City Council - Regular Meeting

We'll go ahead and call the budget finance education session to order. Today's session, we're going to be covering parks, public works, and wastewater. And for that, I'm going to turn it over to the chair of that committee. Councilman Cody Harvey. So, Councilman Harvey, the floor is yours. Thank you much. Conduct this as you see fit.

Good morning, everyone. Thank y'all for being here. Hello, hello. I'm excited to hear from our public works department and parks and all the things that they do um lou bryan um one quick story before we go in and we hear the budget presentation today um this gives you a little bit of a synopsis of uh the efficiency the attention to detail that our public works that department does under the leadership of jeremy wood uh one evening i think it was a friday night At like 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock at night, I saw a Facebook post by David Carroll that said the Deputy Donald Bond sign had fallen over on East Brainerd Road. And so I quickly texted Jay and got an immediate response. And within two hours, Jay had a brand new sign for Deputy Donald Bond up on East Brainerd Road. So that gives you just a little bit of a, yeah, yeah, I think that deserves a hand clap. So thank you for your attention. to detail i know that's important not only to the community but the family of deputy bond so i appreciate absolutely all the work you do and things like that really uh talk about your character and your your attention to detail so thank you appreciate what you do and with that we'll turn it over to you awesome

Well, I'll get us started, and if we can, I think once we kind of finish this, we'll go ahead and leave Jay at the table, and we'll go through the rest of his funds, so that way we don't make him come back and forth on us here. But we'll start with Public Works. So there... Their budget has an increase of $876,000 over last year total. Salaries and benefits makes up pretty much all of that, and that is largely due to the COLA and benefits that were added. They did add 23 positions. And they also budgeted having there a budgeted vacancy rate. And essentially what that is with their departments, especially it's true mostly citywide, but especially in public works because of the nature of a lot of their positions, they deal with a lot of natural vacancy, just turnover where you have crew workers come and go and different folks come and go. And then in some of the engineering positions, if someone leaves, it's a little harder to fill them. And so they have a certain amount of just historical vacancy within that fund. And so what we did this year, what their team did this year really is take a deep dive kind of on that historical vacancy and try to get that budget more right sized. The way our budget system works, EPM, kind of the technical piece of it, it takes all of your positions and it assumes 100% fill for the full year, which we know doesn't happen, right? So they took a deep dive on it and said, hey, let's With a conservative kind of edge to it, let's say, what should that number be? And so they reduced kind of that 100% full by the 2.4 million to try to account for kind of where their vacancies typically are. And what that allowed them to do is add 23 positions that they need to further the work they're doing at kind of a budget-neutral stance, right, because they were able to kind of take those vacancies and then fill them with these positions. Yeah. Yeah, yes. And so we kind of last year, we took out that vacancy because it had kind of gone. Folks had typically, I think in the past, used that as a way to kind of They missed the mark on that vacancy number, and last year we said, well, let's just not do it, and we know that's not real. So this year we've kind of, again, they did a good job of going through that and seeing what the number should be and putting it there. So anyway, so they did add that, but again, the 23 positions are largely budget neutral because of the vacancy projections that they've done. On the operations side, mostly flat. They did decrease... The interstate lighting maintenance piece, about $180,000, that's in conjunction with EPB. And again, that's more of a right-sizing. It's just been over-budgeted. Based on some conversations they've had with EPB, they think the number they have in there now is more realistic. And so they were able to bring that number down. The space cost decrease, they had some folks over at the Midtown campus that they've brought into their existing footprint at the DRC. So they were able to save kind of that space cost there. And then just like most of the other departments, they have some increases within their vehicle operations.

Help us understand the services line item production. Sure. Figure out where we've moved some things around. Sure.

Let me.

That one million.

Get into the, pull up the detail for it so we can talk about it.

Big file moves a little slow.

Solid waste disposal looks to be...

So the bulk of it, yes, is in the waste disposal is the biggest piece of it. And that was money that was being sent over to the solid waste fund to help cover the cost of the recycling, the Orange Grove contract. Part of the 23 positions they added, 11 of those are... to do the work that that contract was doing. And so now all of that money stays in Public Works Department. So you'll see when we pull up the positions here, you'll see there are 11 positions to kind of replace the work being done there. So on their positions, they did add 23. This is here. Again, the ones in the brackets, like the transportation engineer, that is a reduction. So there's 24 adds, one reduction, so a net of 23. And you'll see in the middle there the 10 refuse, recycle center, attendance, and then the one format above it. All right. Before I get to the capital, any questions on the operations side? Yes, ma'am.

So I will say, as Councilman Harvey was talking about the detail-orientedness, Jeremy, of the way that you do your work and your leadership, I think your executive summary speaks to that. We've got executive summaries in here that say the same thing three times that are – Or they're there from last year. This is very specific. I appreciate the department-wide trends I want you to know that I read I read all of it within the position request the one I had the question about it's a hopeful question is the city transportation engineer so I would not dispute that it would be wonderful to have another one but I know how hard it's been to get any so talk to me about you know what your experiences with hiring is there a gap in salary much not dissimilar from what legal is experiencing in their department tell us about that and and how hopeful you are about being able to fill another traffic?

So we actually took this position and converted it to an assistant city engineer position over transportation.

Okay.

With that, we have two applicants right now that are highly qualified. We initiated interviews yesterday. And so with those two, we kind of understand where we're going with them. We should have a hire relatively soon. I will say the struggle has been for a little over a year since Chris Davis and Carmen Harvey left. we had not been able to get any traction whatsoever. There was no interest in people coming here. The pay was not what they wanted. I can't really say that it's below what the fair market value is, but it's not what they wanted because it doesn't match the outside figures. But there's a lot to it in what we do with family time and the ability and flexibility that we have here in the city that a lot of people just don't understand until they're burned out from doing it on the outside. So trying to capture that was very difficult. We sat down and we looked at it and we played with the numbers and went back and forth on the responsibilities on how this should look and are the numbers correct for what we want them to do versus what it says they do now. And that's where we came up with making it an assistant city engineer so that it matches the rest of the engineering core. So we have one that's over stormwater, one that's over construction, and one that is now over transportation.

Water Construction and Transport.

Yes, ma'am. And I think with the two applicants that we have right now, I think it shows the engagement that we put into that is showing with the quality of those applicants that we have. And one of them is actually a local person.

Well, that's really encouraging. I'm glad to hear that. I know it will take some real pressure off of other very important team members.

Absolutely.

And then could you also tell us about the Zoning Development Manager?

Yes, ma'am. So the zoning development manager is one that we've had struggles with in the past as far as trying to get flats pushed through the system and different positions of leadership being taken care of. And it's been a constant struggle. And with Bill Gore in the seat in LDO, he has been very creative in what he's trying to come up with and how he's trying to reformat his team to look. And the zoning development manager is one that's going to provide the oversight directly to the zoning operations citywide. So we'll have someone that is dedicated just to seeing those operations. And then they'll have a QC, QA opportunity over everything that's coming in. So they can make injects directly onto the permit request and the plat request. And then With this oversight, we anticipate that the delays that we've seen in the past will no longer be because they have the system that is going directly to them, and they'll be able to make those injects throughout the process instead of waiting until the very end.

That will make a big difference to our building and development community. Yes, ma'am. Time is money. Yes, ma'am. Okay, that's helpful. Thank you very much.

Yes, ma'am. And I will say our times in LDO have dropped significantly since Bill's been working on everything. What used to be a three-week timeline for initial reception and reviews is now within seven days. Okay.

What's the goal to get to?

I would like it to be under five, but we're working with a lot of different companies, and the mayor has a lot of different, what are they called? I can't remember the name of it. Cohorts. He has cohorts that he's working with from different cities. He's getting different ideas, and we're exploring a lot of different things across the U.S.

Okay.

So we're trying to pull in everybody's best practices to get us down as low as possible.

Okay. All right. So it had been three weeks, and now we're down to the seven days. That's fantastic. Okay. Let me just make sure, Mr. Chair. Yep, that's all my questions. Thank you very much.

Any questions, council, at this point? Okay.

On the capital side, this is kind of their capital budget, $18 million of public works capital items. The biggest chunk of that is the $10 million for paving that we've been committed to. Then you'll see a handful of other items up there. Anybody have any questions about any of those? Yes, ma'am.

Um, I'd like to confirm, um, in this, in this public session. So the family justice center facility improvements, uh, the 900,000 that, uh, let me just confirm that that is for, um, in large part, the build out of the rape crisis centers. Correct. Fantastic. Okay. Um, that's an important commitment that the city has made. Okay. Thank you. That's all perfect.

All right, that's Public Works. We'll keep Jay at the table and we'll move on to State Street A. This fund is funded by our gas tax that's coming down from the state and it's used to do road improvements. You'll see they have a decrease of $226,000 salary. Most all again is in salaries and benefits. And again, they've applied, you'll see on all of these, all of Jay's slides here, they've applied this vacancy, that same kind of idea of right-sizing the vacancies and accounting for those appropriately, they've done that on all of these. So that's where that decrease is coming from. They do have an increase in asphalt. We've all seen kind of the cost is going up, and I imagine it'll continue to do so for the foreseeable future. And then some vehicle operations increases there. They have 60 positions in that fund, no new positions, no reorganizations. It's going to be the same positions as last year. Any questions on the state street aides?

OK, so the $10 million that's in capital, we're going to transfer $1 million from state street aid to Paving. So that puts us at an $11 million overall capital investment from Paving.

The state street aid money is a portion of the $10.

Oh, it is a portion.

It's a funding source for the $10. So not $11.

OK. Important to understand. Thank you.

Is that all, Councilwoman?

That's all. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

One of the things I want to point out with the increase in the asphalt, hopefully with the attempts that we're having with the alternate means for the paving, might be able to get us away from that increase. So then we can use more dollars to improving the road structure without having that large impact. So as of June 1st is whenever the first one is going to be in place, and we'll see how that goes. And hopefully that will work out for everything.

That's the pressure pave? Yes, ma'am. Okay. And there, yeah, there's a significant cost difference between that and fresh asphalt?

Yes, ma'am. It's about 50% difference.

So, okay. Thank you for that. Yes, ma'am. That's all, Mr. Chair, for now.

That's all right.

All right.

All right. We'll move on to the next one. Solid waste. Solid waste budget has an overall increase of $340,000. Salaries and benefits decreased $212,000. Again, some of that budgeted vacancy, and then they moved the truck driver over to the general fund. And then you can see the operations and transfers total increase, but the operations total is actually a decrease and then the transfers increased. So the operations side, we decreased in services. Again, that's related to the Orange Grove contract that had been previously paid out of this fund. Now all that work is being done by Public Works employees in the Public Works Fund. And then the transfer to cap that's a transfer to capital and that's for a compactor at the landfill the one we have out there it's getting a little bit older we have to have two yes right we have to have two our backup one is not reliable at this point and so especially with the expansion that's going on at the landfill they need a new reliable compactor out there and so that's what that 1.4 million dollars is to pay for the compactor

Mr. Chair, might we be able to do a lunch and learn at the landfill?

Well, sure.

I've never been to the landfill. I mean, I could go by myself, but I think that would be really fascinating.

Lunch at the landfill. Just a thought.

It's for Mr. Chair to discuss with you, but that would be pretty interesting. Yeah. I will write it down.

Party at the landfill.

We could look for our own food.

Make a picnic and be like top chef or something. I wouldn't recommend that.

Again, we don't have any new positions, but they did move one truck driver over to public works, so it's a general fund. And then on the capital side, we have the $3 million for the expansion we're doing out there, and then the $1.4 million for that new compactor that they need. Any questions on solid waste? stormwater and there may be a change to what you guys have we had a late change last week on this they were printing the pages when I walked over here so we'll get you fresh pages for your books But as it stands right now, we have a recommended increase of $6.8 million. Salaries and benefits up just shy of $1 million. Again, they did do the vacancy decrease, but we added 23 positions, which may be new to you. It's not in the book. Some of them are, but not all of them.

It was four, now it's 23.

Yes, that's right.

19 we're at. Okay. Explain, when you say vacancy, Decrease. Explain exactly what you mean.

So in a lot of the public works, citywide, but again, public works is particularly heavy in this. Their crew workers and even some of the engineers, the crew workers have a lot of turnover just naturally. And then the engineers, like Jay said, they're kind of hard to fill. So those vacancies sit open for a while when they have some of those level vacancies. And so what happens is the way our system budgets is that it assumes we fill 100% of the budgeted positions for the entire year. That's just the way it defaults to. And so what their team has done is they've gone in and looked at a historical average of like, what is our actual fill rate in any given year? And then they've adjusted their budget down to that actual kind of, we expect to have a certain number of vacancies come and go throughout the year. And so that's what they've done. They've budgeted that natural vacancy rate.

So that's not unlike what the request that I've submitted of what kind of vacancies are we having year over year to identify positions that are funded but not filled?

Yes, yes, that's right. So they've done a deep dive on that of looking at, and it's a little weird with your request, and you'll see some of this probably when we go through like a position. So you may have, Jay may have 20 crew workers, and we may keep filling the same one. You may fill the same one twice in a year because when HR, that person leaves and they just hire, so they don't go to the last position. vacant one so you may have one that's a crew worker that stays vacant for four years because they're just never full of crew workers because there's always a vacant crew worker somewhere and that one is just at the bottom of the list and never gets filled and so there's this like concept of what order we fill them in and there's really not a method to that i think it's all it all goes with the pipeline requests so we have the vacancy review committee and the vacancy

We get an HR does the calculations. We don't budget for video. So you do the calculations and how much needs to be paid out for that person. And so we're always looking at the most recent things. So, if they want to replace the summer, we're posting the positions. So, yes, they can post a pipeline. They can see, because we are using the most recent 1 and making sure that we get started with 0 video and then we're posting it. So, by. By the Vacancy Review Committee, that's what's going to happen, is that the most current one is the one that's going to get filled. But that doesn't mean if we had 10, we could fill down to the one from 2022 that's not vacant. It's just we don't really have that many people we can go to hire.

Because, you know, especially in the crew worker, you may fill it, and then the next day someone else will lose, and then you've got to go fill that one.

So there's just kind of this cycle. So there is the vacancy. And probably that's across a lot of departments. It is.

It is. I think it's especially heavy, and it's just because of the size of their department and then just the nature of the work that they do. A lot of it is personnel trying to get into the city.

So it's an entry position, and then they come in and apply for something else once they get there for the door.

It's a high turnover rate. But, yes, so that number is kind of tied to what we've been talking about. It's that vacancy that they just have every year that we know we're never going to be 100% full, but it's just not going to happen. And so they've quantified what that looks like, which allows them to do more on the off-site or hire more folks. Good, Councilman?

Yeah. Just real quick, other than what we've already talked about, the positions, what are you planning for the public's knowledge as well? What do you plan to do with the increase to 6.8 million for stormwater?

So the 6.8 million with stormwater includes a lot of different capital projects and local projects that we've been working through. As you know, we've had a lot of flood issues in here significantly. Yes. And we are trying to mitigate all of those with the stormwater processes. We just signed a contract for the waterways evaluation that will give us the opportunity to prioritize the entire system from start to finish on what we need to build, what we need to put in place, and where we need to prioritize our means right then and there. And that is going to be a long-term project, but if we can get that correct, then that will impact the entire city as a whole and negate a lot of the stuff that we've had going on.

Well, thank you. I think, like you said, stormwater, especially recently, for me and my district, the two highest calls and complaints I get are paving, stormwater. That's it. And a lot of those work hand in hand. And a lot of those work hand in hand, exactly. So I'm glad to know that we're looking at this, especially as a long-term project, to try and find a solution and get ahead of it.

as we see these problems increasing so okay good any other questions from stormwater i will point out the difference the 19 uh we did add again not in your books but we'll we have to replace some pages probably by now we'll get them to you today the 19 new litter crew yes um to go out and Jay and his team are developing a plan on how that's going to be implemented. Excellent.

Very good. And that's part of the resolution that we passed? Yes, sir.

Councilman Elliott's.

Councilman Elliott's. Yes, sir. A month ago or so. Yes, yes.

If I may, since we're talking about the litter crew, I brought this up in my, Jay and I have talked about it, but in our meeting with Kevin about budget. I've encouraged Public Works to think about within that litter remediation plan. to consider how we might engage our citizens in that as part of neighborhood civic pride. I know that I have a couple of neighborhood associations that have made litter a priority within their neighborhood. And what I've suggested is might they consider some type of grant program that would be available to community groups, whoever they might be, that if they made a commitment to keep a section of a neighborhood or, you know, if you're going to do a monthly pickup that there might be a $5,000 grant available because my hypothesis is that that $5,000 would be worth a great deal more to a neighborhood association or another community group than if we were just spending operations dollars on that. So if a very small portion of that is carved out, when I think about just the reality that we all, we ourselves are Chattanooga, right? We work together to make our community better. And I think there's a real pride of place and pride of purpose when you see see your own community getting better by your own hand and learn about the realities of that. So there's something that I've mentioned to Jay for them to decide how they might want to do that. But I'd love to see that, you know, across the city and all the districts.

That is one of the topics that we've included in our look while we're going through this program.

I appreciate that. Thanks.

Absolutely. All right.

Moving on. That brings us to wastewater stuff.

I appreciate y'all's time. Thank you very much. Happy Public Works Week. I appreciate it. There's going to be some changes to the calendars as far as locations and all that for this week's events because of the weather that's coming. But I would be pushing that to everybody. That's rain. Come on down, Mark.

One week you tell us about all the plans and then the next week I hear it's $50 million over. I'm just excited for you to be here, sir.

Don't believe what you're reading. Let me just say that.

How often is that true?

All right. We'll hop right into Wastewater's budget. Recommended increase, $49 million. The bulk of that is on the capital side. Salaries and benefits is up 1.2 with an increase of 17 positions, and they also have the COLA and benefits increases included in that. On the operations side, again, the bulk of their overall increase is within the transfers to capital. And then they do have some debt service that they're going to add this year that they're going to start paying down on. So this is $2.6 million. The 17 positions are listed here. So total of last year, $2.25 million. The 17 new brings them up to $242 million headcount in this budget. And with that, anybody have questions on the operations side? Council, any questions?

Can you speak to the Class A power project and its budget and where it stands with the capital?

Sure. And what was reported in the news was that a certain technology, the thermal hydrolysis process that we had looked at, we didn't choose that technology because it was too expensive. but we're still doing the project, and the project is still designed to be within our budget. We're still working with the design-build contractor to get things, doing some value engineering to try to make sure that we get within our budget, because one of the things that I've been telling the team is that we're not gonna just throw money at this just because you tell us it's gonna be expensive. You guys gotta sharpen your pencils and make this project work within our budget.

So what are we getting then for the $50 million?

So what we were going to do originally was put in the thermal hydrolysis process, build another digester, and rehab the old digesters that we talked about at the last meeting, which are 60 years old. But that approach, that original scope was, again, it was probably $50 million, maybe more, over what we had budgeted. So what we said was, you know, it costs just as much to rehab these old digesters. Let's just build enough digesters. to do what we need to do, then we don't need to do the rehab and we don't need the thermal hydrolysis process, which is a whole bunch of stainless steel tanks that are very, very expensive. I don't know how you can fit $50 million in a small space, but when you have enough stainless steel, I guess you can. We're going with tried and true technology that doesn't require specialized services. It doesn't require specialized treatment. We're building new digesters, which our in-house teams know how to operate, know how to maintain.

This is the four that we've talked about.

These are the four new digesters, yeah. So we were going to build one new digester, rehab all the other ones, and put it in the stainless steel tanks. Now we're just putting in four new digesters, and we're getting the same result.

We still get the biochar.

We still get the biogas. We still get the biochar at the end of it all, yeah. And we're eliminating the oxygen. And the oxygen gets eliminated, too, on the liquid process side, correct?

I know one thing we talked about to our tour over there was the reliance on EPB, the big bill that we get. Is that still?

It's all still part of it. Okay, very good. The intent of the project has not changed at all. We're going to be generating biogas. We're going to be converting that into electricity. We're going to be drying the biosolids and creating a biochar. all of that stays the same it's just how we do it it's like we're not we're not driving the lamborghini we're driving the honda okay but we're still getting the same getting from point a to point b the same way for a less cost and that honda is a whole lot less to maintain it is exactly that's exactly right yeah okay okay council hey there hello all right moving on okay

Again, the 17 positions that they added there, and then some of the capital that they've got going on. Again, these are all at the end of the book, and then there's also a slide with the consent degree-specific capital projects. Okay.

Councilman Clark has a question. Yes, sir.

I do, and I apologize if we have to backtrack. I got caught up talking to someone at the prayer breakfast. Can we go back to the slide with the new position? And maybe this is a question for Councilman Henderson. Was there a list ever sent to us of the unfilled positions?

I've just received a list, I guess today, yesterday, today, but there has not, I mean, I haven't sent that out to the whole council yet.

Okay. Can you speak to your outfield positions? Yes. How many they are, which positions they are, and what is the oldest date on the last position not filled?

I don't know that exact stat, but I can get that for you. But we have a lot of positions that are cyclical. Before you came in, we talked about crew workers and laborers. Well, that's just kind of like a rotating position. It's hard to keep somebody in there, so we always have some vacancies in those entry-level roles. For us, that's operators. crew workers and laborers as well. So we always have some vacancies there. I get that. That's not my question. Yeah, the other ones.

If that you don't have, I would rather wait for it. What I'm specifically asking for is how many unfilled positions your department has and what is the latest date of that unfilled position. If you don't have that, I don't have the stats for you. I will get those for you. If someone in our breaks or whatever, because I know there's a list.

I will get it for you.

Please do. Thank you.

Hello, Councilman. Thank you. Councilman Anderson.

Mark, so these are 17 new positions, right? Like newly created positions.

Correct.

So help me understand, like at this point, and it seems like we're somewhat simplifying our operations, why do we need to increase positions? I'm talking about 17.

Sure. There's a couple reasons. One, we're bringing some stuff in-house that we've outsourced. So that is a lot of the some of the stuff, the building maintenance that we're doing and also the grounds maintenance that we've always outsourced, but we're bringing that in-house. And so some of the maintenance positions on here are for that for that role. So for instance, for the electricians alone, I think we reduced our reliance on contractors by $500,000. But that's because we're going to be, we have electrical apprentices, we have an electrical program now that we are able to keep And so we're kind of doing a similar thing with the maintenance side. So we've got a maintenance apprenticeship program that's starting up. We're gonna be bringing more of that stuff in-house. Also the landscaping work that we've always outsourced, we're bringing that in-house as well. So that's kind of the maintenance side of this. The other, some of the other positions, the engineering positions, We've struggled to fill the engineering positions, and Councilman Clark, to your point, this is one of those areas where you're going to see there's some vacancies. And you see that we're adding more. How are we going to do that? So one of the things that we've, our new program, which is the energy program, we have one person kind of trying to run that whole thing, which is, you know, it's unsustainable to have one person that has so many different responsibilities when it comes to the solar, the biogas. coordinating with EPB, TVA, the maintenance on those things, and the coordination with the Department of Energy and others that are getting us these incentives to do this project. So we're bolstering that group to actually be a kind of a subgroup within the administration division right now. And that will probably spin off at some point. But right now we're trying to build that group to where we're actually, you know, what we're doing today with the Class A Power Project is just a step one on the energy stuff. We've got some other stuff coming up that we're still doing our due diligence on that we'll talk about in the future. But that group is actually going to be... kind of running, basically paying for more than itself by the time it gets all going. So that's the engineering positions that you see on there. And that's basically the main things. The other thing on there is the senior director. So there's a lot of times, you know, we're at 24-7, 365 operations. There are a lot of times that my deputy and I are just unavailable. because we're here or we're somewhere and there's got to be somebody that's kind of responsible at the plant while we are not available. And so this is not an additional position. It's actually a designation to one of our existing So we've got five directors. One of them gets assigned as a senior director to play that role. It's not really, we're not adding a new position per se. We have to add it because it's the way, you know, we have to do the HR and the accounting. But it's not an additional body out at the plant. It's just a designation to somebody that's already there.

Is that the case in the seven in administration positions?

Yeah, so the seven in administration is the energy people, which is the engineering folks, and the senior director. And I think there's a fiscal analyst.

You have seven listed in administration.

Yeah, yeah. So you've got a fiscal analyst, two senior engineers, engineering coordinator, engineering technician, senior director, and I'm not sure what the last one is.

I'm going to give some context and it's mostly off of some information I know that we have been studying about unfilled positions. And I know the administration has done a great job and they've got a good rate of filling a lot of unfilled positions. And we don't do line item budgeting here. And so meaning those funds can be moved around if they're held. And so I'm always concerned that when we add but we're not utilizing what we have like how can we maximize what we are not using into new positions and what i've discovered um and this is educational for me as a freshman right but chip you've talked a lot about those unfilled positions and the amounts and it's for me it's never a clear answer about how we maneuver those positions in coordination with new, I mean, the unfilled positions in coordination with new positions. Like, I never understand the rationale of unused but we're requesting new. You know what I mean? Like, apparently you must have needed those. And so I guess my question is that you have positions requested that are, that was a need but unused. Are we going to see 17, are we going to come back fiscal year next year and you're going to be like, well, we couldn't fill these positions, but that money floats around in your budget? How do we move these positions into utilization so they're just not sitting in line items and budgets that could be moved around into something else? Because I really, I'm not accusing you of doing that, but I'm just kind of getting wind of that that might be a strategic move budgeting thing that department heads are doing. And I think we, for me, I frown upon it when we have unused positions that you cannot fill for whatever reason than to come before the council and ask for a new position. It's just not your department. I just wanted to give context to that.

Sure. And the ideal situation is that we fill those positions because the positions that we have The services that those positions would provide are still needed, and they're outsourced. If we can fill those positions, then we can actually reduce our reliance on contractors and things like that. So that's the goal always. We do have a challenge out there at the facility right now where we just don't have enough office space. We're building some office space, and that's coming. We when we hire somebody like we just have our new HR BP and we don't have a place for them yet Like we've got to build out some office space because the plant has grown over the last 60 years But no office space was was added and so those are those are you know, you'll see in our in our budget That's what we're doing We're making sure we have some office space for these folks and some space for them to work but ideally we do that and we reduce our reliance on our contractors because the services still get provided. One of the other positions on here, the PLC engineer, so that's a programmable logic controller engineer that actually goes out to the different pump stations and makes sure that they're operating effectively and the program is working, you know, correctly, because those are automated. So it knows, you know, they're smart stations. They know what to do and when to do it. But if the program, if the computer glitches, which happens, what do you do? We pay $100 an hour right now for PLC engineering services for a contractor. And so what we'd like to do is be able to bring that in-house. We bring that in-house and we can respond quicker. We don't have to go through the purchasing process and the procurement process for services from a contractor. We can just send someone, hey, go out and fix this pump station and get it done. So those are the kind of things that we're trying to do. It's a challenge sometimes to fill some of the positions, especially in the engineering division and things like that. And the professional positions are difficult to fill. But we're committed to try to do that in order to reduce our reliance on outsourcing.

And I would just like more information on it because my philosophy is if you don't use it, you lose it. And trust me, we can find ways to help support other departments with money. You're not using it. So I'd like more information about I like for other administrators who come before us to know what you if you're requesting new positions you need to know what you're not using and be able to explain that to the council because we've appropriated those funds to you in a previous budget and you didn't use it. So that's going to be my question for every administrator that comes and asks us for new positions until there's some explanation you know I'm sure there's a good explanation but when I ask a question like why you're not I really do expect you out to know that data alongside the data that you're requesting us to fund and I think that's fair to the taxpayers because you're you you're in essence you're not using money we gave you and so if you're not using it then why do you need it yeah 100% we'll get to that if you can give me that explanation that would be great absolutely Councilman Henderson you're recognized thank you um

Mark, help me understand. So we increased our salary and benefits a million, too. And you said that was to reduce our dependency on subcontractors.

Yeah.

Basically, correct? So is the subcontractors, help me understand which line item the subcontractors are showing. Is that under services? which it looks like we've decreased our services by 800,000.

Part of the million, too, is also the COLA for the benefits of the existing employees.

Okay. So the total cost of the new positions would balance the reduction in subcontractors?

Is that correct? Well, yes and no. Yes, for some of the maintenance, for sure. But for the new energy stuff, we're adding services. The other thing we've done, as you notice, we've added large tanks around the city. We've added pump stations and electrical controls with all those tanks. We do have more infrastructure that we're maintaining. But the energy stuff is new. That will be offset by once the Class A power project comes online and we're generating the revenue there. So that's looking out a few more years.

Well, is the $800,000 in services, is that directly related to subcontractors?

that would be a so I don't allocate I don't allocate where the dollars come the bulk of it is like Mark said a lot of counting half half a million I think in the electricity the electrical piece of it with the new electricians services line item budget some of them are down but some of them are up significantly we have

Total delta being that 800.

And it does take time to fill positions. So, you know, there's, you know, it might not show up in this fiscal year, but it should show up in future fiscal years. Like two years ago, we did the electrician, you know, apprenticeships. And then now we're seeing $500,000 reduction. This is like two years later. That's kind of how, but you've got to fill those positions. You've got to get people up to speed and everything else. So there is a bit of a lag.

I want to make sure that we're tracking if we're increasing on our salaries or decreasing on our. Sure. Subcontractors and not just, you know, the whole thing inflated.

A big chunk of that decrease is the pipeline inspection piece of it. Yeah, so that's a good point. We're doing that in-house. So we used to have to hire contractors to go do the pipeline cleaning and inspection around the city, all the collection system. We're doing a lot more of that in-house now. And so that's also reduced our reliance on contractors. Okay.

This is for Mandy in conjunction to your department. Mandy you sent the vacancy review list over that I just received and it's not departmentalized is there

I thought you just asked for wastewater. I'll send you the whole thing. Oh, this is wastewater? This is just wastewater, is what I say. It should be filtered for just wastewater. There's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven positions.

It can't be. Where do you see wastewater? Is it under a different tab? Oh, where is it?

One of your vacancies?

Yeah. Okay, so there's 2015, there's a 2015 versus a 2026 list. That's a different list that will see what positions have changed from 2015 to 2026. okay so you just sent me here's which one two three four five six seven so you have seven unfilled positions for wastewater I think those those are the ones that are unfilled and have been unfilled for

More a year or so.

And that was my question. I wanted to know which positions, how long, and how long they've been. And I think there's a column on that off to the right that may have last filled.

It says positions last filled, and it has the last filled date. And the oldest position that he has is a senior engineer position.

Councilman Henderson, as chairman of the budget, might it be possible if next week we have some time specifically where all the council has that and has studied it, and then Mandy could walk us through the intricacies of those positions, of how that... You're talking about all vacancies? The vacancies, yeah, because Councilman Clark, something that Mandy was telling us about with the dates on the position, so say you have seven... litter crew ten litter crew and part of the vacancy that happens is that somebody might get another job in the city that's not as entry-level and so they're always refilling position number one or position number two like they're so if they so like the date on the bottom of the position if they have not kept a full crew at all that time that one might be dated 2022 when in fact they've been running through these others, which doesn't it doesn't really change the the question itself of, well, do we have an extra crew position that we don't actually need? But it sounds to me like When I look at this at a glance, I don't fully comprehend how it all works. And so if we do have time, Mr. Budget Chair, I think that could be really helpful because Public Works has done exactly what you're talking about. They found $2 million in their budget from those positions, and now they're able to add new positions. related to litter. Well, that's in stormwater, but in some different positions that are very important, recycling, et cetera. So I'd love to be able to understand that better.

I've got some additional statistics that came through here from my astute team back here. We have 36 vacancies right now. 24 of those 36 are actively being recruited through the HR process. Three are ready for, I think, interviews. And so the other 21 are actively kind of in the recruitment process.

Okay, so I was sent the one-year vacancies. Right. These are the vacancies that are over a year old? That's right. Okay, so let me rephrase. No, I'm sorry. No, no, no.

So it was clearly very complicated. I'm sorry. It shows the position last filled date. So on this list, you have two that were last filled in April of 26. So that's not more than April.

It could be, and the way that report was put together was the vacancies as of July 1 and the vacancies as of last week when I ran the report. So it could be like a crew worker that was hired, and it could be some in and out in there, which would show up differently, but just the way that report was put together. But we can come back and refine that. So let me help reframe my question.

I would like... Stay with me on this.

All right. I would like a total list, okay, of all of your vacancies as in this fiscal year, because we're still in this 2026 fiscal year, which does not end until June 30th. Up until that date, I would like to know what your total vacancies are for your department. That's 36. That's 36, okay. And I'd like to, the list that I have, is a one-year variance and there's only seven positions on there so i'd like to know all of the titles of those positions 36 so i would like to have a piece of paper with those 36 vacancies and their titles yep we'll get it to you okay

thank you i don't know why that was complicated sorry it feels very complicated what i have requested from weston so i had a document last year that listed every vacancy department and it budget and it gave a budgetary number i mean if you added them all up i think it was Around $18 million. That's a lot. Someone took out the fire and police that got down to like $8 million. But I would lock that same format for this year and possibly somehow overlay it to figure out which positions from that last chart to this chart, which ones are still vacant.

That sounds like a good idea.

because of what several people have said about how it's all always rotating I think it's there's some information that for me would be missing And that's what's actively being reviewed. I mean, I know there was a position with a department last year that maybe I never saw the list, but maybe made it to the list, but we don't necessarily know what departments are actively pursuing. And it may just be that, yes, we need that position, but we haven't been able to find the right person. So how does that How does that get identified on that list?

Well, there was a column, I think, and it might have been listed status. I mean, like if they were in an interview process.

Okay, I just want to make sure that we see that information as well.

There was a column that kind of gave an update of where that position was.

Councilman Anderson, do you still have that? list that you had last year uh i've got i've got it somewhere okay all right i think it'll be good to send to weston and mandy maybe in preparation i'm sure yeah it's probably in the fy 26 budget full okay i'll go run it down okay very good and maybe and just just a comment and if we have the time next week to have more of a

lengthy conversation once we have the information in front of us. I want to make sure that we're allowing the various departments to have the opportunity to have an exchange with us. Again, it may not, we don't always know what's going on in the behind the scenes of Yes, we need this position. Yes, it's been open for over a year, but we haven't had the right person to apply or been able to fill it. So I hate to cross out something that's desperately needed, but there's not always the right person around to fill that spot.

We've got about six more minutes and we've still got to go to parks. I think there's time in the next hour probably with just DTS and everything. We've probably managed that, I would imagine. Anything else for Mark? Anything else for wastewater? I think that was it.

Calm down, Brian. Talk some parts. Absolutely. City and a part. We're the fun department. The fun department. Let's just start off with that.

I thought it was finance. I thought it was finance. You're so well suited.

All right, so parks is showing an overall decrease of 1.1 million dollars And that's we'll get into why so salaries and benefits a decrease of 630 and what we did is we moved I'm gonna get that arts culture and creative economy group from parks That's the group that kind of manages large special events and things and that's moved over into economic development So we get an economic development. You'll see those folks added to that budget. So we've moved them from here to there And then on the operation side, there's some operations dollars associated with those people and those teams So those those monies have been moved as well and then there is $100,000 added for our investment and money towards our investment in the national park setting. The six positions from, or move to economic development, they're listed there, but again, it's that ACE team, the Arts Created Economy, moving from parks into economic development. Any questions on that kind of high level? The bulk of the change was just, again, moving that group over. Does this budget include the new park out in my district, District 4?

Great Road. Well, we did acquire Great Road, and our next step with that would be working with the community to decide what we would like to see at that particular park. So there's operations for doing that, but as far as actual capital investment, we're not at that stage just yet. Gotcha.

Councilman, Chairman Harvey, I've got a question about the investment into the National Park City. To do more of a deep dive and explain what that investment is.

Absolutely. So I will say this. The overall goal of National Park City in year number one, which we just eclipsed into year number two, was just overall attention. Last year, National Park City was not budgeted, but I was able to work with tourism, working with our local media. I think we've all have heard the term over and over again. So I do applaud being able to navigate those waters without a budget. This year, I'm hoping to elevate that even more, especially with our city. And what I usually say by that is that we can showcase some of the great things that the city is doing that's innovative, that sort of fits into that national park city realm. And that includes anywhere from video and marketing and the list goes on. Also too, all y'all are familiar with the seed program that we did launch with David Littlejohn and Humanaut and exploring that and next steps of that. And we'll also do some marketing around how community initiatives have sparked some change in the city of Chattanooga and how we're all working together as partnerships. So I think really it's just, We've seen millions of people viewing Chattanooga from the top, from magazines like Popular Science to Outside Magazine and the list goes on. Now it's sort of localizing that a little bit more and then working with teams and video companies like Dynamic Studios and more to sort of elevate what we're doing here locally and with our partners as well.

So the investment fund will be used kind of in a discretionary way for...

Overall, just highlighting the things that we're doing here in the city, working with our partners as well, that leads into the National Park City Initiative. It's like nature-based marketing dollars. Yes, sir.

And I think that's what it should say. Because when you use a broad term like National Park City investment, and we're all still trying to learn what National Park City is, you need to be a little bit more detailed about what that investment is as far as like, if it's marketing, if it's community engagement, then that to me is what it needs to be earmarked as and explained as. Because when I think of investment, I'm thinking like, well, it's a park, you're building more parks, you're building more trees. And what frustrates me with these line items is that they're that broad. And it's very strange for me to even ask, like, what is the breakdown of it? Our whole entire budget is investment, right? And so when I see a line item that says investment, I'm like, into what? And it's not explained. So not I like more of a breakdown.

Absolutely.

Every line item in our budget could be investment. Right. So I do believe that's very broad. I like to understand because because the program is so new, we're still curious about why we're investing in National Park City and how it benefits my district or just our city in general. It seems like we latched on to this or this global organization in another country and say, we're a park city. And we're still trying to grasp what that means.

Absolutely. And my goal is to help explain that better going into next year. And I do believe Weston may have pulled it up. It is under our advertising budget under my communications team. So we do have it listed there, but we can explain more if we need to.

Councilman Henderson.

Thank you. I'm gonna follow up with something Councilman Clark was talking about. One of the things that I think that we really haven't latched on to is is really marketing this National Park City because I I've talked to several I guess entrepreneurs that have moved here from other parts of of the United States because we are now recognized as a national park city. So I really think to some degree it's a it's a recruiting tool for economic development. And it's and it's been effective with just the very little exposure that we've given to it already. So, I mean, if we can kind of kick that in full gear, I mean, I expect that to be really an economic development tool. One of the things, and I don't really expect you to answer this because I was hoping our chief of staff would be here. One of the things that I noticed when I sat in on the interviews for the park administrator None of the finalists, and I think there were four, really spoke to programming. And it made me wonder, and I even brought it up in that, when we were kind of doing a debrief, I brought it up to the chief. It makes me wonder if we have programming in the wrong department, in my opinion. And we've already moved aquatics over to community development, correct? Correct. Would we not be better served moving all of our programming over to community development and let community development do our programming and let our parks do the parks? I know that's putting you... And I don't expect you to answer, okay? I'm just kind of throwing this out there. What kind of programming do they do? That's what I'm saying. I don't even... Well, I mean, look, all of your... I talk about the seed program. No, no, no, no, no. Like ball tournaments, like... I'm lost in what we're talking about.

Councilman Clark, I can... For National Park City?

No, no. Parks in general. Parks in general.

I'm so sorry. I did a segue. I'm thinking you're thinking of National Park City. Yeah. But you're saying parks are parks department.

Our programming for Summit, our programming for Warner Park, our programming really at any of our community centers that has anything outdoors, all of that goes through our Parks Department. It was just very, I guess, evident to me that none of those finalists really spoke to that. And it just made me wonder if we have that in the wrong department. And maybe that's something that we need to talk about on the 26th. I can follow up with Deputy in the corner, of course.

Well I was just going to name off some of the recreation department activities that we do do so while the aquatics did move over we do have therapeutic recreation of course our outdoor Chattanooga program is extremely strong where we're just connecting people to the outdoors every day so kind of that learning ground we have a couple hundred youth that are playing baseball tonight in our RBI program you know the list kind of goes on so to your point I'm not able to answer that particular question and I will let that for our next administrator. However, as far as recreation and the programs that we do, I think overall we're built on them being outside in the outdoors, and that's where it sort of fits in with the Parks and Outdoors Department, especially something like Outdoor Chattanooga, but all of our ball fields, all of our tournaments are outdoors as well. So I think that's the overall mindset of why recreation and those types of recreation amenities are in our department. Because it goes beyond the tournaments while obviously that's an extremely massive economic benefit for us Just like I said, even the little ones that are playing baseball tonight You know the yoga in the park that we had it.

We're at Ross's past Sunday and the list goes on so well I mean it either speaks to community health absolutely or economic development. I mean really air and and I guess my point is are we getting everything out of our parks and that we could with programming being there. And the answer to that may be yes, I don't know, but I see our parks as being a big part of community health. I see it as being a driver, as being an asset for economic development if we use it in that way. And just like back to the National Park City,

that could be a big economic driver once you know by getting the word out that you know that that that's what we are because there are a lot of companies that are interested in that movement absolutely and just a quick follow-up to those that were candidates as well part of my transition uh for the new administrator obviously is explaining all of those uh recreation amenities and activities that we have going on so they will be it will be ready from day one

I'm sorry, Councilman Henderson. I'm good.

I'm good. I think, Councilman Henderson, your thought experiment is interesting and worth continuing to contemplate. Obviously, yes, we have that economic development element, but we also have how are the services and opportunities and amenities and civic infrastructure that Chattanoogans have built for Chattanoogans accessible to Chattanoogans, right? And I have long been impressed with the the Parks and Outdoors Guide, when y'all first started doing that, you know, that's my favorite publication of the year. I put, you know, I bring it on my screen and porch. I look like, oh, I wish I had, you know, I highlight things and then I have to go to a different meeting sometimes.

Thank you.

And so then when community development started putting that out, I saw, you know, there's something there of, okay, well, we've got, now we have two. But I do think that it's highly likely that there is an overlap in, The folks who are interested in things that are happening in our parks, things that are happening elsewhere in our community, be that in a community center or a health fair, by community health, whatever it might be. And then when community development launched an app, and I find that as a consumer, it is difficult to really know what's going on in the city. with the parks, with community centers, et cetera, with the library. I mean, there's a lot of really neat stuff happening. And I do think if there were a way to coalesce all of that into a singular quarterly kind of publication, some of that is like getting people out of silos, maybe.

Or the Chattanooga app.

Or the 311 app. I mean, who knows? I mean, I think sometimes you need a... low barrier to entry, like fail fast on something, not like rebuild a whole system. But if we think about why the city exists, it exists to provide health and safety, largely, but then also we exist and provide service opportunity or services and opportunities to our citizens. Thinking about how we do that ever better. I think is a worthy thought experiment.

All right, council, any more questions before we move on? We're already a few minutes behind, so. Yeah.

Sorry, yeah, I thought we were just on that one thing.

No, we've got education and innovation next. We're supposed to start at 11.

Okay, well, I'll stand down.

I'm here because it's up to you all. Okay.

Real quick. Real quick, golf courses kind of fall under Brian's purview here. So a largely flat increase of around $100,000, half of that is the risk allocation increase, and then another increase for just materials and supplies and the cost of operations going on there. So they have a total of 53 folks out there. No new positions for them this year. So they're going to keep operating with the people that have positions they have. So not a whole lot new at the golf course. Kind of business as usual for them.

Questions on golf course?

MS. Well, I will say with regard to their future challenges, they say that challenges keeping up with payroll, they've dramatically increased over the last three years by 70 percent, their payroll costs and aging infrastructure. But these are self-sufficient courses. And so I think the green fees, cart rental, et cetera, is opportunities for revenue growth. MR. That's right.

Okay. All right. Moving on. Great. And that would conclude the parks and public works, I think. Excellent.

Brian, thank you very much for your time today. Absolutely. Appreciate y'all's support. All right.

I think that's all. We're going to turn it over to Councilman Clark. Innovation and education. Are they here?

DTS, is DTS here?

They may be watching.

Here they come. Oh, yeah, DTS. What time was mine? Ten minutes ago. 11 to 12. No. Right? 10 to 11. That was the old time. Sorry. Yeah, oh, yeah. So we'll go with who's here.

DTS is here. They're all here.

Yeah, they're here now. You're leading it.

All right. We'll start with DTS, if that's okay. So this is... Huh? Is it DTS? Oh, innovation. DTS is under innovation. Hang on a minute. Morning. Morning.

How are you? Good morning, everyone. Gotcha. Cool.

All right. We're going to commence our education innovation of for the Department of Technology Services, is that correct? Yes, sir. OK, so I'm still learning a bunch of acronyms. And after you, we have the administrator of early learning, who's here with us. But if you could just walk us through your budget, and then I'll yield for questions.

Perfect. we'll start with the the high-level DTS this budget increased three point two three point three million dollars salaries and benefits were up eight hundred and thirty six thousand dollars three percent Cola was part of that then they also had With, and Gerald hit on this a little bit, with their hiring of folks, last year we added a bunch of positions. And so kind of to that conversation around the engineers and some of those professional services, when we look to budget, bringing some of those folks on board, just the cost of bringing them on and hiring them at a little bit higher rate to get the right people in here, increase salaries and benefits a little bit for us. They did have a decrease in consultant fees, $480,000, contracted services and training costs, another large decrease. A big part of their increase, really all of their increase, is in these IT maintenance accounts. And what that is, there's kind of three accounts. You'll see them if you get into the details. It's hosting, maintenance, and licensing.

And licensing and software.

And so that's kind of the software cost. And the big chunk of most all of that increase is the Axon contract. We touched on it a little bit when police was here. Last year, Axon, it's the body cameras, it's the car cameras for the police. That contract lived in police's budget at a cost of $1.4 million. Mm-hmm. That contract ended. We entered into a new contract. It now lives in DTS's budget just so they can manage all of our IT contracts for us. But that cost went from 1.4 to 2.5 for the same thing. A couple additional cameras, but...

For the same thing, it went up by $500.

No, we're adding a number of different additional body cams and car cameras.

And so they added, and then there was some additional police software adds to that as well. So the bulk of that IT maintenance increase is around police technology that has been added to their budget.

So let me ask a clarifying question. Council members, do you all have any, Councilwoman who?

Oh, I'm still listening. Okay.

I want to put a pin right there because I know, and this is just for clarity, I think you just mentioned it, that we, the Axiom, but the Axiom contract increased by a million dollars. Is that correct? And it did not, we made the decision not to go out and rebid that because I think the other competitor was Motorola. Is that correct? That's right. Yes. Yes? Yes. Okay. And so, but prior to that, it lived in the police budget?

That's correct. Okay.

And it was transferred to your department as a net increase in IT maintenance accounts? Yes, that's correct. So that was a $1 million overage, but what's the total amount for that?

The total amount that got transferred to us from the police department budget was $1.48579

Okay, so subtract that from 3.2 million of your IT maintenance accounts, what are the other accounts?

So there's an additional 1.5 million in costs that came to us that are police department funded as well. That 1.5 additional cost was for what? one million for the axon contract so we now have a total of two and a half million dollars for the axon contract by the way that they started their start in negotiating position for us was three million dollars so we have them down to two six and we're working for two five because that's the funds we have right so uh and the chief has worked with us on that to trim the number of devices that are part of that contract by the way this includes evidence.com gotcha We have a camera system called FUSIS that makes it possible for citizens, businesses, Hamilton Place Mall to ingest cameras into the Arctic so that we can provide policing services there. So we have a number of other things which I can detail for you. So there's an additional million dollars that gets us up to the two and a half. Then we have a system called Peregrine, and Peregrine is a data management system. So one of the truths in PD is that we have 20 years That has been collected through our records management systems. That sounds like something you put in the file drawer. We don't run a police department without a records management system. It is the way that department functions. Every area of the department uses a records management system. So we have 20 years worth of data there. That's a very hard problem. It's one of the things that tripped us up with people. prior RMS that we were trying to bring in, Mark 43, you all remember that problem. Data management. So this gives the chief the ability to reach back into history whenever he needs it and access that data without having to bring all that into a current records management system. So that's a big benefit to us. They're excellent at doing this. They have some proprietary technology. We brought them on board last year. That also gives all his command staff dashboards about what's going on in their areas, neighborhood policing, arrest, crime of varying sorts. So it's putting at their fingertips the kind of data they need to run the department effectively. That's Peregrine. Fusis I mentioned a little bit earlier. And then there's a few other things, great key magnet forensics, part of their fingerprinting operation, and a couple of other smaller applications that make up that $1.5 million. So that's basically the core of what got added to the... software purchases that we manage on behalf of the city, okay? And the chief did take his budget down by about $3 million. I don't know if you've met with him, but if you have, you saw he had a minus $3 million. So this is one of the things we're getting better at when costs move from one department to our department. We want to have a net zero for the city. And so we're getting a little bit more discipline around that. Part of what we also plan to do over time is look at how we might distribute these costs back out into, so a little bit of a cost accounting principle, put the cost where the value is being generated. So that's part of our longer-term look at how to manage this cost more strategically. What it's looked like year over year and what it looks like now while we're talking about it is DTS is kind of going out and bringing in a bunch of cost and where did that come from? Well, that's not exactly how it happens and by the way underneath this 3.2 million is a lot of in and out. We've found opportunities to say, hey, we have some overlapping software, so we're not going to pay for that anymore. We've found software usage that's not up where it needs to be, so we've had licenses that we've called back. Some of our contracts let us adjust our costs. Others of our contracts lock us into multi-year that saves us money so we can't actually take cost out even though we're using less licenses but we hold them for new people coming in so we don't have to come ask for more licenses so monday.com i gov other things that are used all over the city oracle is another example we have to have an oracle license for every human being who's full-time employed in the you know in the city so we have a lot of ins and outs i have legal size paper here that's probably 300 line items of costs uh that we manage on behalf of the city it is the backbone the software is the backbone of the city operations yes

So I would think it's the backbone of the innovation hub for the things you're doing to help digitize the police department. And I'm really interested in the dashboard access to community policing data that will be available in the police cruisers. Is that correct?

Yeah. I didn't know about the Christmas, but yes, we are going to have a dashboard that's available for community policing. And by the way, I would just like to have a little aside and say thank you to the council for your investment in DTS last year. Part of what I'm able to talk to you about now is what we've been able to do by beefing up our staff. And we've done that very well. Just to pick up on conversations previously, we have only out of the 25 net positions you gave us, we have five unfilled. So we went after that really aggressively. And those five were a challenge for us to just kind of find a fit. The environment, the hiring environment, was very good to us. We had a lot of general layoffs in various other tech companies. And that inured to our benefit because we had people looking for jobs that wouldn't normally be looking for jobs. And I will say our benefits and our work-life balance, as has been mentioned earlier, was a real attraction. We had some people come to the city who were being paid twice more than they're now being paid at commercial entities and if you want to just generally think about the cost in our department 2x in a commercial environment versus what we're able to pay here is just kind of a good back of the you know napkin calculation but we were able to attract people because we paid a little bit more that's to talk to my overage a little bit more than we were budgeted because I really felt like you made that investment we need to get the right people in here so we can do what we need to do and some people wanted to come to work for a little bit better work-life balance where they had global teams that you know they were up at two and three in the morning here working remotely and that is one of the advantages of the city of Chattanooga but it also has its costs for human beings so So anyway, we've been back to what we were talking about. Yes, we have a number of activities, our AI data area. We've had 17 new dashboards put up since you all made the investment in our team. That's because we have new technology that we've brought in, new capabilities, new team members with new skills. So that's one of the one of the value areas and certainly how we manage software and think about it is another I would also say from an innovation perspective We have a project management team. So every new piece of software that comes into the city any department That's asking for a new piece of technology has to come through my project management office And it's there that we have the opportunity to look throughout the two or three hundred lines I mentioned to see if we have any other software that we're already using here That would cover 85, 90% of what someone might be looking for, so we can talk about trade-offs. Maybe they need that really, that 5 or 10% more, and then we can say, okay, that's worthwhile. We're completely revamping that whole process from stem to stern as part of our innovation engine here.

I'll pause for questions from council. Do I have any questions? Is there another slide, Gerald, that is... I want to keep us moving. I do have a question about your AI position.

Yes, sir. That's the last slide. They have one new position that's added. All the GIS positions live in DTS, but it's being funded by someone.

this position that's on the thing yes okay it's technically in his budget but it's being funded by this morning we have a number of positions Councilwoman Hill thank you Gerald I appreciate some of the details in the executive summary I was interested to understand about the digital transformation leadership that we invested in last year but you've spoken to some of that already The two things I wanted to ask about, number one is the cyber resilience. It was concerning to me to discover that despite what was said in the risk presentation, Mandy was able to clarify that we do not in fact have any type of cybersecurity insurance at this point. So the work that you all do is that much more imperative in the training. Are you working with risk to help them identify what kind of insurance we need to have?

Yes, ma'am, we are. Yes, my team has the application right now, and we are filling it out. Brian Hoffman, who's my director for infrastructure security and camera operations, has the responsibility to do that. Brian came to us from Hamilton County 911. He was one of the individuals we were able to attract over. And so he's going to fill out that application. We'll return it to RISC, and then RISC will shop it through their broker for... Quotes, right, and then RISC will look at that. We'll provide any input and feedback they want from a cybersecurity perspective, and then RISC and the mayor's office will make the decision about the insurance. I might also say too, Moccasin Bend is going through the same process, and just as a point for council if you're not familiar, we also provide the underlying cybersecurity platform for Moccasin Bend. My team does.

So the other question I have, your budget overview language was interesting. Your one, I think you're the only one that has said that your budget is provisioned at 26 level cost to sustain improvements, but should additional needs arise, incremental funds would be needed to add to our budget. So nobody else comes in and is like, but we may just need more money later. That was unusual. And to what extent do you anticipate that suddenly we would need something that you didn't know we needed and require a budget increase?

Let me tell you where that would happen. When we have contracts that are expiring after Typical is a four-year, multi-year contract, sometimes five. Some vendors will only allow us to do three. So the Axon contract, by the way, I think will be a three-year contract.

James, am I correct about that? Three for Axon? Five.

Five, all right, five. But we have one or two that will be three. So when we come to a renewal period, we've negotiated terms with these folks that are usually... two, 3% increases year on year throughout the life of the contract, but four or five years is a long period of time and they will come back and they have come back and they will ask us for 50% more money. 40% more money. And depending on what it is, we might be able to bring some other competitors to the table or not. And in such cases, we do our best to get them down to the amount of money we have in the budget. So what I'm really signaling to you there is we will do our absolute dead best to stay within the budget that you approve for us. And then we may find some vendors who just will not come down to the money that we have no matter what our strategies are in order to get them to do that. In which case, we would either need to ask for more money or we're going to have to find cuts somewhere else. We could go to other departments and see if they had money. namely the ones that would be using these applications or as a last resort we would have to go to the mayor's office and ask do they have a fund that we could somehow tap into and we would do that very carefully and only after we've exhausted all the other options that we might have to stay within the budget that's already there okay okay that makes sense and your point about

If it's a software that a specific department is relying on, it makes sense that that department's budget would be impacted. Got it. Thank you very much. That's all. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like a follow-up to that because I know in most of our departments, there's usually a contingency line item for that for if something goes over cost or if something has to be renegotiated because of a change or a contract changes, but you don't have that in your book.

I do not. No, sir. We were asked to be

We were asked to do everything we could do to be flat this year. But you have listed a contingency in your executive summary to her point, and you can be flat and ask for a contingency line item but deny it.

We have a contingency line item in general fund as a whole, which DTS rolls up underneath. So it would come out of that contingency.

But what's the normal variance? Like for one budget year two or next, where have you seen... an increase like for instance Axion was an additional increase of a million dollars so just on average where have you seen a contingent increase that you would have to come back and ask the general fund or council for more money I would I'll give you an example from last year with money.com our contract right now we were renewing it they were providing great services for us they ask us for

40 or 50 percent increase now we were able actually to get them down within the amount of money we had So that's that's the kind of example that I'm talking about and we have been able to Manage within the budget for these sorts of things in prior We're just so tight this year that I wanted to just call it out as a potential potential Yes, not that I'm looking to do it. This gentleman here will help me in every way he can to make sure that we get our costs, we keep our costs within the budget envelope he's given.

I want to go back to Westland because you mentioned contingency fund and the general fund. How much is it? 3.2 million. And so is that understood by administrators that that is something they could dip into? Is contingency usually used for those purposes?

It can be. Like this year's contingency was used almost entirely to cover the mold remediation at the police department, just things that we have to do that we didn't really plan to do. If Axon came back and we didn't have the money and we know we need it, we have to fund it, then if we couldn't, to Gerald's point, find it somewhere else in police's budget or in theirs, then yes, we would have to go into it.

Did that sinkhole come out of contingency? It did not.

It didn't? No.

So it could potentially. But it's understood by administrators that if it's not, because certain departments have, like community development has a contingency line item budget. is what I'm saying. You do have certain departments, and I'll have to go back and look because I saw that. That's why when she asked that question, I was like, oh, they were, you know, I didn't want to insult you, sorry. They were strategic enough to put in a line out of contingency. Are you aware of other departments that have contingency? No.

Generally, it all falls underneath this umbrella. If they're within general fund, they fall underneath that general fund contingency umbrella.

I think to respond to your comment, I would go to the mayor's office if I needed help, yes. But I would do that as a last resort. That's how I manage my budget. You've given me the money to run my department, and you expect me to stay within it, and I'm going to... fall down on the last mile carrying the backpack before I go ask for help.

Well, you seem to be giving us a great return on our investment, even with the reduction in force, which is difficult for the city and for us. And you seem to turn... turn that back into innovation that's beneficial not just only to the police department but to the city as a whole, is that right?

Yes, thank you for that comment. Yes, we worked very hard to do that. And the transition, I'm happy to say, was really without any substantial issue at all.

Or impact to operations.

Or impact to operations. And we were able to make a number of innovations throughout the city. the 311 dashboard that we have now that informs us of what's going on there, the work with 311 in terms of the applications, some of the feedback that came when Kevin and team did the 311 presentation to council. What can you find, can I find more easily When this happens in my neighborhood, in my app, our digital experiences team has worked very carefully and hard on that one. So we have been able to turn the whole transition into more innovation for the city and without any real trouble or loss of operations or impact operations throughout this last year.

Last question before we transition over to early learning. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Oh, I wanted to ask the question about the position that was added for the director of AI and there's another point. AI and data? AI and data. Yes. Do you want to speak to that and what that role is doing and how they're integrated into some of this innovation work that we're doing?

So that's Jonathan Taylor who came to us from Kroger. He was part of their consumer research business, which is about a billion dollar business for them. They basically take data from their customers and how people purchase and buy, and they make that available to the people that sell to them. It's a crazy business, but a crazy profitable business for Koger. So he has excellent skills. What we've done in that area, I combined the AI and data function into one. And the truth about AI, whether it's unstructured data like this information here, that's what's unstructured, or structured like what you would find in a spreadsheet in a database, it all has to be good data. And it all has to be annotated and tagged and understood, and it needs to be accessible for AI to use it. So we have taken... a system that was 10 years old and replaced it with a modern system. We're leveraging our strategic partnership with Google. We're using their platform called BigQuery, and this is their big database that handles unstructured and structured data for their company. They operate their company on it. And we have used some Google tools as well for analytics and visualization to be able to provide the dashboards that we have now. And so Jonathan spent the first nine months transitioning from what we had to where we are now, and it's a significant level of effort to do that well. and also worked with Brendan Cleary, my GIS manager, to stand up the new budget site that we have and the new open data site. So when we moved from that 10-year-old system that housed both the data and the site for open data, we made the transition to BigQuery and then also to our GIS platform that now hosts that site. So they've worked together on that. We've also been focused on some pilots for AI. I worked on a pilot in constituent services to try to help that team take all this kind of email, phone messages, money.com feedback from you all and sort of get that together in a way that they could see what I call signal and noise. So there's a lot of information that flows and this is one of the challenges we all have about You know, you can whack a mole by attending to every single problem that comes to you. Each of you appreciate that idea. You can try to get a sense of what's the bigger problem that's going on across my constituency, across the city, and then try to put some resource behind that. That was the intention of that particular innovation. He's also focusing on adoption of our AI investment across the city.

Awesome. All right. Thank you, Chairman Anderson. so this is not really a budget question but i called you friday you know we've installed this smart uh lot technology out there on brownsbury or comes highway and i think down broad street as well yes sir but i had to call to say we've got congestion yes sir and i think you made some changes and within an hour or so

it helped and it cleared up we did is that something we're going to have to call every time no sir just clear up no sir so one of the other investments that you all gave us in the budget amendment was some capital money for a transportation management center so i That is over on the third floor of the City Hall Annex. And we have now a manager hired and we've made an offer for a lead position operator to run that. And we're in the final stages of procuring the software that would make all this possible. We will have a team there who will be watching around the city. so that you won't have to call or your constituents won't have to call you and then you call me and hope that we can get something done. And that's certainly, that is how we plan to operate and I would say it will take us a little bit of time to ramp that thing up fully. We've talked to the city of Nashville about how they run their Transportation Management Center and taken all the learnings and feedback we could from them. Kimley Horn who consults us on multiple projects on transportation and works with the RPA on their multi-year programs out there as well has given us a lot of feedback and so we have a good understanding we've been out to TDOT's Transportation Management Center to learn from them and so our intent is that we have eyes on at least probably I'd say 18 hours a day so if something happens in the middle of the night Right now we're going to be comfortable with just having to deal with that reactively and we'll have a way to do that but for about 18 hours a day we're going to be watching traffic in the city and being able to activate an incident plan that would flush traffic out of a problem like you described to me on Friday afternoon or just any other kind of congestion that we might be able to make some tweaks.

Until we get that in place, just go ahead and plan on some kind of response on Covenant's Highway about 3 o'clock every Friday. About every Friday, yes.

Yes, so we will keep our eyeballs open.

So we need to put Gerald's number in our cell under favorite? Fix it.

Yes.

Okay, Gerald, do you have any closing or any closing comments or questions for the administrator? Also, thank you, gentlemen. You're welcome. Thank you. Next, we're going to have the early learning department. The Department of Early Learning, which is ran by Carissa Mosley-Jones, their mission is to help children receive the best possible start in life by increasing their access to high-quality early learning experience that shape their future, is the mission of the Department of Early Learning. So, Administrator Jones, welcome.

Thank you.

And thank you for being prepared to answer our questions. Would you like to introduce maybe your team members here?

So this morning, it's just myself and my deputy administrator, Dr. Marsha Drake.

Thank you, Dr. Drake, for joining us. All right, we'll jump right into your presentation.

Very good. Early learnings budget shows a decrease of just at $1 million here. I'll get into that in just a second. Salary benefits up $87,000. That's the COLA and benefits increase we've been seeing in each department. the operation side 1.1 million dollar decrease that's moving some rfp agencies up into that other agency we have that bucket in general government the four million dollars we've taken all those four-year contracts now that they've run out and taken all the funds out of those departments and put it into that one line item in general government so this one million dollars represents the agencies that they previously had that now live in a single line item um in the general government So other than that their budget was flat That 17 folks last year no new or reorganization. So 17 folks again this year And so that is early learning in a nutshell any questions Thank you So

Following up on some of the presentations that we have had with you all, the commitment that the city has made to early learning to our youngest residents and to families is obviously very important to the One Chattanooga strategy and I think the values that we hold as a community. So I'm starting to, now that we've had, we're in year five really of these investments from the Kelly administration, to better understand how our commitment is turning into outcomes. And we talked about this a little bit the last time you presented because there is that goal to have children be more ready for kindergarten. And I know we have that bridge of the data. Where are we with understanding if what we're doing is helping kids be healthier when they get to, know more words when they get to pre-K, be more ready for kindergarten? How are we tackling that?

So those outcomes come from a variety of places, right? So we have four divisional offices. We have four divisional offices and each look at those outcomes in different ways. Head Start, of course, is the example, I guess you should say, or provides us with the way in which you can look at readiness. most generally and they have set guidelines in which they do that and that data is always available. So depending on what I would say this depending on what you want to know we can pull that report together. Most recently we I did have as of last week actually did have the staff to come to provide me with their latest impact reports so they do have impact reports as we were preparing for the release of our So, we wanted to make sure that we were able to speak directly to some of those things. So, it just depends on what you're wanting. So, I will say that. But each division, each divisional office is looking at that differently. And we have, of course, the newest body of work, which is the Parent Family Community Engagement Directorship, which will have the specialists under that. And she's looking at how BASICS plays a part, BASICS Chattanooga plays a part into that and other initiatives that we do in the prenatal. So it just depends on what you want, but I can get that information to you.

Well, I think...

But do I feel like... Let me say this. Do we feel like we're doing the work and that they are becoming prepared? Yes, we are. Yes, they are. Based off our Seeds for Success cohorts, the providers there with Head Start, and when you look at the data for those children going in, they are ready.

Well, I mean, that's exciting. Like, that's what we all want to hear, right? I know that through this department, the city does a lot to get in front of families, to be at the health fairs, to get Chattanooga Basics out in front. And obviously, there's an immediate economic benefit to having families have access to 1,000 secure child care seats, right? It's clear. But then really manifesting that improvement of life based on being more ready for school and being prepared for school success. Acknowledging that you have these four different lenses of looking at it through, I'll be excited when we get to a point where you can say, here's the one.

I'm just excited for when that happens. We're working on that, and we have clearly partners that do that work as well, right? And so we partner with Chamberlain's, we partner with Signal Centers, we partner with Hamilton County Schools, we're a part of Early Matters and the Bright Star Coalition. I mean, there's so many pieces there, and what that looks like, and I'll be perfectly honest with you, what that looks like would be a case scenario, right? It's like, it's not just, oh, this is what it looks like to be kindergarten ready, because every child is going to be kindergarten ready in a different way. Because I could say kindergarten-ready means you come from a two-parent household, you have X amount of money in income, you live in this kind of house, and that's what I could say, right? You following me here? But that could not be the case because you could have all of that and not be ready for kindergarten. So we look at, through Early Matters, there is a scope of kindergarten-readiness. Where it looks like, can they count to 20? Can they use scissors? Can they identify these colors? Can they identify these shapes? All those things. How are they social with their social skills? How do they interact? Do they play alone? Do they play together? what, I don't want to get into reading, but just like, are they reading? Because if they're reading it prior to kindergarten, clearly there's some advancement there, right? So there's just all these various buckets there, but we do use that tool as well. Coming up on next week, next Saturday it is, right? May 30th, there is a day... in kindergarten festival that's coming up at Archer Knob Elementary School in which the Office of Early Learning is going through each step of what it looks like to be kindergarten ready based off of what we utilize from Early Matters and what the community through Early Matters, the coalition, has decided is what we feel like deems them as ready to enter being able to do these things. And a lot of those things do align to what they do at Head Start. But they will be able to go from station to station and completing like a bingo card. So like, can your child do, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this, as they get all the way through. They'll be actually able to go through the classrooms and see what that looks like. have the experience of what the lunch line looks, all those things. So those are pieces, too, to getting you kindergarten ready, because you can be academically kindergarten ready and not socially kindergarten ready.

Right. But we know that we have a huge number of young children who are not ready, right? And that's the purpose of the Department of Early Learning. Right.

And making sure that we're exposing every child that we can to those efforts and making sure that parents know that these resources are available, taking them to them, providing them spaces that they can come to us.

Okay. One other question. On our agency allocation proposal right now, there is a proposal for an item at the Montessori Charter School. And my understanding is that it is kind of imploding. And I'd like to, not our commitment to them, but is that... What is this $100,000 commitment to the Montessori Charter School about?

So, their proposal to us was that it would be to support pre-K seats.

Okay.

I will say this, let me pull that up because I did not think that that was going to be asked today.

And if we need to work on it.

Yeah, we can work on it, but I can tell you because I did have, but it is towards pre-K seats and they do have a pre-K program there. Did have it asked out to them and I know that information was received back through our fiscal analyst as to how many seats does that amount support. how many seats based off of what that amount supports are actually city residents that actually live within the parameters of what Montessori supports which would be I believe it's District 8 residents and some of our highest needs areas that would be highest needs students that would be zoned for our schools that are in highest need as well right so I asked for a little more in depth So, like, is $100,000 paying for five kids, or is it paying for 10 kids, or if it's paying for 100 kids? Like, what does that look like? And I do have that information. I just don't have it readily available to you, pulled up, but I can get that to you.

It'd be interesting to understand, are they seats that wouldn't exist without that? You know, it is a... Already, the... I think primary target market for that Montessori is the community around chat prep and cgla right so it's serving that community but it's been concerning to to see comments and and read in the paper about just that Montessori concept not necessarily coming to fruition I mean you know as a school remember that sometimes charters great ideas but not always can't always happen you know is is that does that investment make sense if that school is floundering does it help it not flounder does it

Are you asking because of the success of the Mining Story School, would it be, is it advantageous for us to put a pre-K program there?

No, so when I looked at the list, I thought this school is, this school is not living up to expectations. Why are we putting $100,000 in it? Was the note that I made to myself.

Which $100,000 is for a pre...

It's for pre-K. It's for pre-K seats, but not all of them. We don't fund the entire program.

Correct. Right.

So I just, we need to better understand what that investment is.

What the rationale of that investment.

Yeah, because pre-K seats are valuable anywhere they are. But is that school doing what it says it's doing? Because I think the thought also would be that those children might matriculate into that school.

Well, yeah, typically, I think, from my understanding, when you apply to that school, those kids then go into, they apply into the lottery, I hate to say lottery, but the process for kindergarten. But they do support this, I know they support, that they, well, I should say preference. When you look at the application, it says preferences given to students that reside in that neighborhood, which would be... in the neighborhood surrounding that, and then anyone who is a sibling to a child that is a student currently in Montessori Highland Park or CGLA or CHAPREP.

That makes perfect sense.

I want to yield to some more questions. Councilman Harvey.

Thank you, Chairman Clark. My understanding is early learning is nearly completely funded by a federal grant. So I guess my question is, what, if any, is the city's portion of funding early learning? That's probably a Western question.

Our portion of funding early learning is $2.3 million.

Is that in addition to the federal grant?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yes. The federal grant is not included in any of this.

Okay. Gotcha. Okay.

The federal grant only supports, well, we have two different federal grants. Yes. The main grant that you're talking about as it relates to early learning education, that would be the Head Start grant. And in that grant, well, in that body of work, we have the main grant, the CH grant, and then the HP grant. And that's about a 12.5, 12.8 million dollars, 12.5 I think it is, million. That is their grant in its entirety to support Head Start and early Head Start programming. Of course the city does supplement, you all supplement support there for income for the staff. And then the foster grandparent program has a grant as well and that provides the budget for expenditures for the foster grandparent program and everything else. The other two offices in administration and parent and family community engagement are funded on the general fund.

Gotcha.

Okay.

All right. That's all. Thank you. I have two questions, Ms. Jones. And the first question is a budgetary question as it relates to capacity expansion of Head Start operating hours. I know that all of the administrators submitted a flat budget with not a lot of increase to programming, and we've seen an agency shift to yours and youth development of $1 million, but what is the strategic trajectory to come alongside some of our other partners that are providing Head Start care after 2 p.m. Because right now we stop after 2 p.m., but we have other partners, and if I'm not correct on that, please correct me on that, that provide Head Start They supplement their funding to provide Head Start services after 2 p.m. for their parents and family. But the city does not.

So our city main sites, Avondale, Cedar Hill, Daisy, and Hope City, soon to be James A. Henry, those sites run strictly 730 to 230. We have collaboration sites and our partnerships. So example, Chamberlain's. or Purpose Point, they provide childcare on their own in addition to our Head Start classes. Also with their programming, they provide what they call wraparound services before and after care. So they're able to start, their children are able to start their days due to working parents and situations. They're able to start those days from 6 a.m. and end them by 6 p.m.

Correct.

That is something that Shameless provides in its own entity. It is not funded by Head Start. That is something they provide out of their own budget and as people pay. And the same with Purpose One.

I don't know I guess what so we so the question so the thing is if we were to do that in our four main sites We would have to have city funding for that because the grant does not afford us to be able to so why is that not a priority from the we talked about this last year council and it's you know early learning as we know because it's kindergarten readiness and We use this department as a community development function. We have a they have a line item called community forward but If we know, most of you who are working parents, your workday does not stop at 2 o'clock, but yet our city has not put the investment, this is not a dig on you, but it is a criticism to the administration that we have not invested properly into early learning by expanding Head Start Care past 2 p.m. and our other partners have. And so we are the council that appropriates those opportunities And I guess my question to you, where is the advocacy for that and the will from the administration to do that? And how can the council support you in that?

So I, in my, having been administrator here in the three years I've been here, I do feel like there is will at the administrative level to support that. I just know that... from my other life when you have when you all look at the grand scheme of things and even when leadership is looking at the grand scheme of things um you prioritize and does that become a priority although it is a priority you have to figure out what that looks like right i can't speak to that i'm not at either one of those levels however i do know that there have been several conversations on that same question has come to me from from administration from administration actually mayor down has that's come to me um Mayor's Cabinet, Mayor, you all. So it's come up and we have, we've presented most recently, even last year we presented, I actually put it in my budget last year and we had to take it out because it wasn't there. So there is, we would like to expand. Eight to five. Looking at ways to do that if there's funding available. I know that I presented a proposal and Weston and I talked about it and I've talked about it with my direct reports which are the chief's

And we do have in the sheet that Kevin sent with the agency allocation of that $4 million, there is money set aside within that bucket. The pilot extended hours at the James A. Henry site.

And that was going to be my subsequent question.

It's around $200,000.

And Chris, I think, has the specifics on what that looks like. And I can send that to you. I was a proposal that we came together as a team and sent up. We've garnered that support from that level. That was sent to Weston, and here we are.

And I'm going to let you close and talk about some of the returns on investment. But I just kind of go into your point. I know Head Start has national benchmarks in which we measure success. I'm big on success. What tool are you using to explain to us the rationale why we should continue funding your department? Usually the return on the success for this department is how we measure kindergarten readiness, right? I'd be curious to learn more about what those tools are and what those benchmarks are. And I know they are set by, Head Start has a national benchmark by which they are set. So I know we're following and I know that it's there, but I really feel like if we're really serious about how to ready these children between kindergarten and third grade reading levels right that's how we measure success if they're matriculating from a pre-k program into the Montessori and we're measuring that but we're not paying for it like the rest of our partners it seems it seems like we're not putting our money where our program, you know what I'm saying? So it's like we're not doing it. This was something, in other words, I think this is underfunded in a way to where it does not help us reach that milestone of kindergarten readiness if we're not doing a standard of providing care after 2 p.m. to allow those children to remain in that program for that extra curriculum that they're experiencing at our other partner sites while our parents are at work. And so I guess my request of Kevin or whoever is monitoring or taking notes on this, I'd like to know what the cost analysis would be. I know we're moving into James A. Henry, which I'm really, really excited about because That is a that's going to be a very innovative site and how we start measuring kindergarten readiness by those expanded hours. And so I would be happy to see those outcomes. But we're doing it there, right? Right. What were the cost analysis for us to replicate that?

I can tell you that now. So we did full option implementation for a scope of six full days of classrooms, 12 part-time teachers, two part-time floaters. That'd be a total of $330,000.

For the year?

Per site? Per site. This is starting at James A. Henry, full coverage of six clubs. Gotcha.

And that's until what time?

And that would be start time of a full day of 8 to 5.

So I think you'd mentioned six, which does feel like it's a little bit more flexible each year per site.

And this is what, and I will say this, this is what we've sat down with the Head Start staff based off staff capacity, what they'd be able to do, all those things, this is what's based off of that. And that's a full day. If we did a partial, sorry, that was full implementation. If we do partial implementation, it will provide, this is aftercare, and I will say this, let me go back. this is aftercare proposals because yes some places do before and after care however when we um did our community assessment which we're required to do by the federal government in the area that we were looking to pilot which is james a henry there is not a need for before care there is a need for aftercare and so we had a before and after care plan came back and revised that to just an aftercare plan. So this is full implementation aftercare. If we did partial implementation, which would be three full day classrooms and not six, because we're opening with six full classrooms, opening with six. But if we only did three, that would be six part-time teachers, two part-time folders, and that would be $190,000.

So a total cost analysis to launch the expansion of those programs that are three main sites, Avondale.

So we have to look at, I can't, I'd have to get you there because I'd have to get it.

So that way next time we talk about this, we can actually talk about real numbers and what we can strive towards because that's a big deal. The fact that we stop and that's not a knock on your team or anything, but when we talk about developing families who are working and we're trying to get families into work, but they got to get off work to go pick up their kids at 2. You know, that seems a little, we're working a little backwards. And that's not to the fault of the administration or this administrator, but the fact that we've got to put our money where our mouth is. We want to talk about kindergarten readiness. We need to replicate those programs that we know that's given us this evidence-based practice of results by expanding those hours after 2 p.m. because everybody else is doing it. Councilwoman Burse.

Just a quick question to add to when you provide that information for us. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Could you include, is that like from 2 to 6 or aftercare would be from the time school ends?

Yeah, so aftercare would be from the time school ends.

Until 6 o'clock? Okay, so 6 o'clock. And then we include how many students that would serve for that pilot? Mm-hmm.

And Council, it is 11 a.m. for lunch, and I'll yield to Councilwoman Burns. Administrator Jones is going to get some of that, because I'm curious on what that cost analysis is, Weston, so that when we do talk about this, if not for this budget, but for next, that we can be like, oh, this is what we need to strive for, because that is a request from the community. And I can't tell you this, but I'll yield for time.

for the full implementation is James A. Henry.

No, we'll be rescheduled to level 30, and then we'll pick up with...

I mean, I would like to see... Planning and zoning. All the main centers. Okay, and I'll get it. So one center, and then to do the whole...

Administrator Jones, do you have anything in closing before we break for lunch?

I do not. Thank you for your time. I know oftentimes people ask for outcomes. It's a moving ball. There are children, there's mobility issues, there's staffing issues. In our field, we have had a tremendous amount of staff retention, workforce development issues, I mean, given COVID and all the things. So it's just every second of every day looks different for us in our world. But they're touching people, making impressions. And children are leaving the spaces that we support and that are welcoming to our supports better than theirs.

Well, thank you so much. You're doing amazing work. I'm so glad for your colleagues. Council, we will break into 1130, and at 1130, we will pick up with Councilwoman Burns, who will be chairing the planning and zoning budget here. Thank you.

on track everybody did lunch break quick lunch break so we are our next presentation is going to be from the Regional Planning Agency I'm gonna turn it over to Weston to first go over the financial side of it and then Karen has provided which I've given to each of you in front of your materials on the highlights for the program and her organizational part. So Weston, I'm going to.

So we'll start. It's kind of two components to this discussion. There's city planning as it lives in general fund, and then there's the RPA side of it. So we'll just hit kind of the general fund piece of it. Their budget recommended decrease overall of $116,000. Most of it in operations, $142,000 decrease in operations, so reduction in consultant fees, and then some expenses that they're moving over to be covered by grant funds. And then they did have a swap for grant-funded position. The positions with this kind of plays in with the RPA overall discussion in the org chart, I think, that Karen has provided. So position-wise, city planning as it lives in general fund is net neutral so that started with five to have five in this one we did do some reorganization some some position swaps and then a position change uh with losing the transportation designer and adding the principal planner um and then karen i don't know if you want to be better just to go ahead and hit rpa real quick and then talk about just kind of overall Then the RPA budget is not in the book. It kind of hits that our budget is one line item as an appropriation to RPA. But we wanted to kind of just add a little color to it. So they do have a budget, and this is their budget. It shows a decrease of $767,000. If you remember, Hamilton County pulled their funding out of that. It's roughly $900,000 of funding that RPA lost this year. And so there's just been a lot of moves. And Darren's filled you in some, and then Karen will kind of continue to fill in. But we've eliminated four positions and have $400,000 of reduction in operations, either things being covered by grants that we're able to move to the grant or reduction in consulting, advertising, other operational decreases that Karen were really hard on. with administration to kind of get this budget where it's at. The four again, we had the reorganization. So we saw those on the other slide. So those are just positions moving in and out between general fund and RPA. And then the four positions that were decreased that were that were reduced are right there. Important note, and I'm sure Karen touched on this and Darren did as well, no one was riffed. We didn't have any people lost their job because of this. I believe there was one employee that retired and the rest of them we found spaces for in other places. So while we lost the positions, we didn't lose any bodies. And so with that, I will kind of turn it over to, well, I guess questions or Karen, if she wants to add.

Any questions, council members? Can we get additional questions? Yes. And you also, you all should have, this was put in a folder. This is the added slides that you should have in a folder.

It should have been shared with you this morning. It was in that planning and zoning folder. So it's not in the book, but the digital copy should be available.

I guess what would be, this may be just my ignorance, but what are we advertising? That was, I think, one of the previous slides you had was, I think it was. Sure.

It is. It's a relatively minor reduction. Advertise for legal notices for planning commission and then we cover the cost of advertisement proportion of City Council and so That is that legal, primarily legal notice. Okay, so like public hearings and... And then we do have, we provide 20% of the cost of legal notices for MPO meetings. The rest is reimbursed by the federal government. Okay, gotcha.

Good question. What other questions, council members, do you have of Weston before Karen moves into this supplemental sheet that I put in front of you? I've seen no questions. Karen, if you want to go over the elective work program.

Okay. And these are I think I'll start by noting we have a lot of ongoing activities as part of our kind of review with the loss of county funding. We started with what are our core services that we provide and build up from there. And so we might be a little bit closer to about 80 to 90% of staff resources or are just kind of those ongoing responsibilities related to both the MPO and the Planning Commission City Council zoning and subdivision planning process. So highlight-wise, this is for the whole organization. Our org chart is on the back. I'll start by noting the MPO, which is the Chattanooga-Hammond County, North Georgia Metropolitan Planning Organization. We staff that organization. I think staffed it since 1977. And that has its own work program. So I put a link here, which I realize you won't be able to get until you get your digital copy. But the work program of the MPO is its own standalone item. It's a two-year program, but I put the link there and then just italicized the items that are related to the work of the MPO. And so this year, thinking about community planning and zoning, which is that implementation tool of the plan, moving Plan Chattanooga on towards adoption. We did a presentation at Planning Commission this past month. It's on Planning Commission's agenda for June for adoption. We already talked about having metrics coming out of that. And since Plan Chattanooga is a high-level policy document, we'll be looking for opportunities for refinement or a little bit extra attention if needed. And then outreach communication about that. So I'm thinking that is really going back to the neighborhoods, reminding them of Plan Chattanooga, reminding them how to use the plan and be thinking about their neighborhoods. And so thinking about implementation, we're gonna complete an update to the form-based code. This is something we've had on our agenda for a year. And so we've restarted that to do an update that particularly thinking about the work of Plan Chattanooga and some of those changes in the downtown area. So that project scope, we're gonna revise that project scope. We can share that with you. We also can continue to monitor the zoning ordinance. One project we have to do is look at constructed project using the new zoning tools, particularly urban residential tools. So one of the big push of the new zoning ordinance was to allow more residential tool options think we need to go out and take a look at them and think about the zone and the tools and are they meeting are they providing um the housing and the compatibility and based on what we're thinking they were were and so that would be a project for the year i'm thinking probably think about the zoning district and look at pictures of those developments and then coming back to you all We are going to do the MPO work last. Continue to work with Reconnecting Communities. The city has obviously a foot in that grant and we're the neighborhood implementing entity. And so one of the planners is working as the Choice Neighborhoods kind of grant coordinator, neighborhood coordinator for that role. We also want to set up a socioeconomic, we're calling it, I put land use dashboard, that might not quite be the right term, but just to provide more information and track changes going on in Chattanooga, there's probably an overlap with the metrics, that's kind of, so that's one that we're going to need to refine a little bit more. And then in the sustainability shop, working on the electric vehicle transition planning, partnering in efforts for residential waste diversion. A lot of this are partnerships with Public Works. We have had a C-PACER, which is a, it is a more of an economic development tool. It's sat in sustainability. We've been transitioning that to economic development. That will come in front of council to make some changes. but finish that transition and then also we are developing an outreach kind of communication programs regarding sustainability and stewardship but at a local level and we just had a discussion about that with administration on Friday so we're still refining that and then just any other direction or projects coming up but I put at the 2025 we have we processed 135 rezoning mandatory referral applications and 42 major subdivision plots for the city we also do all the minor subdivision plots you get that monthly email from Brian about the minor subdivisions and that takes a lot of time also but that is a lot of communication and coordinating with applicants and so MPO task wise and we have a The MPO, we run on a kind of a five-year cycle that aligns with the, well, five and 10-year cycle. A five-year cycle that aligns with the regional transportation plan. We adopted the regional transportation plan. It was due again in 29, so we're gearing up the work of the regional transportation plan. So the research and analysis teams doing all the socioeconomic data and projections They're also updating the land use model, which we use to help inform planning Chattanooga and updating the travel demand model. And so those those provide that some of that the database support for the regional transportation plan. And then because their regional transportation plan is a five year project. Melissa has her team. working on a biennial amendment for our current transportation plan, because enough changes, they do a biennial amendment for that. And we'll start the work, the new work program for the MPO will kick off probably, it's usually like December, January. We'll kick that off because it takes about eight months to get through the adoption program for that work document. So happy to answer any questions. I can always provide more detail on any of these if anyone's interested. and whatever information you might like.

Yeah, I wanted to say thank you, Karen, for your leadership through this reorg. I know that that had to have been a difficult thing. And actually, I would appreciate a digital of this, but the overlap with the executive summary that's in the budget book is, I mean, immensely helpful. I mean, I see that this is almost like the short form of the long form that you've already provided here that we've had the opportunity to study. I was very interested in this because it just helped me better understand some of the bigger picture planning things. I think the one thing that really stood out that I wanted to point out was about the Office of Sustainability. And you make a point that The office seeks to amplify, not duplicate, existing city-led sustainability outreach efforts such as Rain Smart, National Park City, Chattanooga Tree Project, etc. I think it's wise to be looking to amplify, not duplicate. And I was pleased to hear with Public Works, the way that they're kind of stacking on some things with that, just to be... People can only pay attention to so many programs, right? So if we double down and all focus on promoting some of the same ones, I think we're going to get more traction and better benefit to the people.

So thanks for what you're doing.

Oh, and also the idea of consideration to existing nonprofit-led programs that you all can come alongside and be supportive of without recreating the wheel within RPA.

And Madison Rawlings is the Director of Sustainability, and she's done a great job of kind of transitioning from, it was very heavy in grants, and then 2025 came along. And so shifting to still provide kind of that value, but with a different focus. And so she's been a good creative thinker about how to do that.

That's wonderful. Thank you. Government cannot be all things to all people. So that's all, Madam Chair. Thank you.

What other questions, council members? Okay. If you all have nothing else, I think we're good. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Karen, for putting all of this together in Weston as well. Deputy Chief, thank you for all your work working with RPA. We appreciate everything you all did to move us forward. I'm excited about the next year. Thank you. All right. Is it time?

It is, and we are efforting to get them. We're way ahead of schedule, so we're going to call them. So we may just need a quick break to get them down.

Okay. I have them at 12, moved up from 1230, so let's see if I can't move that up even further.

Sounds like we're going to have a quick break. Yes, we're going to have a quick break.

So now we're happy to welcome Richard Beeland, who is the Administrator of Economic Development to work with Weston to present and answer questions about the economic development proposed budget.

So economic development as it sits inside of general fund. There's also economic development fund. We'll talk about it after this one. But this is as it lives inside of general fund. So their budget overall recommend a decrease of $117,000. It's relatively flat at that level, but lots of ins and outs in between. So they are adding $1.3 million in salaries and benefits. It is an increase of nine positions, but really it's just moving, as we've talked previously, a handful from the mayor's office and a handful from parks, and then the coal and benefits changes as well. operations was down 1.4 million really all of that decrease and then some is moving out RFP agencies those four-year contracts that expired now live in the single line item in general government so we decrease their budget related to those that was 1.7 million and then the operations piece of the arts culture and creative economy group coming into their budget so their budget was flat other than those kind of weird all those folks moving in and then the RFPs coming out then their budget started last year was 31 positions we've added 10 positions nine of them were just as reorgs from the other departments they're listed there and then we have one net new position of a special housing programs manager that It's 50% grant funded. I will pause there real quick for any questions or conversation on their operations. Can you go back to the other side? Yeah.

Council, do you have any questions? Councilman Elliott or Vice Chairman Elliott and then followed by Councilman Daly.

Thank you, Madam Chair. What is the new special housing?

The special housing programs manager will manage the down payment assistance program and the other programs that are within housing. Okay. Okay. That's all. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I'll just add, too, that they're 50% grant funded. They'll also be working on part of this community development block grant funds that the city receives that they are already working on, and the other half of them will be doing these for the down payment assistance program and other programs.

Okay, great. Councilwoman Dutley? Oh, that's all right. Councilman Elliott. I'll let you answer that question.

Anybody else right now? Okay, Richard, I'd like a little bit more clarification on that position because when we spoke, Sherita said that there was already one person that was 50% grant funded that was doing that, and you all were requesting an additional hundred. You were moving a position over at a cost of $125,000 to be a second person to do that.

That's correct.

So there will be two, in this scenario, there will be two people doing this.

That's correct.

And the grant that they are being funded by is what?

The position is the community development block grant money that we're receiving right now.

So CDBG will be paying for 50% of each of them?

No, 50% of one of them. The other will be fully general fund.

Okay, so my understanding was we already had somebody that was 50% grant funded by CDBG.

We did. That's it.

And now we are adding a second one, which is 100% funded by the general fund to the tune of $225,000. For both of them. For both of them. Got it. Okay.

Thank you. They do have some capital funds. So there's some public art at the Westside project, and then there's Roswell Gateway. Moving on to Economic Development Fund. This fund has a budget of $20 million. It's the fund. In a chart here to kind of show, this is also in the budget book as well, $7 million of that total bucket is going to capitals to fund some of the projects we've seen here. Then the agencies, again, we touched on those agencies last week, but they're enumerated here again. There is a $260,000 contingency line because things do come up within, to Councilman Clark's point,

There was a question I asked you earlier, and you said you weren't sure if a contingency was another fund.

So some of the other funds do, but the departments within the general fund typically do not. Okay. Well, fund, department, but we do do contingency, is what I was asking. Yes. Sorry, yes. There is a contingency fund within this group, because things come up where it makes sense for us to step in. This allows us to have a little bit of flexibility in the economic development space. We pay some fees to the county for where they collect sales tax revenue and remit it to us, so they charge us an administrative fee on that. And then there is a lease payment. It's debt that goes over to the CDRC. That's for the convention center, the Chattanooga DRC, and the parking lot. That's the $7 million?

Yes. Is the HEB $2 million appropriation here, is that to support our...

commitment to the west side that is for down paying uh it's for uh homeowner and rental rehab homeowner rental yes a million each last year we had that in the capital budget um but just through the discussions we think it makes more sense to put it in kind of the operations piece of it

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is not necessarily on this in particular, but you said something that sparked a question. Are there any parameters outside of, of course, like infrastructure projects that we have to follow when we're putting something in capital budget versus the operational budget?

It's typically based on kind of the size and duration of the project. There's a few things. We're working on kind of, one of the things when I stepped in, there was some gray, and I feel like a little bit of that, and what we were putting in capital versus, and so we're working with our capital team to sure up that, policy of like you know very bright line kind of this is what goes in capital versus operations i'll be interested once you guys kind of get a better handle on it because i don't think it's a big deal i think it just could just be uh educational opportunity for myself and whoever else is interested no i i agree often capital are one-time expenses yeah as well it is and and there are some things to my point this this ended up in capital last year and i think there's Some guidelines.

Commitment to making it.

Yeah. And I think we're going to, so we're going to true up that policy and kind of really put in there, hey, this is capital, this is operations, so we can kind of put that on. That works. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Right here.

Councilman Clark.

And I think I was head down on this computer when you said that the $7 million capital fund, could you reiterate what that is again for me please?

So there are projects we've talked about in all the other departments, and part of the funding for those projects is coming out of this economic development fund. Gotcha.

I thought that's what you said, but do you know specifically what those projects are in the capital?

It is in the budgets.

I can pull it up. I'm just curious. I mean, does anybody else know?

It's in the projects that are funded with economic development.

Right. So the specific question that I'm asking you or any other council members, does anybody else know? Okay, here it is.

And so it starts here and it goes down a number of pages. And this is a break out of the $7 million in the economic development capital. That's correct. So this column right here shows the $7 million total. It gives a breakout kind of by fund. And then if you continue to scroll through it all, it goes by project by project. And it does the same for There's some money we'll see in a second funded by bonds or by the Hotel Moto, which is further down. There's some money from that fund going to capital and it tells kind of which projects are funded by which across all the different, the buckets of funding.

So in your budget book, this is going to start in the capital budget where there's kind of a narrative at the beginning. And then you can, as you move through that capital budget, there's labeled C at the bottom. So I believe that was page C14 and 15, where you can see the individual breakdowns. But so even then, like $7 million from economic development, that's general government. I think it's not quite as specific as...

It gets into the details as you go down.

Yeah, if we head to, like, page C19, you start to see, let's see, for example, Avondale Community Center crosswalk improvements, $230,000.

A big one is CARTA. CARTA's funding comes out of economic development.

Westside Evolved. So this is our commitment then to the next build phase of the Westside.

Year three of year eight of that commitment is in that. So if you scroll through these pages, and then even if you keep going, it goes down into some other buckets around the hotel and hotel dollars and some different things.

Parks and Recreation has several items.

So that's the allocation of that seven. Fire equipment. if that makes sense.

That's a great question. Thank you.

And I think, may I follow up, please? Yeah, go ahead. And I think for me, as we're navigating how you guys construct the workbook, to know that there's a cross-reference to that. Because for me, I thought it was an additional. Sure. In addition to what was already broken out in the capital budget. I was like, oh, what is it? That's right.

So, yeah, this is just a funding source for those projects. But, yes, that makes sense.

So I need to find that in the capital tab under C-19, and it gives me those breakouts. That's right.

It's all the way at the back of the board. It's the last section. Perfect. Thank you.

I find that sometimes I'll be looking at why is this chart different than this next chart?

It can be tricky.

Councilman Harvey.

You mentioned earlier in the lease payments that Carter Street Corporation was part of that. What's the difference between that and then the other line item, Carter Street Corp. KO?

So the Carter Street, that's an operations commitment. The lease payment is just for the work done over there. There was debt associated with that. And so that's the repayment of that debt. Okay.

Vice Chairman Elliott.

Speaking of Carter Street, how much is owed on that convention center? You know? Roughly $17 million. Left?

Yeah, you're good.

You're on it. You can't compare.

FY 29.

That's what we want in our CFI.

Okay, okay. And how much do we pay on it every year? Do you know? Roughly $7 million. Okay. Thank you. I didn't think you would. That's pretty impressive. I wouldn't even try to like those anger at you. I was really curious.

We should have a session, test Weston.

No, let's not.

17 million, we're paying 7 million. Well, the last year. We got our amortization. That's right. Like what, four years, five years?

It ends in 29, so yeah.

Okay, so 29, that'll be done. Riverfront will be done in 31. Cool. Thank you. need to think about opportunities.

And I'll add to this, this fund also, it's not, we don't budget it, and it's this concept of volatile revenue. The TDZ, sales tax money, that comes in, flows into this fund. We don't budget for that revenue because it is extremely volatile. It could be zero one year, it could be, if you look in actuals of 25, you see that last line, tourist development zone transfer to CDRC, it was $5 million in 25 that we got. At some point in the recent past, it was zero, right? So it's a weird funding formula that the states got set up. And so essentially what happens is if we get TDZ funds, that money is first transferred to CDRC to pay the debt, and then this fund makes up any gap. So if we don't get anything, we'll pay 7.2. If we do get something, we'll pay less than 7.2 out of this bucket of money. Right. So, yes. So, I'm sorry.

Go ahead. Okay. I like the respect decorum. So, when you say flows back, so the state collects the tax and then sends it back to us. That's right. So, if the state decides, maybe not, they just...

we don't get it the state has to send it to us but it's a weird the formula for it is based on growth within the TDZ zone which is surrounding Finley Stadium kind of the south broad area so it's a kind of weird footprint but it's based on the growth within and the growth without and it's this kind of complex funding formula that they do okay and then they run it through that and then they say well here's what you get and they send it to us so so is it new growth or is it just growth it's just yeah it's just growth in general so so whatever the sales tax kind of outside and inside they do a comparison last or this year I want to say maybe not uh 5.9 million we got this year uh 5.25 but again it could go to zero this year we don't know right it's just it's it's kind of wonky that way and so we've not really seen it zero I think I saw I went back and looked the ways and it was maybe a A year or two. I mean, it has been significantly less than this multiple times. So we just don't budget it. If it comes in, it just reduces the amount that we pay out of deadline.

Okay. And I think for me asking is because I know Finley, the legislature just passed the bill for particularly for Finley Stadium to recoup some of the funds within the stadium.

Right, so the bill that the state passed was for Finley to be able to capture some of their sales tax in order to do improvements that they need to do at the stadium. But that is designed, we're still working with them to negotiate, kind of work through the agreement of that, but it should not and will not impact the TDC piece of it. Okay. Because this supersedes kind of whatever they're doing. So the state, it'll be just work around the TDC, whatever they get. So we're still working with them on that. um but yeah they did pass that so the stadium can get some money to do the infrastructure changes looking to do okay that works thank you madam chair absolutely any other questions um i

I'd like everybody to have like the full picture of all the different ways that economic development fund, but budget are working together. And then I'd like to come back to the approach to workforce development. So do you have another fund that you want to show? Hotel Motel? Hotel Motel. You want to do that one?

Yeah, let's go ahead and do that. There it is. Hotel Motel Fund. So the hotel-motel fund is funded with the occupancy tax that was set up some years ago. And that money, again, flows through the county, comes to us, and the breakout is there. Again, there is capital funds. There are capital funds that are moved from this area. this fund to fund things like, we used it for Walnut Tree Bridge. The riverfront is what it was initially set up for. It was for the riverfront project. It was expanded some years later to tourism and tourism development. So any capital related to tourism and tourism development can be used. these funds can be used for that um we also have in this uh budget and allocation to chattanooga tourism at a million dollars that's the same we did last year that's to support uh the work they're doing we have an additional 600 we talked about some of this already but we have an additional six hundred thousand dollars to support the fifa uh security program or security efforts with the world cup coming here in the next month or so um and then uh this chattanooga hamilton county history experience partnership with songbird and uh it's a hamilton county education collaboration um with them we have 850 000 in contingency again in this fund um that's just again as as tourism opportunities come up that we didn't foresee it allows us some flexibility um to kind of do some additional things uh the You see there the hotel, the hotels get to keep a certain fee out of this tax. So that's the 204. And then the county keeps 182,000 roughly. It's another 2%. And then the debt service is the debt on the riverfront.

The narrative for this fund includes a $2 million transfer to HEB for affordable housing. Is that a typo? Because I'm not seeing it in the itemization. Is that a typo? We said it was coming out. It's actually coming out.

That must be. Yeah, that must be. Dropped in the room. Got it.

Councilman Henderson.

The debt service question is down $178,000. Would we not be better off putting that towards the principal and getting that down quicker?

We could. I think the difference in the down, last year we budgeted I want to say that piece was budgeted for this fund backstops the series C debt on the stadium. And so the overall debt is a $5 million note. We had put something in there last year just as a contingency, just because with the project still ongoing, we just wanted to make sure we had it covered. We've done kind of our analysis. Sherita did a great presentation the other day in Sports Authority, I think it was. And we've kind of looked at it with her and with the county, and we don't anticipate needing that in this year. So we removed that $200,000. And then part of it also, just the amortization. But yes, to your point, you could... I'll pay it now.

if we apply that to the program. And can we even do that? I know some of them.

I'd have to look. I can look at the specifics of that one and see.

It's a very interesting question. And would you repeat your question?

So we're taking 178,000 out of debt service. My question is, could we not leave it in and put that towards the principal? Okay.

That's the first I did part I didn't hear. Okay. Thank you.

at some some loans allow you to do that i don't know if this is one that and like what would that you know if we did that year over year how many years would that illuminate and i did not write my notes down on the balance so i'm going to call some of you if you weren't ready for it i was just thinking about how much i appreciate that you were able to very quickly tell us that this fund backstops seriously dead on the stadium i thought that is the kind of um

guidance we've been seeking for us since we lost Daisy.

So the hotel-motel funded debt, let's go down.

Oh, Goldberg, that's true, I forgot about him. Sorry, Goldberg, if you're watching.

A couple of different issuances where it's been refunded kind of since the inception. The latest, I know it's hard to read,

is 2031 is the latest maturity on that and we've got 9.2 outstanding on that one yes and we're paying in paying in four million but it's not going to be okay any other questions council Okay, so now that we've seen all the ways that the economic development dollars, hotel, motel, economic development fund are being invested, Richard, something that stood out in the narrative from the economic development department was the thought process on how you all are shifting your work and investments on workforce development. of mushy, kind of muddy. Can you speak to where the government is headed in the coming years?

Sure. So Andrew Hudson heads up the workforce development division for the for the economic development and has just launched Chattanooga Works. I don't know if you saw that recently, but it's like a reverse engineering of workforce development. So a lot of times in the city we were training, but we weren't training for jobs that were actually open that people can move into. We were providing some skills that may or may not be needed in the community. This way, if you identify a job that's available, and then back from there, begin training for that job, so the person has a position to move into once the training is done. So that's the direction that it's moving into now.

Thank you. Also, something that Sherita pointed out was that, you know, in the wake of ARPA dollars, there was money that was specifically allocated or available for workforce development. And so a lot of things that were not workforce development became that, which added to the muddiness of that. So this is... Now we're in a season where we're really distilling down into the essence of what workforce development is to get people into jobs that we have in Chattanooga and that we want to have in Chattanooga.

And then we want Chattanoogans to have.

And then we want Chattanoogans to have.

Yeah. And you're right about the money, though. There were a lot of things. If the money was available, then anything that they could say if it was workforce development, it's going to be workforce development if the money was available. And it wasn't a lot of times.

Yeah. Not that it was bad work.

No, not that it was a bad work.

It was unclear.

But it wasn't moving someone into a job that was going to be producing so they could be paying taxes here in Chattanooga and supporting their families.

So we should expect in the coming years, I think, greater efficiency of use of that money.

And focus. Focus.

That's the real word I think I was looking for. Thank you. Did you raise your hand, Councilman Hill?

No.

Okay. Councilman Henderson.

So explain in the future challenges and opportunities, it looks like we have an opportunity for the strategies of re-compete to research and develop talent training. Is that along the same line? What is this? It is. What are the strategies of ReCompete?

So the ReCompete was a grant that we received for a half million dollars over, I think it's over five years, but to identify obstacles to employment like transportation or childcare. And so we're two of the big ones. So in child care, it's like what kind of attention should be paid to child care? Could it be micro child care facilities that could provide the services for the person to have a job? Or could it be an employer that would have a child care service within their manufacturing plant that would be able to provide that service so that people could work there? And then other, like I said, was transportation as well. training so as we're using those fund that funding to be able to provide services that we're talking about for this reverse engineering to get person into a job to provide the training to get them there go what how much available funds are left in so we you're saying we got a $500,000 grant yes and how much of them is all of that funding still available or no it's not so I would have to find out the exact number that was okay

So employing the strategies that you learned, not with the money that's already spent? Is that what that means?

I guess what I'm asking is, is there a dollar figure to employing these strategies on this recompete?

Let me get that information for you. Okay.

I mean, it doesn't really do us any good to develop strategies.

I read that as taking the learning from that $500,000 grant and using it to inform work that we would do in the future. Because as I looked at these challenges and opportunities, some of them are pretty big. And that's that they'll be working on. So good to at least learn, but I hear what you're saying.

You got anything to add to that, Chief?

It's in line with what... And so the strategy that they're pursuing now is actually funded by the budget of the department. Now there might be additional opportunities to go out and get actual implementation dollars to further produce it, but the strategy realignment is kind of the outcome of that. Okay.

Richard, you weren't here. You might have been watching with great interest. But we had a good conversation with early childhood department about what it might look like to extend time in the day for some of our Head Start or all of our Head Start facilities. And it occurred to me that there's a clear line between that and economic development, because we really are helping people get to work. The question of what happens in aftercare As a parent, aftercare I've never seen be an especially educational time. It's just more safe childcare. But you're talking about this micro childcare and things like that. That is in line with what the council was discussing earlier.

i was watching that and when you were talking about the james a henry hub and and then studies on the west side have shown that the barriers sometimes are early childhood or early um care and aftercare that um people need to be able to have a full day at work yeah makes sense full day of work and it's an economic development okay okay council do we have any other questions

All right, worth noting that the Office of Neuchat and Nugent has moved into economic development, as has the events and the ACE group. I have a proposal.

Yes, ma'am. And then office of office office, but creative economy. That's yes.

That is art culture, creative arts, culture and the creative economy.

Okay.

To see these as culture and creative economy. So that has officially moved into economic development. Okay. Yeah, that's how I'm sure. Thank you.

Well, we're going to have a special pull out in this with Chairwoman Dottley about affordable housing. I sent all of you an idea about some strategic refinement of this budget, but as it involves both economic development proper and some specifics of affordable housing, I'd like to wait to talk about it until after Chairwoman Dottley has done the affordable housing piece. Oh, okay. Well, I just, I'll stay here.

Oh, okay. Yeah. But I don't have much. You can go ahead and cover it, Winston. So,

I don't, I'll let kind of Richard take it. We don't specifically have affordable housing lives kind of within economic development. And so, there it is.

So talk about the programs that we're funding. So the funding remained flat in affordable housing as well. So the proposal has a million dollars to the HEB for affordable housing, which is the rental assistance. and could be split between rental assistance and rental rehab. There's a half million dollars to H-E-B for eviction prevention. If you know, you've known about the program. If you can keep someone in their home before they become homeless, then that's the best use of those dollars, keeping them there. So it's a real successful program now, and our partner in that is Legal Aid of East Tennessee. proposing $3 million to HEB for the down payment assistance program, which was funded last year as well, and it's just now launching. And then there's also $2 million to the HEB for affordable housing, which is to fund Habitat's critical home repair program.

Thank you, Richard. So to that point, and again, thinking about the whole department, here is a copy, a paper copy of the proposal that I sent to counsel yesterday for your consideration. So in the budget amendment last year, we had $3 million in this 2026 fiscal year for down payment assistance program, which launched this month and people are excited about it as we would have expected it to be. So I have a proposal to strengthen the long-term impact of our housing investments while also ensuring the responsible stewardship of public funds. So what I am suggesting, and honestly I was kind of, when it wasn't in the capital fund was not I thought that the DPA I figured that three million dollars have been absorbed in in other projects but it was exciting to see that affordable housing and specifically homeownership was something that was continuing to be prioritized by the administration and for about five years now I've been learning about and studying and trying to help kind of group think about permanent affordability and you all have heard me talk about that some from the dais and permanent affordability when it comes to homeownership is most often achieved through a tool called a community land trust and when the community was doing some feasibility studies that would be the word earlier this year we brought in for strategic planning some of the planners within that group to talk about what what they were thinking the community land trust is moving forward and so my proposal is that we allocate 2.25 million dollars to the existing down payment assistance program under the current program guidelines so The transfer was a $3 million transfer to the HEB, so this would add another $2.25 million to that fund, to the tune of $5.25 million in a down payment assistance program, and make a one-time $750,000 investment in operating expenses for the Tennessee Valley Community Land Trust. My thoughts on this also are that we would reallocate $125 in funding for the new position to manage additional DPA work to instead create an economic development incentive manager position. When I was meeting with the economic development team, Richard, Sherita, we discussed the fact that We need, as a city, better oversight over our major economic incentive packages and tools, most specifically TIFs. Sherita was explaining to me that there is a huge volume of work that should and can go into making sure that TIF commitments are upheld that funding is appropriate etc and if we she would very much like to have somebody who wakes up every morning and that's what they do all day when she started listing it all and then I think about all the other work that Sherita does this person would report directly to her and so the rationale is that right now FY 27 the DPA program is going to be have a substantial capacity at $5.25 million. And so what it does is gives us the opportunity to invest a portion of those funds into a permanent affordability solution that will begin to create a community asset, not just a community funding program, right? So the Tennessee Valley Land Trust is completely community-driven initiative. and actually our esteemed vice chairman is on the founding board and it's worth noting that the city housing department has actually twice applied for funding to start a community land trust and expected that to cost about six million dollars so knowing that we have community support for beginning this long-term investment strategy toward permanent generational affordability. I can see that $750,000 allocation would establish lasting tool for generational homeownership affordability, create permanent affordability rather than one-time depreciating subsidy assistance, preserve and preserve public investment in perpetuity through that subsidy recapture and appreciation sharing so you know the way that down payment assistance works in our current program people can receive a down payment assistance 0% loan for $15,000 potentially qualify for an additional six from the state for a total of 21, but it's It's an agreement that that new homeowner can use that $15,000 until they sell the home, and then they return that $15,000 with zero interest to the DPA. Well, to the city of Chattanooga. I'm not sure if we have clarity. Well, to the HEB. So perhaps it does get immediately pushed back into the fund, which is good. However, we all know that $15,000 today is going to be worth a lot less than it will be in 10 years. Seven years is often a first-time homebuyer's time in a home. That's getting a little bit longer now as homebuyers are getting older, so we might expect to see that money come back into the program year 15 potentially. So what I see, and as much as it costs more money to buy asphalt it's going to cost more money to buy houses and if uh if the city does want to continue to encourage and make home ownership possible in a time when that gap is getting bigger to have a way to grow the value of that subsidy over time is going to give us longer term roi for our community so To that end, my thoughts about the 750 is that though this is a newly forming organization, I have been advised by the administration more than once that sometimes multi-year commitments can be challenging, right? So this would provide startup funds that would cover three years, more than cover, I think, because hopefully their costs will come down, the operating of the land trust. So making it clear that as a city council and as the administration, we want to see permanent generational affordability and wealth generation, equity growth in our community. at a time when the DPA is very well funded, right, at $5.25 million, so that then we can move back into, just focusing on the dpa moving forward seems like a really great deal when you think that the city was looking at six million dollars to be able to get one started for 750. also i would add that i'm suggesting that we make the 750 000 allocation contingent upon the tennessee valley community land trust securing double that amount in subsidy dollars so that they raise 1.5 million dollars to provide the subsidy for home building, or not home building, but home buying, excuse me, that is part of the land trust model. So I know you all have had this for a while. I've already talked about the piece about economic development oversight with the TIF agreement. So I would certainly appreciate your feedback on this and hopefully earn your support for this tweak. Yes, Vice Chairman Elliott.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to provide one bit of clarification.

Okay.

The seat that I'm serving on the CLT is actually a council seat. So council will have permanent representation on the board in perpetuity. So I'm just an inaugural council person. So after that, one of you all will take over.

Councilwoman Donnelly. Thank you, Madam Chair. So I did have a couple of questions regarding this. I guess I'll start with the more easy one. For the regular, for the new incentive manager, which I do like that position, would they then be also, well, I guess I would ask, for them to give us regular reporting in regards to those TIFs and to those pilots? Because I know we've always asked for that, and I always got it in a... i said a readable manner i guess you can read it but it's a lot of information so just that's just kind of my ask on that one great great great point and then so for the land trust um i know they came and presented uh i don't know maybe less than a year ago at the time they didn't have an ask so um and they are And so I know we received the list of agencies, the agency proposed agency appropriations. So I guess what has changed? Did they go through that process? And then is the administration in support? Well, I guess clearly in support because they've already applied for those things. But what has changed from them coming? Because when they came, they said they didn't have an ask. So what has changed?

Yeah, great question. Thank you for that. So when... When they came, they were in a fact finding, what is possible in our community? Is this something that our community is interested in? How might it work phase? And they came to, we invited them to come and talk to the council so that we would just be informed that this is conversation that's happening in our community. And I remember back when I was running for council for the first time five years ago, Caleb had done a big study. And they had identified different ways that a community land trust could be pursued. And so it's an ongoing conversation in the community at large. They did not have an ask then, and I will be completely frank, they did not come to me and ask me to ask for this. When I put together my budget list for District 2 requests, I included District 2 requests, I included citywide requests, and I included just thoughts that I had about how individual departments might deploy funds in strategic ways. this was a city ride wide request I honestly was not expecting there to be three million dollars for for down payment assistance in our budget when I didn't see it in capital I thought it wasn't there but what I'd actually asked for was if if that three million is floating let's use three million dollars to to fund the startup of a community land trust because I personally just think it's that important for long-term preservation of Chattanooga for Chattanoogans and consider the rapid rate of housing costs where Nine years ago, city council was not sitting around the table talking about the fact that working families making 80% to 100% AMI couldn't afford homes. They could. We are in a changing landscape. And then we think, how many homes have been purchased by corporate ownership? And a land trust to me is part of stewardship as a body of leaders to say, We want Chattanoogans to be able to own homes and we know that we can't just afford to continually find more money in the general fund to make this happen over the next 20 years. So here's an opportunity. What I saw was an opportunity where we had $3 million from that amendment plus real energy and formation of this land trust. And so that's how it happened. They didn't specifically come, but when I asked, okay, what's your operating cost for a year? And they estimated $250,000. And I thought, well,

Thank you.

Let's see if Mayor Kelly has three more budgets. What if we just do this in one so that we don't have to feel like we're torn between down payment assistance or this other thing?

Okay. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. And then I think one of the questions I asked when they came and they hadn't quite solidified what it was, was the equity model, the shared equity model, because generational wealth is important and we want to make sure people have that. But when I think about the incomes of those who would – potentially apply for a home within the community land trust, equity is going to be important to them because a lot of them may not have had the opportunity to establish that generational wealth. So at this, I guess at this juncture, do we know what the equity model would be for the land trust, the shared equity model?

Council Vice Chairman Elliott, do you have any guidance on where the board stands on developing the resale formula?

If I remember correctly, we talked about this some time ago, so just bear with me because I don't know all the details. We actually have a workshop going on right now, today and tomorrow. I do know when a person looks to sell the land, it is in the deed that they can only sell it at a certain level of AMI. Right. And I believe, if I'm not mistaken, don't quote me on that. Let's just leave it there because I don't want to misspeak on the next part.

I'll look into it and get you as much information as I can by next week.

All right, that works for me. And then my last question is, you mentioned that, well, in the proposal, it says based on current projections, once approximately 225 homes are placed into the model, what is the current plan to acquire that part? Because at the moment, they don't have it. Well, it's just starting. Yeah. So they don't have any problem. What is the current plan or what's the scope of that being placed into the model? to get to that level of how, because we know land is scarce in Chattanooga. So what is the, I guess, the plan to do that?

So in the conversations that I have been a part of, and again, I'm not on the board, and so we could get more information from them about projections on projects, but I know that there are, there are, already some trusts that have land in them that are interested in building, for example, for teachers who work at Howard High School, for example. potentially seeing multiple homes built in a single community that would enter into the trust at a single time. I think that's what we, where I would expect and what I've learned from working with Nicole is that you're often looking at volume, right? How do we get volume, not just one off, two off. Now, something that I always have my mind on is any type of land that we have in our land bank or that we're holding as a potential opportunity. I think there's some individual streets, I think, that maybe have contiguous land that could potentially go in. To my knowledge, they've been talking with all sorts of developers. But we can find out more information on where they stand on their exact resale formula and their growth strategy but I do think that it's much and I won't say anything is easy right but it is more straightforward to raise support for subsidy dollars to actually help like to basically say donate money so that we can help people buy houses. It's easier to raise money for that than donate money so we can run the back office to help people buy houses, right? So I could see us as a city council making a real leadership commitment allocation in this way to then propel them to have the funds to then be able to secure

land to purchase okay and then my last question and i promise is what is the i guess the community plan around it so let's say for instance there is a block that has vacant home i would use altar park for example there's a block around where the library is that's completely fat uh flat undeveloped for decades by a local agency here. Okay. So what is the plan surrounding, like for instance that particular one, how do they, what's their community plan in regards to engagement around that community land trust, not particularly in that one because I don't know if that would be included. I'm just exampleing. Right. So what is the community plan around engagement and things of that nature so that those communities understand what this is because some can look at it as when you look at share equity um and that was actually a um when our housing team first came on board that was something that was brought to i to the also park community and a lot of the con a lot of a lot of the constituents were concerned about you know well if i bought it and i want to sell it i should be able to sell it for whatever i want to sell it for and receive that equity and they felt that any percentage off of that to go towards something else was taken from them, robbing from their generation. That was the words they used. So I think education is going to be super-duper important. But also, so I guess, and I'm sure y'all don't have that now, but just the community engagement plan around what does that look like, especially when you think about the percentage, the AMI percentages that will be more than likely to take advantage of a community land trust because it's not a bad it's not a bad thing it is just making sure people understand what they're buying into right is important so i think that would be the only other question i have other than that i'm good to go thank you manager okay um well

One thing I will share about community engagement with community land trusts is that my understanding is that the board, the founding board will within their bylaws identify at what point it transitions from a more like a standard board to being what's called a tripartite board. That's three part board. And a key part of requirement of that board is that a third of the board has to be made up of people who live in community land trust homes. Now, that answers a different question than the actual education around whether you want to purchase a home in a land trust. And I think you're 100% right. As a novel in this area approach to homeownership, people are going to have a lot of questions. And from the fact-finding committee that I was on, that was something that Grounded Solutions, the network who presented to us, really drove home the point. education, education, education, stewardship, stewardship, stewardship. Because the reality is that A subsidy is money provided that you didn't have, right? So even going back to that idea of we all together are Chattanooga. If Chattanoogans have money for... If I can't afford to buy a home and a 100% equity model, if I choose to take on... To take advantage of a... down payment assistance program and community land trust purchase, then it is I think reasonable and a citizenship kind of headspace of I want to pay that forward that I couldn't afford to get in with a hundred percent equity right now because I didn't have the money for it but I can stay here for four or five seven eight years and then sell it and now I have the wealth to then invest in my next house in a hundred percent equity because I have made that and and now I'm paying it forward for my neighbor you know who now can afford to buy But you're spot on about the education that will be necessary for this. Let's see, Councilman Harvey and Councilman Noll.

Just a couple of questions that, again, this may be my ignorance when it comes to this, but is this the same organization that also procures land for the city for parks? No, this is separate. This is a different, okay. Yeah. All right.

So there are so many trust things. Yeah, yeah. So the Trust for Public Land, who actually, David Johnson of the Trust for Public Land is going to come be our parks and outdoors director. Yeah, okay. make those lines a little more confusing so we have a we have a community land bank a land bank authority that is run by the city and Megan currently sits Megan from our staff currently is their employee so there's the land bank and I believe Megan is not on the board but is an advisor maybe to this CBLT That's correct. Okay. So she's an advisor. And then you have the land, the trust for public land and some others like that. They're about preserving land just for whatever. And then this is a community land trust, which is not, it's an entity of itself, not officially part of any other organization here in town. It's a new thing.

Okay. My recommendation is if it was the same organization, I was going to say we need to make sure that this is used for only housing. 100%. Okay. All right. That clears that up.

But I'm going to make that point used for only housing.

Yeah.

Well, for management of the thing. Affordable housing. Councilwoman Null and then Councilman Henderson.

Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. So my question is actually you've asked Councilwoman Dottley asked three of the ones I was going to ask. But I didn't hear her touch base. You are asking for $750,000 from the three million? Yes, ma'am. Okay. My question would be how many fewer families would receive down payment assistance immediately if you pull that $750,000 for that? Is there an estimate as to how many families that that would affect?

Well, we could certainly do the math on that at the 15. So $750,000 divided by 15. Knowing, however, that the first $3 million that has been allocated, there's only two months in this fiscal year to spend that down. So the likelihood of that being spent down to zero, I think, is zero in this month and next month. So then if we look at $2.25 million heading into it, We have an opportunity to then invest so that generationally more and more families can do this, even if the city of Chattanooga gets to a point where it's unsustainable for us to have $3 million dedicated to down payment assistance. We have assets in our community that are providing affordability, not just this year for one family, but consider if every home that's in the land trust turns over five times, you get a 5x return on investment. But what's the exact number? 50. So 50. So it would take the subsidy of 50 in the down payment assistance program and put it toward founding a community land trust. So if we think about that 50, multiply that by 5, that becomes 250 families potentially that would benefit from that.

Okay, so, but that's putting it into something that you don't have actual warm bodies that is going to be taking part in that right now, right?

Not today, but over the long term, yeah. It's an investment in the future.

So, I know I met with Micah Gillian and Janice Goodwin last, well, no, the first part of this year, I think, or maybe the last part of last year, in reference to this land trust. So at the time, they did not even have a formula for it to do what they needed to do. Now, my question then was, and if I remember correctly, the individual that buys into this never actually owned the property. They actually just, the physical part of the house So then what is it to guarantee that they would get their full equity? Is it anything that would guarantee they would get their full equity out of being in that house for whatever X number of years? And then I think you have to kind of balance that with... how many we're gonna not give the down payment assistance to a family that will be able to own their land and their home that is sitting on that land and get full equity out of that property when they do decide to sell.

That is definitely a trade-off when we think about a community land trust model. And why I think it's an important tool in our toolkit because if a family doesn't have, so 20% down payment on a $200,000 house is $40,000, right? So that would be to aim for not having mortgage insurance, which I think was kind of our olden days, pre-COVID kind of concept. So if a family doesn't have 20 or $30,000 saved up to be able to purchase a home, and also let's remember For area median income of family of four, and I'll use those numbers because it's the ones I'm most ingrained in my brain, a family of four can purchase a home at about $260,000. And that's for 100% AMI. So a family, but our area median home is $340,000. So we have a significant gap in it. requires a bigger down payment to buy a home so what we what we can reasonably expect from the down payment assistance program as we have it is that that $21,000 is going to be most useful to families that are at 100 to 120 percent area median income which is fantastic we still are getting first-time homebuyers when I looked at thinking about like How this might open doors to younger homebuyers, because keep in mind, home ownership, first home age is now getting to be in the 40s, 41, 42 years old to buy your first home, not in your 20s the way that kind of American wealth building has been built. So let's see, I put some numbers in here. 120 AMI for a two-person household right now is $80,000 to $90,000 a year income. So that's really how far our 15 to 21 is going to go is to be able to get somebody at that. With a land trust model, you do trade off that the land itself is really a lot of the subsidy. The land might be worth $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 in a land trust model. So if I, as a homebuyer, am not buying this plot of land, I'm buying the house on top of it. then right away, as a subsidy, we've got 50 grand in the deal, right? If we're trying to make a home more affordable. So that's why then we could potentially see folks who are making $60,000 suddenly be able to be back in the market of first-time home ownership. And it's true that in that scenario, okay, they don't have $60,000 to be able to put toward the purchase of a home. And we have a tool in our community toolkit to help them become a first time home buyer and generate equity. Maybe they don't walk away with everything because they got $60,000 in subsidy to buy this house. So it's fair to say, okay, We're going to try to move, take, like you get, you raise, you get all the money on the appreciation of this house, whatever the formula is, and we'll find out more about it. But then you can, then you take what you've made and you can go buy something else in 100% equity environment where you can afford, you as a purchaser can afford to own 100% of the equity. This is a way to have long-term investment in the community, but not necessarily right for every person, but by no means would anybody ever be required to do this in the same way that, you know, they're not going to walk out that $15,000 that they're putting in now. Arguably, they don't have 100% equity either because they have to pay that $15,000 back. You know, it's $15,000 that has to get paid back. It's a question of how much is that going to be worth to the next person that we try to help with their family.

But at least with the down payment assistance, like I say, you own the land and the house that it's on.

That's currently, yes.

Land right now is... It's expensive. It's expensive. So the house that you build on there, the material stuff, the actual framework of that is not going to equal out to ever what the land is worth itself. So to me, you're still not coming out on the good end of it. Someone else is. That's just me. I don't understand personally, and I will look into it more how that actually builds a generation of wealth.

Sure.

It just gives you a place to pay rent for for a little while where you would be paying it if you were in your house to own it anyway, so... No difference in you rent an apartment. You rent the space that's there. You don't ever own any of it until you're just paying to have access to it. That's what that sounds like pretty much here.

The models, the financial models that To my knowledge, almost every land trust in the nation and what I'm hearing from the board of the Tennessee Valley Land Community Land Trust is that helping create a tool to facilitate the building of generational wealth is a non-negotiable like the the formula absolutely will help will help people walk out with equity when they sell their home but it does come with the reality that if you needed money to be able to afford to purchase a home, that some of that money stays with that investment so that it can be affordable to another person and another person and another person. But it is very different than renting for a couple of reasons. First, when you secure a mortgage, as you know, most often you're going to secure a mortgage that is a if it's a 30 year mortgage, you're agreeing to a payment that will stay the same over those 30 years where rent would go up, up, up, up, up, up, right? So you have stability there while also building equity in your home and creating a financial tool that, for example, you could refinance to be able to fund your education and use that equity to do that and then still have a home or refinance to pay off debt or any number of things because it does become a real asset for you, right? Councilman Henderson had a question, but do you have any other questions?

No, I have no other questions.

And then Councilman Dutland.

So this actually gives us, in theory, a dual path to some homeownership. I mean, you can either, I mean, you could choose the down payment assistance or you could go the land trust.

Mm-hmm.

can you use down payment assistance on the land trust?

Yes that was something that I have talked with the team here about that already you would be able yes you'd be able to use that toward a land trust which is how then if you think a home becomes affordable at 80 percent AMI in the land trust then if you have down payment assistance it starts to become affordable at 60 percent AMI which is a game changer.

Yeah and who carries the loan on the land trust does this will a bank carry a loan yes yes it's it's a traditional mortgage yeah okay um and that if i'm not mistaken the 2.25 million that's left in there still allows us to help about 150 families yeah with down payment assistance And do we have any idea how many might even apply for that, Richard?

I think it's been very well received. I think there's a lot of interest in the program. But also something that's important to remember, Council, is there's a cap on the amount that the home can cost. $400,000 is the upper limit. You have to be within that 120 or below AMI.

Yeah. And then kind of the... piggyback or follow up a little bit on, I think you asked the administration's position on this. I don't know, do we actually know, Chief, what position the administration is taking on the community land trust?

Yeah, sure. Richard, can I sit for a second? Sure. Thank you, Councilman Henderson. And thank you, Councilman Hill, for your continued leadership in this space and for your thoughtful advocacy for long-term solutions. The administration is supportive of the land trust. As Councilwoman Hill pointed out, we have pursued this separately prior to the formation of the TVCLT. Can we kind of go backwards, though, just thinking about the proposal, starting with the staff proposal? We recognize the tremendous need that Sherita has expressed to me for some time as well. So thank you for acknowledging that. You will note that we didn't put that forward in our budget proposal. We feel like we can take care of that, meet that need administratively. So there, Richard and I were talking yesterday, there is a There is a vacancy in OSH, which is also in economic development that we're not going to need to backfill. So our intent is to tarp that position to create this incentive position that would report under Sherita. We feel strongly that we need both given the portfolio of housing programs that we have built out over the last few years, particularly With DPA coming online in a real way, we do feel like we need the capacity with both of the program managers that are reflected in our proposal and with Hanukkah leaving as well. So we feel like we can do both on that front. And then with respect to the CLT, so the administration is committed to supporting the CLT. We are committed to, yeah, we see it as a value add, right? Like the more tools in the toolkit, to your point, the better. One thing that I would offer as kind of a counter consideration with respect to the amount in this budget is I would ask for you to consider, instead of 750, doing 250 in this budget. And there are a couple of reasons why. One, I feel like, and some of the questions have come up with respect to the fact that the CLT is in its nascency. It doesn't have an executive director yet. As far as I know, it doesn't have an executive director. And I think, yes, go ahead.

No, this is for Chairwoman.

Oh, sorry. Do you want me to keep going or? No, please. Yeah, keep going. Okay. And I think to Councilwoman Knowles' point about the trade-off here, we think about How do we invest the dollars in a way that can make the biggest impact the soonest? And I don't think that we lose anything towards the long-term strategic investment represented by the CLT, but we know that land trusts take a minute to get going, right? So if you think about what is the material impact on housing affordability for Chattanoogans in FY27, it's going to be at least on average five years for a land trust when you think about nationally the time it takes for those institutions to have a portfolio large enough to make a material impact it's a long-term play to your point exactly and we support it but in terms of this budget um we feel we feel real confident that the dollars that you guys have appropriated for down payment assistance previously and then what we're proposing in this budget we think that we'll be able to deploy all of it. I mean, we've had over 150 loan officers come and attend our trainings. We've had, you know, more than 30, I think it's 34, 35 local financial institutions. I mean, there's just a lot of activity and enthusiasm around down payment assistance, and we know that it's a real need in the community. And so I wouldn't want us to, you know, while I do acknowledge and share kind of like the the strategy of like smoke them while you got them like go get you know go get it while you can to secure that I think that in this case we need to think carefully about the opportunity cost because I do think that it's a real one And then lastly, actually, no, I think that's it. So the administration, again, we are supportive. We want to, this is the other thing I wanted to mention, we want to partner year over year for the remainder of the Kelly administration with the CLT to help it get going. We think that there's tremendous opportunity through our land bank as well to actually We encourage them to apply for the next RFP, which I think is later this summer. I don't know if it's been scheduled yet, but that's what I've been told, is that there's one kind of in the works. The CLT would have a competitive advantage because of the long-term affordability dimension of any proposal that they would put forward. That would make it very appealing for the land bank to want to partner in that way, to help transfer properties into its portfolio. And so, in summation, we support it. We would ask that the council consider a $250,000 allocation instead of the $750,000 allocation that we would commit to repeating for the subsequent two budgets for the remainder of the Kelley administration.

Okay. Thanks for that, Kevin. I think key to this discussion is if this council and this administration decide to take this leadership stance, whether 750, 500, whatever it might be, we consider how we might also make further partnership commitments like the land bank, like to say, we've talked a lot about land bank property should be for affordable housing, right? Well, what does that mean? And it does, do we then start to say, we want our community assets to stay community assets. We want to have a natural transition where not just an RFP, but the land trust gets right of first refusal on properties that are there, right? Like right of first refusal, meaning the land, because we are trying to build, this is something I would think as a council person, I want to see us build land a large civic holding of properties that our community is holding in perpetuity and providing affordable generational wealth building and home ownership. And also, as a counterpoint to what you said about things being in their nascent stage and when the city invests, We put $3 million toward down payment assistance last year, and it's only now beginning to be deployed. And we also invested $20 million in affordable housing the first year that Mayor Kelly was in office, knowing that that was an important investment. The same with the DPA. And we now have the very first Invest Chattanooga program coming out of the ground. But if we had waited, it's not even coming out of the ground yet, but it's going to come soon. And those were investments that we think are important, right? Absolutely. And what we knew was we had $20 million then. We don't have $20 million today. For sure. So just for thought.

That was an appeal to just timing, not merit.

Okay. Councilman Elliott and then Councilwoman Mill. And then Councilman Dominick.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Did I get it in the right order? No. No?

You can go before me. I don't mind.

Councilwoman Dominick.

Okay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to highlight a couple things from conversations with the CLT. And I appreciate the administration's perspective. So I thank you, Kevin. We do have an executive director. It's temporary. And we do have a posting for a more permanent role. And so there also are plans for us to have at least 25 homes by July of next year.

Wow, great.

So we are looking to scale pretty significantly. And a lot of that work is already in place to move. And I do want to echo some of the things that everyone has said, but particularly, I want to say this, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. And we can provide down payment assistance for our people, and then also make sure they have an affordable home. They can use that down payment assistance, right? And I look at it, when I look at this, It is an exorbitant amount of funds we're putting towards down payment assistance which is needed and I want us to keep supporting it because it can help so many folks. But we also have to be mindful of how we also are lowering the barriers or connecting the dots for people to even get some of those traditional mortgages so they can use that down payment assistance. So that's something we have to be mindful about. To that point, we have allocated $3 million already that has not been exhausted, and these are funds that are going towards something that is looking to have an exponential growth. And understanding how priorities change, financial situations change, if we can solidify this investment now with stipulations that matching funds meet it, we don't have to think about it again. It's a one-time investment that can multiply over years. And we can really show up for people in a special way for Chattanooga. So I appreciate everybody's conversation to this. And we're all just trying to figure out how to best show up for folks in an affordability crisis. But I do support this. And if our down payment assistance program is successful next year, let's put another $3 million towards it, right? Because that's how you really change the lives of folks we're here to represent to change. But I think this is a good step in the right place.

Thank you, Councilman.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair. So and I think it just goes back just echoing the sentiments of Councilman Henderson and Councilman Elliott in regards to the dual path. At the end of the day, it's just another tool there. I think my question surrounded Well, two, because one was brought up. First, messaging is important to me, and it is important to especially the people I serve that I know that are going to be below 80% in some of the conversation, especially when you think about the companies that Councilwoman know. That is what people will think, and they will begin to feel like they're being penalized for being poor, that equity will be taken from them and things like that. So messaging is going to be messaging and education. Mm-hmm. is going to be key because we don't ever want to be seen as a city that's penalizing people for wanting to build wealth. And so that is the first one. The second one is, and I wasn't planning to speak about this, but since, Madam Chair, you brought it up regarding the land bank, I believe the land bank, I don't believe that the land trust should have the first right of refusal. I know that was just a thought. But that it remains a competitive process simply because, you know, is almost forcing the city then turns around and pretty much if they have a first right of refusal, the city is forcing people to be in the land trust. And as mentioned earlier, everybody does not have to participate in that. So if everybody doesn't have to participate, then why would the city give land to the land trust? And pretty much if you want a home, if you own land that the city has, you have to have being a land trust like the builder has to do everybody has to be a part of this process and then becomes a force process and really takes away some of the equity some of the inclusion and that competitive process for other types of builders minority women owned business builders for other organizations to come in and participate so i just wanted to kind of think a little bit more critically about that particular thing because the land bank is for whoever puts in the best bid for that property for that area, and not necessarily for the land trust to come in and take. Because we don't have that. I mean, we have some properties, but it's not a lot of properties. So I think that commits people to being a part of something that they may not want to be part of. Because some people may just be. I know a couple of builders that could get a property from land bank and build it at a really reasonable rate, depending on how many units they put in. density is key in the core of the city is so you have those and then they may be able to build at a affordable rate and then rent it or sell it at an affordable rate so then you have that um but i don't want it to be a sole source for well it's not because they already have 25 houses uh there's some properties the plan oh okay they already have a plan to do that so i just want us to just kind of step back on the land bank piece and just you know, think about what message is that sending. It is sending, you know, the city has property, and if you want it, you have to participate in this program. And that's not necessarily, I don't, that. that kind of excludes a lot of people from participating so that was the only other comment i had about the land bank piece because that um that's just my my i know it's just thought out yes um but other than that i mean generally speaking i do support funding it i think figuring out what level is you know but i think the dual pass councilman henderson i think that was the best way to put it it's a dual path you know it you can take this or you can take that one or you know yeah so yeah Oh, both. That's a big one.

Not both is when we get to really... Yeah, yeah, the both is...

Opening the door to home ownership. Yeah, but again, it goes back to the messaging. If I make $50,000 a year and I can get both, then when I get ready to come out of this and maybe, you know, God's been good, I can make $100,000 a year, was I penalized at the time for... being i don't say poor but penalized at the time for not having money um you know i don't know but that's that's just kind of my thought of it because when i get out here to my neighborhoods i have to explain this that is going to be the first thing that has already been the topic and now i have to figure out how do i explain it from a city perspective of you know how how do i explain this i guess it'll be on the land trust to explain it but i still need to have that understanding and be able to articulate that to the my constituents yeah that makes perfect sense and i think um my my hypothesis would be that the uh the

advisors who've been helping the land trust that grounded solutions think through this have encountered that in a lot of that very question in a lot of places and probably will have guidance um toward that for that long-term communication and stewardship and how might we turn that conversation if you weren't penalized for being poor you had an opportunity to buy a home you wouldn't have been able to buy otherwise And that was an amazing blessing for your family that now will continue to bless you as you take, you know, but anyway, yeah, very, very conversation. Absolutely. Councilwoman Null, Councilman Clark.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Madam Chair. So in a perfect world, $750,000, if you could go through three neighborhoods in this city, and purchase homes that are vacant, or family members that no longer want to stay in the area, and you take and invest in those homes, and you get them up to par, it would definitely be affordable to a whole lot of families. And they would not, I mean, definitely generational wealth. They own the house and the land. and in a neighborhood where they want to be or maybe didn't think they could be. But, hey, I'll give you an example. In my neighborhood, two homes became available. Somebody snatched them up for $100,000 apiece. Those homes were worth every bit, probably $450,000. If we had had a portion of that $750,000 and given it to that neighborhood to purchase that home and put in maybe $30,000 to renovate it, $130,000 home, definitely affordable and definitely generational wealth. And you own the house and the land.

So there is a million dollars in the budget for that kind of rehab already. That was a different HEB allocation that came from the economic development fund. Councilman Clark?

Thank you. councilwoman hill um first of all thank you for this um i think sometimes we wait for people to ask us to do the right thing and when we should just do the right thing because um one i support this in its entirety um secondly i want us to remember the word investment and Because I think there's some things that's getting in the, that's money in the waters about what this proposal is. One, we can do more than one thing, right? Our portfolio, first, I celebrate the mayor's portfolio. It's one of the things that actually makes me excited about some of the things you all do, is your housing portfolio and the options that you have made available for people who will not qualify. I just want to let you guys know, because we like to brag about this down payment assistance program, which I think is great. And I think I raised this point is that that $21,000 for the average median home income in Chattanooga is not a down payment. So when y'all want to do cheerleadings and great down payment program, it's great for who it works for. And that's wonderful for those families who are going to do that. So guess what? If that doesn't work for you, we have other options, right? And this is just another option. It's an investment. Community land trusts are working throughout the country. I think we're behind the wheel on it. The city did apply for the funding and we did not get it. So I know there's a desire for you all to get into the business of land trust development and could not do that i think this is the will to do that to start that investment over a long term period i think it should be more than several fifty thousand dollars because there are people there are people who fall in the gaps that will not apply for the down system of payment program that program will only allow you to live in certain zip codes in our city and some of your zip codes that are gentrified you cannot live there with that program We really want to talk about that. And so I champion this because it does go another layer down of people who are experiencing poverty in this economy. If you guys are familiar with the term allies, the working poor, there are people who work two jobs. Some of them work for our city. Let that linger. Some of them work in our council office who are working poor people who would qualify for a program like this. So We fund a lot of things as an investment. One west side, when the federal dollars fell out of one west side, what did we do?

We shorted out.

Okay. So please, I know we have amnesia sometimes in how we fund things, but not when this helps things. This is just another notch in the belt of the wonderful housing portfolio that the mayor's office, I believe, has established. And I think $750,000 is a wonderful one-time investment. Meaning, yeah, it may be in its infancy stage, but we have put a lot of money in things that were not in this infancy stage and did not get a return on its investment. We just heard a board member of the organization go, hey, we got a goal to do 25 homes. We spend money, and I still don't know a return on investment on some of the money we spend in community development. So I'm excited about this because we can do more than one thing at a time in giving and investing in a program that people are already doing. Like, this is not even new to us. We're actually behind the wheel on helping poor black people get into homes, because they're using it in Indian reservations. Did you guys know that? Land Development Trust. They're doing in Atlanta, places like North Atlanta, and when they sell their homes, because this allows people who don't qualify for assisted down payments to actually enter into the housing market as a starter home. Some of y'all have these multi-million dollars home, and you can borrow your money out of your home. Some of us don't have that opportunity. This program allows us to do that. So you may not own the dirt, which is fine, but if you didn't have a program like this, you wouldn't own the dirt, the mailbox, or the house. This gives you an entry into that, and guess what? You sell it, because hopefully you will level up, and to buy another house in East Brainerd or North Chattanooga. So remember that this is an entry into other tools or options that have not been available to this city. And I know it's an interest to the city because we tried to do it. And again, as I stated when I opened, thank you. Because I don't think we have to be asked to do the right thing. I think we saw an opportunity and did the right thing. So thank you for educating me on what a land development trust is. I got it confused with David Johnson's organization. He explained that to me. And I've explained that to people in my district. And they're just like, well, how do we expand it? Similar to what we're doing with Invest Chattanooga, right? So, but anyway.