it. And we have way more than enough. I think we're over 30% in reserves. State requires 17. Before Adam came to us, me and David had sat down and we had ran a lot of figures. And we estimated that we needed to be somewhere between 27% and 28% to remain solid through a Category 5 storm like we experienced. Of course, we had the experience. adequate enough to maintain reserves. And I'm not saying that to say we're spending reserves. I just want you all to understand that this city's financial position is excellent. We're going to continue to maintain. This is what we've done for nine years straight. And we know that we did not have, you know, we had to rebuild our reserves. One thing that I think is fair to say is only in solid waste have we ever budgeted And if y'all remember, that was whenever we raised the rate. We said we would put $75,000 a year in solid waste going towards the reserves to purchase trucks for capital later on down the road. But other than that, we have never budgeted reserves. We just don't. What we do is we zero budget. And then these guys right here, plus their all year long getting projects under budget, keeping capitals low, keeping operating expenses low. And at the end of the year, that money rolls into reserves. And that's where we are today. It's not for anything that these budgets have done. These budgets have given them ample abilities to run their departments effectively and efficiently. And then at the end of the year, I've always told them, we do not play the use it or lose it game. That's not the way it is. We will give you what you need. Do the best you can. At the end of the year, we will roll the money into reserves. And that's what we have maintained and continue to do And that's gonna be the same way we're gonna reflect this budget, it's gonna be the same way we're gonna reflect future budgets. We're gonna continue doing that, because we're in a great spot. We do not expect to ever touch reserves, but they are there if we need them, and we do have more than enough. And that's not that you ever have enough in reserves, but at some point, you can just have too much money. And we need to look at that. And that's even with all of our capital projects that we have going on. We are still maintaining that we are getting the most bang for our buck because we are matching most of our major projects with grant funds. And that's reflected over previous commissions where we received another $6 million in funds. Part of that was budget, part of it wasn't. So that will reflect in. This budget will show a reduction compared to last year's general fund. Now, that's not from us cutting the budget by 10%. The budget is 10% levels. And we have cut in certain areas as much as we feel like we can. We just don't want to throw ourselves in a position to run back. Because when I do come back to you and ask you for money, it comes from reserves. And we don't like coming up here and asking, hey, we've under budgeted on this and we need to do it. If we can't pull that off, then so many municipalities right now are screaming, we're going to hit reserves, we're going to hit reserves. Say anything that you do not agree with. No, you're good. We have just nine quick slides. Do some quick overviews of it, and then we can dive into the individual budgets.

Okay. The budget overview. This budget maintains services, so we had to cut Our ad valerum tax, the rate remains at 2.7 mills. We've estimated $2,769,336. The CRA is going to collect $510,704. We'll collect $1,070,511 from the county for CRA. So our ad valerum used for operating is going to be roughly $2,258,632. Utility rates, they've gone up. but they're very minimal, five cents for the county increase to split the cost for the UB out of general fund, there's a transfer of $308,920. This year our health insurance rose five five percent of the five percent Capital Improvement and CRA.

This budget includes nine CIP grant funding

So, major city improvements and rehab is being funded by state and federal grants, which is, again, out of all the cities, this is a huge number for Callaway. Also, I want to put some economic conditions in here, because if we're looking at this budget, we're saying, point nine percent returns Some errors that are on here as of

I did have one question. You said you're going to take the water meters and split in half, 201, 200, and the other? Yes. Can you put 300 in the sewer and 100 in the water to help balance that a little bit?

So those are proprietary funds, and when you audit those things, those need to see if this is what we spend in sewer and this is what we spend in water. Right. And split it 50-50.

So that means in the past we've paid for them strictly out of water.

We've paid strictly out of water.

So if you took the amount and you took out of water and kind of put it in sewer this year.

It has to be an equal spread.

It would be equal because now you're taking the past and curing the problem. I agree with you.

And we were actually talking about it.

Water meters are becoming a big deal. And it's just because, if y'all remember the changeover that we went through, those meters have a 10- to 15-year life cycle. We're getting towards the end. Bill, when did we put all those in?

12, 13 years ago.

So we're starting to see meters are going blank. When they go blank, we have to go trade them out and put new meters in. Well, these meters were put in over a three-year period. So we're getting toward the end of life. We're starting to see more and more meters, and we're having to adjust to get meters changed out as quickly and as efficiently as possible. But that means we need more meters than what we've put in in the past. So upon sitting down and going through and looking at the number of meters that we had, the question came up of, why aren't we using sewer money? Because the sewer is being built off of the amount of water that's running through the meters. I did check with legal counsel. Kevin said, yes, we are splitting. So in this year's budget, we've actually added an additional $210,000 in the water, $210,000 in the sewer as an equal split to purchase meters. If you look at the overall budget, we're sitting in the negative a little bit on both of those. It's basically because we're behind meters. And we need these meters so we can get them changed out efficiently. And these are the new meters.

we're getting reimbursed, right? These developers are going to pay for our meters, correct?

We'll be able to cost the impact, yes. Okay, all right.

I just want to make sure that we're getting our money back.

Well, we're getting it back from new development and new construction, but we're not getting it back yet.

Well, yes and no. If they're not reading correctly, don't start talking to meters about me. But if they're not reading correctly, we should crash that utility building. Real quick.

This is really wrong. That's over here. Don't get me excited about meters. What's happening with those is if we have a meter that goes blank, it shows on our report as blank. At which point, we do a yearly average. Thank you. And that average is what's billed out. So the discrepancies are going to be minimal at best on the billing side of it. That's Lisa's department. This is something that me and her and Thomas are constantly working on. And, in fact, we have people now that are specifically labeled to change out meters. Right. Because we're getting so that we can. and we're starting to see these increases. But no, just because your meter goes blank, you are still billed the average, and when the meter gets changed out, it gets reprogrammed, and we're fine.

That answered my question. I was going to ask, even though it went blank, does it continue to record the usage? But I guess not.

No, if it goes blank, that means the battery's dead. So these batteries are internal with these meters. They're sealed. We can't change them. We can't do anything about it. We have to change the meter out. Got you.

One question, too. The problem you're having on the water side is, and maybe we're starting to get a handle on it, is all these water leaks, major water leaks. And we're having to suck that up.

I don't think that's amounting to a lot. I mean, yes, we have leaks. It is. Everybody has leaks. All cities have leaks. I was talking to a gentleman the other day who called in. He was impaired. And we're sitting here going, we don't like for stuff to go more than a week. And we keep an ongoing thing. Now, that doesn't mean that something won't go past a week. That just means something probably happened, like we have a forced main break, or we have a major water leak, or they're having to catch up on another project. I think it's something where it needs to be. But all leaks are looked at that day. They're prioritized. majorly going to get fixed immediately.

Not if it's on the property side and then they leave and don't pay for it. And we've had quite a few of those thousand dollars come in front of us.

We have had some of those, yeah. We have got really good control over that, but some of those have to do with the medical issues that we kind of have when it comes to some that we just don't make. We just don't. But other than that, I mean, I think we're doing pretty well on our... It's all part of this building. In fact, I would say compared to even the last six months, we are way ahead of what we normally see. And we're steadily trying to get better. Some of the things, I mean, not to go deep into it, but a big issue, if y'all remember, was water leaks in the same spot, same spot, same spot. We don't even... We don't even patch anymore. We're running new service lines every time. And it's because of the aging infrastructure that we have in there. We have lines that have been there 30 years. They're just starting to get brittle. So rather than fix a brittle line, we go pull that out and we run on new service lines. That does take more time also. So we have to play that game of how are we doing versus not having to make people wait long times. Nobody wants water running in front of their house. And so that's some of the things that we're doing. That is actually a major thing, is when we're out there and we're now requesting service lines instead of putting a patch on Troop and Ryan. And that's where you were getting your redundancy on brakes in the same spots. Then we're going to put a patch on it. That's great. Six inches back and bracing that.

I have another question, if I could, on the overview. What's causing an auto increase of 20%? Are we having that many vehicle accidents? Insurance is driven by numbers of accidents. I know of two this past year.

Let me get the numbers on that and find out what's driving that.

Because I know of two accidents that you all told me that I ran into. So I don't know how many more accidents we had. But it's kind of... Troubling to me that our auto insurance has gone up 20%. Something is driving that. I know we've had associate, I mean associates, we've had, talking about Walmart, we've had employees stop for speeding. If they got a ticket, was that reported? And that would affect our rates.

Every time one of our people has stopped, the sheriff's office calls me.

Right, but I understand. But- Something's driving at 20%.

And they did not receive a ticket.

They didn't receive a ticket?

They did not receive a ticket.

You take driving purges away from them?

No, we watch your GPS.

Okay, all right.

We go through and mark them, and we watch your GPS. Because that system lets me know how fast they're driving. And we can start monitoring them.

Who is our insurance company? It's FMIT.

FMIT? Florida Municipal Insurance Trust. Yeah, but something's driving that 20%. Yeah.

Appreciate it. And then the last question I had on the overhead, I guess you answered that. How did you figure pay increase this year? Did you just decide to give everybody a pay increase?

We looked at the cost of living. We set it at 3%. I sent y'all an email out yesterday if y'all were seeing that. I figured that's where we'd start first.

Right. We talked about procedures on salary increases.

Did you receive that email yesterday?

No. I was working until 1 this morning. No, I didn't get it. Hold on. Okay, I see it.

We've met multiple times. The mayor was in on actually one of the meetings. Okay. The department heads just sit around and we talk about it.

All right.

So what I've done is I've sent each one of y'all the evaluations that we use in general government. I also sent you the evaluations. There are actually no evaluations in the fire department because there's this mission-driven. Right. So it's different than the general government's. Okay. We went through, we looked at common terminology. the different categories that it would fit, and we came up with a series of 10, basically 10 criteria, and that's what I set it up. And of those criteria, you can see that one is marginal. You have no ones that don't make it past their 90 days. Two to three, generally those don't make it through 90 days. I mean, we know when employees come in. Then you've got a four, five, or six. make sure you're the ones that are going above and beyond, doing what it takes. And nine is distinguished. And if anybody receives a nine, they've got to write a 400-word theme on why this person receives a nine. And that's the way it works. So, you know, one of the things that we were talking about was making sure that when departments did evaluations, that they were consistent from department to department. So this is going to pose... multiple people from the departments, be it the foreman, the supervisors, the department heads will all work on the lower level people. And then as it goes higher, we want to make sure that multiple people are involved in watching. Myself, Emma, probably Adam will be involved also, so that we can make sure that What this person says is average is the same as this person over here doing a completely different job. It is an average for their job because we don't want to get into the bias situation. That's the one thing I'm most concerned about when we come to merit pay is bias. Well, so-and-so got a higher ranking than me, and I work just as hard as they do, but they don't like me. That's why I didn't get in. You can't defend that. other than saying, well, okay, we have multiple people evaluating. So that's one of the things we will work through internally to make sure that this doesn't happen and that everybody receives ample support. I mean, Tim may say, you know, most of my guys are seven and eight. They work great. They're all hard workers. And then you may have somebody else over here that says, I got two or threes. I can't give them any more than that. It's bias in the thing. So we have to make sure that we get that bias removed out So the way we kind of said was we would do merit score based on, and we did put in the budget 3%. And I did put in here the base rate, which would be determined by commission or merit rate based on, would be based on the offer. We put 3% in the budget. So as an average, you could say the base rate was 2.5, the merit pays 3.5. Or we could say the base pay is, and when I say base rate, If you're lower level, you don't get a raise. If you're mid-level, you'll get what's called the base raise. And it could be 2.5, it could be 3. And then you'll have your merit raises for the people that are doing outstanding. You're going to get an additional 1% on top of that. Our general fund budget is $72,000 in the positive, so we can take up some of that as needed to move over there, depending on what our job shows. We just did it annually. Because we just don't know for the first year.

Okay.

But I can promise you this, we'll be fine. We can make it work. What is this commission's thoughts on merit pay?

Well, I've been talking about it for years, so I'm glad to see you're doing it.

I would like to. I will tell you all that this is at the request of you all.

Yeah.

We do not agree with it. We do not think that, we think it's going to create more dissension amongst our people. But we will do whatever this commission requests us to do.

I would personally like more of a across the board, this is the pay raise. And if there's a merit, it would be based on a bonus. And it would be a, I don't know how you would set your numbers. The top 10% of your workers are entitled to this incentive bonus. And that would actually have people working toward the whole year to incentivize them to get that. Whether that be an extra percent on top of theirs, a half percent.

Let's say it's a standard bonus, like saying we have our holiday bonuses. We already have a holiday bonus. Right, so on top of that. It could be on top of that, yeah. It would be a standard. That way it would be easy to budget versus a percentage and not have to pay, but just have it as a one-time payout.

Well, and the good thing about doing it that way, I'd have to think about it, but the good thing about that is it's not ongoing. It's a one-time. So every year you would be budgeting again, where if you do a raise, you've got that raise forever and ever and ever. So that's, especially kind of in an unknown area right now with not knowing what's going to happen with property taxes, that may not be a bad way to go. But I mean, I know y'all don't think the merit is good. My issue always was when I was a worker and when I was a supervisor, you have some people that really go all out trying to do a good job. You have other ones that just say, I'm here. I'm doing what they expect of me. That's enough. To me, it's not fair that those two people get the same raise. Because, you know, that's discouraging to the one that's working so hard because they're going to say, why should I try? She's doing the same. She's not doing anything and getting 3%. I'm busting my tail and getting 3%.

So one of the ways we counteract that is most of our job descriptions have lows. So we have a maintenance worker 1, maintenance worker 2, maintenance worker 3. But we do assign that they have to have certain skills to be able to move it up. And so people, unless you come in and let's say you have your CDO, you may start at a service worker two, or if you're just coming in general, you'd be a service worker one. Once they acquire those skills, the supervisors are required to basically write a letter stating that we would like to see them move to a service worker two with a pay increase because they have mastered these skills, which are all of this particular level, and Number one, and they are deserving to be moved to this for their outstanding work performance. And we do that.

Yeah, but that works in like public works.

It does work in public works.

How does that work in utility billing? They're all the same position. That is correct. You know, code enforcement, I know you have limited people, but you can't say, oh, well, you did so good, we're going to move you up to, there's not an up to level to it.

Actually, for code enforcement, we do that based on levels, right? Phase one, phase two, and phase three. As they achieve their certifications and levels, they can move up. But at some point, you do match up.

Yeah, I mean, it's just like in public works. You can't have all level threes and no level ones.

That is correct.

Because don't we allot so many of each position? No. No?

No, that would be great. I've got to wait for a two to quickly move to a T. Okay. It's based on your own merit and how well you work. But those are ways in the lower level . We don't have that. You're correct. In the utility building, we don't have a utility building one. These are services?

I mean, do you have?

We could create that.

Do you have leisure services?

Jim, what do you got?

We have most of the position, ground specialists.

We have one and two. Yeah, we have ones and twos. they do have the abilities to move up as they earn their pay. But at some point, Tim, you're the first person I see when I turn, so I'm going to pick on you.

You're going to pick on Tim.

Ed, are there longevity pays, like you hit certain year marks that you get a pay raise, or is a 10-year person paid the same, if they're at the same level as a brand-new person on the street?

Right now our longevity pay is we give a $500 holiday bonus, and then they get $10 for every year served as far as bonus.

So a one-year person and a 10-year person, if they're at the same pay grade or paid the same salary.

They get the same bonus, yes.

But they're paid the same base salary.

He's talking about if you have somebody that just started and somebody that's been here 10 years but they're in the same position, are they going to make the same?

No, no, not at all.

Okay, so they did get longevity each year they got.

We're starting right now. Let's say they get a 3% raise this year or, you know, And Commissioner, you haven't been here over the last five years where we had the issue with the standard labor wage moved to 50. We had to start making all sorts of adjustments. We were going to do it in this commission in mid-year adjustments where we gave everybody a dollar an hour raise because we had to get these things in order. And as we watched our budget, we were like, okay, we can do this now. And we got into a position to where we were ahead of that mandate, which I don't know when did it take effect.

For, I think, next year?

Yeah, the next year or so.

We're way ahead of that $15. We're beyond that $15. And for your information, prior to that, and Pam will remember, we had no pay raises for five years for employees. Really?

It would be like a $100 bonus.

Right, a $100 bonus.

I would be at a $100 bonus at Christmas. So he's come a long way.

Yeah. And it could be that next year that's what we're looking at. I don't know. We don't know. Everything's unknown at this point. That's right. And whatever we do this year, I always look at it as a liability. In other words, it's going to be there year after year after year after year. Unless that employee quits, then we start all over with a new employee. But for the management side, they're going to be around. And I think they're going to be around anyway. Pretty well, you know, what major corporations are doing is about the same. We're a little high on percentage. I can speak at Walmart. They do 1%, and that's a huge corporation. So they have a big liability when they're looking at 1%. It's a bigger dollar value than our value is, you know. But it doesn't matter.

But that's to that employee.

It doesn't matter if you work at a 300% capacity or 100%. I'm not there for pay raises all the time.

No, but isn't that frustrating to people?

It is frustrating because when I started at Walmart, we had an employee making $12 an hour. And that's what I think they hired me at 12 or 13. I wasn't there for the money. I was there for the fun. We got a big pay raise the following year. That employee that had been there all those years was making the same thing I am. And that's how the company does it. They don't care. They don't like it. There's the door. Yeah, so that's kind of harsh. But I don't think that's happening here in the city because they're going to have increases every year where a new beginner is going to be at the base rate.

Well, and don't we usually do with raises, you have to have been here so many months to even get a pay raise?

That is correct, yes.

I believe it's six months. I think that's what it's always been.

That was my question. I've been here forever and we get the same pay.

The bonuses are basically the same way. Six months you get I think you get the full bonus. I had to look at the standards. Three months you get half the bonus. Within three months.

Is it six months you get the full thing?

That's what I was thinking. For half.

That's what

So city manager, you're saying you want to get away from merit and go with that percentage across the board. Is that what you're asking?

I think that's going to be a much more level playing field that will eliminate potential issues in the future. Because if you really look at it, and here's a way to look at it. It's not like we're offering a ton, but on a $20 an hour person, 1% is $0.20. 3%, what, 60 cents? Yeah, 60 cents. So you're talking, you know, difference of 20 cents, but at 20 cents, honestly, it doesn't make a lot, but in the long run, there are psychological backlashes to this to say, well, he got 20 cents more than I did. They said he's a better worker. My supervisor doesn't like me, and we have none of that where it comes to bias, but I mean, we've developed this. We feel like we can implement it adequately. We feel like staff can implement it. If you also choose to want to go the merit way, this is going to be probably our general guidelines. We'll just need to know what we can plug in. Can we plug in 3% and 1%? We have a base of 3% and then a 1% on top of that.

We've had commissioners have had discussion quite a few times I think the direction we gave you last year was to go to a merit, but I don't know. It's up to all of us, obviously, to make up our minds on that.

We have a plan that we're ready to implement.

Right, I read it.

I can see both sides.

So if you did flat rate, what flat rate raise are you looking for?

Right now we have 3% that was in the budget. That's what was in the budget last year.

Across the board, period. Yeah.

Well, what we did last year was $2,000. It wasn't a percentage. We stayed away from the percentage.

That is correct. In last year's budget, I think we did a 75% raise across the board. That does help out our lower level employees a ton. And we're OK with doing that.

Well, how many employees are there?

No, there's like 80 employees.

I mean, if you take 80 employees, it's like 75 cents an hour. I mean, it's either 75 or 80.

Are we having problems with number of employees again? We've been down this road before.

73 minus commissions. 73 total? No, 73. So it's 73. Yeah, with commission.

Plus commission. So 73. So if you take 73 employees times 75 cents. But then when we do that, I know it comes back and it's like, well, that's a slap in the face to my managers because that's not giving them very much. So you can't have it both ways. You can do a percentage or you can do 75 cents for everybody.

We're not cheating our managers to start with. They get pretty good pay, plus they get their good increases by just being here all that time. So, I mean, well, you've caught your managers up to where they should be, and then they've increased since. Correct?

To see no matter what we do, somebody's not going to be happy.

So we had done a presentation, I think three years ago, where we did X amount up to... It just depends on what the sliding scale is on my arrow.

Well, but then you have to watch because you just keep widening the gap.

Right.

That is true. Yeah. So I think flat rate, to me, seems fair. I mean, when I worked for Bell South, it was flat rate. No one complained.

I mean, what he's saying is if you do 3% across the board, 3% of that person that's making $16 an hour is a big difference between the 3% that a department... No, I was thinking flat rate, 75 cents an hour, dollar an hour, whatever, 50 cents an hour.

See, they like to talk in percentages, and that's, you know, every time where you talk about the cost of living, percentages, percentages, percentages, percentages of what? You know, actually, if we haven't gotten to it yet, we haven't really gotten into the budget yet, but when we, you know, talked about our increases due to our, increase in water cost and this and that and the other. Actually, for years, what they did, if the water cost went up 3%, our water cost, for example, outside of the base rate, we just increased overall cost of that water. 3%, not the actual percent of what, not the actual dollars or cents that came from the county. And the reason we did that for so many years was that, very honestly, we're talking about now that the employees in that department is going 3%. The cost of materials for that, asphalt and otherwise, is going up. So for us to say that the cost in those enterprise funds is not going to be going up is not... exactly accurate because it is all going up, whatever the cost of our distribution of that water, whether it be the pipes, whether it be the gravel, or whatever it is. So for years, what the city did was just, if the water went up from the county, and of course, as I was sitting out there, I love for them to talk about percentages because I know what percentages are and what we're actually going to take place. But in our budget, we're going to be going up for $0.05 or $0.15 on that. But that's not going to the cost of our water and the cost of our sewer. is not going to be covering. It's actually going to be probably our costs are going to be going up at least 3% or 5% or 10% in many cases, depending on the materials. So right now, we don't see that now because we've got reserves and we're in good shape in those areas. When you talk about percentages, I'm against merit-based, by the way, since we're talking about merit-based. I'm against that. I am totally for certification and skills, and skills increase and certifications increase. And if a person's situation is such that they're doing well and instructing, Are they doing well in working with a group? It's not a detriment to a group. What we had in industry is we had lead people and assistants and this kind of thing that you could actually recognize that. But in all cases, and those are those who studied psychology, in all cases, no matter what you do, there's going to be a negative impact for a positive action or a positive impact for a negative action. And that's when those people that say, well, I'm not going to do it, but then Harry over here does it, the person that said he's not going to do it is getting rewarded by not doing it, and the person who actually did it is getting a negative reward of actually doing it. But as far as merit-based, I don't see how you can really effectively manage that. But you can manage it, and you're already doing it by the levels that you go up. so-and-so class one, class two, class three, class four, whatever it is, you're already doing that. In many cases, that covers a seniority in many cases by doing that. And the only time that we've really run into trouble with that particular situation is when they reach the top of the grade because every grade has a maximum getting up there. And sometimes by actually giving somebody a $2,000 a year raise or 3% is actually taking them over that grade. And we've had to deal with that in the past.

We've had that in the fire department.

Right. And we're managing that by adjusting grades. You have to adjust it. With cost of living and stuff like that.

But I think the way it's actually being done now, and I may be certainly in a minority, but in my 40-something years experience with industry, you really have to rely on the certifications and the skill levels that you have. And it's just as simple as rewarding somebody from almost being at work every day, that kind of thing. You could add some of that stuff in there, but that doesn't involve a judgment. It involves an actual quantitative statistic, if you can say that twice. And by the way, Adam, we won't unload on you. We unload on Eddie. And what Eddie's, and I just forewarned you, and you've already seen some of it today, I forewarned you that what he does, what he did for years, he just, David, David. So, you won't get it, but it goes downhill.

I understand.

Well, My question to you is, since we're kind of all over the place on this pay raise, if it was completely up to you, what would you do?

I'm biased because I'm going to take care of my employees. Well, so? So I would look at more of a standard average number for the bottom people to raise them up more, like a standard $1 an hour raise. Mm-hmm. Run it.

So would you be okay with $1 an hour or 2%? Because 2% of an upper, I mean that could, it's going to be a lot more than $1 an hour. Yeah, I mean figure, I don't know what the average salary of a department head is.

I don't think we have.

That's a dollar an hour for $100,000. Salary-wise.

And that's $2,000 a year per employee. That keeps your structure in place too because maybe I shouldn't tell the story but I constantly do something I shouldn't do but I know years ago we had a public works director that after he retired and I saw him and When I was sitting out there and realized all this was going on, but they kept dealing with percentage and even our city manager, even in their contract that had whatever the percentage was that the employees got, that's what the city manager would get. Well, you take 3% of what the city manager has and 3% of what the... let's say the lowest shovel handler gets. And over time, that kind of builds up. So this particular individual was saying he had to accept it. He was totally surprised that since his basic skill was a block layer. getting the percentage every year. By the time he retired, he was making more than he fit. And it was all because of the percentage. And with what we've done with this commission and just using last year as an example, when we're saying we're giving everybody, well, what, $0.75 or whatever for $2,000 a year. We're talking about $1 an hour now. That's $2,080 a year. It keeps everything, as long as your structure was in place to begin with. And Eddie, you've gotten the structure. Your management team has gotten the structure correct, and we've had to do it for the $15 an hour situation coming up.

We're way beyond that now. Right. We're years behind that $15. Right. When we started pay increases, that was the goal.

Yeah.

And we've gone way beyond that.

But see, we had to look at the people that were making $25 an hour. Mm-hmm. And with state coming up, where they only supposed to be, you know, the minimum is $15 an hour. If you raise everybody up from $12, then the person that was making $25 needed to get $3 more, which would be, you know. So we've kept that in line. So that doesn't impact us. But the raise at $1 an hour or $0.75 an hour, like it was last year, what I think we should be doing. I don't like percentages. I do in some cases, but not necessarily in this case.

I think personally you should put a package together for us to look. We can talk $0.50, $0.75 a dollar. What does that impact? We haven't even gone through the meat of our budget yet, although it's a budget that's a decrease and we have our taxes are not going up. But I would like to see what the dollar value is at $0.50, $0.75, and $1.00.

Well, I can tell you right now it's $100.

I still don't like that whole thing for the simple reason that I don't care where you're at, be it the city or where I work or Avery work, there's always going to be somebody that's not pulling their weight. In other words, you've got dead weight.

And I know we have it in the city because I've seen it.

You all have seen it.

Well, in the industry, we look at it as roughly 5%. And some of the times you've got that 5%. If we question it, if you got that 5%, which you know is pretty much out there, and your turnover is only 1% or 2%, that tells me I'm not doing my job as a manager because I've got at least the 3% or so people out there that other people are having to cover them, getting the negative reward for positive action, that kind of thing.

What I've seen from Eddie so far, dead wood gets cut pretty fast around here. Right. And I appreciate that.

And looking at the layout that he sent us, if you hadn't looked at it on the... I just did. But the layout that he sent us, I was looking at the 1, 2, 3, and even 4, And I'm thinking, why are they still working?

They're not.

I'm not. When you get to the four or five, and then that person that's right there in the middle is just and would like to get a raise, well, get a different certification. Do something differently that makes your skill more valuable to your department, to your people, That kind of thing.

We have that situation in our city now where some of our folks have not gotten their certification. And I'm not going to talk about names or positions, but I think the city manager knows, and we all know that.

Well, we know some of them for eight years. Yeah. Hopefully all that is passed. I really don't want to get into them.

No, I'm not going to talk about that.

Yeah. If I get into that, I'll have to talk to Eddie privately.

That's if there's somebody that's supposed to have a certification and they don't get the certification, maybe they shouldn't get a raise until they get that certification. And I don't know exactly, I have a suspicion, but I don't know exactly what you're talking about. But if somebody's supposed to have something and they were supposed to get it and they didn't,

I do have one question. So the base rate, a guy comes in at $15 an hour, is it still going to be $15 an hour, or is it $15 an hour plus what the rest is?

I think they're bringing them in higher than $15.

They would still come in at $15. Okay.

Everybody's being hired at $15? No, it's just an arbitrary number. Okay. Arbitrary number.

Everybody's been hired for at least $15.

Right. You do the new people that way? No. Okay.

Well, I would like to see some numbers, raw numbers that, you know.

The only thing I'd like to know is these departments that don't have levels, how you're going to account for them.

Right.

Like utility billing. They can't go and get a certification and get more money. So I want to know how you're going to treat those. Now, just fire department, I know they get different certifications when they get their EMT, so they get more money when they.

Firefighters.

They're making. Yeah. So somebody.

The flat, who's that? 75 pieces an hour. That's for everyone. And they need to make the work at the house.

OK. No, but what they're talking about. But these people get, just like in public works, they can learn something new and then they can move up. Fire department, I guess you can go for, I don't know which is the lowest. Fire department already has levels. That's what I'm saying. So somebody can move up easily. I guess leisure services, depending on the job, they can move up. I mean, if it's a ground specialist.

I mean, that's a really easy thing. We can just create levels in the areas that they're not.

Well, that's what I'm saying. I'd like to know how those are going to be addressed. Right. Since you're using part of that, using that as part of your argument, then I'd like to know how that's going to be carried out through all departments. Right. I don't want somebody to be penalized. They can't move up to anything because they work in utility billing. You know, if they went to public works, they'd have these opportunities.

I think Bob wanted to know what $0.30, $0.75, and $1 will cost overall.

Yeah, because it has more impact than just the salary.

It's a liability forever.

Yeah, and if we get nailed with that one thing,

Well, that's probably when you start eliminating positions through attrition. When somebody quits, you don't show the position.

We'll get that information out immediately.

Thank you. In your presentation, you talked about the health insurance. On page one here, it was saying that The employee only is 100%. Now, we're covering the employee.

We cover the single employee at 100%. If you do not take our insurance, you get $100 a month paid back to you. And if you take the employee child, employee spouse, or family plan, it is a 70-30 split.

But this is different from what we did last year.

Same thing last year. Right. Last year we went to, we were paying 100% of the employees.

Right. I thought we went away from that.

We went away from that on the employee child. Right. Employee spouse.

We just went single employees 100%. We came up with a split on.

Trying to make it equal.

Right. It's not on every level. We have three different plans and it's the base level. Right.

I just want to make sure you said if you don't take our insurance, you get $100 a month, but you have to have proof of other insurance. We don't give you the option of not being insured. I wanted to make sure everybody understood that they had to have other comparable insurance.

They're going to be a part of it.

The last thing I'm going to bring up, because we're going to have to get into the budget here. Eddie, as far as your presentation concerning reserves, I'm losing track of time, but at one time we looked for 25% reserves in the city. And I guess about that time, well, that's what we had. That's what the goal was. Then the state came up with, I guess, trying to do something. The state got involved and came up with this 17%. We were already at 25%. So that's the way, very honestly, that's the way I've been thinking. And this was even before I was a commissioner. that the 25% was out there, if I recall. But the reserves, well, we're at 30% now. But I want to make it clear is that 30% not restricted does not include restricted reserves, restricted funds.

I think that's all of it.

It's all right.

It's all right. I can get you a kind of a rundown on that if you'd like, but yeah, we are above the state.

Right, but if we had a hurricane today, we could not use the restricted reserves. We can only use the unrestricted. So that's where that, years ago, 25%, or that's where that 17%. But I suspect that the state, The state is looking at your, when they look at your balance sheet and all, they're looking at all the reserves in there.

On the balance sheet, it separates it out. So you have restricted and unrestricted. And you can see that in the packet I gave you that

Yeah, but you can't use the restricted reserves for that.

I'm not talking about any of that. Couldn't you use some of that if they apply to the restricted areas? Well, if they apply, but they generally don't apply to it.

Impact fees, especially if it's hurricane cleanup.

Also, just to make sure, when you're saying restricted funding, we're not talking about water and sewer.

Right.

even though those are technically enterprise funds, we can use those for government. We just have to pay them back.

You can use them to operate for general government, but yeah, you can use them for anything else.

If you'll remember, we actually took, I think, $6 million out of the sewer fund and used that. And that's where that 25% number kind of went up a little bit, because if you'll remember, we had to go to the bank. We got a lot of But we still have $147,000 in interest. Remember, this was the big deal. That's the one thing you can't apply for FEMA funds for. And that's what's killing a lot of the cities because they still have their own.

Most of the cities, well, I'm going to make a statement. All the cities west of us is not line of credit. It's actual long-term debt. Right.

It said you're receiving, and this came from the Bureau of Recovery from the Florida Division of Emergency Management. It says, on July 2nd of 2026, FEMA announced through a that the president authorized an increase in the federal cost share for eligible public assistant projects under DR 4399, which is Hurricane Michael. that money back.

Good. Wonderful. So how much?

We don't know yet. It'll be a while. It won't happen tomorrow. So, you know, you run through the immediate part of this form, you're sitting at 100%, then it drops to 90, and then your lower level cost shares drop 75, 25. I'm going to assume a lot of it has to do with the obligation under 4399, because I've heard quite a bit that happens where projects just didn't get done, and so they have done that. And It's also had a lot to do with lobbying up in Washington, trying to get more money to cover the interest. And I think that's where some of this is coming from. For us, we didn't have any of that. So we're expecting, out of all the money that we spent at the 75% cost share, we're expecting to get a big fat check.

Where are we at? We still have outstanding balances.

We have some very

and the other figure I'd like to see is where did you call him David I didn't call him David I didn't call him anything the other thing I'd like to see too is where we're at with debt service can you send me a letter on that I know we had a schedule I'd like to see where we're at just send it to me or send it to the commission it'd be good for all of us to see that 865,000 1st of August

They sent it out, so we're not quite sure where we stand yet. It's in the audit report.

Our PA's will take care of it. Our debt service is in the audit report that we just got.

I know you're getting ready to receive an extension of the tax. Yeah, I'm looking for the... No. This will be coming up, not at this meeting, but in the next little bit. We have to extend our contract for six months. As I know, we already extended. This time, we will be requesting an increase... reimbursable and we still have plenty of money in that side. So it'll be pass through. We will be seeing that.

So you need to make sure that the increase we're asking, I know it's 100% increase, but I'd still like to know how much, what the outstanding balance is, what is old. Yeah, we'll get that for you. I was just kind of prepping for when I come up.

They still have over $300,000. We still have it in that fund. at the state level that we can ask for for administrative services. But it works off a percentage. It's just maybe a few percent.

A while ago, we talked about leaks. And this has been, Commissioner Pelletier, well aware. We've been concerned about this for years. And I can go back 15 or so years at least. when I brought up that subject because I did the math. I did the math of what we purchased at so many dollars, so I could tell how many gallons we actually purchased by looking at the dollars and going back and figuring it out that way. And then by the same token, the amount of what we cost charged for our water, it could do the same thing, do the math, and come back to how many gallons we had there. So actually, I knew, and I think probably Bob, you did some of the similar figuring, and some others did, Pam possibly. But we could tell, here again, we're buying this many gallons. And we're selling this many gallons. We're not looking at dollars. We're looking at gallons. And some of those gallons were different than what we were selling and what we were buying. Where did they go? So one case, and I don't know if you If you were back then that we actually were looking, I was told that, well, the fire department goes in and they flush that. And then at that time, we had a lift station out in Allenton that really wasn't being used that much. But to keep it going, we had to actually add water to it. The city came up with all kinds of reasons why we had that difference. And the bottom line, particularly now, since everything, all the, we know basically, we actually get a report from the fire department, you know, how much, just basically how much they use when they flush the, so all those figures are there. And I haven't done the math recently, but I'm with Bob that, very honestly, we're losing a hell of a lot of water in the water leaks. And I'm not talking about the ones, some that I've reported. that I would not report on the weekend because the amount of water that I see coming up doesn't justify the overtime of somebody coming out, you know. But some of them are gushers and all that business.

About five feet high. How long might one?

So I just, you know, those are the, Those of you that are doing some of the math, that's one of the things you could do. You can actually come up with how many gallons we buy and how many gallons we sell. And I need to shut up, and let's get to page one.

I guess this is our next thing to do, equipment, capital purchases. Actually, page two.

All right.

What have we decided on page one? We haven't decided anything.

No, I mean, we've had- Just information. Yeah, just- Yeah.

Okay. No. Well, when we go through the numbers on here, you're figuring all the numbers through all the departments is 3%, right? He's going to bring that back to us. He's going to bring that back to us. What we're seeing here, it's all 3%. All right.

So just looking at some of the capitals that we're looking at, 519, which is general government, we have no capitals in the end. Moving on to the fire department. The fire department has done a good job in trying to get only what's needed. Chief, you're welcome to get in here. You have a four-inch hose.

Yeah, that's just a large diameter hose with the new hydrants that we're putting in with the larger connections. So that just helps us out in labor wise. We ain't got to lay two, two and a half. We can just lay one four inch line down. That two and a quarter with that new hotel going up, I think it's Candlewick or something, that's actually 200 foot longer on stretch. So some of these hotels like the Holiday Inn don't have a standpipe. So what we do is we want to make sure that we know the pressure that the firefighters are up there are getting. So we're actually laying that two and a quarter up. And it has hardly no friction loss and whatnot. So we're just asking for more of that for tactical reasons for that hotel. The radios, it's an ongoing process. We're still working with first gens that we ordered in 2015. We're asking for three more. That'll give us 21. And of course, that'll... outfit everybody in the department. I'd also like to give city manager one during them events, like a hurricane and whatnot, so he can hear. Yes, sir?

Why are the radios 7,000 apiece?

It's just like buying a stainless steel vault at Ace compared to the West Marine.

They're intrinsically safe, very specialized. It's just like tire trucks that cost way too much. It's just what the industry is.

Unfortunately, that's just... Can I ask the question?

Do you have an extra? Because if I'm at the EOC, I need a radio.

We're still working on that training for you, Mayor. Yeah, I got to make sure I can talk to you.

Because we're in hurricane season.

Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. We're getting around to it.

Just in case.

Yes, ma'am. Before I leave off. Sorry. Thanks. Anything else? Yeah, the radios, like I said, it's just going to help us. And, you know, we're going to probably still try to budget at least two every other year because I know it's such a cost just to kind of phase out the first gens. You know, the end of life was years ago. You know, so we're just making it work. We also have in here the Explorer for Deputy Chief of Vehicles, 10 years old. And I just had it on my capital, my five-year plan, so it's still on there. It's for him.

And so you have a Ford Explorer now?

Yes.

Does it have turbos?

The new ones that he's been looking at, unfortunately, do come with turbos. His does not, and I don't like it.

If you have a problem with the turbo? The oil hose to replace it is over $3,000. Okay. Just to let you know.

And we'll get with fleet if it is approved, you know, maybe have some other options, other manufacturers. You know, we try to streamline our fleet, you know, just try to get, you know, Felix has been real good with keeping tires for our F-150s and stuff like that.

Can you get a different model? I don't know. We should go by contract.

All the Explorers, in order to get one that doesn't have the turbo, you've got to go up to what they call the S. increase to go to that one. That's basically kind of like their performance Explorer. There's 40 Explorer. So it actually jumps the price up just to get to that motor.

Do you know how much, sir?

Felix didn't give me a quote on that one.

Tenfold. Okay. City Manager, what I'd like to see, which I ask every year and I asked you a couple days ago, I want maintenance logs on these vehicles.

Good.

If it's running good, is that what you're saying? The maintenance log is bad? What's the maintenance cost? Just because it's old, is it that bad of a vehicle?

I just wanted to put everything on a timeline. Right. I know. I understand that. And that's the reason why.

And one reason why we're going ahead and doing it now is because we don't know what we're going to look like over the next three to four years. And so we want to go ahead and bring this up. This is all capitals. We can understand what we're thinking. And y'all either.

I'm just telling you what I'm thinking also.

Right. It's by him.

Yeah, it's by one person. And like I said, the shape is phenomenal. It's in good shape. And we believe the resale value will be there. So we will surplus it and sell it. At the first budget meeting with CM and CFO, I asked if any other department could use it, if City Hall or if you guys wanted a vehicle to have at City Hall to use.

Like I said, I'm just throwing it out there. It is a good vehicle. Well, that's what I always wonder.

If it's good enough to keep for another department, why do we need to get a new one?

That's what I'm saying. And like I said, it's to be a more emergency base that we just...

Most of that stuff that we need, we need trucks. And you take one of these that doesn't have anything in the back and it's enclosed, it's just...

So we're going to get like a Ford F or a Ford, whatever, 350.

No, he's getting that. No, this is just for his replacement. So another expense. They need the enclosed for their stuff so it can be protected.

But that doesn't answer the question. If it's that good, why are we replacing it?

It's just an emergency vehicle. I just want it on a timeline.

So we're buying it because it's been 10 years, not necessarily because we need it.

You're exactly right. Yes. But, once again, the reason why we're bringing it up now to have the discussion is I don't want to come up in two years and go, oh, I need another $60,000 vehicle because I don't need to do that. With the situation where we're at now with our budgets, we're trying to capitalize away so that we can kind of just ease back a little bit except for what's completely necessary at the time. So we will sell it. We will sell this. Perfect. Well, that's it.

Because if we keep it, then it gets older and it's worth less.

That is correct. This particular deal, we will definitely.

Good.

We would probably.

So it's a large resale on Explorers.

And we'd expect 15,000 to 20,000.

I was on GovDeals yesterday, and there's one going for about eight right now. So I recommend GovDeals for this.

Okay. And we'll set reserves.

Yes. Yes. We might have a commissioner that wants to buy it.

Yeah.

For those of you who have been around for long, you know where that came from. It's not this guy.

Unless you change the rules. No, we ain't changing no rules. We ain't changing no rules.

Been down that road before.

And I still see that truck.

I was going to say it's still around.

Yeah, it's still around.

Yeah, I know. Yeah, it sure was.

Well, it's over 100,000 miles on it now, right? Yes. Okay.

That's low mileage. 107,000. So actually we're about only 60% of the standard mileage. Right. So... And this is actually road mileage. Unfortunately, we're a small city.

How many fires have we had Assistant Chief go to in emergency mode?

Oh, yeah. I mean, everything. He's there with me.

I don't have the numbers in front of me, sir, but we do. So both of you respond to all fires? Yes.

How many fires do we actually have?

I don't know. I don't think.

Do you know how many fires we had just in the last month?

I'm talking this year. Oh, this year? Yeah. Ain't but a handful.

Yeah, I mean, you never hear about it.

Yeah. You know, and joking, my guys, they put them out so fast, it don't get newsworthy. Yeah. I will say that. Right. You know, I will say that. Hey, you know, there are a lot that are just alarms. Right, a lot of alarms, a lot of kitchen fires. Right. You know. Kitchen fires. Right. I mean, KFC, you know, it stayed right there in their kitchen.

Did everybody know KFC called the fire?

Yeah, you sent out an email. Oh, I did send out an email. That's the only email I've ever gotten about a fire, but I did get that one.

Well, I don't know. I still have an issue with getting rid of a vehicle that's 60% life.

Well, don't look at me. I'm the one that's got $160,000 on my town and country.

So $135,000 for the land purchase. We're going to press ahead with that.

That was a carryover. Every year today it's about $1,600.

Do we know what that is?

On the current vehicle, yeah. $1,600?

Shoot, that's a set of tires and a set of brakes, and that's it?

We take care of our vehicles, sir.

It's probably worth more now than the resale value.

I would say move forward because we're going to end up, I keep a truck, and I've seen other cities that are driving a 2000 model truck eventually, and when it don't look professional, and it really is, it is worn out once you start getting all those ages. And the longer we keep this truck before we liquidate the 2016, the less it's worth on the resale market. And that $60,000 next year is going to be $70,000 because that's what Ford's going to charge us.

Does the 60,000 include all the whistles and bells? Yes, sir.

And that is kind of high. We always kind of shoot high because we're always, you know, so.

But that's all your wheel and lights, whatever slot out. Yes, the stickers, lights.

Yes, sir. Anything in particular that you?

Graphics, everything.

Everything.

Ready to go.

Radio. Yeah.

The other thing on there, we are still working through the land purchase of the land down there for the future fire station. On 38? Yeah, we ran into, you know, we're working through it. Probably say just, you know, we're going to go ahead and keep this in the budget. Regardless of what happens with the property tax, we can still keep the land. So we're going to go ahead and move forward with the purchase of the land.

Well, we're going to be there for whenever.

Any more questions on fire? So if y'all know tonight's agenda for the commission meeting, we're requesting to do another capital shift like we did in the water department for that new excavator. Santa had a project for about $200,000 to put lighting all out here in the sports complex. We were looking at doing solar lights. Upon more investigation of that, we realized that they're probably not going to be optimal for use here. We're going to have to do the maintenance on them. Of course, we have warranty for a while. Also, the brightness of the lights and the proximity of how close they have to be. So we talked to FPL. FPL came forward, and we actually got a little partnership with them. They're going to come out and install lights just like the lights that are coming down the Arts and Conference Center. And they're going to go ahead and loop all the way up to the sports fields, all the way around Loop Road. And it's going to have the adequate lighting that we need out Have you even got a determination on that yet? We are boring? I think it's less than that. Okay. So we're going to need to provide the boring to go underneath the road. We don't want to go underneath the road. But that's going to be our only cost to have these lights installed, other than the cost of electricity, which these are going to be low-water LED lights. So it's a really good partnership with FPL. We're really thankful that they stepped up. So that being said... When Tim came for his capital budget for next year, which contained mowers, I can't remember what I was on, the wills, some locks, some additional things that we need to do for that, rather than leave this money in his budget this year, and then at the end of the year it rolls over, where does it go? It goes into reserves. We want to go ahead and do a capital shift. We're going to get all of his budget for next year in this year's budget with that amount of money. One thing is that we ran into an issue with the air conditioners on this building. There are 10 units. They are more than 25 years old. They are bound to fail, and they are failing. And so we need to go ahead and look ahead for this. So Tim got a tentative quote. Just for price-wise, it was about $200,000 for 10 units. We want to get his capital. for this building. The remaining five, we will do in next year's budget as his only capital expenditure, which is for 100,000 for five units. Of course, this is dependent on what happens tonight, but it kind of all coordinates together. We're just trying to use the money that we have in this year's budget to optimize so that we can keep increasing next year's budget as we try to move forward and get our capital statement ready. So we'll be requesting a lot of items shipped tonight. And then in next year's budget, we'll just need that $100,000 for the other five units in here for this building. Okay. I can't believe the units have crept along and we made it 25 years on. That's amazing.

So depending on how tonight's vote goes on that, we'll determine if next time we have a budget workshop, if you have to come back and change this number. Correct. for leisure services, capital expenditures.

Did we go off for bids or did we just call someone for a bid? We're going to go off for bids, correct?

This will be a formal bid. We have to know where we're sitting so we can just call a rental company and they actually donate their time to come out here and look. Who has done work on some of the units that we've had issues with? We'll go out for formal bid, and then it'll come back to y'all for approval.

I have other issues with leisure services, but I'll hold that until we get to it. It has nothing to do with this.

I think this is a smart way to move forward, though, barring tonight's plan.

I'm going to move on to Street.

All right, moving on to Street. We have the stormwater study in there, which is now grant funded. So it is a $209,000 expenditure. It will be reimbursed through the grant. It's just a pass-through, but we have to put it in there. Street is requesting a box truck. I think I have the information in front of me.

than what it was on the photo. Can you get it more dirtier than what it was on the photo?

We could, I'm sure.

And there's no maintenance records, too. You know, I'd ask for that.

So we got 93, 29.38 in that vehicle so far. We do plan on having some overlap with it. We're not going to surplus it right away. This is kind of like the workhorse with all our tools, hand tools. It's also the concrete mixer pulling truck. That's probably why it's so dirty. It does have concrete on the back of it that is permanent there from splash where they mix concrete. You can see the water tank. Like I said, when that thing shows up, it's the go-to unit on scene. A design flaw with it, the cab is bouncing. The mechanics have kind of tightened up, tried to adjust the bushings and all. It's not worth messing with a whole lot anymore, is what I was told. It's not going to fall off or anything. It's just a, I think it's a design flaw by Ford. Mechanically, it's sound. It's just, it's getting old. It's 16 years old. It does pull trailers around. It's a workhorse.

you say is 11 years old no 11 years old yes yeah it's a 2015 yeah and this is also part of what we're doing in our departments being able to split because like in the street Yes, sir, we're gonna continue to use it with the newer and

Until it reaches a point where we will surplus it with you. I don't see that being any time very soon. Like I said, we'll have a pretty good amount of overlap with this truck.

Is the new truck going to be outfitted similarly? It's not going to be a new concrete mixing truck, is it? No, it'll be a similar truck.

I don't think it's going to be quite as long as this one, is what we're looking at. We haven't picked out the exact truck we're going to get yet, but it'd be very similar to this one.

You're getting a new concrete mixer anyway.

We're asking for a large concrete mixer where we can do a larger amount instead of these little patches. We can add aggregate to it. I'm getting ahead of myself, but it's a much more beefy machine. It's not just a mortar mixer. What we have now is really more of a mortar mixer. It's not a concrete mixer.

I think we tore up almost a 25-foot sidewalk because of the line right underneath it. We have to go back and put this back together. And yes, Commissioner Graves, the water department gets charged.

They tear it up, they pay for it.

They tear it up, they pay for it. It took a lot to do, but we figured it out. Actually, they just marked it on the POs and everything.

Just say you already hit a page 31, because that's my question on page 31. Where is that on page 31? I see you have it under sewer, but you don't have it under water.

Our guys are actually doing a lot more than just sidewalks. Head walls. We're actually building blocks of culverts in the house that we have too. Our guys are stepping up their game a lot. But the little concrete mixer is not cutting. The mortar mixer.

Well, I appreciate Bill being honest in bringing that up because what we are doing, those smaller mixers, We are using aggregate in there, which is actually not good for the mixers and creating issues there. So now with the mixer you're asking for, that is properly spec'd for adding the aggregate to it.

Yes, sir. And as you know, our city manager is a pusher. So we're trying to do things in-house that we normally would outsource. Right. And we're coming up with these tweener jobs to where they're not small jobs, but they're not big enough to sub out. And our little mixer's just not enough. And it's not enough to order a complete truckload, 10 yards of concrete. So if you order a reduced amount of load, you wind up paying a delivery fee. And we can't just leave these driveways open or sections of sidewalk open too long, so this will help us fill that gap and fill those tweener-sized holes quicker and get things done with a good, strong aggregate-based concrete mix.

All that is particularly going to be well used in Shadow Bay. No. And throughout the entire city, yes, sir.

What's the expected life on a mixer? I'm sorry? How long should it be? Right off the top of my head, I would say 10, 15 years. How long have y'all had that smaller one that y'all have abused? The smaller one, it's just right off the top of my head.

It's probably somewhere between 10 and 15 years old.

And we still got life in it. It just ain't big enough, like you said.

It's not big enough. And you can't put aggregate in it or else it'll just tear it apart. It's a mortar mixer. It's not a concrete mixer. Get rid of it. But we'll keep it for sure.

Sure. So we'll still have a use for it.

Oh, yes. Okay.

On the small dump. Betweeners get the big one. Sure. We'll be looking that word up on Google. Betweener.

Between little and big.

That's true. You got it. I'll look up that on the city computer. It'll tell you what I'll find. And then finally, since we've talked about the mixer, Street is going to need to replace out a couple of their older mowers.

And as you all know, they're mowing grass eight hours a day from Easter to Halloween and just really taking a beating. And Felix and his guys, they do a really good job maintaining them and trying to keep them running and all. But as you can imagine, of course, we're not hitting debris from Hurricane Michael anymore, but we do occasionally hit some debris.

Anybody have a question on that?

Nope. Okay, on all of them.

Good.

Okay, we'll move on down to water. The camera system in the back truck.

It's really our Q's van. That's a typo. It's not our back truck. Our Q's van. Q's is Q-U-E-S, which is a name brand. It's a van that's dedicated for telemarketers. etc. We need to upgrade the inner guts of that van to bring them up to today's technologies.

I was going to ask, what's wrong with that back truck we just bought?

That was my bad.

And obviously, replacing the fire hydrants is something we're doing to stay ahead and keep these two big guys behind me happy. How many?

As many as we can.

Yep.

And a coring check station out in the East Bay area is where our extended lines head out towards the shipyard. How many fire hydrants?

It's on.

And that allows us to use impact keys, doesn't it? For the fire hydrants?

I had a question from a citizen on North Fox. There's no fire hydrants. Is there anything in the works to do anything on North Fox? Which portion of North Fox?

Where Randy lives.

County or city?

City.

Is that the new area?

You know who he is. Eddie knows who Randy is. Yeah.

Now from the school to the subdivision. Right.

It's north of 22. Yeah. So that's by the new subdivision.

Okay, but it's north of 22? No, it's off of Cherry. He lives off of Cherry. I'll get you an address.

That's the road that we made two way that used to be one way?

Right, the road that we made. And he says there's no fire hydrants. And since we're talking about fire hydrants, is there any plans to do anything on that street? Not immediately. And we'd have to redo the lines? Can you put that on your?

Yeah.

We will check it. To do checklist, please. I just informed the citizen that I'd be asking.

If there's a nice fat line in there and we need to add a hydrant, that's not a problem. Yeah. If there's not an adequate line. Then it's a problem. You definitely don't want to stick fire hydrant on too much. We've got a lake.

We have a lake there in the fire department. Well, see, the last time we had a fire there, you actually needed all this hose that you're buying now because.

So are the water meters, should they be on this, the 200,000? It's a different area.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Bill, I thought we did the chlorine. Is this going to be a recurring cost every year?

No. This is a carryover.

Carryover from last year, so we didn't do it in last year? Okay. All right.

I knew we talked about it.

So it hasn't been done, and we're going to carry it over this year. All right.

Yes, sir. And the Laney Road water main upgrade is just old.

This is the one where we have basically the line runs from Gay through the ditch, goes to the other, and tees off. And it's an old galvanized. So because we're doing the South Gay project right now where we're upgrading that, this is just one of those areas. We put the tees in and kept them off so that we can loop that whole entire road. We'll do it all in-house, and we'll come back And then we will add more fire protection. That's a straight two inch that goes in there and makes a T. That's not good. We need loop systems. All of our water, we do not need two dead end lines. So while we went ahead and put it in there as a project, I think I told you on the previous commission meeting that we'll be coming back and talking about this in the future Not that it has any priority over anything else. It's just we found it, and we need to go ahead and start working on these as we can. Since we have crews that can do the installation, and we're going to be increasing line size and fire protection, we can use our impact fees to cover the cost. So basically neutral.

And it's better to ask now than in six months when you say, hey, can we use this impact fee?

That's right. All right. And then finally, our tow behind back trailer. Bill, tell us about our current one.

Our current one is big and cumbersome. And back when it was purchased, I guess they thought bigger was better. And it's great. I mean, it was a monster. It's heavy. I don't have the numbers in front of me how much things cost us. But we will get some overlap on it. The VAT trailer we're looking at purchasing is the one almost identical to the one we got for the street department a few years back. They like that one. It's lighter. Even when it's slammed full, it doesn't require a CDL driver. Like I said, we will have overlap with it so that we can equip our water division guys with the machinery they need to stop these water breaks. This thing helps them out a ton.

So when you have an active water lake, water's dashing out of the ground. This will go in there and suck the water out so they can find a re-clicker and then repair it as opposed to trying to dig around in the water to figure it out. So the back truck won't do that? The back truck does, but they're sewer. We don't use the back truck.

Well, you've got a sewer truck and a water truck.

This is for the... The utility guys, that they can pull it over there with a pickup truck.

We don't call out the Vactor truck for every water break.

That wouldn't be practical. You know, when they get backed up, they will. They'll go to CBO driver to follow them and leapfrog and catch up. But this is an everyday use machine that keeps them from having to call in locates, wait 72 hours to dig with a hoe. You're not allowed to put shovels in the ground with equipment until locates are all done. It speeds the process up. we call hydro mining where you kind of it also comes with a Pressure washer where they can spray the mud down and wash it in there and vacuum it out Get to the problem area and fix the break what we're using every day now They took the tone.

They have some type of system today. Yes, sir. You want to get rid of that? We're gonna we're gonna surplus the big heavy ditch, which is which yes, sir Okay Because I knew we had a system, but probably not too efficient.

This is just going to make it so that every employee can look up at this. Right. And that becomes an issue. Sometimes it will be inevitable to get equipment around ten and a half. Proceed with that. Correct. And even cover multiple breaks. Any questions on that? No, I'm okay with that. All right, we'll move on to sewer. This is the zip line. Basically, this is going to be something that y'all are going to see also on tonight's agenda that talks about a piggyback contract. We need to line some of our sewer systems that are starting to deteriorate. rather than wait for them to deteriorate completely and pull them out and replace them. We can actually go in and have a machine that will go down, and it will reline the inside of the pipe. It will clean it, and then it relines it, and we can get another, what, 20, 30 years out of it.

Yeah, this, it's like the PVC pipe. It's there for, it doesn't corrode like the cast iron at all.

And this is at Sandy Creek.

All over the city, right?

Take that next line out completely.

Well, I was going to ask, why is it at Sandy Creek when we have it?

Well, you notice it says zero. But see, that was actually supposed to be, that whole second section has got to come out. That should have been removed under where it says, that one says necessary replacement. The $125,000, when we started looking at the cost on this, and we were calling around and Thomas was looking, trying to figure out where we could get the best price, and should we go out and bid for it? What we found out was that because we're only talking about doing 400 linear foot at a time whenever we have to do this and trying to coordinate doing a massive project, the cost per square foot, but because we're doing such low amounts at a time, that we were going to be charged mobilization fees and then linear foot fees. And they were just astronomically high. I think it's called APS is the name of the company. They're actually a local company. They do a lot of this. We were looking at some of their contracts. And as we were talking to them, they offered us to piggyback off of a contract if we wanted to. The big selling point is there's no minimums linear foot. And they're not charging us a mobilization fee. So it's just going to be a per foot charge. And we have to look. They were doing thousands and thousands and thousands of linear foot. And because of the size of that contract, they charged them zero mobilization. They offered to let us piggyback off of that, which is allowable under our procurement rules. It's also allowable under the state. This was able for us to drive it down and not have to do so many linear square foot or go out per project. We can just piggyback off their contract in whatever we need. I think we told them we would The minimum amount would be 400 linear foot at a time. That's basically between the sewer and the sewer. Man over man, I was about 400 foot on average.

That's a little long, but yeah. Which is throughout the city. It has nothing to do with Sandy Creek.

No. Take all that out.

I just want to make sure. I got to ask. As you put it in here, I'm going to say, why is Sandy Creek?

There was something else that was in there that somehow or another got floated over, and we're not quite sure where it came from. But that should have been removed. Okay, all right. This has nothing to do with Sandy Creek. This is internal to the city. Lying sewer pipes. I'm new.

I don't know one thing I noticed. A lot of times the comments that are over to the right, sometimes they're last year's comment that has nothing to do with this year, but it got left there.

Yes, ma'am. Yeah. So what does SIP stand for? I don't know.

Seal in place. Why is that? Seal. Seal. This is CIP. Coding in place. Correct.

acronyms and what they mean it is cured in place probably but that's wrong too cured in place cured in place I'm kind of curious Bill I'm kind of curious on this you're talking about that they have a system that goes in and cleans the pipe they'll clean it prior to

A VATCON truck. Now, the money we're asking to upgrade our Q's van is what helps us find where we need to fix these lines. So those two kind of go together. And then once Richard Addison and his team kind of let us know, hey, these are our problem spots, then Thomas kind of decides, prioritizes them and all. We ask for money, and they'll sip line it, is what it's called, and they clean it to make sure it's clean so that it adheres to it. And they blow this bag-looking thing down in the line, and it basically goes in there, turns inside out. They blow it up against the wall, and there's an epoxy-type glue, for lack of better words, that adheres to it, and it's solid. It's tough stuff.

It cures it, like, so it works like a... But it literally goes in and it blows up against the outside walls. And then it cures, and then they can remove the lining out, and then we've got a pipe that's completely lined.

How do they dispose of the cleaning side? When they clean it, how do they dispose of that? How do they dispose of it? Yeah, because that would be an environmental mess.

and their liability if they have an environmental spill.

I'm not going to make any assumptions that they're even using a cleaning product. They may just be rinsing it out.

Yeah.

Because this ain't what it does. It's just a way to keep us from digging everything up and replacing lines ourselves. It's just a great tool because that's the last thing we want to do is start tearing roads up, digging up, replacing zero.

And have we used this process in the city before?

Not that I'm aware of. We have, but it was in stormwater. Same thing, bigger, different, you know. But, I mean, they do it all over the place.

This is not a new technology. It's new to me.

Okay. I'm okay with all this.

a spare lift station pump those are the pumps that are submerged in the bottom they're submerged in sewer we never know if one's going to burn up and we just keep that in there as a place that we'll be able to replace the pumps as needed so not buying right now just budgeting in case that is correct and these are capitals we cannot use them for anything else this year, I came to you and said, let's do this and not buy these jukeboxes. Keep one in there. We're sitting good. Don't need a truck. Not asking for anything.

So really, that claw truck shouldn't be showing there.

That's last year.

That's what I thought.

Because there was no money for that side. That's just a carry-on.

No money.

we are asking to get a new truck for code enforcement. What this really stems from is our two utility building trucks that we currently use. We have been experiencing issues with some of them. And when they go down, we have no other spare trucks. The spare trucks that we have are basically in the water department building. You may want to come up and talk about how old nasty that is. So we really have one spare truck right now. It's being utilized mostly for locates. So we're technically sitting where the city really doesn't have a spare truck that can float around and be used anywhere else. And so one of the issues that Bonnie has after we were discussing, I hate to buy a new truck for the utility billing guys because right now we're hoping to continue on. They are in their trucks all day. They run. for these guys trying to do their job. This has been an ongoing issue with utility billing over the last several years of not having a spare sitting up there. But rather than buy that utility, but sitting there, one of Bonnie's issues that she has when she's out is because of all the notices, the amount of workspace. Bonnie, you're welcome to come up and discuss anything you want to discuss. I mean, everybody else is getting a turn, so don't you get a turn.

Well, I basically just have my passenger seat and floorboard to put my stuff in, and I carry all kinds of stuff in my truck, cleaning supplies, sanitizers. I carry blankets because I sometimes pick up stray animals and coordinate with animal control and stuff like that.

And Bonnie works out of her truck. That's one thing. That's kind of a mobile office for her. She has her iPads and everything that she does, everything else. So she's technically in the field all day long. So we looked at going ahead and grabbing an extended cab for her, taking her truck, moving it over as a spare up at City Hall. It can be utilized multiple ways. For one thing, currently right now, we go to the bank daily. We also go to the drop boxes on a daily basis.

And Lisa has been using her personal truck for that.

For a long time. errands that we have to run in. And then also, if we do have one of our UV trucks going down, they would have it there. I know we recently just had an issue where one of the trucks went down completely. And it was, how long was it down for? It was a week and a half we were without a truck. So we ended up actually still buying these trucks.

I happened to be out of town that week, so it worked out.

It really got to the point where when we were calling around, we just didn't have any spare trucks. Tim, I tried to steal some of Tim's trucks. He didn't have anything available. So we're looking at going ahead, getting her a room because she's in a mobile office. That will give her the additional room.

You're talking about a 250? I'm just looking at the paperwork you gave us.

I don't think we did.

We didn't get any of that.

I think the only thing we got was that box trail. Oh, we don't have information on it, okay. That's the only thing we got. I think we can make a copy of this.

Extended cab.

Extended cab.

Versus the single cabs.

Four-door versus two-door. Yeah. Is that right?

Yes.

As far as the general running around, the fire department has a vehicle that would be good for that. I agree with that.

Well, you can buy liners. I mean, I have a liner of mine. I threw all my dive gear.

Well, you know, rainy and wet, but I don't see any dirty trucks in Leisure Services.

finish this on equipment?

Yes, ma'am. We're just adding. What is that going to do to our numbers on the budget?

It's already in there.

It's already in there?

I just forgot to add it. It just wasn't on the slide.

So does that bring the total for city budget to $1.3 million? $16 million? Yes, sir.

Page 16.

No, page two still. The total city, 1.3.

That's capital. This is just capital, it's not city budget.

Well it says total city budget. No, that's capital.

Y'all never caught that before.

It's always been like that.

Really? We call that now.

If nobody has an objection since I said I would let our public speak, does anybody have any comment up to this point? Anybody want to say anything? I just want to give anybody an opportunity. We'll just keep plowing ahead then. Nope, he said no.

Well, in two hours, we finished page two.

That's typical. We didn't get through page two. We didn't get through page two.

So we can actually, do we need to do page three?

The best thing to look at would be to jump to page five.

Yes.

This is just a quick overview of what you're looking at in your budget summary. is going to be a positive 72,000. CRA is at a negative 89,000. That's really a lot of that. You've got to remember we're doing the spillway, so we'll have pass-throughs in there. The water and sewer, those negative numbers, and we've never really got in and talked about this, but we do rebalance these when it's all said and done. But that really has a lot to do with the meters, where we said we're putting extra money in to use meters. So right now, overall, your budget is sitting at about a negative $117,000. We reallocate it again. We also do not have the proper revenues in there. So when those numbers come in, I'm sure we'll probably flip off all of this.

I'm going to make a comment, at least on three, but it relates to the interest. And it's really a positive comment because I look at what the interest income projection for revenues, Eddie, prior to, actually prior to we paid our banks to keep our money. And it was, you know, we were sitting out there, several of us were sitting out there. It just seemed so ridiculous that we were doing that. And until we made certain changes, No, we're not. Changing people, changing personnel. Change of people, yeah. Change of people.

And attitudes.

Yeah, right. And it, I mean, when we think about what we had then, I mean, not only were we not drawing interest, but it took us two to three to four months to even reconcile our checking accounts.

Mm-hm.

I see that the interest is down, which means whatever reason the interest is going to be down. But when we're looking at least $347,000 in interest.

$1.2 million this year. So I do have a question.

The bank was taking advantage of the city. I'll be kind. I need to check with Adam. Adam's never seen the city that didn't run sweeper count. And we had just changed the city over in Arkansas that I was at. We just changed him over into sweep accounts. And it was becoming a common practice. And when we got here, me and, you know, why am I paying the bank $1,500 a month to keep $20-something million of my money? They fought me at first until I gave them the proposal from the community bank.

No. So what's the interest rate? So I do have questions on this page. I know we skipped right over it.

On three?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay.

You know, we have a lot of variations in here from last year's budget.

The first one was... First, I remember...

Why don't you just walk through it then, instead of me asking a question about each thing. Why is that velourum up 44.8%? Why is other property taxes?

Well, you're adding in there, when you add that, you're adding in there the 27 and the 3 million, but you have to understand,

So when I see the total budget at almost $5.8 million versus $4 million last year, how did we get up so high?

$1.074 you're getting from the county, because last year it was like in the $900,000 range. So it's all gone up.

So about an extra $400,000 there. But I just want to make sure we're not making a mistake.

No, so this number populates after I put all the information from our DR420 and our DRTIF in there, and it calculates it itself. So this number came from what I would do anyway when I go in there and take our accounting.

Okay. I see our permits, fees, and licenses went down 19%.

Yeah, so just looking at historical from what we did last year and stuff,

How about special impact fees and special capitalization fees?

So that went down because we had a lot of places that were building this year pay their impact fees up front. Is that correct? So we, of course, try to be conservative on what's building this year, you know, and things like that. So this number can go up and down, but, like, I didn't want to put another million dollars in there and we only get $600,000 in that one.

Okay.