County Council - Regular Meeting

All righty. Thank you and welcome back from recess. I guess first thing I'd like to do is verify that we have the most up-to-date numbers from our budget team. So, when you're ready, go team. Um, I do want to make a correction on that paper for the givebacks. Um, the sheriff 129 the 20,000 that can go ahead and come off there.

Remove. You mean remove them? Yes. And that changes the total county general give backs to 244,848. What's the total one more time? 244,848 above,

right? And those are our only new numbers.

All righty. Nothing on this version of the form two has changed. No, not from the end of our last meeting. What is that dated? 918. What did you get when it was 98? I'm showing the Go ahead, Bill. I'm showing the year end balance projected at 6,41,928, right? 6 million 41,000 what?

6,41,928. We were at 6,34,890 and we had prosecutor give back of $7,38. I guess I want to make sure that your number matches up with our budget team number before we proceed.

Can you calculate it that way though? Yes, you can. But it's 6,41 because it was 134. What? It was 134. Yeah. Okay. That my mistake.

Was that million 141 930? We're good. Everybody good with that? What do you mean? Where's the I put that number in the

20? Yeah, you said the ending 2026, right? Bill, what was that? So, what are we saying that number? The 7,000 was a a give back. It was an addition to that 6,141. Is that the ending balance for 26? Yes. The operating balance for the end of 2017. Yes. Not what we started with. No.

Where we were.

Any further clarifications on that? Okay. Yeah. All right. I guess my question was going to be to the budget team and it's also going to include the sheriff's department, the jail part of it. The article that Mr. Hughes sent out said that Delaware County still owed, was it 216 or 61,000? 216 216,000 that the state was going to finally make what immediate payments on for back amounts due. That's what the article said. And I'm trying to find out if that number is included in revenue that you're already accounting for in our revenue form or not.

That should still be coming in that are what already accounted for. Okay. So, it it should already be there. All right. Just wanted to make sure

their immediate and our immediate probably different definitions, but I just I just wanted to clarify that. Sheriff, have you seen that article? Thank you, Nancy. Thank you, Sheriff, for that. Does the ending balance of the 6,141,000 does that include the 500,000 that we are possibly going to reduce our operating balance to or not?

Um, yes. It's based off of the $6 million operating balances. Did all the calculations? Thank you.

You got any clarifications?

Any clarifications? No. I mean, he's showing 141930. They're showing 141,930 over the 6 million operating balance where goal is correct. Right. We don't see that. We see 46390. But that's something we can figure out later. Yeah. All right. The next thing is to open it up to council for other comments, ideas, suggestions that we don't feel like we have covered or made a determination on. Bill, did you have anything you wanted to have council discuss? I do not.

Okay. Anything from that end of the table? Bill's down there by himself right now. I'd move over, but I got too many things.

All right. and open up for any elected officials or department heads that want to say anything before we would possibly approve this budget at our next meeting. All right, telling you turn on your mic. those 300,000 is what we have for the interest money right now.

Make that clarification. So everybody is

all right. So, this has to do with the um ARP interest of the amount of 300,000 that we were all discussing. And um I currently have an email out to state board of accounts um as to as far as just making sure what can and can not be done with that. One thing that cannot be done with that. Um things are looking promising. I don't want to put it out there as this is bad news. It's looking promising. Um, however, the money will not be able to be directly transferred into the county general fund. It can be used, but it won't be used out of the county general fund. So, I just wanted everyone to be aware with your calculations of how that's going to calculate, especially when the girls put in the final numbers, um, that it won't show in that county general.

Okay. So a couple things, right? So you're checking on whether or not that could be transferred to a different fund, i.e. rainy day, right? I have an email. Yeah. Okay. And then I guess the alternative to that is in lie of spending it out of general. If there was an expense line, we could use it for we could apply that 300k to something else. No, it wouldn't be apply. It would just be ha it would have to be expended out of the line that it sits in now like directly spended out of that. Okay. Like a purchase of some sort or whatever. Pay off the voting machines.

Pay off the voting machines. Great point. So, so there's a chance that the final figure minus 300K, right, shows our balance being less, but knowing that that 300k is there plus there is a opportunity that number is going to be higher potentially. Hope so. Okay. All right. So, I mean, I'm, you know, comfortable with proceeding as we have it if you are too. I am as well. Okay. Is that all you had, Tanya?

No. Um Ed was not able to make it back by now. So he asked that I give this proposal that he has came up with for our office as far as an increase goes. And it would be a total of 10,963. Um and that is a 2% increase on the salaries. Is that something you passed out? No.

Oh no. No. And I should have made copies and I'm sorry I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off. So I do have this if you want me to make copies. Um but he has 9,224 gross pay, $76 FICA, $1,33 per P perf for a total of 10,963 and that's at 2%. And that only increases it to the internal base. Internal base. Yep, that's what his note said. His notes wrong.

Okay. Or I could be reading it wrong. The note was supposed to be that we were only increased to the internal base. So that's just an additional I see that our office was only increased to the internal base. So which equaled a 7% increase at that time. Is that time? Yes. Okay. Would you like me to make copies or Yeah. Just let me see it. Comments from council. It would open a can of worms. Oh, absolutely. I believe it would.

I just don't see how we're going to afford to continue to do this. I mean, uh, I think it's been said and pass it on down that way everybody gets a chance to look at it. In previous meetings that if there was a reduction in employees to cover this, that that might be something that we would entertain. However, I'm not in favor of it at this moment.

There's no way to keep sustaining, you know, cutbacks and operating balance cuts to to do this because, as we all know, I'm against against the operating loans. Taxpayer money spent for interest is taxpayer money going to the bank instead of for the benefit of the county. I think he just sees it as a lot have been raised to um external mid which was a larger percentage of an increase to begin with and then also if you take account for the fact that our benefits that was added to our budget this year equaled like $660,000 within our actual you know budget page compared to last year. you know, ours actually went down. Our budget overall went down um based on if those numbers weren't there. So, a lot of our increased amount, I guess you would see in the numbers, is really due to those benefits being added in, not from our other expenses or sellers. And we did we did um not we did not uh what I want to say replace one of our employees um in order to make room for that new position that you guys approved last year in order to try and offset that. and the one we didn't replace was a higher paying position overall um including the longevities and the longevity prorate and etc compared to the one we replaced it with. So I think that's where I think that's where his head's at as far as accounting for uh what he's asking for.

I am uh I mean go ahead other thoughts from council comments

trying to get to the numbers. I mean I'm with everybody else. I I I I feel for what Ed is trying to ask for. I I totally I don't discount it one bit. Um I do think it's um it's a fair ask. I just to your point I don't think I think that precedent's already been set for now and we just have to hold tight. All right. Any other department heads or elected officials? Council feel comfortable with what is now going to be presented to us Tuesday?

Yes. Do we um well I guess we still have chance to prior to adoption of any tweaks that have to be corrected. Yeah. If we come up with something numbers, we can Okay. But uh we haven't come up with anything. But I do want to clarify that we aren't doing the $1,000 raise. That was correct. That was not brought back up to the council. And All righty. then we will recess. And I'd like to jump in. Please go ahead.

Just for a couple quick comments if I could. Um when I got here, I was asked and I think everybody knows that I'm not in favor of reducing our operating balance. Uh and uh the comment was, "Are you glad this is going to be over?" And my comment back was, "It's kind of like watching a movie. Um I'm glad it's over, but I'm not real happy how it ended. And um if I could also make a comment in regards to putting our dilemma here um maybe in in different terms. If we had um if I had a client that came to me and I'm doing all the paperwork, this client has hypothetically has 500 different employees and uh they all do various task obviously in a big company. Um and uh for the last month and a half, two months, we've been talking about revenue and uh projections and uh we finally decided that uh we needed to address this. So the owner comes and and approaches me and says, "So what does it look like for uh next year 2026?" And I said, "Well, I've got some good news and some bad news. And the bad news is it looks like we're going to be uh maybe $650,000 short of our revenue. And um the owner says, "Well, what's the good news?" And I said, "Well, um I've got it all figured out. Um you and your wife or husband um have a retirement plan. uh pretty

significant that you've been able to accumulate through your uh business. And uh the way I'm going to solve that shortfall for next year is I'm just going to go ahead and dip into that. We're just going to take maybe a half a million dollars out of that uh retirement plan and um that'll get us through next year. The owner says, "Well, is that going to cover it?" And I said, "Well, a half a million may not cover it. We may be another 150,000 short. Uh but you've got money in in your retirement to cover that as well. Okay. So, have you made a projection for 2027? Uh yes, I have. And u it looks like we're going to be another million and a half$2 million short um on revenue that year. And uh the owner says, "Well, how you going to pay for that?" And I said, 'Well, if we don't do anything more today than we've done in the past, the old saying is if you keep doing what you're doing, you're going to keep getting what you got. So, my recommendation is that if we're $2 million short in 2027, we just dip back into your retirement account, come up with another $2 million. Well, that doesn't sound good. Oh, yeah. By the way, um you know um I've had a meeting with the um department heads and uh seems like uh while we're on the subject, they all want raises and the owner kind of looks at me and guys are trying to figure things out. And uh so I think the essence of my conversation here is just that I think that's the the road that it looks to me like we're headed on. And I would um exercise or ask the council to really be prudent of the fact that uh 2027 uh budget will be here that we'll have to

deal with next year that not dealing with anything this year I think unfortunately is just going to cause more problems next year. Thank you. Thank you, Jim. Any further comments for councel hearing? None. We'll recess till Tuesday.