City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay. Well, it is 8 o'clock. 8:01 actually for the moment. Or if you're going to use I'm going to pull it up.

Pull it up along line. Very good. uh the council should have the two books and the public has access and uh incredibly valuable to this process. So, thank you Jessica for for uh taking care of this. This is her first f full cycle of of having this role. However, she has just a few years with this experience. I won't belabor that. So essentially what uh the council should be uh very familiar with and the public that has paid attention the last few years uh with the state law changes in property taxes uh we found ourselves strategically looking at a cycle of budgets that are goodyear bad rotations. And with that, uh, we approved, the council approved, uh, the the current year's budget a year ago. Uh, that was a pretty rough budget, considered the bad year, if you will. Uh, those are evennumbered years. Uh, because this is the fiscal year 26 that we're finishing up. The budget in front of us for today is an oddnumbered year, uh, 27, fiscal year 27 that ends next June. And because of that, we have the advantage of what's called revaluation. Property taxes at the assessor's level are all revalued in oddnumbered years. And they developed what those values were back on January 1 of 2025. And given all the delays that occur in the Iowa property tax system, an oddnumbered valuation date drives the budget that also ends in an odd number. It's the easiest way to remember that. So the 25 values are driving the budget we have in front of us, fiscal year 27 numbers, uh because now those are all

official uh with the exception of just a few values that are still being disputed in in uh court systems. Um, so for the most part, we're we're pretty solid on knowing what those numbers are, and that's what brings us to you today. Uh, as far as process goes, um, I'll let Nick, um, I'm going to add one more thing to your your list, Nick. Um, if you could also, uh, find time in possibly even later in the morning, um, remind us all of the schedule. Sure.

Uh, as well. But I also had a request uh just yesterday to spend a little time uh with with the budget books themselves because some of you are not as familiar with how these books are arranged and I thought that might actually be helpful too uh to see the different categories in there. Uh but one last thing and I'll be done is that again the letter summarizes the high points. This this uh is even though it's the better year of the rotation, uh it actually still required uh some cuts. Uh most of which is due to the fact that we needed to utilize about $2.5 million, a little more uh for the current year. Uh we had to use fund balance to to solve uh the the past cycle. We wanted to eliminate that in this cycle and make sure we truly hit the reset button and said let's make sure we have a balanced budget for 27 in the good year that we've got if you want to term it that and uh eliminate the need to use any fund balance in this budget and we we've got there. Um and so in doing that we had to cut back a little bit and those items are are listed here. There are um several positions about 13 that we that needed to eliminate. Um and uh only three of those it turned out were uh actually in uh being held if you will uh current employees and we did have just those three layoffs in this cycle. So I think that's probably enough at this point. I will jump in throughout the day uh and and let Nick and and Jessica have the the heavy lift.

Did the three Mhm. switch into a different job or they they they're

though it ended up being uh three that did not switch in. There is uh an opportunity for one of the three uh to potentially pick up a job in the next few weeks uh because there are other vacancies in the same area. Um but unfortunately two of the three are going to be really hard. There won't be there aren't any vacancies today that directly correlate with a similar job. Uh and understand that as a layoff they have that opportunity of another vacancy of similar jobs that they're qualified for. They can so I would anticipate one of the three having that opportunity but the other two do not. and they're all informed. Um that that has been t that part of it has been taken care of as as is typical with the budget process. So again, we have uh category by category throughout the day that we'll go through. Um this is meant to be informal. This is the first step. This is my recommended budget. Uh it is not unusual to make some tweaks between now and the April approval dates. So, Nick, I'd say take it away and we'll go from there.

Thanks. Um, as Scott alluded to, uh, honorable mayor and council members, uh, Nick Shaw, finance director, uh, here at the city. Um, what I'm going to cover for you first is kind of talking about the layout of the two different books that we have uh, that we

I have a lapel one. Is it still not working? Trying to make it closer. My ear. Oh, the beard. Probably would work on the beard. Um uh so we we break it out in two different books. So what we refer to as the operating budget um and the capital projects, the capital program. Um, and so what you can actually see here, I have uh both of them up, but I'm first going to talk about uh the recommended operating budget. So the way we try and break it out in um for the numbers here, uh we kind of have a table of contents obviously, but we kind of focus more on by department. Um and then each of the departments might have uh multiple types of funds. So as as we kind of go through this uh discussion, we have multiple types of funds that we have. We've got the general fund which is the primary operating fund for the city. Um that's our general fund and uh that's where you get more of the traditional uh you know city clerk, city manager, uh community impact relations, police, fire, finance, it all of those uh uh essential uh processes or administrative services as well as like parks and PD and fire as well goes out of the general fund. Now there is some activity uh within each department that might hit other departments. So one that is heavily a different department is actually the public works department. They have our enterprise funds. So those are the ones that are running like a business. So the user fees are put in place to be able to cover those costs um to provide that service. So those are our sanitary sewer, our storm water, our solid waste, our parking funds. Um and then we also

have special revenue. Those are ones that um basically have the the uh a very specific thing that it can be spent on. And so good examples of that is a a special revenue source like road use tax, local option sales tax, uh CDBG, home. Those are very specific regulated funds that come into the city and have to be spent for specific reasons. So sometimes you'll see like uh for the finance department we kind of oversee what's going on in the local option sales tax whereas the um road use tax is something that's under public works and a little bit under engineering as well. So that's kind of what we try to do is lay it out by department because that's more functional um in the layout for knowing what kind of things fall through. Um, and so in the front we kind of have the budget summary where we give you all of the operating expenses uh by fund type. Yeah, we can. So it shows the each revenue type. So this sums up all the different types of funds. Um, so special revenue, general, enterprise, debt service, internal service. We have a reserve general fund. Um those are kind of specific um unique items that we don't want to have within the general fund because we want to be able to carry those balances specifically for purpose. Um it's kind of like a hybrid almost of a special revenue and general fund. So um and then uh kind of our trust and agency type stuff. So the special assessment and exp uh uh expendable trust items. So then we also go into um the general fund specifically and break it out by uh department. So what we tried to do here with the layout is

give you a fiscal year of actuals um and then what was adopted in the current fiscal year we're in and what were uh the recommended amendment for 426 and then the recommended 27. So it kind of gives you a look of one year of actuals um the two different approaches uh or time uh points in time. So the adopted 26 was what was done last year at the be uh beginning of April for approval. And then this is an amendment to kind of to keep it more in line with what actually happened through the the timing of events as we go through as well as um and it'll become more apparent when we actually get to the capital improvement program. Um but also carry forwards of of items that um didn't get expended in the prior fiscal year and has to get carried over into the the current fiscal year. So things that were appropriated in 25 that needed to be spent in 26. Um and then 27 is our recommended budget for the fiscal year starting in July. So as you kind of go through, we've got a summary of all the different uh funds or fund types and the different activity that's in there. And I'm going to kind of scroll down to um sorry Laura, we're going to we're going to cover yours because you're the first one um in the book. So as you look at when we actually get to a department, it kind of goes through the activity that department has. So you have the different specific revenues that they um uh that they have coming in uh and then the expenditures that that are associated with that department. Um you can also see that there's a line that's called subsidy. So what that

actually is is that's the um that's the point at which obviously the revenues don't cover uh the expenditures in that area and then that's where you know a place where like finance has the overarching uh revenue coming into the city. So then that creates that um uh funding to be able to cover the subsidies and all the different departments. So property taxes being the biggest one and some of the transfers in and stuff like that. So then we also break down uh with the largest expense uh in the general fund as being uh personnel services uh then we also break out the FTEES um in those areas as well. So you can kind of see as we break out each of uh this is broke out by uh what we refer to as the org. Um, so it's a different tracking mechanism for uh each department to be able to determine different things that have to be tracked uh throughout the year and reported on. So this is the administration of the clerk's office. So it kind of gives you just the additional information kind of breaks it out on the type of revenue that's coming in and the type of expense that's uh going out as well. So each of these sheets kind of compile uh in total to kind of show you from those sides what that actually looks like um from a department to department. Uh going into the um recommended capital improvement plan or program uh for 2027. It is a five-year plan. And so when you look at uh the five-year plan, it is uh the um amended 26 uh the recommended 27 and then the three-year three-year uh forecast for

28, 29, and 30. So the 26 and 27 are our firm on kind of what we have anticipated for expenses. Uh the variable that we have there with 26 is uh kind of what I alluded to before is that carryover especially when you're talking about construction. Uh the construction season is more calendar basis versus um uh versus the fiscal year. And so with a June 30 fiscal year end uh the 26 has to have that carryover from a prior fiscal year and then have the expenses for the next construction season. So you'll see kind of almost like a construction and a half so that just in case the projects do go forward uh early enough within the construction season, we have the spending authority to be able to do these projects. But what ends up happening is is you kind of have that carry forward from from the prior year into that next year to have that uh spending appropriation um set up uh for that next year. So that's kind of why you'll see that drastic difference. And we've got a slide kind of showing that from actuals versus kind of the the budgetary plan. We break it up in a couple different categories. Uh bridge. So we've got tax supported and enterprise. So you can kind of see the bridge, fire, library, miscellaneous municipal buildings, and parks and wreck and streets are the taxup supported. The ones that are specifically enterprise funds are the parking, sanitary sewer, and storm. So, you can kind of see that when we actually go to present that, you'll see them broken up in that way. And what we try to do uh within the uh within the capital improvement plan is try to give you a bunch of different reports um for this so you can kind of see it in a bunch of different ways. uh the projects um projects by uh

department is showing you what the expenses are for those projects um entirely both the expenditures as well as the like transfers out. So you might have citywide bridges um that has funds in there that might get transferred to like let's say Walnut Street to cover some of those costs. So that would actually kind of show uh a an expenditure there uh even though it's basically just transferring funds from one one to another. So we try to uh give you enough information a couple different ways uh within the capital improvement plan and we also go into uh the revenues which is is very helpful. Um let me get down to the revenues. The revenues do show kind of what funds are being used. So you can kind of see the different sources or revenue um and how uh how they uh break out by funding uh over over the full uh capital improvement plan. Um but as you go into some of the details, you can actually see what's being funded by that particular pro that what projects is being funded by that funding source. So, uh, the ARPA funds that we have, uh, the last piece within, uh, within this capital improvement plan is actually Hamilton drain having funding, uh, for that capital project. So, you can kind of see what projects are being funded by, uh, let's say some work that we're doing that, uh, De Mo Waterworks funds as well. So, we have got that detail uh, within that program. But after all of the nice reports summarizing the same kind of same information a couple different ways, uh they do go into uh the very uh specific project uh sheet. So it kind of gives you the

total cost per project where it falls under the department uh the category useful life uh and it kind of gives a description and a justification. It shows you the different uh types of expenses whether it's construction and maintenance or it might be design or planning. Uh but then we also break out those funding sources. So the beginning balance is that carry forward that you can kind of see from project to project how much is actually um being carryovered for for that particular project. So for this one you can kind of see that there's $2 million of anticipated expense. 1.2 2 of it is actually a carryover in that scenario. So, any questions on the books themselves. Okay. I know they're nice large books to read uh a lot of information. Um I kind of tend to um has a lot of numbers and a lot of thing to a lot of things to get through. Um, we do have quite a few um slides to get through. So, I'll I'll make my way over to the other other table so we can kind of get through some of this. But, uh, like Scott said, this is our recommended budget. Uh, and we've got several different topics that we're going to go through today. So,

as Nick is doing that, I'll make you aware of the extra handout that you have. uh comms has done a great job of simplifying some of this information that we're going to hear about today in uh a little more uh illustrative formats and I don't want to bury the headline later in the day. I I failed to mentioned that with this budget as you're aware but the public needs to be aware there is not a proposed change to the total tax rate uh for 27. want to make sure that everyone understands that we we uh were able to make the cuts we needed to make uh to fit within the same tax rate for 27 that we've had for several years now. Back to Nick.

And just a question, Nick. Um so our comments or questions from the books, is there a due date when you need to see those? Um, I think it depends on if you're referring to more of the questions on numbers or like edits for kind of a final document. So, I would say that there's less of a deadline for the, you know, uh, the grammar related edits. That one's a little bit less. That can be after the budget approval. Uh but anything that relates to the numbers or or any of the specific questions on what's what's actually within the budget, uh that would be something that we would want to um address throughout the course of uh through throughout the course of the the budget process. So uh I'll kind of go into the schedule uh because I think it makes sense right now with that question. So, what we have uh for council action that we have to do with the budget is on February 23rd, you guys will have a set public hearing for a property tax levy. So, what that does is it is a um uh setting the we'll say ceiling of what we're asking for for property taxes. And so that's one where we have to have a special hearing uh for just that. Um there's no action that needs to take place, but it is one where we'll have a public hearing. It has to be at a meeting uh completely by itself. And so what you'll have on February 23rd is actually an approval of set hearing for March 23rd. What that does is it allows us to get that information to Poke County by March 3rd and that goes onto their transparency report that goes out to all property owners. So that's due to them before March 3rd or March

5th, sorry. Uh and then uh you cannot have the hearing anytime after March 20th. So our hearing is going to be in the morning of March 23rd, similar to to what we've done in the past couple years. Uh so in the morning we'll have that hearing so that we can have it separate from a specific uh um council meeting and it it will have be on its own item um that morning. Um and so what that is actually doing is setting that ceiling for how much can be um requested or levied within the property taxes. So that's kind of the first hurdle. Now, if if throughout the budget process uh it is determined to decrease that, that can happen after that point, you're just creating that ceiling. Um later that day on March 23rd, you'll be setting the hearing for the actual budget. So, March 20 uh 23rd at uh at our 5:00 time frame, the regular meeting, we will be doing a set hearing for for budget items. So, that is going to be set for April 7th. And so what you do from that set hearing is actually show the revenues and expenses of the different funds and you have to stay within those functional areas. So you can't go above those expenses. You're creating basically another ceiling not just for the revenue. You're actually creating a ceiling for the expenditures on those state forms. So from there that's what creates that. So there is possibilities to make changes all the way through that. But what finance does is as you guys work with uh city manager and and and through this process that allows us to make alterations. So as we um put together the book and produce that um there's things that we find out don't don't quite match because as you put the information into the state form you

might find out that maybe a transfers in don't don't match transfers out. So when that happens then we'll have different changes frunk functionally that we have to do. Um and so we will be doing that and we summarize those changes uh and you have that as a um kind of a amendment uh addendum to the blue letter uh that kind of tells you all the different things that changed from the book that got produced to the budget that's actually in front of you for approval on on uh April 6th. So, so throughout that time frame, I think you would work with uh through with Scott to make sure all those questions are being addressed. I don't the sooner the better is what I'm going to say is the more we can get that

in mid-March we have absolutely have to have any changes and then the edits uh especially the grammatical stuff can can go all the way through to the 1st of April. Yeah. or excuse me, even a week after is fine because we will print the final budget books with approval with after approval um at that point. So, so mid-Marchch if we had a particular question on the CIP like uh and on occasion we've juggled things the the year that it was because of some other priority. But

uh capital projects are a little bit easier in that regard because what we're actually doing with the state approval is only related to fiscal year 26 and 27. So if things are moving around, especially in the 28, 29, and 30, that's really just the capital improvement plan that's all being altered. Yeah. As long as within the dollars we have, we have a flexibility

and doesn't affect like let's say if you if if um if you're moving around different years, it might affect like if it's a tax supported project, uh we might have to look at our modeling for the the the debt service. So, like let's say there's something that's in fiscal year 28 and you want to move it to 27. Well, that would affect 27 would be hard to do. But if you went from like 29 to to 28, that would be one where we would have to look at what that actually does for needing funding to be able to to pay off that debt. So, so Nick, real quick, and I know that we kind of glossed over this, but I think there's some really good important information that people at home aren't able to see. Um, as I said to Scott, I mean, I'm shocked that a ladder truck is almost doubled in price

from 2018. Um, you know, that's 62% of our budget is public safety. and to show these increases. I think it's important um that everyone sees that at home that the challenges that we really are going to be facing because those costs don't go away for us. I mean those are those are essential costs that we are going to have to fund and that means if things like that are going to double either revenue has to increase significantly shift or things will have to be cut and that's that's shorter ladders. Yeah, that's a challenge. Um that

I I just think it's important right there on the right side where you've you've listed that out just to kind of gloss over it. I I that's a really important sheet that you've got there that is going to depend. I mean that's we have to prioritize and there's a there's a good upfront cost right there of what we're going to have to what our challenges are going to be going forward cuz I don't think those costs are coming down are they?

No. In that particular instance for the public and the council, uh the market and private providers of services to government, in this case ladder trucks that actually build them, has shrunk significantly. There are, it's my understanding, there's really only two companies out there that do that amount of work in that area. So yeah, and but it's not alone, right? there are a lot of uh businesses that are frankly doing less and less business with local governments and because of that the prices have gone up. So again uh shout out to comms for putting this together along with finance.

Yeah, really good really good information in there and easy to understand. I I think that if not that that should be on our website if it's not already. Yep, it will be. It will be. It was one that we just produced yesterday I think. Okay. Well, they did a good job. Really good job. Comm's did and now it's on the record with today's meeting as well. So, thank you. You bet.

Speaking of prioritization, so what one of the things that happens here and we're getting a a presentation of essentially the end outcome of the manager's prioritization. And in the time I've been doing this, one of the things that I struggle with and that I would certainly like to to see and figure out how we as council get I know there's a whole process where departments submit projects and and other pieces priorities to the manager but I don't recall ever seeing that as a council member and when we are making prioritization like that that's understanding what the requests are and what the range of options are would be helpful in being able to say, "Hey, we agree with the manager's recommendation. We'd make the same prioritization decisions or or to when we were trying to make difficult decisions, have a little more information about what what is what is out what we could potentially be doing." So, I I'd like to figure out a way to get to be able to see some of what the departments submit to the city managers as part of this budget process. Uh, and and I know a lot of work goes into that, but I it I feel like those documents are there somewhere and should be able to be shared with council for review.

Yeah. So the best way to handle this may council I totally appreciate that and that is not the first time that comment's brought up right and so that is why yeah that is why we added process this year uh all the departments that face outward and provide uh services to our community directly uh came to the council and presented their departmental services you may recall over the last 6 months and I want to I appreciate that you brought that up because I want to reference reference that to the public as well because those were recorded. Uh those are the first one of the very first things uh I talk about and I know the departments talk about with new council members as they come on is a great starting point to understand what is it from a service level that each of our departments are doing uh for our for our residents. So that I would consider that the base information right of what is it that our our uh departments are are doing uh providing services and and then it then it becomes a question of you know uh getting down into the nitty-gritty and I would I would tell you that the important aspect there for council is to make sure that you are uh building relationships with the department directors directly. I think you all know that my form of of uh leadership is to make sure that uh those relationships are strong directly from elected official to the department uh directors because they are the subject matter experts in their areas. I'm not going to be able to answer all your questions in in regard to those departments. Uh so that's pretty critical because they will always be the best communicator of whether or not their priorities are being resourced because that's what this today's conversation is really about.

Are we providing we as and those up here providing enough resources for our department directors to provide the services that they want to. And so that's always going to be your best opportunity. Um, in all frankness, I'm not going to be able to call up the council members every time there's an idea that's brought forward, right? That would be having all of you spend 70 hours a week in our office thinking about talking about potential potential changes. So if if there is a concern about a service level uh with a department, you they are very welcome to speak about those with you. I encourage them uh to to let you guys know when something's not being taken care of.

Just to follow up on that, I think that's is certainly fair and I think you have to there has to be some management of the information that we take in uh to make the system functional. However, I think to council member Mandel's point, you know, what we're going to be talking about for the next several years is are cuts to services and cuts to and cuts to construction. Um, and the public's going to get used to that conversation, maybe even too used to that conversation. And what we're not able to talk about are the areas where we cannot grow. The areas where we where we where our subject matter experts that are running these departments are saying these are things that we could be doing. This is what it would take to do this. And so I think we would be better advocates in our community if we could talk not just about what's being lost but also what we cannot move or advance or do differently. I think that and you know I'm fine. I think as I think I've observed my council colleagues the last month and a half in doing this job very fine having those conversations with individual department directors. However, I think just as you're aggregating information to bring to us so that we have, you know, kind of unified pieces of information that we can all work from that are the same information. It might be wise to to work into something. Hey, here's here are what the requests were. Here are the topline requests. here are three or four things that each each department were seeking because, you know, just looking at the um when Nick was up here, you know, just showing the budget books just in general fund dollars, the um police and fire increase by about $5.5 million. Every other part of the general fund uh expenditures is reduced.

I would like to be able to put more context behind what could have been done as I'm considering all of these things if I understood what those other departments were asking for. So we can I I we can incorporate aspects of that within the budget the next the very next budget cycle that talks through the cuts that are going to be necessary. Um, so yeah, the the intent and and we have some time set aside later today yet to talk about what the future looks like and how the process will need to change based on the magnitude of the cuts we're going to need to make moving forward. But that's not necessary. Although we we can add additional conversations and meetings if if there's a particular aspect to it you want to get it squeeze in for 27 but the numbers aren't forcing that issue at this moment. I I would uh appeal to you that the best conversation about what we're not able to do and wish we could should be taken in context with what we can afford and holistically what is it going to cost to even maintain what we're doing today and have done for years. That's going to be I'm kind of stealing my own thunder from later today. How we're going to lay it out very differently moving forward uh to make sure uh all of council and the public understand what our gaps look like financially and then work our service levels into that amount. Uh and that will that will have and we've already put this in the process allow for the opportunity for requests to add. We we understand uh changing uh community changing needs of our residents

does not mean everything has to be cut and in fact priorities develop over time that require ads at the same time we're cutting. Right? It's just at the end of the day, we need to make sure they're balanced. And so, again, we are already we we've already laid out what that process is going to be, and I'm going to spend some time on that later this afternoon. But I don't want to confuse the public too much, right? The 27 budget we have in front of us is balanced, and it is very much a status quo. I have no problems with comments coming up that we're still missing the opportunity to do something new. That's fair. Um, but we will have a very much different 28 cycle uh that we'll jump into after this. That's fair.

Scott, what I'm hearing is uh the departmental reviews that we had in our workshops, while we're not changing or modifying too much um on the expenditure side, those meetings are going to become more important as time goes by. Not just a pat on the back or tell us what you're doing, but what are the options? To council member Mandelbomb's point, I did not view those conversations as being an opportunity to hear what are they thinking about for future years as to how to keep the expenses down and what the options are.

And that is the intent to add that. it. And just to be clear, so you're giving us it, it would not be out of line to for me to go and sit down with the department director and ask what did you submit to the city manager's office? What are the things that you're hoping you were hoping to do? How did you prioritize these internally? Those are all appropriate conversations. Well, let's if mayor, if you wouldn't mind, we maybe need to have a separate conversation.

Why don't we have a separate conversation on this? Because it's very okay, you go talk to somebody, you go talk to somebody, I go talk to somebody, you go and we're all going at different times and we all have a priority. And then this is his recommendation. So, you might say, well, I heard from this person that they want this, and I you it could get very confusing. Yeah. And it and I'm not saying you can't ask but I'm just saying I think we have to understand what our role is too as to how we assimilate the information. We had the meetings and they can get more defined by the department heads, but you can't have seven people all, you know, we've got to figure out how to get it together and that's the budget recommendation and this is our opportunity to say we heard this, we want to change this, this is our opportunity to do that and we can do it along too when we were having our other meetings. I think you have to be somewhat careful,

right? what granual I mean I can clarify if I could just real quick it's absolutely okay to ask department department directors where do you see your service level needing to grow okay how would you envision your service levels needing to grow what are you hearing from the public okay when it when the request gets to what discussions are you having with the manager and what documents those all then become public documents if it gets shared with council. Aren't they public documents anyway? I mean, they're not created. Not if they're drafting documents and and of that sort. So, there are opportunities.

Yes. I I guess the the piece that I'm trying to to get to is I don't I don't always understand the range of options that are presented to the manager because my understanding from talking with departments is that they submit they submit budget requests to the city manager's office and we don't we don't know exactly what they've submitted or requested. we know what comes out and there are decisions layered under that, right? They're they're necessarily items that were prioritized in making this recommendation. And what what I want to be able to the the layer I want to be able to peel back is to understand what the decision points were that went into the budget because those would be the natural places for I I might raise something completely different but the most natural place to play around would be okay the manager made a decision between A and B. Do I agree with that A and B

rather than introduce that will not occur introducing item C into this? That's that is the level you've crossed over and you're acting as a city manager at that point. So the role of council that that is too far that is too deep.

Well, I think that that goes back to so you every department had I would say would give whatever they could because I don't know of anybody that says I want to get a cut. So then it becomes are we micromanaging down to the level of what their wants are versus and again it's seven people doing I think when we have the department managing when they come and give their presentation we can have more thorough discussion to I think what councilman Simon said when they're coming to present uh options are I mean that's where we have we could have seven different opinions on which the options are. So, if we're going to go for every department on every option that's been brought forward, I think it get pretty complicated. Uh, I'll open it up. But I

And am I not correct? You've met with every department manager. There's been compromise made. They know exactly what the recommended budget is. They've said, "Okay, this is what it is. We we're we're okay with all this." I mean, and I'm sure that there were some discussions where somebody said, "Hey, I, you know, this is really, really important to the department. We need it." I'm sure there's been some compromise there, but at the end of the day, every department head has looked at this and has said, "This is this is okay." Well, and I think the status quo of service level that we're going to provide on this uh budget and no tax increase. Um I I I can see where okay this budget but now the next budget where we're going to have to sit down uh as Councilman Simson said those are the important conversations that publicly we're going to have to have together as a council and together with the departments and with our constituents. What is going to be their priority? What do they want to see from our city? because it's not going to be status quo what we what we're doing this year. Um if things continue like they are at the state house and they're not doing us any favors by their property tax reform as we all know what it's going to do is it's going to kill our service level and um and and that's that's a reality that we're all going to have to face. But we're going to face that together with the department heads. this budget is is the same and that will start confusing people. We start dragging things out and okay, what are we going to do? Cut this or that. I mean that I like that this budgets that way. But going forward, I agree that we will be part of those conversations.

But I think the conversation you're bringing up is not just about this year, next year, whatever. You want to be involved. Do you want every idea, every thing brought forward to the council or to you or to is that what you're asking? I'm just want to make sure that on the financial. So if park and wreck, they want uh all the different options. So you want to know all those options and then which the manager peeled back and didn't recommend.

I want to understand what the tradeoffs are better. e even in a status quo budget, there are tradeoffs that are made to to get to that point. And and I I know there are those types of conversations. I can suggest tradeoffs. I mean, I I suggest that we all suggest our own things that we want to see funded, but we have incomplete information and often times what I mean, when we raise ideas, we're told we can't do that. With a better understanding of the trade-offs and and the the thought that goes into the actual recommendation, like we can do a better job on the accountability. we can do a better job on making our recommendations in ways that that are are maybe apt to be able to work but we need to understand that

we will have a separate conversation on this I think because that gets into another realm and we as a council have to come in agreement to what is the information we need and what is the level and that will be a council decision not one or two of us but a full counsel

and just real quick to try and work us towards a positive place before we move on that can come through the city manager's office. the same manager can say listen here are things that we wanted to do but we were not able to do in terms of like because what I want to respect is there's there's there's an appropriate level of governance and and I have reservations with the the manager's guidance of saying listen you can have any conversation you want to have with any department director because that can lead to what you're saying mayor

I think to to get what council member Mandelbomb is saying and that I agree with is let's let's as part of this process be like okay here are good ideas that we that that were brought forward from departments that we're not able to fund so that we have a better understanding not just of what is is or is not in here relative to prior years and relative to what is reflected in prior budget books but also what other what could have been in there so that we can better I think we I think that just makes us better advocates honestly I don't think it's it's a it takes us to the level that we're not supposed to be

well I think that's why we needed a conversation as the council as to what the level cuz your level might be different than your level and so we need to get to an understanding of what expectations are and what level we need to be at to make decisions for it so we can have that in a future discussion.

Well, I I think it's difficult for staff. I mean, me doing this for 12 years, if I go, I'm going to be lobbying for things in Ward 4 to my to to staff, and I'm going to push them to do the things that I want for the people that I represent. Councilman Mandabal's going to do the same. Councilman Baron's going to do the same. We're going to advocate. That's our job for Ward 4 residents. So when I go sit down with whether it be engineering, I want this road completed, I want this done, you know th those are what what did we trade off? You know, um there's a lot of competing forces with lack of

it's difficult with my priorities for for me is going to be different than yours because I'm a I'm the advocate for Ward 4. So, if I go sit down with a department head, that's that's that's what I'm going to try to do is is get money funneled toward four. Um even though it might be more needed in W three.

Exactly. So, um, that typically when we've been allowed to go scatter and start messing with department heads and get them moving on different things without the entire council knowing, we have ran into problems doing that over the years. I've I've watched that and and so I think that that you can make the request. Yeah, sure. That's not the problem. It's then letting the rest of the council know is what I'm hearing that those requests are out there so we can we can add process to that. Yeah. Right. I mean it's not just one person asking or whatever then it needs to be shared. Yeah.

So and we can have more conversation as to what depth and how we want to structure going forward.

Our first topic is storm water enterprise. As I go through this, uh, feel free to ask questions. Um, like I said before, we have got different types of funds. So, storm water utility is actually one of our enterprise funds. Um, as you look at this, this is kind of the breakout of what uh the storm water does uh maintaining uh almost 600 miles of storm sewer. uh they also manage the street cleaning and also uh levy mowing and inspections. We also have 35 pump stations as well. So when you look at that we they do a wide variety of things within the storm water utility. Um to kind of put it in perspective the street cleaning um that's twothirds the circumference of the earth. So I mean from that from that perspective they actually do a lot of street cleaning across the across the city. As we look at uh the stormwater overview, um the rates are based off of the eru or equivalent residential unit. And so it's based off of the imperous areas of a property. So roof, patio, driveway, um is the determinating the determining factor of what that rate is going to be based off of. So the uh one eru is a is is a little bit over uh 2,300 um uh square feet. So from that perspective, you depending on the size of the house or size of the business um that is where that rate is applied to is what what equivalent eru do you have. Um compliance with federal state law regulations on flood prevention is also within this. So, one thing that we'll get into when we're looking at our capital program is uh a large investment that we're seeing in the flood prevention piece with our levy levies

across uh with the rivers we have. So, um flood uh flood management and water quality improvements uh planning and design of the construction projects that I kind of alluded to as well as a lot of public education. So when we look at uh the storm water utility personnel um this is one where our sewers department is actually a um allocation between sanitary sewer and storm water utility. The combined uh personnel is uh 121.8 and so this is the portion uh that is charged to the storm water utility uh broken out in those different areas. Um, and again, it's a full-time equivalent. There isn't fractional people. So when looking at the operating revenue uh from services uh you can kind of see here uh with storm water we have been uh doing a lot of uh work within the operating of the storm water focusing on a lot of um uh a lot of work that kind of has had that that rate the rate increase on this for additional work that they're doing um with like the separation projects that uh made additional uh storm water uh linear feet that we've have within the system. And so uh you can kind of see that upward trend. Also there is some uh unique revenues in there uh from like interest uh interest revenue. So some of the interest that we've received in the past is based off the cash pulled funds as you you guys see on a quarterly basis. uh the treasur's report kind of showing our investments uh on our pulled and non-pulled funds. So what we do in the amended and recommended is we actually look at where we see interest rates

going and the fact that we've been kind of spending down the cash the cash that we have um and being able to kind of not depend on like an interest rate in if there's a a big fluctuation on interest rates going up or down. If it goes down then you know we don't want to rely on the interest income. So you can kind of see why it kind of goes down. There's some other, you know, land sales and different things like that that kind of uh you don't necessarily plan for those for the actual operations of the revenue. When we look at the recommended budget for uh 27, it's kind of broken out into four specific areas. Uh you've got cash for storm water capital projects. So that's the amount of cash that they're actually putting towards uh projects that we'll kind of get into in more indepth on what projects we're seeing. Um there's the debt payments. So we have revenue debt um that is paid for solely by the storm water utility rates. Um and so that equates to about 26% of principal interest interest that we pay. Uh then there's the operating piece of of storm water and then the pilot ROI. So pilot is a payment in lie of tax or or return and return on investment type stuff. So from that that is um the assets that that uh uh enterprise has has pays basically an equivalent um uh tax for the police and fire services uh being able to respond to those areas if they need issu if there's issues there. So it's kind of that plus the return on investment is a discussion of the initial investment that those enterprise funds had that was a part of the general fund because as the as a city grows they actually break out of it being in the in the general fund and off on its enterprise. So originally they started

off that way and so it's kind of a a fee for uh the different work that we do uh in the general fund that that supports that uh enterprise fund. Wait. So, let me make sure I under understand this because I So, we are paying a pilot out of that fund. Correct. So, part of when when the storm water fees on your utility bill, a portion of that then is going towards police and fire to cover police and fire expense so that we keep those facilities safe. So, it is coming out of that. Yes. It's as if it was running as a business. Yep. Okay. Yep.

And then part of that is the use of the the rideway. Y So our utilities are using part of the rideway as well. So that's the basis kind of on the ROI piece because technically they're um from from the original uh rideway that was uh purchased usually through general uh general obligation bonds and we actually would purchase and put in streets and add the utilities. Traditionally that has been something that was funded through tax supported and so this ROI is kind of of kind of that recognition of that. Got it. But we don't on the for example on the rightway like we don't collect any rightaway payments from you know state law doesn't allow it

right but but but we're covering the costs and then we're eating the costs for those private sector the metronet the Google fiber which which by the way there's been significant amount of significant disruption and and even just managing that from an engineering perspective to make sure that the right of way is restored to the condition it was in previously. We're having to spend a significant amount just to just to respond there. So we also wanted to kind of show you some historical on the expenditure side. So as you can kind of see um the operations is the dark blue at the bottom that's kind of been a gradual increase. Um you can kind of see the variation uh the biggest variation you can see there is actually the green which is the transfer to CIP or that cash for um storm water projects. Now that could be specific storm water projects or a project like a streets project that's being funded partially by storm water utility as well. So it it kind of is both. That's why we kind of uh summarize it in that way. uh we also kind of break out some of spec some of the other specifics here of you know equipment purchases or other charges. So but when you look at the uh operations budget so that percentage that we originally showed um of that breakout of operations being 35% if you look at um breaking that out what does that entail? So you kind of see the largest percentage there is personnel services. So that's the salary and benefits. Um some of the um the uh you've got equipment purchases broken out there. Uh workers comp, other charges, indirect cost allocation, and contractual services. The other is the other big one that we have there. Commodities is just the use of supplies.

So that's kind of the breakout of what it costs to operate the storm water utility. kind of going into some of the stormwater CIP projects. So, shifting from operations to specifically the capital program. Um, you can kind of see some of the like the citywide project uh utility projects are are kind of minor projects that are all across the city. Um, then you've got the citywide master plan projects. So, this is one where we went through that the uh task of going through the uh study. It took multiple years to go through that and it gave kind of a template of how to score projects and determine the priority. Um, and so we already have some of those lined up and and plan and we'll kind of get that further. And some of the other projects that we have in there like Hamilton Drain, Closest Creek, uh, flood mitigation, uh, Jackson Basin, Crawford Creek, all of those are specific projects that have been broken out and we've been working on those as well. So, this kind of gives you an idea of where some of that work is being done. across the city. But is it almost completed um on the on the north on the northwest side of town there with the go back one more

closest street close yeah Hamilton and and closes are we close um yes Hamilton almost complete the close out for those right now I think construction's complete on both those okay there's more to do on Closest Creek is there not there are future phases on street creek which are not currently in the capital 5-year capital program. Those are being evaluated as we work through the rest of the stormwater master plan programs and those will be programmed in down the road. Okay. Thank you. As long as we're talking about storm water projects, uh is there a target date to get the George Flag Parkway um

the floodgate done? Floodgate done. Is there a just um Steve might know um I think it ran into problems. Yeah. Sorry. Council, honorable mayor. Yes, the George flag lively closure has had an extension on it. I believe it's going to be completed by May. It was supposed to be done by the end of last year. They ran into some un unforeseen conditions underground, so they couldn't do the the cut off walls the way they needed to. So, they had to come in and do it a different way. So, it's extended the remainder of that project. So, that will be done here in the next couple of months. Uh, early or late May. Just some timing with some concerts and such. Let's say late May.

I'm probably going to say late May if you're going to ask me that. So, yeah. Well, now let's see. Who are you now? Sorry. I'm Patrick Bean. Oh, and previously public works director today. Congratulations. Congratul. Is this your first day on the job? Number one. It is. Oh, welcome to the new world. It's still helpless. Yeah, I don't know if everybody picked up uh Patrick was named as our he will be running that division. So, congratulations.

Um, looking at the capital program, all the different funding sources for this storm water improvement specific. Uh you can kind of see like I said the the only uh ARPA funds specific into the project is uh in in here as well as you can kind of see the future dollars that we have coming in is primarily from the storm water utility itself. Um as well as uh what's called the sales tax increment fund. And so those are uh uh state uh funds that we were granted I want to say a while ago. So it's it 13. So, um, and it comes, uh, it'll be coming for a long period of time. It actually is going into the flood mitigation program to kind of do work, uh, within the levy and any of the flood mitigation uh, projects that we had applied for uh, from the state. So, as we look at the storm water projects specifically by year, uh you can kind of see a lot of the ones that we're working on uh today uh are those specific creeks that we're trying to wrap up within this current uh count uh fiscal year that we have. Um going forward, the way that it's going to work is the citywide stormwater master plan program has um uh that process that as projects are starting to come uh to fruition in that we'll actually break those out as specific projects. So, I've got uh the next slide here that kind of talks about what Oh, sorry. Uh I guess in a couple of slides I have what breaks out the citywide storm water master plan program that we see as the first uh I want to say four projects um in the priority list is coming. So, within um the next uh CIP, you'll actually see some of those projects broke out as their own projects. Um as we move forward, those will kind of come out. And then the flood mitigation

improvements is primarily the levy work that will go into um before we go off that slide, I just want to make sure I understand what you're what you're saying. Sure. So what what you're saying is essentially when we see in that 2027 that citywide storm water master plan that's 15.5 million

in the future CIP as we finish out Closest Creek Crawford those will come off and there will be another four projects that then are listed out separately that that 15 million is covering is that that's the way that's the way to understand that. We we kind of wanted to um uh have a a kind of a distinction point of being able to say uh the the stud citywide study that we did for that master plan. And then the programs we kind of wanted to wrap up that old way of doing it versus this the citywide program master plan approach where we kind of wanted to say the additional things that we need to work through on like closest creek or different things like that is going to be scored through that master plan program on what areas and what projects need to be worked on and so then it'll be broken out. So we kind of wanted to kind of wrap up the that that process and then we'll break out for the next year.

Right. And and and this is an example of like one of the areas where when I ask for more detail, that's part of what I'm trying to understand is like in a 15 million like this and I've got it in two slides. Yeah. But but I'm just trying to point out like when I ask about more detail trying to understand where it makes sense and you know what are the list of projects because then there's a separate prioritization within that because there are I mean I I mean Patrick can tell us better but we we could probably be doing storm water improvement projects for the next two decades and not run out of things to do that we've identified today. Yep.

Yeah. We can we can send the date that we had this conversation. If you want to flip forward, might as well. I'll go up to the we're all familiar with the levy, but the next one. This is that breakout. Yep. And this was discussed previously. There were not decisions made. Uh aside from that, these were very public conversations about those priorities and we will have to bring this forward again for adjustments with the 28 second.

Yep. and and the the the master plan itself kind of set the approach to calculate the priorities. So that that's kind of how that ended up going uh with this. Uh now the the numbers uh when we decided to put the funds into the different uh approaches kind of differ from where we actually think the expenses are. So, that's kind of where we think the expenses are going to be, but we wanted to make sure the funds were there uh if we need to kind of pull stuff up or make amendments to to to make those changes. But, um this is the the breakout of the storm water master plan update. Um the um if we go back to this the flood mitigation one on the levy work uh the alterations of A uh which is that um kind of uh A B and C those are all completed the the part of the Y there you can kind of see um D and E are currently under study and design um and then H and G are later phases uh except for part of G is is being worked on um or part of G is being worked on with the Southeast Connector project as well. So, that one kind of uh came uh up in the schedule uh with the work that we're doing there. And as we look at at a summary of those uh of the require uh requirements for flood protection and watershed uh our significant drivers on the system rates uh storm water master plan has been completed the priority projects and proactive inspections have been started. So uh this is one where we are proposing a a 6% rate increase for the ERU. Um what you can see there is the current

rate that we have is 19 uh.29 to nine for one eru and then the per per month. Yep. And then this would show a 6% increase. This is to allow us to be able to to meet a couple of different um u measures. So with the storm water having revenue debt, there's coverage ratios that we want to make sure that we maintain. Um so we're playing uh we're we're working through that modeling making sure that we maintain uh a coverage ratio. uh to be able to keep our our rating for our bonding um as well as uh the amount of cash that we have on hand on a ratio basis as well as uh being able to invest the the cash for the storm water projects as well. So this is kind of the driving factor not just the operations but a lot of the other pieces of that being able to do those projects. So, Nick, what happens if if we said we wanted, you know, this is this is where we could prioritize. This is where we we could as a council say maybe we only want 3%. Maybe we only want 2%. Maybe next year we don't want any increase. What does that do for the storm water master plan? What does that, you know, for the future of projects? So, if we were to not go to the for the proposed rate that we have here, uh we would have to re-evaluate how much we're we're funding for those master plan projects because we wouldn't necessar we wouldn't necessarily have enough cash on hand to be able to do that work. And two, uh we have uh covenants within our revenue bond that we have to maintain or we've agreed to maintain certain coverage ratios with that debt that we issued. Okay. So, um, we could get forced, uh, uh, to have to do that to maintain those rates, but we want to make sure that we stay above those before it gets into a place where we would have to get them pushed.

But those are the the pressure points that the seven of us get to decide is right there. Correct. And there's there's not Yeah. So, we've already talked about how we we could also break this out moving forward differently for 28 and and moving forward

into two pieces. What is necessary for a rate increase for operations because you have mowing and maintenance and the pump stations that need a fair amount of of maintenance as well. And then separate how much of the increase that's necessary for improvements on in the plan. And you'll have more flexibility as a council to say, yeah, maybe less or more on that regard, but we'll have less flexibility obviously on the first piece, which is how what does it take just to maintain the same assets. Okay, that's that's what I would like to see on on this before, you know,

I I'll be honest, I I hate the the nickel and dimes that we do on on all of our bills, the 6% here, the 5% here, the franchise fee that, you know, we're we're we're taxing the the most vulnerable folks in our in our community that, you know, so I mean it it would be good to see operationwise. I would like to know that even for this current one, even for FY27 and and FY28 operation-wise, and then what what capital improvements aren't going to be done if we if we didn't do that 6%. I I I mean, I think that that's that's something that that that we need to know before that that that that is something that we have to get into the weeds about. But I think it's really the priority on, you know, you look at what Closest Creek and some of those things, those were helping our residents

be safe in their own, right? So, we need to make sure balance what we're doing to make sure we're doing the work that we provide for our community, right? In a safe manner so they aren't flooded, they aren't they're having the proper systems that make it work for them, too. Because the end result can be devastating. We'll add talking points. Well, in and from a resilience perspective, one of the things I mean a chunk of us were here June 30th, 2018 and that that I mean when you talk about most vulnerable, we had residents who lost everything and including their life, including their life. But

we did.

But yeah, it it but when we talk about that and we know from a climate change perspective that severe weather like that is going to be more frequent. The investment from a storm water perspective is a pretty important investment so that we don't lose property that we protect property in in some of the most vulnerable areas of the city. Um and so any other questions on storm water topic? Okay. Um to power through I'm going to skip the break and let Jessica kind of talk through the sanitary sewer piece.

Right. Good morning council. Is my mic on?

Morning mayor and council. My name is Jessica Butler, research and budget officer. I'm going to be presenting the sanitary sewer enterprise. Um, you'll see a lot of similar terms um that Nick just discussed in the storm water. So, I won't touch on those um in the interest of time this morning, but um sanitary sewer is a high level overview. Um, it was established to pro provide funding for the operation and maintenance of the sanitary sewer of roughly 100 or 1,7 miles, which is fun fact number two of the day, nearly the distance from De Moine to Mexico. Um, it also provides for the planning design for capital construction projects. Um, like Nick mentioned, there's also compliance with federal and state laws and regulations for sanitary sewer. And we provide wastewater treatment services through contributions to the wastewater reclam reclamation authority. The primary operations within the sanitary sewer are the long-term control plan or the projects, connection fee program, sewer lining program, and the citywide sewer program. The allocation of full-time um staff to the sanitary sewer division of public works is 53.2 with the remaining of the 116 I believe it was um on the storm water side. In addition to that staff, WR also has budgeted for 115 full-time positions. 98 to 99% of the budgeted uh revenue on the sanitary sewer are from customer

monthly use fees. Uh those fees are uh dependent solely on usage. The average uh billable gallons from fiscal year 2001 through fiscal year 2025, excuse me, 2021 through 2025 was 5.2 million gallons. Looking at the total recommended budget for the um entire enterprise fund, you'll see the substantial portion just over half um are payments to for the operations and debt payments um on the infrastructure through the um operating represents 22% um pilot ROI 11 and you also see 10% cash to sanitary capital projects and debt payments at 5%. Historical look at the expenses of the sanitary sewer um fund. You'll see um in early years there were um redemptions of or early redemptions of debt. Um that's why the um piece in the yellow is a little bit higher in FY22. And also as we go through the presentation in a few more slides, you'll see, you know, we're finishing up a lot of um separation projects. So we have higher levels of cash to the sanitary capital projects in um FY21 and it starts ticking down as we go, you know, up through current year. and 27 we will start taking back up with the goal to reach um $8 million um of cash to the cap sanitary capital projects. Um and we hope to be meet that goal in 2030.

If we look at just the operations piece um from two slides ago which represented 22% of the entire budget um this would be just the piece um for on the city side so not including um personnel services as susect expected represents 56% of operations. Um the other large categories are uh the billing agency fee uh that we pay to um De Moines Waterworks for the monthly billings to all of our customers. The payments to contractors and the other charges 8% that represents um workers comp and sump pump reimbursement program. Moving into the capital project portion of the enterprise fund. Um in the bright red here you'll see um a couple of separation projects that are nearing their end. And then in the bright green are examples of recent trunk um sewer projects that were recently completed. Not shown on the map are the ongoing and citywide uh sanitary sewer lining and repairs projects that span the entire city. Funding sources for the capital projects. Um we are finishing up a couple projects in 2026. Um De Mo Waterworks is has contributions in for the Western Ingresol Run separation project of 600,000 and we have um transfers in of 925,000 which are primarily from other sanitary sewer funds that have been closing out. Um moving forward we expect revenue into this um these projects to be solely from the sanitary sewer operations.

sanitary uh CIP projects by year. Um as I just mentioned, the sanitary sewer lining and repairs, that's that top line you see there. Um by 2030, we will um be contributing $8 million to that project from the operations. So that's cash straight from operations to the project. Um which eliminates the need for any debt. Um, we'll also continue to allocate annually for the sanitary sewer trunk repairs. Um, we have three separation projects that you'll still see in 2026 that are wrapping up and we expect those to be completed in the current uh fiscal or calendar year depending on how construction goes. Uh is a a big part of the sanitary operations. Um so um they've presented us some um information to present to you today. Um they collect $72 million um from the 18 member communities across central Iowa. Um those uh community collections are for the operation and maintenance of the facilities, cost of funding reserves and cost of debt. Um the net operations um 14.9 million is operation u maintenance and insurance costs less um other operating revenues that they have within their in their operation budget. We're expecting to see debt service payments of $37.4 million. Um other budget um items of 19.8 million which includes operating reserves and renewal and replacement budget. And for fiscal year 2027 alone, there's a capital improvement budget of $122 million.

As you are all well aware, in late 2024, um the OPR updated its conveyance system and treatment facility plans um with over $1 billion plan in plan projects and improvements through 2045. Um this leads with over a billion dollars of planned um investment um leads to major increases in the projected debt. Um projected in 2034 to be at 90 967 million. Um recently through the approval of the third amended and restated agreement increased the debt levy to accommodate the construction of these projects. Previously was at 675 million. debt limit is now 975 million

because we are a

one of the me community or member communities of the uh we can expect to see uh city debt payments for our portion of the debt to increase substantially over the next uh several fiscal years. Um 26 amended budget includes debt payments of $11 million and that will more than double in FY30 um to be $23 million. In summary, uh the drivers significant drivers on the rate system will be the um WRA projects and the uh associated debt. Um we continue to invest in the um uh sanitary lining and repairs and also the trunk sewers. Um we've invested over the past 5 years $14 million in those lining projects. Um that extends just life of the infrastructure. Those are very important for us to keep doing those and continue commitment to funding those projects. Um the we expect the remaining sewer separation projects to be closed out this fiscal year. There is no rate increase projected um this budget cycle as last year we increased a 6% rate for both fiscal year 26 and 27 rates. You could put the bulleted item number three in all caps. That's kind of a big deal.

Yeah. Separation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, that might be a good thing for uh our PIO office to focus on. So, Yep. Yeah.

And between the um the sewer lining and the separation projects uh kind of uh depending on storm related item because obviously your inflows and infiltration inf uh in infiltrations um if those decrease as well as with the separation projects being completed um that should reduce the flows that we have going to. So the way that the calculates flow is basically how much is actually flowing to the plant. Um so if you have less of the INI is what it's usually referred to. Um as well as this the sewer separation is basically separating the sanitary sewer and the storm water uh infrastructure separate out separation projects. So that allows for not the storm water to go to the to the facility um to be treated. So from that perspective, uh the hope is is based off of it depends on the the amount of weather that all the communities see. Um and so if it's a drought, it tends to have more flow. Um, but the way that the the billing works or the contributions from all the different members is based off of a three-year average of flow to W for the for those that aren't actually sitting on the board, which Boss, Scott, and and Westerard were were just there yesterday actually. So,

and it's consistent. It fluctuates. Yeah, we're about consistently going down though. Yes. Yep. We've tended down. I think it just depends on if there's a more storms happening. it ends up getting a lot more through that INI through the infiltration through the system. So the more we can actually do the lining and and repair projects the the better that will actually help us from taking on that that piece of it. Right. And the flow is also a a a question of usage as well. Right.

Yes. So for for example, if we implemented water conservation measures in our buildings, not just reducing leakage with the lining, but if we had water conservation measures, that investment would also potentially lead to a decrease here. Right. It is it is solely uh based off of the thousand square thousand gallon per thousand gallon flow, right? For the usage. Yep. Right. So there there are multiple ways to to reduce this that are also consistent with maybe other sustainability goals.

And this comes into play too with uh those that have uh the two meters on their house as well. So if you've got the me uh one water meter into your house, you're paying for that flow through the the this. But if you had a second meter for your outdoor watering, since that's not going through the sanitary sewer lines, that actually doesn't get charged for for those for that water usage for the the customers. Okay. So So if you have a separate lawn watering that doesn't get charged sanitary, it doesn't get charged a sanitary sewer uh water usage. Yep.

Okay. And we've always had that in place even though we didn't have combined sewer overflow. I mean, if you're watering your lawn and that's going into the storm sewer, we were Yeah. If you only had one Yeah. If you Well, if you only had one meter. Yes. So,

right. Okay. Any other questions? Okay. solid waste. So, uh, as it relates to solid waste, um, so we have about 65,000 homes for trash, yard waste, andor recycling collection. Um, the staff is about, uh, 50 FTEES. Uh, the equipment that we have is 25 side loaders and 12 front and rear loaders. Uh some of the other services that solid waste uh provide is the scrub events uh property cleanup and uh dumpsters as well. Looking at the sources of funds and uses of funds uh kind of holistically uh all on the same slide you can kind of see that solid waste collections is the largest portion of the uh sources of funds and then you kind of see uh.3% on property cleanup yard waste is 12 recycling is 2.3 and the other are um let's see if I've got the others is uh includes bulk, extra item fees, municipal trash, forplex dumpster charges, and other charges. Um when you look at the use of funds, uh we broke it out with the personnel service of 32, equipment maintenance and fuel, um landfill fees, vehicle purchases, debt, and other. Um, from an other standpoint, that's commodities, workman's comp, um, the indirect pilot, those type of things are in that as well.

Yeah. One quick question for the property cleanup, private property cleanup, what's the balance of how how good are we at at those property owners paying us for that cleanup? I know it's put on as a special assessment, but do we actually collect that money? Does anybody know how much we actually collect? We uh for this budget, we're budgeting 50,000. So, it's how much? You can see the the dollar amount there is only 50,000 is what how much do we spend more? That's something you know that's something but that is something we can get a report.

Yes. on to give you the history and the trend on that. But it Yeah. So, that's one where we'll have to But when you're talking about uh it being assessed that there's to be able to get those funds, it it it takes a a it could take forever. Yes. And if it is one that maybe let's say is abandoned, those are ones where we might work with a organization and then wave those nonprofit and then we wave it. Yeah. Exactly. So, it's it's hard to say, but we can kind of give you some history on that. uh but it is not a very low dollar amount of of actual revenue source. Is there anything that we can do to make sure that we get paid? Anything? No.

Well, nothing comes to mind because assessments assessments is our best tool. Not always abandoned, but often times cleaning. I mean, that's what they in my neighborhood, the city's been there like four times, and the person just keeps collecting more junk and they come out and they clean it up and, you know, it's just like a re pickup for him. I think I think that goes back to how do we uh talk to the public about keeping up with their property and having u more discussion if it's a repeat offender then what are those mechanisms too

private property cleanup in the budget book was $650,000 right just for the number that you're asking what are we spending is it $656,000 and we're only anticipating about 50 coming in. 50,000 back. So there's your number,

but trying to put together some of the history on that too because it it varies drastically from one year to the other. So um as we look at more historical revenues, you can kind of see um it is a very small portion even even when you look on multiple years that private property cleanup is a very small. You can't even really kind of see it's between the the yellow and the orange. Um, but you can kind of see the outlier. Uh, hopefully you can see that the 2021 uh the green is the other like loan proceeds. Um, so that was uh debt that uh Solid Waste took on uh for uh those were the loan proceeds to be able to to contribute to the MSC2 uh construction. Um and then some of the other like I said um uh revenues are the public works bulk, extra item fees and municipal trash. So um some of the other things you can see is the biggest portion of it is those um monthly uh uh customer fees from the solid waste. Uh looking on the expense side, you can see that you have a correlation here. Um the other uh that you can see there um is that transfers to the MSC2 uh construction that happened in 2021. Some of the other fees uh that you can see from the 22 through the 27 recommended um are those commodities workman's comp uh collection agency scrub program uh different things like that. Um also, you know, we try to with the vehicle purchases leveled that out. You can kind of see that we had that very small amount in 21 and then we went to in about that 22 23 time frame is when we did more of a allocation to kind of level that out. And one thing to kind of

talk about too or we'll get into this next slide um is uh the um the the the things that were kind of drive some of this uh some of this stuff is the recycle change that we had with Metro Waste Authority. That agreement um uh start date was June 9th. The most recent they operate it started operation in November of 21. Uh our end date on that agreement is 2028. Um and then also this past uh March uh last March, so about a year ago, you guys approved the lease cost of ownership uh with HouseBY on the uh replacing 11 side loaders over two years and we would keep them for 2 years. Um if you would like those slides again, just let me know. Uh it was recorded as well. So, it allows us to do replacements of all 20 22 side loaders over two years, which then ends up um saving us, I think, on the repairs of those vehicles, only having them for 24 months. Um, and then it's basically they gave us a guaranteed residual of of almost 68% to sell them back because there is a market for those those vehicles. Um, going into the current rates, um, there is not a proposed rate increase for 2027. Um, so we we anticipate to keep those flat until we kind of get a better idea of some of the different variables that we have going on with them, how the LLC actually uh, pans out and um, other activities. Uh, we don't see a need to do that rate any rate increase uh, in 2027. The last time I think we did a rate increase was a couple years ago. I know that was a bit quick, but any questions on trash? Uh, two for Adam. Um,

I have one question, too, but probably not. All right, Adam. Uh, is the um battery operated truck still out there uh doing collections or I think it was just one truck, but how's that going with that? Deputy public works director. Uh, it does go out almost every day. There are certain routes that it cannot be used on. Doesn't have the the battery power. For example, it can't do any kind of recycling on the east side of town and then drive all the way to Grimes to dump and come back without using up the entire battery. So, we found out the hard way when it got towed back one day.

Okay. So, but there is only one. You're correct. And it's used on the routes that it fits best in. Uh will there be an expansion of that or just uh that's probably that's probably the only one. One and done. One technology. Yeah. H how does it work when it's sub zero? It uh it does okay. It we see a little bit of battery degradation with the coal, but not tremendous. Okay. And um so let's see. Now we have three additional places in the community that people can drop off their cardboard.

Correct. Have have we promoted that very much or uh it just brand new or It's fairly new, but the PIO did put out a a announcement on social media about that. Oh, okay. Working. Okay. I think uh the the idea is if you have cardboard that goes to the just a specific cardboard dumpster, it it has a higher value than if it's in your um yard uh tote. So correct. Yeah. It's not co-mingle everything else. So it's it's worth more to Metro Waste as just cardboard. Okay. And so small businesses can use that also to drop off their cardboard too, right?

Correct. Thanks. I I have a a question for Nick on the last page. Current rates. Refresh my memory what the sub subsidized rate is. First 64 gallon is $10. Who who gets that? What? Um there's an application process and I can't remember off top of my head how how you qualify for it, but there is a it's income base. I don't know what level the income base is, but it is uh an application for I just couldn't remember. Thank you.

And with in the most recent, it's been a little bit since we've changed our our rates, but when we've changed our rates, we've actually left the subsidized rates flat when we did do the rate changes in the past. Thank you. So, so Nick, for people that are watching this instead of the Olympics, which is kind of hard to imagine, but uh one one acronym that hasn't been explained is pilot. You might just explain that.

Yeah. Uh pilot is actually payment in lie of tax is the that's what that acre acronym means. So it's kind of a governmental term uh that usually when you uh have agreements with uh different organizations that technically are taxexempt, they would agree to pay a a pilot or a payment in lie of property tax. So boy, wouldn't it be great if that would become wildly popular? I think that that probably will not be something people will be coming forward on. We've asked and it's very difficult. But

um Yeah, it it is something that you see uh in in uh so to kind of give you guys a little bit of background on myself uh if you weren't aware um I started my career with the Otter Estate and then I also worked at the city of Iowa City before I came here at the city of De Moines. So I've seen other other municipalities and other organizations across the state and they do tend to have agreements with uh those exempt properties within within their cities. Um, and so that it tends to be a one because of the services that tend to be provided of that police and fire response that those even though they're tax exempt, they get those uh they still have responses to those those locations.

And do we have any of those agreements? Uh, we have some organizations that obviously are um our enterprise funds do those pilots. Um but we also have uh airport um and I think that we did in the past have a few others but uh waterworks I think as well. Waterworks. Thank you. Yeah. So like the state of Iowa and the more hospitals. We used to have uh ones with hospitals that expired I think in 2022 I believe. Okay. I'd throw out I think community foundation was good about uh

there were some that that kind of volunteered to to kind of go through as we worked through. We do a calculation for those the ones that we have agreements with. It is a uh portion of based off of uh uh like insured values because if they're exempt they technically don't show any values. And so it's a agreement on the insured values of those properties. uh and we do a calculation of police and fire uh what that percentage of our uh tax rate is. Um what that would have actually been equivalent to in those agreements. So we have a few properties that are tax exempt here in comparison to where I've seen in the past. What is the amount over like 40% now?

Yeah. Um, we've uh it's it's obviously kind of hard to truly uh to to know um because you technically have uh uh we we've got unique situations where you might have um where where a hospital whether it's owned by them or leased by them. If it's a leased space, it's it's technically not taxexempt, but if it is owned by the hospital itself, then it is taxexempt. So, we kind of it's kind of hard to truly show. Uh, we were able to pull some information from the um the uh Poke County's uh website uh but some stuff you just really can't pull off of there like uh state of Iowa's uh properties or f federal type stuff. So, it's not a full picture. But yeah, there's the rule of thumb is about 40%, but um I think that that's worth us looking at to see what that number truly is and how it's changed with the the cost to be able to replace some of those uh tax exempt properties.

We provide the services for this the fire not, you know, some have their own security, but for sure fire and medic and things like that. So So other taxpayers are subsidizing that for the taxexempt organizations. And I I assume we went back to the hospitals. They just decided not to do it for uh those had expired and we could not uh the request was made and denied. Do do we allow offduty officers to work at the hospitals for example? Could we potentially condition if they want offduty officers at at nonprofits, could we condition that on paying a pilot? We can look at look at that.

I mean that may get them back to the table because if they want an additional service from us. Okay. I think I I think we've veered from uh solid waste. Um yeah, I think so. So at this point before we go into operations, would you like a break because I see people kind of getting up and down. So we take a short break and then we'll come back. It's 10. Let's do 10 minutes because operations I assume will be a bit longer. Will be a bit longer. Yes. Or 10 o'clock. Yep. So 10 o'clock. Easy. That puts us on schedule. Yep. We got back to schedule.

Oh.

if we can get everybody all together again. Yeah, it was 10 o'clock. Okay, everybody, we're going to get started again. Um, thank you for Looks like we have more people coming in. Everybody sits to the back here now that we have all this space. They're hiding.

Okay. Yeah, we'll turn it back over to Nick and and unless the manager wants to introduce this is the operating budget portion which is Can't hear you very good. I don't know. I think it's on. There you go. There you go. You're good.

Okay. So going into the operating budget, um we uh from an operating standpoint, we kind of focus on three different pieces. Uh the general fund operations, the road use tax fund operations, and local option sales and service tax. Um again, those uh CIP and operating books uh can be found on uh dsm.city/budget. Um so the overview um so the commitment to maintaining service levels uh expected by residents so we are doing uh status quo um so what you what we've seen is keeping our tax rate remaining at 1661 is our approach um so we had position reductions 16 total uh 13 was through vacancy process uh attrition and then three were the the the changes in force that that Scott alluded to earlier today. Some of the other big things that uh were changes from 26 to 20 uh 26 approved to to uh 27 uh violence interruption program and library operations as well as building security. So some some things with the building security u consolidating to this building um as well as uh altering some of the other uh approaches at at the other buildings as well. um general fund, uh the major service areas. Um obviously we've got the library, police, um development, inspections, fire and parks. to kind of overview of looking at the major sources of funds and major uses of funds within the 2027 uh recommended budget. You can see that property taxes make up over 50%. Um of the uh revenue um the fees and and

charges for services is 14. Um so that is basically the the um revenue that um we charge for specific things. So like the park shelter rentals um the their fees directly charged for that um service. Um the intergovernmental that's a a government uh finance term. It's revenue that we are receiving from other governmental agencies like federal, state, uh school, county, uh those type of entities, other government ent entities. Um franchise fee. Um, this is the franchise fee of the five. It is 5% which ironically is the 5% franchise fee. The other franchise fee, the the transit is a special revenue. So that 2.5 transit part is not a part of the general fund. It's a special revenue that can only be spent uh for that. So that's how we account for that. a hotel motel is 4% and with that uh to take in consideration there is the agreements that we have with uh catch de moine and bravo um that they get 25% of those funds um and so we we keep half of those funds. Uh some of the the items that are in the other the 7% are things like the ROI and interest earnings and and um donations are in that that 7%. From the use of funds side you can see that uh personnel services make up 73%. Uh may it's the salaries and benefits of of of our staff that that provides those services. Um contracted services is 15%. Um some of the bigger items from an expenditure standpoint um in the contractual

services are things like our hotel motto tax payments to catch de mo and Bravo uh vehicle replacement uh property insurance um and like vehicle and software licenses um for the annual support on like Microsoft and Tyler uh Tyler technology for our ERP and other softwares that we use at the city. Um, as we go into a comparison for the general fund, uh, from 21 through the 27, as you can see, uh, the dark, uh, uh, bar to the left of each area is our expenditures. So you can see that different years it is uh creating a surplus or a deficit depending on if that that left bar is more than the multicolored bar that is a deficit. Um and then um if it's less then that creates a surplus. So as you can kind of see it kind of varies uh from year to year. The big change or the biggest thing to kind of look at is 2023. um that was uh where we uh put the ARPA funds within the general fund for the uh general fund losses. So you kind of see that that was kind of an inflow there. And over the course of 2024, 25 and 26, we're utilizing uh the majority of that fund balance that we uh had between the 26 or 23 through that 26. This is kind of depicting it more in a table. Total revenues, total expenditures. Uh when you actually put the numbers there, you can see that in 2023, we had that 38 million and then we used 10, 3, and 15 over the course of those three years. As we look at the 27 recommended uh budget, you can see that

we are a balanced budget, just a little bit to the good of 18,000. balanced. So um looking at the major uh revenues specifically like we kind of talked about before. Um, so the fees and charges for service includes those uh the actual users of the of the programs that are actually doing that as well as you know the pilots that we receive and the indirect cost allocations, ambulance charges, airport reimbursement uh for the police and um school crossing guard type stuff. So that's kind of the stuff that's in those uh charges uh fees and charges for services. uh fines and forfeitures have like the parking violations and ates uh which is the automatic traffic uh enforcement the cameras um are within that um hotel motel uh we only keep half of that um and then uh Bravo does make a contribution directly to the zoo from their 25%. Just piece of information for you guys. Uh licenses and permits include the building, electrical, mechanical, uh plan reviews as well as pet licenses are included in the uh license and permits. as you look at the taxable valuation changes um over the course of of fiscal year 18 through 27. So a 10-year horizon. Uh as we've talked about in the past, we have the good year, bad year. Um so you kind of see that it kind of goes from that re-evaluation years that are those oddnumbered years are the ones that are those peaks and the valleys are the e the even years. So, um, in this

10-year horizon, you do see an average of the non-tiff, um, as a 4.25, but with the legislation changes that have happened, um, there is that, uh, trimming effect that happens to the combined general fund levy. Um, that started uh, with the fiscal year uh, 2025. So, we did incorporate that green line in there to kind of show we had the 41% in valuation growth uh for 25. It got trimmed down to two. Uh and then in the next year, we did uh because we were under the trimming, we were able to to put our 810 levy back to 810, which caused that that levy to go up by 4.4. And then in this current year, our um re-evaluations and new construction and everything like that and what was released uh from TIFF valuation, we did have a a really good uh growth in our non-tiff of 9.6, but that did get trimmed down to 6.4. So that's with the current uh legislative uh actions that with property taxes that have been approved and and in in in effect uh that did do a three over a 3% trim in this current fiscal year.

So their the current bill that they have at the state house, how long does that continue for with the the cap and two more cycles? I think it's two more cycles. Yeah, I think it's 28 and 29. And they're looking at making an immediate change. Correct. Immediate as as far as we know, we believe it's going to be for fiscal year 28. Um Okay.

Uh we uh the current legislation we've looked at has mostly been affecting that uh fiscal year starting July 1 of 2027, which is fiscal year 28. Um but there has been times where we've we where they have affected the current year. Fiscal year 24 is actually one of those cases where they affected the current year we were working on. Um when they did that they did move the because the budget used to be March 15th or March 31st and it did get pushed off to April. So when they did make that adjustments they started pushing the budget submission back later. So there is that. So for the next two years, we still have the

the existing property tax existing property tax system, but but they are looking to the the legislation that has been proposed um actually um would supersede or or or alter that approach in the in the 28 and 29 years. Okay. Right. That's

um um Did you have something else on that? Okay. Uh looking at franchise fees and again this is the 5% um gas and electric um and uh cable but cable's a very small number and it is dwindling. Um but gas and electric 5% um is is one where it's kind of weather related. So depending on how hot it is or how cold it is um determines how how how much we budget. So we budget about uh 12 13 13-ish million I think at this point uh for gas and electric but you can see that we've had you know historical numbers just slightly over 12 or slightly over 14. So we try and stay about that 13ish um not knowing how it might actually pan out in any given year. And again, this is the 5%. The two and a half is in a special revenue that can only be spent on transit related activities. Uh looking at the hotel motel tax, that is at 7% for the room rates. Um if you can tell, it's changed quite a bit from 21 through 25 on actuals. Um the 2021 was heavily affected by COVID. Um but we have seen uh a steady increase in this. Um again 25% of it goes to Bravo and 25% goes to catch de mo and the remainder uh stays with the city. Now uh that was something that changed I think it was this year. Um so so going forward is where we'll keep 50% of it. In the past it was uh 27ths went to Catch De Moine and and 27ths went to um Bravo. So it was a little bit over uh 25%. So minimal change there, but it keeps it to where we at least get to

have half of those to go towards our our services within the general fund from the uh major expenditure standpoint. Um so this again is the personnel services uh are the salary and benefits at 73. Um the contractual services at 15. Commodities are our supplies. Um other charges kind of uh has our contingency uh workers comp um medical payments under 411 and loan payments of our general fund loan note um is in there as well. transfers out could be to um different uh uh projects as well as uh into CIPs if we if we have some funds in there. There is one project that we'll get to that actually has general fund in it as well. Um but the capital outlay is a very small amount because most the capital outlay for the general fund is actually within our tax supported CIP. Really quickly, is there a a best practice for as a percentage of personnel services out of general fund for a city our size or

I wouldn't call it a best practice, but this is the norm. Yeah. So, this would be expected about 70% is been my experience with other communities that I've

Yeah. You could you would I mean you could see it anywhere from I'd say 65 to 85% is you tend to see across other municipalities. Um it just depends on how much you are actually doing with um uh individuals uh your your own employees versus contracting out. So, you know, we've made that determination on some of our mowing contracts, uh, with like the parks and and cemeteries and stuff like that where they used to have staff doing that work and then we've we've now contracted that out. Um, so that's been kind of one of those things. Thank you.

We constantly work with our departments to kind of see if that is the right right path of balance between their personnel, the their actual employees versus contracting those services out. When you look at the salary and benefits, uh this kind of gives you an idea on kind of the um the personnel services is a accounting term, but it is salary and benefits. Um some of the big some of the things in here too on the benefit side is you know our MFPsi or chap uh chapter 411s for our police and fire. those those contributions are uh FICA um as well as health um and those are the some of the benefits um on the health care costs as well. Um so you kind of see um the that piece of it in comparison to the different years. So the the the there's a a 4.5% change from the 26 amended to the 27 amended based off of forecasted costs of of of salaries and benefits that we see on from the retirement side as well as healthcare costs.

What was the amount again percent again? Uh

uh 4.5 When you look at the general fund by department, um this kind of breaks it out by the different departments. Um you can see public safety represents almost 60% of the 27 budget. Uh 34% uh police and 23% on fire. Uh the rest uh kind of break out. Uh the larger next one is administrative services but that's kind of uh summation of of those uh departments that are serving all of the departments not only the general fund but also uh the other funds as well. So the road use tax funds the enterprise funds those different things. So that includes the city clerk, city manager, finance, HR, IT and legal. Um, and you can kind of see the other small ones that we have, uh, with parks at 7, neighborhood at four, library at four, uh, development services at three, and engineering at two. And then we've got mayor and council at under 1% and then community impact relations at under 1% as well. Moving to uh, road use tax funds. Um you can see here that the uh revenues that we have coming in is primarily from the road use tax uh funds collected by the state and distributed to the communities. um it is based off of population and so it's based off of a pool of their collection a process of uh registration as well as uh gas taxes that are collected statewide and then it's distributed uh by municipal um uh municipal population. Um as well as we have minor uh minor revenues coming in uh through street excavation uh street

maintenance and traffic engineering that we have just minor funds coming in for the different services and things that they do that generate revenues. But when you look at expenses you can see on a road use side uh these are the type of activities that are being done. So about 50% of that is street maintenance. uh street trees is about 7%, engineering, traffic engineering is five, transfers is 14. That's going into different capital projects. So, um we'll kind of get into what those uh projects are when we actually get into the capital improvement program. Uh you also have a replace equipment replacement, uh sign, streets painting. Those are all kind of varying about fiveish or under. And then street lighting is another 9%. So that's kind of the use of those road use tax funds, how they kind of break out with the different activities that are being done within road use tax fund. Um, looking at some of the multi-year or historical numbers in comparison to the amended 26 and 27, um, you can kind of see that we're a little bit on the conservative side for 26 and 27. Uh, because based off of the numbers that we receive from the state on what they project as numbers po per per uh per citizen is what we're we're basing it off of for 26 and 27. So uh it can vary throughout the year depending on what is collected at the state and so we use their projected numbers for us local option sales and service tax. So, um, as you, uh, may hopefully are still aware, the, uh, with this being, uh, approved, uh, as an expenditure policy by the council back in 2018, December of

2018, um, the, uh, local option is supposed to be sent spent um, 50% for property tax relief. And then the council uh uh had an expenditure policy based off of street improvements and flood prevention uh neighborhood improvements and public safety improvements and expenditures. So this is the breakout of the other 50% of the nonpropy tax relief. You can see here um we've um we transfer uh 50% of of the property tax relief to pay pay off debt. That's our property tax relief piece of it. So, we transfer that right out. Um, and these are four different uh components of local option. Uh we have the different we'll get into the detail, but it the public safety improvements and expenditures has been growing as a percentage over the last handful of years as we've been putting uh additional uh funding for uh police officers and firefighters uh being covered by local option versus um the general fund. So, Nick, the uh public safety improvements could be for additional staff positions, not not necessarily equipment and

correct. Yep. Well, it's it's public safety improvements and expenditures. So, um the the the path we took originally um we started with firefighters that were coming off of what was called the safe grant in 2019. There were like three three positions or something like that. I think it was Yeah, I think it was like nine. Oh, 15. Okay. Yeah. Nine. Nine or 12. I can't remember. Something more than 10.

Yes. Um so that's where actually it started was um with that safer grant to be able to maintain those positions after um after the grant uh time frame to be able to keep those. And then we've uh added additional uh firefighters being covered with the ad of fire station 11. Um and then during the budget process in 26, we added additional uh firefighters and police officers being funded by local option as well. So just to maybe that uh wedge could have a a better title than just expenditures. I mean, it doesn't that on the surface it doesn't sound like personnel. So,

sure. Um, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. Just I I think it could be a better descriptor there. So, if if we want to make that change, I wonder if we would want to update the expenditure policy because that's referenced in that expenditure policy that the council passed. So, um, we tried to use the same terminology that was on that roll call, but the detail follows. Yes, the detail follows exactly what it is here when we come up, but we we tried to use the same ter terminology that was used on the expenditure policy uh that was passed in 2018 on what it was going to be. Okay. Well, so it might be be worth taking a look at. So, thanks.

Yeah. Um so from a local option sales and service tax, here's the two kind of the first two topics of the property tax relief. So debt service payments. Um so 2026 has an anomaly we had uh timing wise on a transfer from 26. So about 600,000 of that is actually 2025 numbers and we're catching up in 2026 there. So 2027 budget that 50% is that 30 uh 950. It wasn't that we ended up receiving a lot more. It was kind of a timing issue on the transfer to the debt service. Um, from the uh street improvements and flood prevention, uh, this is $4 million that is being transferred into uh, CIPs for street projects. So, it's cash for projects instead of taking on debt. uh the stormwater fund. Um that was uh a bunch of additional projects that we wanted to fund in the stormwater CIP that uh the general fund loaned $9 million of cash to the storm water. And this is the local option paying back the general fund of that. It was $9 million and the first year I think that that was being paid back was either 2020 or 2021. So, we still have a couple more years of of that funding. The flood prevention buyouts is uh one is is is one of those projects that we actually have um uh we allow carry forward funds for that project. We allocate 400,000 uh each year. Um because as those pro uh as those properties become available um we want to be able to purchase those. Um, we have uh probably we have over 200 homes citywide that are still in flood planes. Um, to be able to purchase all of them that it would probably be in the 30 million mark, but this allows to as

those properties come available for us to be able to purchase. Uh, we try to put that there. Um, like I said, over 200 homes, about 50 of them in in the four mile area. looking at the uh neighborhood improvements. Um so you have the deficit properties uh that this gives you both the amended 26 and the 27. Um you can see that we are contributing half a million in 26 um none in 27 um but we're trying to kind of focus more on the improving our neighborhood side. We still have um properties within the blitz on bite process and I think we have some funds to be able to do that. This was uh it didn't need that allocation we did on the improving our neighborhood side. The library operations was uh one of the original funding in the passing of the local option where it expanded um operating hours at all six libraries um including you know uh services every day at central library and frequent library and we adjust it by 3% each year to be able to um continue that piece of it so it goes towards library operations uh special investment districts That's the Avestm piece. Uh that's the 5 million contribution that we have there. Um the neighborhood matching grants. Um that was one that we have uh designated for small awards, small grants to the neighborhoods and community groups for projects that build uh their leadership skills and improve their the neighborhoods, neighborhood associations. Um the rental housing enhancements, that was one where the city provided assistance for rental property owners to remove knockout panels and complete a HVAC separation projects. Uh and those

projects were finished up in 2026. Uh broadband permitting costs is another one of those where it is the uh costs of being able to expand our service to allow the increased broadband connections throughout De Moines. Um and again it's an adjustment of of 3% from one year to the next. Um we've got the enhanced tree care and planting. um trying to expand services and and also take care of the trees that we have been planting and making sure they get watering. Um we also have the youth uh neighborhood park programming. Um that's one where where uh parks has uh expanded that EK Davis program to additional parks throughout the city. Um the parks capital projects. Uh those were different things that we increased funding towards play uh spray grounds, play playground improvements. Uh and the car uh um the Birdland Marina improvements as well was another big one in that. Um the regional features project, our city improvements, uh anticipated city expenses to different projects that might relate to the uh uh water trails um and different things um as as they come up from the city side versus uh others. uh park enhancements uh increased their uh increase their efforts with uh park and additional park maintenance uh and 7-month technician as well as the volunteer coordinator efforts uh there at parks. And then the sobering center contribution is the the last item that we have there with the contributions to Poke County Behavioral Health with through a 280 agreement that we have

back to the so the regional features. So that just explain that again. And that that's wasn't in 26 is in 27.

Yes. Uh it was one of those things that um we had a budget to to we did have anticipated more pro projects where we we did uh if we go back to originally where we did put this project in place, we had multiple millions in there, but we did trim that down to be able to kind of keep a balanced budget within the local option standpoint. And then this one was where we pushed it out from fiscal year 26 and or push it in a million that was in 27. We did a half half a million in 27 and and 28. So it's just to be able to uh maybe fund some of those projects that we that we have in correlation with some of the parks trails was originally what I said. So, it was originally a million dollars a year going way back and it was intended for on land improvements whereas the icon water trails is taking care of most the cost in water if that makes sense. And uh with some exceptions, they're also helping pay for the on land features. And there were things like restrooms and additional parking and and some of those other trail aspects to get access to uh their sites that we've put in there. But uh we didn't have anything in 26 to expense against that. And so that's why that's blanked out for 26. And in 27 we lowered it from a million to 500,000. So that's how we got to that number. But at this moment, we don't have any specific specifics, but there's several projects in the works that may need to use that.

Question, when you talk about the the icon water trails, we just received uh a grant that I think the city city parks and wreck wrote the grant, but it was awarded to the icon water trails for birdland. How will that money be spent? Do we get will most of that be used for land improvements since we wrote the grant?

So, I think it'd be best for us because there are several grants. The this is another example, great example of parks department working with potential grant funds and receiving several different re new grants uh for the Birdland project. So to not confuse anybody, I think if if we could send out a message that indicates the different grants that we've received, including IAT and and several others. And then the most recent one you're referencing was a $2 million, I believe, uh grant. And we'll have some announcements on that here in the next week or or so. Uh we're coordinating with Congressman Nun to to put that information out.

Okay. And then we get detail as to what it's going for. Yep. But part of it will go to Birdland. And then when you talk about the um parks capital projects, we've lowered that amount some. It was 1.765 now 1515. What What does that include? You mentioned Birdland in that when you Yep. spraygrounds, playgrounds, um carile um trail connection and some funding into the Berlin. I think it was a million in Berlin. That's or million each year, I think. Yeah, we had we did had to do some matching.

Yep. We'll double check. I don't believe that's a reduction. It was a planned amount from years ago that was going to reduce that was going to be a little bit less. That's why it was based off of specific TR uh projects because we were trying to fund a certain number of spray grounds or certain number of playgrounds and so that the funding that was anticipated in that. Okay. So you'll send us some more information on that. And then when you when we actually look at the when we get into the capital projects or if you look at the the capital projects book itself, if you look at the funding uh sources, you can see where local option is going into what specific projects. Thank you.

And then the broadband permitting is that anticipated? remind me if if that's long-term anticipated or we I'd call it midterm. So, yeah. So, just help me understand that a little better from midterm and timing and if that may be able to be reduced or phased out.

Yeah, great question. So, the anticipation is that it would be phased out. Um are we in the third or I'd have to look at engineering as well. But most of this is what we talked about earlier right-of-way management because we had uh additional fiber optic providers uh jumping into that market and uh putting more fiber into the ride ofway. We recognized with uh Google being the first that we were going to need to have additional engineering staff to help manage through that process. And uh lo and behold uh I believe three other providers jumped in after Google if not four. Uh and because of that then we're now looking at needing to do this a couple more years uh as they finish up their work. So, uh, unless Steve wants to add something to this, I would anticipate not only 27, but also at least some amount we would still need to have into fiscal year 28 and

before they finish up. And if I could ask, is there any way you just went your mic just went off? Is there any way that we could um make the vendors coordinate things? Because like we finish one and then the next week somebody else is in there tearing everything up again. It's just been this constant uh digging up of the rightways and I it's got to be frustrating for engineering. But yes, and do we have any control? Great great question. I rarely say this, but no. Okay. Uh, we we I thought that's what you were going to say.

Yes. We we try every way we can to accommodate schedules and opportunities for them to work together, but they have the choice of deciding timing and have shown as we've seen that they are not coordinating and in and in fact uh uh it it just continues to be demonstrated in additional uh rightaway usage that and can we charge more for permits or also No, you mean and this is by federal standard uh state for the most part. There is a small element that is federal,

but for the most part the state has decided long ago. It's just too bad because I, you know, I see the trucks with Minnesota license plates. They're there. They leave Friday afternoons. They leave their messes and then Monday morning or Monday afternoon, they'll show back up. And I do want to send out thanks to our engineering department. Yes. Because with what we can do um we we do and and so there is there is um some some amount of responsiveness that we've gotten from some of the vendors. Yeah, Steve has been great when I've had questions

and we we can bring this up and and maybe even send uh some additional literature to council, but it's probably worth noting to the public. The right-of-way management is one of the best examples of De Moines as an urban area recognizing we needed to do something specific about the sheer amount of private utilities within our rightway. And we produced a new policy and uh uh program to fairly uh distribute those costs to the private utilities. and uh we were exempted the very next cycle pre excuse me preempted uh by the state legislature the next year and essentially had to throw that away and because of that the taxpayers of of De Moine are now uh burdened with with those costs because they're very real to manage the right of way. Um but that's just the fact of it. Plus, the property owner then is left having to put grass down and and water it and maintain it. Otherwise, you just get dirt.

Exactly. I I will say, and we are definitely digressing from budgetary issues, but Rob Silvers has been very responsive to me when I see issues and he's a pitbull. He stays after these providers to fix their messes. That could be another topic on what we can talk about. It could keep going on the budget now. Yep.

Uh going into the public safety improvements and expenditures. Um as you can kind of see here, uh we've got firefighter positions. Um we're we're covering approximately the cost of of 39 positions. Now uh within uh the 26 and 27 budget, uh same with the police officer positions. second from the bottom. Those are uh 39 uh positions as well for police officers. Um we also have the mobile crisis services. It's the crisis advocatory response efforts um with the mobile to expand the mobile uh mental health health services as a part of the partnership with Broadons. Um the body warn cameras uh maintenance and support agreement that we have is being funded uh there. um as well as public safety dispatch fund uh positions. It's funding um some of the uh additional dispatchers that we have uh added there uh within the dis dispatch center. Uh the home homeless housing initiative um was the uh grant funding with youth youth and shelter services for operations of their emergency shelter as well. if you don't mind. Yeah,

sorry. No, no, you're fine. I uh I have lots of questions, but I don't want to get in the way of a good slideshow. Uh you could if you could move back one slide. So, the the 5 million that um goes to InvestDSM, I see that it was five million a year ago. Can can you or Scott give some context to how we've how that investment is that is it consistently $5 million? Is there an agreement that we have that that locks us into that amount? Can you give me some parameters on that number?

Yeah, and we have actually three council members that are on that board that can speak to some of this as well. But if for a long time it has been the 5 million with our partners at the county also contributing 5 million. So uh yeah that number has not changed. Uh and what was the other part of we have an agreement is that that's in sets that amount sets that amount of $5 million.

Okay. And then uh ion increasing from 1.3 to almost 2.6. Uh what's the what's the long-term um thought process on that? And I apologize, but I've looked through the budget books. I didn't see that in there or or the invests in there. So maybe off of when we're in recess, somebody can show me where that is. But what are we assuming that's going to that investment is going to look like in future years? Yep. And so the ION program is part of the housing strategy discussion that council has had over the past about a year and a half. And uh the intent there is to continue increasing it from here a little bit more yet.

Uh what is the numbers that we were looking by 28 um I want to say up. This is only the local options sales tax piece of it. I guess I should say what? Yep. So, we're also doing um not just the uh this is to kind of cover the operational costs of it.

Uh the Yep. and any of the other operational costs of supplies and and and different things that they have to work through cuz um any contractual services that they might have as well. So, this is on the operational side of ION. Um but the grant side, we also have the um bond issuance. So when we go through um our bonding process um we have two different bonding issuances that we do. We do the tax exempt which is uh those those product those um and we'll get into this more in the capital improvement plan. But this is the piece that's on the operational side is uh the improving our neighborhoods. we'll be issuing uh the debt for the grant piece of it. And but we do that over a 5-year um uh horizon payback of it. And so uh we current uh prior to 2026, we were doing both the grant and the operations of ION within local option and it was a a million in the granting and then um about 1.3 for the operational cost. the 2027 has I want to say four

four sounds right to me. Four four million uh for the granting available as a part of the housing strategy approach that that that Scott had us uh incorporated into this budget. Um and then I think depending on the approach of of uh the discussion going forward in future years uh is trying to figure out what what that balance is of of how much more to add to it because I think our original housing plan strategy talked about another

10 about like 10 million but it doesn't necessarily say is that within the ion program or special investment districts or work with other uh nonprofits or through 2080 agree agreements either. So, it's one where this was kind of that first step of the housing strategy. I would tell you also from a planning standpoint, I'm hopeful that this is covering the operations and then obviously inflationary increases for the personnel and things of that nature, but that we can then uh in continue to increase the actual amounts of grants and that's the other piece which is the debt issuance that that is available start 4 million in 27 but hopefully growing thereafter um because this is a this is the uh uh the the centerstone if you will of the neighborhood housing strategy.

Help me understand the operational cost a little a little bit better. I mean could that would is that just staff? Like are we dumping most of that is staff? There is some contractual in there. Um, I think it's important to understand here and we and and worth bringing back some additional information that that spells this out is that uh a lot a fair amount of what ION does is helps homeowners with repairs that need to get done that in some cases don't involve any grant funds at all. And so, um, it

are our staff doing the repairs then? No. No. Uh, the grants are are the part that are taking care of the uh

the Yeah. the construction contractors and things of that nature are paying through the grant funds. This is this is recognition of the difficulty that some of our homeowners are having in uh knowing where to even go and where to start with repairing their properties. Hence, they haven't been repaired in some cases for a lot of years, right? And so we knew the uh the city staff being involved with ION were the best opportunity to help our the neighborhoods, the the residents in our neighborhoods um put in contact with the right contractors, the kind of work that needs to get done so that uh and understand this is the exterior, right? This is this is where um uh infraction so to speak where broken windows uh neighborhood services has gone out and said you need you need to make these repairs cuz the house needs to be in in good safe order.

Um and so they need our residents need the staff's help and knowing how to fix things. So how many staff do we have? Cuz if this is all operational, I mean an additional 1.2 2 million would be what? 12 13 staff. Yes. 13 probably. So we've added an additional 13. Mhm. 13 staff but for essentially the same amount of grant dollars. No, the grants are going grant dollars is going up as well. Grant dollars. Okay.

It was trying to compare. Yeah. I was trying to proportionately show the additional costs and um depending on how they're going to kind of ramp that up and approach uh we have to kind of figure out in subsequent years what what that those grant dollars will look like depending on how far we go with the the housing strategy uh approach. So that's why I was trying to get to the point where it's not all of the the staff are directly tied to grant funding, right? Simply assisting the the homeowners on what the processes are to go through is is part of what they're spending their time on. So just like helping a homeowner figure out how to find a contractor like so you're saying the homeowner has maybe the means but not the wherewithal to find the contractor and that's what

these positions are okay a portion right and to make sure the work is being done correctly. I think they help walk through to make sure yes um kind of like an inspector role after the fact but it's really connecting them to the other services and then bringing in the other groups to help. So on the inside, if you do the outside, what do you need to do inside? So whether it be Habitat or Home Inc. and some of those people come in to help make the whole really house whole uh so people can stay in their home and it doesn't get into the blighted condition where costs more in the long. you're hiring additional uh at

we allocated funds to for the ability we're still working with uh neighborhood services to to determine what that would actually look like with that approach. So this just allows us the flexibility to either a hire the staff or use some cash towards the granting. It's it's us trying to forecast. Again, it's a budget that's ahead ahead of the time of what we're actually going to work on. So, it is just trying to allow that path of funding. Yeah. And my apologies because it is a smaller number than that. Okay.

The half million of of uh demolition on that first line, deficient properties is part of that ad. Yeah, we're kind of and so it needs to take on any demo cost within the program through ION now moving forward as well, but there will be ads needed to handle the additional work that ION is taking on that we've discussed through the housing strategy. So, so what I'm hearing is that this is maybe not all admin operations like some of this could actually be grant. don't know yet because we haven't built out the program to the next level to account for the additional funding

which again is part of this summer's conversation as well. Okay. Cuz yeah, the the operational side seemed a little seemed a little high if that was all operational. And so and because we didn't know that if you look at the uh the FTE count we didn't change because we don't know what that mix is going to be. Okay. Yeah. So we showed the same FTE in 26 and 27, but we we know that there is going to be an operation. We just don't know what that make out is going to be

and that will come back to council before the final decision is made, but it needs to be in the context of how much do you want to lean forward with the neighborhood housing strategies knowing the rest of the budget. So, one just one quick caveat to that then if if this is undetermined and and subject to a process that we'll be a part of going forward. I just want to raise up looking at all of these numbers and seeing that the neighborhood matching grant is there not funded as we've discussed and and we have all lamented uh at $50,000. I would encourage city staff to look for an opportunity to bring that back because that's been a very good investment. So that was I think part of the discussion of that going away to fund the uh keeping of Birdland during the last budget approach was to that that would be funding that would go towards keeping that being operated was the approach that we we got approved through the last budget cycle.

Okay. I was I wasn't here in that budget cycle and wasn't just that was part of the discussion of of trying to continue that operation was that neighborhood matching grant kind of falling off being able to go towards uh continuation of that. So that is a great example of potential changes that if council says they want to shift that priority that that can happen. But as Nick was saying that was part of the discussion in 26 that 26 would be the last funding year for that. In fact it was even more than that uh the prior years. It was more like 200,000 a year uh in prior years. So

and these are the types of conversations we should be having. I I would like to point out I thank you for mentioning under invest DSM that it's we are matching a county match. I think it would be helpful as we go through these line line items just to identify don't have to go into detail but where are we getting matching funds?

Um it will be telling how strong we have partnerships outside of the city and how we re rely on them. Is this a correct statement? And I'm not advocating to do this, but if we were to reduce invest DSM, does the county reduce therefore their amount? Not automatically, but it's been made clear that that would again that shows how strong partnerships are. That was the agreement from the very beginning that everybody would be in at the same amount. There's also the partnership, as you pointed out, with the Silverine Center. That's a that's another additional partnership. Yeah, absolutely.

Through partnerships with others, and I think we are the only city contributing to the Poke County Sobering Center in the metro area, another which has done great work. So, metro, right?

Um, any additional questions on the public safety side? Sorry. Um, mentioned I'm sorry. You said we had 39 positions for police and fire and 30 and 39 positions for fire. How does that compare to 10 years ago when our population was much smaller? Well, we didn't have local option, so it wasn't covering any positions. These are just Okay.

Yep. So these were ones where these this is a transfer into the general fund to cover some of those costs because we haven't been able to cover them with the existing revenues that we have in the general fund. So we've had additional funds being transferred into the general fund. Okay. So it's coming out of local option that we would did not originally the expenses the expenses are in general fund but the revenue source is actually a transfer into

but it was never intended when we originally passed uh the only one originally was the safer grant that was uh being funded by elsewhere. And um to kind of put it in perspective, there is um about 25% uh of operational costs. So like the firefighter positions, the police officer positions, uh some of the dispatch, some of the dispatch positions. Same with the broadband uh the library operations. Those are the things that are actually going towards that operation operational costs within the general fund. It's about 25% of the 50%. So, uh, so it's so the sales tax has helped us

Yes. bring up staff

or cover staff without having to without eliminating like sworn uh firefighters or police officers. Yep. So obviously um kind of concerns and challenges uh property tax growth limitations is currently uh within the next uh two fiscal years obviously with the current legislation. Um we have rising costs with inflation uh personnel and construction costs. Uh and then there's uh always a potential for any state uh legislative actions that could come into play. Any other operating questions? Ju

just a g what what level of growth have we seen in the local option sales tax revenue is that so we're um uh currently uh budgeting about uh 60 million uh is the is the dollar amount that we anticipated. I think when we originally had it approved it was just under 40. So it's from the fiscal year 2020 was I think the first year that we that we collected um it was um 39.

Yeah, we collected about 38 and now I think the most recent year we collected um just under uh 60. So we're forecasting about 60 million and it depends on on you know what actually happens. We there was an anticipation uh by the state that was a bit off when COVID hit that they thought less local option would would be collected. Um but at the same time there was a lot more being collected from online sales than they anticipated. So that one wasn't quite as bad of a hit for us. But um it is one from when we originally did the the uh anticipated local option. There was a lot of other communities that did add on and did pass local option after we did. So that did change how that calculation and what gets distributed

in year-over-year like we're at 60 million this year. We think it's going to be do we see a 3% do we see 5%

as as long as there's not alterations to um how it how and how it's being collected or what's being collected on um I think it'll stay fairly uh level uh maybe a minor increase of 1 or 2%. But again, it's one where you you don't want to anticipate large growth with with a tax like that that varies so much from year to year. I would just add that on the horizon for sales tax, it's a countywide calculation, even though individual cities decide whether or not they're going to opt in. and Ankenany has made it known that they're planning to to vote for their local options sales tax and and that could have an impact on ours as well. Um not real certain exactly at the moment, but as they get closer to that vote, we'll we'll do some estimating and let you know what that cuz it could actually help us um given the way the formula and that's what I would anticipate, but we'll we'll get back to you closer to when they're ready to vote on what that might look like.

Um yes, I've got a question. um would like to shed some light on lighting in the city. Right now, there's not a line item to um maintain and repair um some of the um structures in De Moine that have special lighting like the um um there's there's not a reliable line item to do so. And I I wonder if there's um a way we could adjust our budgets. So when there is lighting that needs to be repaired, it could um

are you talking the capital side or the operational side? Well, I think operational. Okay. Because the capital has not worked. So

Okay. Um, I mean, we've got uh the um Ruan connector. We've got the Fifth Street Bridge. We've now added a lighting on the I think it's called the Riverview um Park Bridge, the Iowa Women of Achievement Bridge. A lot of bridges with special uh lighting that um individuals have helped underwrite and when it needs to be repaired, there's not a way to do so. And I um if if there was something in the budget that that could take care of that. Um I know uh personally for me the um the Fifth Street Bridge um uh wiring was stolen from that bridge in 2024 and there's still not a way to to replace the wiring and get it the way it was uh previously. I it's just, you know, it's something that we've added to the city that makes this a great place to live. All of the, you know, the lighting of several bridges and structures and I I don't know, it seems like we found money to wash the windows on this building. Can we can we find some money to keep our lighting structures um uh repaired properly

ongoing? Okay. Yeah, I'll look into I I'm sure we have numbers in there. I just don't know if it's adequately what you're talking about. I'd have to go back uh and and look at that specifically. Yeah, it's not really uh one department. And it's not really parks and rack. It's not really engineering, but should be a place in there. It's just something that is new to the city and has been added and we need to take care of uh what we build. So, well, and that was built on a lot of public private dollars and we do we do need to maintain that

and and we do from a safety lighting standpoint. The real crux is we do not have the funds to replace decorative lighting and so we have to draw the line somewhere in that instance but it was built with both of our public private and we we need to I I feel same way as Carl we need to maintain it and it's not just parks that needs to maintain it. I mean this is a facility issue

just like all the other buildings we've got just I mean this is something that we went out and asked our community to save that bridge and they and they stepped up we've got I think the question is if it's decorative lighting or whatever what is the lighting and what is the cost to go back to the decorative it gets back to anything we're doing now right when we be maintained and repaired but when we do build something now we should we have to accommodate is it do we do or do we not because of the maintenance costs going down the road with the constraints we've had? What so

well and and like we talk about the public private partnership but if it's a public private partnership and we know that there are going to be significant costs to maintain it

and the private partnership is only for the upfront capital. It's a little bit less of a partnership if we're not accounting for the long-term and the full cost because it's a lot easier to get that private public private partnership across the line for the initial upfront piece and then the city is on the hook and we've essentially made a long-term funding decision then without it wi-i without the taking into account the full costs of that. And so I we do a lot of touting of the public private partnerships which are absolutely fantastic and essential but if we're going to talk about it long term and expect the city to maintain at at a particular level that needs to be part of the upfront conversation so that the expectation is set so that we don't we're not having this conversation several years later when the maintenance funds aren't there to maintain maintain it at the same level that that the initial capital was.

So basically when we get fundraising we should allow for maybe maintenance on down the road as we have found so we can keep it up to the level that it was initially is what you're saying that yes like that needs to be a like a policy expectation that we set so that so that we can actually maintain it the same level that we're fundraising the initial project for. The unfortunate reality is we need to be clear about how theft would be handled as well because in this instance that's what it was. It wasn't a maintenance issue. It was a theft, right?

And therefore, we didn't have the fund. Nobody had the funds set aside for the thought of theft. And we replaced we replaced the the safety lighting, but we didn't have the the funds for the decorative.

This this is should be a simple exercise. Uh I raised the same issue regarding all the bumpouts, if you will. That's a technical term on Ingresol. How much does that add to annual maintenance costs? And we when we started that I think it was $140 million for snow removal. It's up to 4 million,000. It's up to I think 400,000 for snow removal. That's it's just a budget consideration regarding the more significant elements that are gifted to our city or others. We have been doing a much better job asking for endowments. One example is the Robert Dray Asian garden and that came with about a million5 in endowment to cover the ongoing maintenance. We just need to be more diligent with that with that effort. Well, it's not unlike a spray ground in a park or a a playground structure. Anyway, we haven't this is something new to the city. So,

I think we need to we'll address it and we can look further into it and then going forward have determine what's the best way to keep these partnerships going and still enhance and but still protect them long term. So, with any other questions, I I'm not sure. I think this since this is the end of operations, right?

One one thing that has come up I think across the ward and and fits and vision zero as well as some of our road maintenance the painting budget for crosswalks and some of the road safety. We get a lot of requests and and I'm not sure that all of them merit, but I think some of them definitely merit. And the answer is the same that we we are limited on our paint budget. Uh and and our ability to to to paint and maintain crosswalks. I know I've got several in some hightra areas um you know by Hoy Sherman Sherman Hill and the hospital that are that are particularly high traffic and have been uh been identified. I know there there are others. I would also say from a paint budget perspective when we talk about road design and some of the long-term projects where we talk about on street bike infrastructure and and other other changes or road diets. I think we've we've looked in a limited way only to things that we can do from a fully physical perspective and there might be more that we can do at less cost if we expanded the use of paint. Um sometimes use of paint and ballards like other cities do. Council member Simson just mentioned the bumpouts, for example, and we only do bumpouts where we can physically build the bumpouts, but there are other communities around the country where they accomplish bumpouts with paint and plastic

ballards. And that may may be a a way that we accomplish some of the same same things that particularly when we have less dollars to go around, we could accomplish some of some of those public safety goals and road design change goals for less dollars if we enhanced our paint budget. And I want to make sure that we are considering that and and looking looking at those options as we go forward. Okay, any other questions? If not, not of those. Okay, we'll go to the capital improvement plan.

All right, the next step we're going to visit the capital improvement plan. Um in total there are 176 projects included in this year's plan. Um CIP document lists all the specific details on each of those projects which you have in paper version can be found online. Um through this presentation, we'll go over um the CIP expenditures, revenues, uh changes to um projects, uh listing of new and significant projects, and then also some removed projects. Some highle um points or some notes to make here. Um, as we put together the capital plan or capital budget and capital plan, um, there's a very strategic review of, um, already approved projects that were included in last year's adopted plan as well as requested projects. Um, think we all recognize that not all projects can fit into our capital plan. um that requires us to prioritize needs. And we understand also that we have a lot of um ongoing projects in the capital budget and plan um that take up a significant portion of the CIP dollars. About 34% of the FY27 capital budget are for ongoing maintenance needs of current infrastructure. You'll notice the amended 2026 budget um includes a spending authority for carryover dollars. We talked about that a little bit already this morning. So that's why those amounts will be significantly higher in some cases than FY27 budgets and beyond. Um final ARPA monies will be cement in the 26 amended budget. There's one enterprise project that have ARPA dollars budgeted.

the cost of debt drivers. Uh while we continue to maintain a positive um bond rating, S&P rating of double A+ um volatile rates and also limited or no opportunity to refinance um existing bonds due to the market conditions um impact that cost of debt for us as a city. We target to manage our uh geo debt issuances. Um target approximately $40 million annually. Um as we go through the presentation today, you'll see some uh near future needs that will drive that number up. Um just carrying on with that theme, the longterm debt modeling shows there will be a modest increase um proposed within the proposed plan. And like I said, projects um needing beyond that $40 million of geo geo funding. These two charts show the total expenditures for the entire capital improvement plan by category. Um this would include the transfers. Um Nick talked about transfers earlier. you'll see those as a transfer out in a project then also an expense in another project. So just keep that in mind as we're going through uh these charts. Um the top chart is the tax supported um projects. Those are geo fund and uh or geo debt and tiff debt funded projects. The bottom chart there are the enterprise funds that we've talked about this morning. We'll talk about parking later this afternoon. This chart here shows the total CIP

project cost. So this chart does exclude transfers. Um so looking at historically um 2018, you know, we've been trending up as needs have arised and we've had um you know, opportunities to through various partnerships and granting um grant funding to um expend more on projects. The FY26 budget, the spike you see there is attributed to the carry carryover from prior year budget. Um the FY27 plan will come back down in line with kind of historical there. Um and then continuing on do have a spike in 29 but uh similar similar um spending levels. Most of the focus um of this presentation is going to be on the tax supported expenditures um of categories of the CIP. Um you'll see on this chart, this represents all the expenditures um FY26 amended through the FY30 plan. Streets makes up a significant portion of all expenditures at 51%. Um, parks and wreck 11%, municipal buildings 19%. Um, category miscellaneous 7%, library one, fire apparatus 4, and bridge improvements at 7%. The total uh, budget for these years is 676 million. On this chart, you will see the all the tax supported revenue sources. Um

the top two general obligation and tax increment funding bonds. Um can everyone hear Jessica? Um want to make sure is it? I can hear but I don't know. Pointing at you. Is that better? A little closer to my No, talk louder. I'll do my best.

Yeah, it's I'll try to talk louder. Um the geo bonds uh are paid by the debt service levy, local option sales tax as we talked about. Um and we'll have another slide explaining that in a little in a few slides ahead. Uh the tiff bonds, those are paid by increment funding. Um some other major sources of revenue um we have a lot of federal dollars coming in um majority of those are are for the Southeast connector project but then also some other bridges um and street projects. um do have contributions from outside partners including uh De Moine Waterworks. Um and then some um private contributions included in some of the um park and recreation projects for Reichart Community and Recreation Center and the Graves Lake Park improvements are um notable examples there. And most all this information can be found in your cip document in the various tables or summary tables in the front of the document as well as you know the individual page documents um that you'll find the same detail. Um, moving into geo bonds by category, um, you'll see 26 and 27, we're hovering right above that $40 million, um, target mark. In 28, we do dip a little bit. So, average of about 40,000 for those three years. You'll see an increase in fiscal year 29 and 30. Um, and we will discuss in a couple slides what projects are driving that up. Um this is uh those increases that will require um changes in the debt service debt service levy rate.

TIF bonds by category. Um some major projects here. We have um some bridge projects, some larger ones that are finishing up. And then we have coming online later um Flower Drive over Raccoon River, University Avenue over De Moines River, and Southwest 9th Street over the Raccoon River. Um municipal buildings. Um this line includes the principal park improvements and the downtown restrooms project and streets. Um includes the market district infrastructure and your solid streetscape and the southeast connector um and skywalk system. So this chart here, I think the two um two main points I want to make first um besides there's a lot of stuff going on here. So this is important chart to take some time on. Um local option sales tax has really provided us the opportunity to keep that debt levy um rate down. But you'll see in the outer years of the plan, fiscal years 28 through 30, we um the proposed budget does require a rate increase. So the blue portion of the chart represents where our um CIP plan has been with the debt levy. The gray above the blue represents the portion that has um what local option sales tax has paid for um property tax relief for debt service. So had we not had local option sales tax, we either would have not been able to do all of those projects or the debt levy would have increased significantly to do the same amount of work that we've done.

Uh for the FY27 budget, the debt levy um rate has no change but remain at 2.86 per thousand of taxable valuation. Um the current plan um will increase um 25 to 30 cents over fiscal years 28 through 30. Still working to figure out what those annual increases might be and how those might pencil out, but we can expect in total 25 to 30 cent increase. Any questions on that? Um, one thing that I wanted to kind of point out as well, um, one thing that we did with local option as well did the we did the uh, asset match uh, from the in fiscal year 2020. So, not only did we lower the rate uh, with local option, we also did what we refer to as our asset match. So, it does frontload some of our debt and it does take uh it did uh make us take about eight years, 8 8 to 10 years for us to see that benefit of frontloading that debt. And so that's why you actually kind of see that slight uh uh decrease in the overall rate would have been. Um that's why you would see if we if we did all of that work even within the current plan we would have seen that rate start to come down uh overall because that front loading of debt has a benefit and we would not have been able to do that without the local option sales tax.

Another portion of the pressures that we're seeing here is less capital projects paid for by the sales tax. So we have shifted the sales tax to operations otherwise the 25 to 30 cents might have been erased completely or it definitely would have been uh significantly reduced.

Now we will get into the nitty-gritty of what's changing all these numbers on the charts and graphs that we've shown so far. Uh so new CIP projects to note um within the bridge improvements category uh 75,000 for the East University Avenue pedestrian bridge. And as we go through these next slides, this is through the entire capital U budget and plan years. So FY26 through FY30. So these numbers are in total across all five years. uh municipal building improvements, city facility and armory replacement phase two or a phase two of this building 1,200 locus of $20.8 million. That includes the cost of relocation of the fire department administration to 1200 Locus. uh the upgrade of the city's public safety radio uh system to the next generation of equipment and software and the relocation of the city's dispatch center uh or the public safety answering point. Future fire station 12 or fire station 12 total estimated cost of $16 million. Um this provides for the construction of a new station on the city's south side and this project um his proposal is to be entirely geo bond funded. Uh if you'll recall from prior fire station um major improvements and um reconstructions or builds, we've been able to fund those with GMT monies. Um that's just not we're not able to build enough cash up um quick enough to build the stations at the pace that is desired.

How much did station 11 cost us? Like 14 14 have to check. I'm not exactly sure. And then four with the new training that we got. How much was that? I'd have to get back to you on that one. I'm not It might have been just slightly with higher than with the training. slightly higher than the 16 here or the 12. Than the 12 11 I think I think it was slightly more than the 11. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, but we don't have a cost for I mean we do we can get that back to you that number back to you.

But this was based off of the conversations with fire and facilities to determine what that anticipated cost given the timing and and and that approach. So this is our including land acquisition if necessary. If necessary. So, you're you're saying an additional Well, I I I'd like to know how much station number four cuz we're not going to build anything like station number four again. Correct. It it should I I would assume it would be similar to 11 since that was the new station with inflationary costs. Yeah, with inflationary costs because we did uh station 11.

Okay. Three. Three three three four years ago. Four four years ago we did station 11, wasn't it? That's what I thought it was too. But yeah, we can give you those uh those numbers to compare. But this was uh anticipated costs of inflation as well as if if there's land acquisition that needs to come into play as well. And what's the future placement? Sorry. Uh so that that would be the um uh replacement of either like the fire station 8 or 10 and only the first year of funding we'd have okay additional

our anticipation would be that's the first year of like any of the design or land that would be in 30 and then 31 would be the the other remaining part that needed to be put in case. And these are all just budgeted, right? Right. Estimates. Yeah. They're as the engineer estimates. Yeah. Sure.

There were three projects that um were removed from the CIP. all those within the streets um improvements um area E6 and E7th Penn Avenue justification report of $150,000. Um this project was to prepare an interstate justification report required by the US Federal Highway Administration and the Iowa DOT for um identified changes um from a study that was um conducted a few years ago. Southwest 9th Dartway to McKinley Avenue. Um that was a total project cost of $4.2 million in the current CIP plus $1 million in a future year, so 2031. Um and then the US 69 corridor improvements, uh $2 million. So, just quickly, I understand about Southwest 9th because we didn't get the the grant funding, but we have to repair the road,

correct? These Okay. I mean, the road is almost unpassable. Yes. The last two uh absolutely still need to get done to a degree and we've got to figure out what can we afford and when. So, I know there's some markings on there now. I don't know what that's from or but I mean if everything that's marked on there gets fixed um it would be much better. So I don't I don't know exactly what what they're doing.

So yeah and I think I think the part of this too is it kind of plays into how we approach the 28 as well. any projects that want to get added or removed would allow us to if it gets added then then we'd have to incorporate that as um how does that affect the possible uh debt levy to pay for that piece beyond what we are currently modeling but to your point councilman we'll find out from engineering what the paint is reflecting as an actual project or not

I mean basically like from Lumis to to to leech it is is really I We we have to do something because otherwise I mean it you you're basically everyone is driving in the middle two lanes going this way because you can't travel on the other ones. There's so many holes and and even the middle lanes are really bad.

Go back when the East 6th and East 7th Penn Avenue justification report. I remember a year two years ago there was an open house and DOT and the city was there with all their plans. Are you saying that's scrapped now? So what this project allowed for delayed? Yeah. Okay. Was the report to prepare the report to make those changes that were presented at that time. Got it. Add some context. Oh, thanks Steve. Do you remember that meeting? We had it at Carver Elementary. And so regarding E6, E7th. Yep. So

what that is is Yeah, we had some open houses as part of a overall study in how to improve the East Sixth uh and East 7th Penn Avenue corridors and really provide better connectivity from the neighborhoods to the north across the interstate and into historic East Village. The next step to make that happen, one of the improvements was to to improve the offramps from I235. Yes. Because if you notice when you get on Second Avenue, get off, you're getting onto I235 from Second Avenue, it's kind of a short transition from when people are trying to get off onto E6. So, we would actually move the ramp to E7 to provide more of a gap

and then make E6 more of a connecting road to the to the neighborhoods to the north. The next step to do that to move forward would be to do what's called an intersection justification report, uh, which would be working with the DOT on how to do those changes. Um, and so that's just the next phase of that project. So, it would delayed. Yep. Delayed. Okay. Mhm. So Steve, while you're there, you might as well go on to the next one, the US69 corridor improvements. So is that Mari or that that is that's not that's not Mari. That is uh the the Mari the US69 and Mari project. That's that actually is a separate it actually is kept in a separate sheet in the CIP.

This would be uh the DOT did an entire corridor study and so there's a lot more to do. Um, and so this would be for future projects continuing to make safety improvements along the US69 corridor. That was what this money was for. And so essentially after the MAR intersection there, there would not So even if the state uh does has their money for it, do we have to put in a match? Is that is that is that how 69's going to get improved for for the safety geometric improvements? typically we have had to lead and and match. So it's a shared effort like Mari the US

aren't they fixing the bridge over the De Moine River too? Uh as you go further to the south from Mari they're do they're doing they're replacing the bridge but that's kind of a more of a maintenance I but in terms of like the geometric safety stuff where we're changing and make you know making safety improvements typically we have had to lead and match and partner with the DOT on those type of improvements. But in terms of like repaving the road and you know fixing repairing bridges, replacing bridges that yeah that's on them. Okay. But it's these and we don't have to participate in any of that that you just said. Yeah. We're not we're not participating in the the maintenance stuff. No, unless unless there's a change we need like with sidewalk ramps or something we partner with that aspect of things.

So it's only the safety concerns. If we have safety concerns of 69 and we want to change like we are in Mari because we've had so many accidents then we would have to participate in funding that at some level. Yes. Correct. And connecting roads is oftent times shared right cost. Um the side streets. Side streets. Yeah. That that plays into it too as well. Yep. Yeah. So are we on Mari are we putting in the the new side street that they're going to put in to connect that project? We're we're really just splitting it. So, um so with the whole the whole project. Yep. Mhm. Roughly half. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, thank you. You bet.

Moving on to the significant CIP projects. Um in the bridge improvements category, Southwest 9th Street Bridge over Raccoon River, estimate of $10 million. Um about half of that is TIFF bonds and the other um is federal and gaming funds. Um city facility or building improvements would be the next category. City facility and armory replacement phase 2. Uh 16 just above 16 million of um that project cost is uh new geo bond issuances. Um total project cost for that is 20.8 8 million. Um we just discussed also the fire station 12 estimate of 16 million um to be geo bond funded. Underneath the miscellaneous improvements category, we have public safety communications system replacement of $9.9 million. Um it's another geo bond funded project providing for replacement and upgrade of um public safety hand and car radios. Um at the time of or the plan timing of this project, the existing system and equipment will be 10 years old. Um which is about the end of its expected useful life. Um underneath park and trail improvements, um we have Reichart Community Recreation Center. Um 17.6 million. Um much of that um balances carry over um from ARPA and lost dollars and some geob funding. Um year to date we've spent $9.9 million um and we are getting closer to opening um late April I believe is still the target date. Um Birdland Marina and um um park $13.6 $6

million. Um $4 million of lost and geo bonds. Um some or four million of lost dollars were carried forward in some geo bond um funding. Um we expect to have 2 million more of additional loss funding. Um state and federal grants of $6 million and an additional um 1.15 of geo bond funding. swimming pools and aquatic infrastructure. Uh $9 million over the fiscal years 26 through 30. Um if fiscal year 2028 is when we start the critical repair improvements um that um we presented last year during the budget cycle. Um what's included in this capital plan is um fiscal year 28 for Northwest Family Aquatic Center 1.8 8 million fiscal year 29 Nahhas Family Aquatic Center of just under1 million um fiscal year 30 um expenditures of $3.2 million for Birdland pool um and then beyond the plan years in fiscal year 31 $1.6 million for teachout and 3.1 for Ashworth in fiscal year 32. So all in the total investment for all the critical repairs at all five facilities $10.7 million. So that that's an example of like the level of detail. It the CIP has the high level but never breaks down the amounts for specific pools really. So it it'd just be helpful to have like the project detail in in there like that

since we have that information and that that's a pretty important some of that information I'm not sure I'd have to look back to the document itself. It may include that on the detailed sheet. Um, no, that's that number is not going to align or match exactly because also within that project we have those ongoing expenses which annually we it's hard to predict sometimes what's going to break down or need attention. Um, so

it's just like the the list of big budgeted items like having that it like I think you can kind of piece together some of it, but it's not it it it's one of those and maybe I'll meet separately with Nick to go over some of this in terms of I feel like some of the level of detail that we're providing here could be in the actual budget. We'll take a look at that. So,

so the the East Army Post Road and I I I'm glad we have such a significant investment, but what what is our what's the plan to incentivize development once we invest over $15 million in that area? I mean, this is a this is a a place where our city could grow. I mean, it's green space. It's I mean, how how do we how do we get development there? Now, if we're if we're going to have finally we're going to have sewer, we're going to have water, we're going to have new roads and infrastructure there on Army Post. Nice roundabout.

Nice roundabout, maybe two roundabouts in there eventually. So, so tell me what our plan is to, you know, I mean, okay, we're we we're putting our marbles right there and and and I'm hoping that, you know, that we're we've got to try to get some significant development out there and part of that's the certification through this. do have that certification site and you know it's it's it's sitting there and it's been certified for almost a year now and it's the only one in our and you know but we haven't so the challenge and and we we actually lost one to one of our suburban friends that was going to go there. Yep. Yep.

So and I think this could be brought back as well and and worthy of it because this is a this is an investment far beyond what we just see on that line item. Yes.

Right. and and so we can absolutely bring that back as a specific topic for economic development. Um but I would tell you generally uh as is the challenge with all economic development, it's working with that p those private owners which I would say we have good partnership with Ryan companies on the uh property that was certified and uh other good relationships but then there are some farmers along there as well. Absolutely. And so um we can we can bring forward what that strategy looks like and

there is no doubt that we are adding value right by having the infrastructure now in place. So uh I would tell you it is very ripe uh for that for that opportunity.

Absolutely. Thank you. the significant projects um in the streets um category for street construction we have the Southeast connector $63.2 $2 million of investment in fiscal years 26 through 30. Um substantial portion of that is federal grants and um tiff bonds. Market district infrastructure improvements of $25.3 million that is also um funded with tiff bonds. street reconstruction projects. Um McKinley Avenue improvements, $10.5 million, roadway reconstruction on Second Avenue. Um $10.1 million in the current uh budget and plan. Um there's many different funding sources for that project, including Mo Waterworks, Tiffman's state grants and enterprise fund dollars. Douglas Avenue, Merlh ML King, uh $22.6 million. That's combination of federal and geo bond funding. East Army Post Road, Southeast 14th to Southeast 36th corridor $15.6 million project cost in the current plan. Um, and that also is federal and geo bond funded. And finally, the Ingresol Streetscape of $9.3 million. Um, that's funded through TIFF bonds. And um I believe we're on the final phase of the span from 31st to 42nd Street.

Connector, how much of congressional money did we get? I know that we had some help, but didn't we get

That's really We We've been very fortunate. Moving on to the ongoing CAP projects. As mentioned earlier, um in our current um the fiscal year 27 recommended um CIP budget, there's 47.3 million um from all funding sources that support the ongoing CIP projects. Um in most cases, these ongoing costs represent um minor improvements and repairs for existing infrastructure. um bridge improvements, um citywide bridges, um $250,000 annually for minor repairs and rehabilitation of city bridges. Um fire equipment acquisition, uh $3.9 million annually for the replacement of major fire apparatus. Um so that's the engines, trucks, ambulances, and the specialized emergency response vehicles. Um this does not include vans, automobiles, um and the other vehicles that are not routinely dispatched for emergencies. Um underneath the library, um we have the library collection additions and replacements of $900,000 annually. Um that provides for audio materials, videos, electronic media, and actual physical books. um library building improvements, $630,000. Uh that includes major repairs and improvements at Central Library as well as the other branch locations. Um examples of that work um are concrete ceiling, um bathroom remodels, and window replacements. Uh under the miscellaneous uh improvements category, we have IT network and security improvements.

um $1 million and that's for the continued replacement and upgrade of city um IT uh systems um fiber optic and wireless networks, data storage and servers, cyber security, things of that nature. Um the city tree replacement fund $35,000 annually provides for the replacement of trees when um they are unavoidably removed um during public construction projects. Vacant residential property redevelopment $100,000 um provides for acquisition, demolition or rehabilitation of abandoned um or blighted uh structures. Land acquisition $1.1 million. This provides for um u land acquisition opportunities um throughout the city when properties become available. Um we may use these pro uh properties for projects. Um they may be resold or developed. Uh Daiko site improvements. Um $250,000. This um funds the various responsibilities that the city um has for maintaining that site. And also at the top there we had 2.2 $2 million of contributions to NDC, NFC, and the Public Art Foundation.

So, I just want to note, and I don't know if I'm going to steal my colleague thunder on this one because I heard him react to it, too, but the $100,000 for vacant residential property redevelopment. I mean, it's just this is not a criticism. It's just dang it. Like, you know, it's it's throwing a what is what what's the you know, it's pebble into the sea. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, and and it's it's it's frustrating because uh I would I would rather see a more robust investment there, but I know that we're limited in terms of what we can do. And and one thing I wanted to point out with the land acquisition piece as well, those are actually based off of land sales that we've done as well. So, that's not where we're actually um issuing bonds for the land acquisitions. Those are based off of carryover funds from land sales that we've done uh from the city as well. So, it's just opportunities of kind of sale sell of land and and purchasing of land that that kind of is where we're at. And we've used some of the funds in there for different projects. So, some of the work that we're doing in in um the phase two for this building is actually coming out of land acquisition as well. So, so Oh. If I could just make a comment how important the NDC and NFC contributions are. I love that both of these organizations are working very closely with InvestDSM and it's really wonderful to see all three organizations collaborating and working together to make our neighborhoods better. So, uh I I just want to give a shout out to them because everybody is working really well together. So if if a a ladder truck cost the the

fire department $2.3 million, then what can you do with $3.9 million and yeah, so that's all of the different emergency vehicles that they have with ambulances as well. And those are primarily funded through GMT funds or the ground um can't remember the ground emergency transportation.

Yep. So those fees are based off of a calculation that we do on um like Medicaid calls and so with that that 3.9 is the annual allocation to it. And so they can carry forward and replace what's needed in any any given time. So they have do have carryover funds especially with with delays that we've seen and some of the purchases of vehicles of that size and only having two vendor two main vendors on on the firet truck side. Um it it it's more of an allocation being able to replace what they need to replace.

Okay. Um, and I don't know if our o almost brand new chief knows, but uh, how far ahead do you have to place your order for w with I this is it's crazy times. Um, mayor, council, Jonathan L, fire chief. Uh, so the 3.9 million as as Nick said goes towards apparatus purchases out several years. Right now we're roughly three and a half years for the ladder truck, the 100footer. The planning you have to place your order three and a half years.

Order three and a half years before we want to receive it. Our fire engines are two years out. The really good news here is we've been proactive. So, we went to Ohio last week to spec out two new engines and a ladder truck that are fiscal year 27 and 28 purchases. So, we're we have been planning ahead of this. We've got seven ambulances on order right now. We're waiting for those to be delivered. Uh we have another fire suppression apparatus that was ordered six or eight months ago that we expect to receive in 36 months. So, it's and chief

right now, but And with an additional um fire station, will we have the equipment? Yeah. So, um our CIP for fire apparatus projects out replacement of every apparatus and we actually have one put in there for station 12 and an ambulance for station 12. So, we've we've planned for that and that number represents that plan. Not that you guys aren't known for good planning, but thank you. That's reassuring. Thank you. Yeah, they they do they do very well in their their allocation of the funds to to plan that out because of the delays that we've been seeing over the last several years.

So with station 12, not only are we going to need the equipment, but we're also going to need staffing. And so would we be would we be looking at another safer grant to to to do that at that time? I think we're considering all of those options and I'll continue to work with the city manager and finance on how we can ready to open station 12 with people in it. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Moving on to the municipal building improvements. um ongoing projects within that um category. We have building re-roofing of $150,000 annually. That's prevented maintenance, emergency repairs, um and replacement of all city building um roofs, energy conservation of $150,000. Um this provides for um completing energy efficiency studies in buildings and other um city facilities um to purchase and install replacement um energy efficient equipment. Um fire facility improvements um $651,000. This would be improvements of all fire occupied facilities. So maintenance at the stations. Um this uh project is primarily funded through the GMT um dollars. So the ground emergency medical transportation funding HVAC electrical and plumbing improvements of $250,000 some maintenance of all the mechanical systems, electrical and plumbing systems also in all this um city's um municipal buildings. uh municipal building improvements, $700,000. Um this just provides for the ongoing um general maintenance and repairs of all city facilities um in the event that offices need to be reconfigured um for more efficient work flow. Um just any other necessary necessary improvements for operations. Um police facility improvements, $775,000. Um this would be improvement of all police occupied facilities. Um you know police station is a dated facility. So um a lot of uh maintenance and minor

improvements go into keeping that building open. Um getting into the park and trail improvements. Um cemetery improvements of $500,000 annually. That's for the maintenance, repairs, and improvements to um the city's eight cemeteries, which includes the Masonic Cemetery. Um recently acquired uh Grace Lake Park improvements, $150,000. Um that provides for um enhanced native landscaping, general improvements across, you know, throughout the park and miscellaneous signage renovations, park building improvements of $255,000. Um that would be for maintenance and improvements to the existing shelters, open air shelters, um restrooms and other buildings um within the city's um park system. park improvements of $1 million. Um provides for upgrade and renovation of amenities um in the parks uh such as sports courts, landscaping, park signage um and other miscellaneous um

how many how many courts can you do for the million? Not very many. Oh, but it includes the other pieces that in that Yeah, the sports courts are only a portion of that 1 million. Um I think we have allocated 150,000 is that two 200,000 um would be included for sports courts within that 1 million. Okay.

Um park infrastructure 1.45 million. This is um to provide for the upgrade, renovation, and restoration of parking lots, roads, sidewalks, and utilities within the park system, cemeteries, and other open spaces. Um there's nearly 24 miles of park and cemetery roads that would be included in this project. Playground improvements. Um $875,000. um that provides for the ongoing maintenance, repairs and improvements um to the park's playgrounds. Um replacing structures and equipment which has reached the end of its life cycle. Um and then we also do have a small bit of funding allocated um to address vandalism um that happens in the park system or the playgrounds um specifically. um principal park improvements. Um this project is actually maintained or managed by the facilities group within the city manager's office, but we still classify it as a park um for reporting purposes. But these the uh $246,000 accounts for general park repairs and infrastructure um that we do on an annual basis. Principal Riverwalk maintenance 375,000 um this is for miscellaneous small repairs um with pavers um fixture replacements and other park improvements. Um recently have finished or are finishing the rotation of um major PA replacements and ballastrad improvements. um sports complexes, $225,000 um for the um maintenance um related to the baseball, soccer, softball, and general use recreation fields.

So, these are the would include also um upgrades to the major sports complexes um James County baseball and soccer in George Davis Softball Park. uh spray ground improvements of 600,000. Um the annual expenditures um would include surfacing um replacing um different elements of the play equipment at those locations, controllers um and other mechanical, electrical or plumbing repairs that were necessary. Swimming pools and aquatic infrastructure, $460,000 annually. Um this is to repair and replace um different um plumbing repairs, mechanical systems, cocking, pool painting, slide restorations, uh another pool fixture um replacements um of the three aquatic centers and two swimming pools, trail improvements, $786,000. Um this uh counts or provides for the planning, design, development, repair and replacement related to the 70 over 79 miles of paved multi-use trails, um 25 trail bridges and 21 miles of soft surface trails. And lastly, um, on this list, urban conservation of $300,000. This provides for, um, ecologic implementation of ecologically based park management practices, park management plans, interpretive signage at natural areas, water quality um, and ponds, and natural landscape and, um, improvement plans. Yes. What what kind of with the loss of

a park planner that we that we no longer have, how will these projects be delayed? Will they be on time? You know, when we talk about the parks, cemeteries and and roads, I know that we have looked at Grand View Park was to to have improvements made. Is the loss of a park planner going to delay our projects? City manager.

I mean, it just seems if we don't have somebody able to work on it that we're going to have some delays.

City Council Page, parks and recreation director. Uh to answer the question, we did lose 20% of the staff and so we are currently right now scrambling, but we'll get done in a week ahead or two to look at all the projects that are going to happen in the next two years. We're using a little bit of logic like if there was grant dollars that have a delivery date that we have to hit, those will have to stay, but we will have to take the entire park system, so all the wards, and we're going to have to rebalance the ability to now do that with four people instead of five people. So, we'll get that together. We'll work with the city manager's office. We'll share with you all what's going to get delayed and what can stay on. But yes, there will be projects that have to get pushed just cuz we can't get to

Thank you. So, uh, with that being said, Scott, I guess my question would be, okay, we've agreed you're taking away a park planner, but wouldn't that wouldn't that go down to like different departments also since there's going to be less projects. So, that would be we would need maybe one less engineer. we would need maybe, you know, th those are the type of things that if you're taking away this, the inability to to do certain projects, then that means you're not going to need others down the line that that do these projects. So, yeah, that's

my my question to you is is you you've decided to take away one park planner, but nothing other than that with with some of the other departments. And I I guess just an explanation of why that wasn't also in there since we're going to have less projects. I mean, it's going to be time delayed. And so, um,

Scott, can I just add one comment before you go? Sorry. the early on in the um presentation we looked at total expenditures by category and this will be in your books too but um just as a natural progression of um plan future planning for in the parks area the CIP dollars were going down whereas some of the other um areas were not seeing that same level of reduction so naturally there are less projects to address in the future I think it would be Thank you for that, Jessica, cuz that that's exactly right. I think it'd be helpful we can provide the the chart that shows we ramped up the part spending purposely uh with the additional ARP of funding and even a little bit of sales tax

and including Birdland Marina and others, right? And so years ago when we did that, we knew there was the bubble, the extra. That's where the pressure was to find additional staff to get that done. So we added the park planner four years ago maybe, Ben. Does that sound right? Three or four year four years. Four years ago sound about right. Five somewhere in that range

to to handle that e that extra. And so that's part of the discussion. And because of that, I felt comfortable making that move at that point. But you are right that with the discussion that's in front of us for 28 and the years beyond that, uh there are additional adjustments that are going to be necessary. Part of that will be on the demand and the supply side. So it it will be what can be handled by the ex the remaining park planners and what can we afford from the budgetary standpoint. We'll have to work through that to figure that out. But it will impact more than just parks. Uh we we know it'll impact libraries. We know it'll impact engineering with street projects. So we'll have that discussion

that robust after this budget budget and then that'll be part of some of our workshops that we're going to have on Mondays or maybe it may be a special workshops but we are going to have those type of multiple discussions with the public okay in that regard

and and you know it'd be helpful I I love the survey that you did but you know you almost pitted like police against parks you know which one's more important or parks against libraries, which one's more important? So maybe maybe with a survey you could say, you know, tell me your top three priorities like out of the parks department or, you know, what do you want to see out of the police instead of trying to pick, you know, okay residents, pick which one do you want to think's better? You know, we, you know, you know, do you want library hours? you know, that that survey that you had. I mean, I I did I I thought it was good, but you

I think it needs to be done maybe a little bit differently as we go forward and and and engage with the public. Fair enough. And that is intended. That is part of the plan. So, if you don't mind, we we'll talk more about that in about 15 minutes, actually. Okay.

The next say one last quick thing that I just want to say that we are very grateful. We've had some really good years with the additional dollars in ARPA. And as you've seen, we have a park system that's 125 years old. And so I want to at least set the table that say that these are great amounts, but we will not keep up. Uh the next round of playground removals will happen with again not enough funding, the next round of sports courts. So you have a hard job as council members, but expect more removals than we can keep up with replacements, too. That goes as part of the, you know, expectations that we talk to the community. That goes back to the all long range. when you build something, you have to build in the maintenance part of it or or maybe you don't do it.

And we've come a long way. Engineering's been very helpful. Like on sports courts, we're doing additional uh technology in in pavement conditions and pavement applications to make them last 30, 40 years instead of what we saw from the 80s and 90s, right? Those cost more money to do it that way, too. So, just something to make sure we think about all the angles. Is this an accurate statement that the parks department is the only department that has a friends of organization that helps raise libraries also? Thank you. to help raise significant monies.

Yes. Thank you. They've done, you know, in 2007 they started and they raised 3,500 and I think last year they processed over $4 million in additional dollars. So all volunteers, one paid staff again on their own dollar. So yeah, that's tough to duplicate. That's for sure. We appreciate that out of all of them.

So what one of the questions and this is maybe a change in presentation, but I'll give a hot button issue that we still had a line item that I could point to in last year's budget book. I can't I don't know where it is this year. I think it's in the general park improvements, but Harmon Park, where we haven't figured out, you know, we removed the tennis courts, there was at least a $200,000 line item for something in Harmon Park in last year's CIP. I could actually point to that line item, park improvements, for example. Correct.

It it's somewhere in there. But again, this is this goes back to my constant theme of having like that detail where we we'd previously had things and I know maybe this is because folks are wanting to shift things around or want more flexibility, but it would be nice to know the specific projects and since we have a number of those things kind of identified which courts are next in line for replacement even if I mean we can have that discussion about what actually happens. But if it's not in there and we don't know that list, how do we how do we have that discussion? And for the folks, because I'm going to a neighborhood association meeting tomorrow night where I know Harmon Park is going to come up. What do I tell them? I can't even point to a page number. Although I will also note there aren't page numbers in this book.

Like that that makes it really hard to use. That was a that was a printer issue. Okay. Um apologize for that. and that but I can't even point to

no um let's it's by design so we can give it to our favorite council member and each year we turn it around. No, the the real story is there's three different categories that are purposely generic. I've been here this is my 19th year and different councils have liked this differently. So it's kind of it's kind of fascinating to hear your comments like we've had project specific sheets per park and then as we downsized we went into more generic accounts so park improvements park buildings and each year I make sure I have the list of where we are going and then if the priorities change at the council level then I can have that same a lotment again using Harman Park as the example if I'm told by the city manager that's the top priority then we move

whatever other park it was out another year and advance that park. So, it's the same dollars and they're there. It's just a matter of what is it? And then Harmon Park is a very unique example is is it going to be a sports court? Is it going to be a spray ground? Is it going to be a shelter? There are funds dedicated to different things within the infrastructure. So, that 1.45 45 million and the improvements the 1 million. Again, some flexibility and we do know what we want to do for 2026 calendar year and 27, but after that it's hard to keep up with what's going to be here because our budget does this too, right? So, so to his point is to the $200,000 still in there for that sports court or not.

The money is there that could be used for that, but it's not we're not planning to do anything in 2020. But if if you know comm other community partners stepped up and said you know we'll match we'll match that if you do X you know to that that's still available. So those conversations for me start with Scott. Scott starts with the community and then he tells me and we work together with finance and we figure it out

to his point if he's able to get additional funding for that site. Is the $200,000 still available for that site if if he needs to use it like as a match or something, you know, a partner with a private or another public entity that wants to maybe do a another tennis court there or pickle ball. It's a timing question, right? So, if you tell me at the beginning of a fiscal year before we started working on a project and already have staff charges to that account, let's just again use sports courts as an example because that's what Harmon was.

Yes. If I knew at the beginning of that fiscal year that was a priority, it's much easier and much more efficient on the tax dollar to do it that way. But if it's if it's halfway through the year, we would ask to make it the following fiscal year. Okay. So, it's in there today. But one of the difficult conversations is how much does the council want to put into tennis courts generally and separately? How much do you want to put into pools and the different categories of the parks? Right. That's where that survey needs to come.

Yes. And that's where then you can decide if there is one new tennis court every other year that that we're able to afford and that's the decision. Then it can be okay, Harmon Park's probably the first. And then but we've got to get that message out to the people that we represent because it's not my decision what we want to do in Ward 4 or what you know Josh wants to do in Ward three. It's not it's not art. It's what our residents want. So we've got to figure out a way to engage in them. Yeah. Especially now because it's not going to be status quo correct going forward after this budget. Correct. Okay.

And we've got a couple of slides after CP to talk about that. if we can. We're almost done with that. Scott has really really quickly really really really quickly but Ben when would we see the list of what's going to be done in each year. So what we would do is as soon as you know you're adopting the budget I can show you this like I can show you ahead of time too like what the playground is in those categories, what the spray ground is, what the trail work is and it's actually listed in the narrative you'll see. So, in our project sheets, there'll be a specific sheet for those are a couple examples, but there's others. You can see what the project sheet is. It'll tell you like in your award trails. Central Place Levy 2 is the next trail project. So, you'll be that's in there. Okay.

And call me if you have any questions on any of it. So, so at the end of the day, how much more would you need? I mean, I'm just saying when you get I'm we're up here talking about one part. Okay. Right. And in overall we're saying this is how much you can have because then we're going to get in this discussion of whose part gets it first. No I you only got 200,000 but you really need a million. Are they still not going to be have I mean I think at this level of what we need to do. I mean

you can get into it but I go we're I'm just saying that 200,000 doesn't go very far and even if you matched it what is that match going to be and what is the total cost? And so as far as the operating budget of what we're trying to do, we give them and then we can figure it out, you know, let the staff figure out what the priorities along with our residents. How much is it to replace Harmon uh the the tennis courts that were there? If you if the two courts are about $400,000 today with the current pavement technology we're using that gets us a longer lifespan. Is it the same for pickle ball?

That's just the court. Really close to that. Pickle ball if I only built but I wouldn't recommend pickle ball. It's a little bit shorter space, not by much. You might as well go ahead and get tennis because then you get two sports for what little extra cost there is. So, okay. I'm I'm just saying that this is the discussion of what do we get into it. So, not that it is an important place or items to talk about, but I don't know if I bet that question will come up tomorrow. It will it will come up tomorrow. And last year, there was a line item in the budget book that I could point to, and there's just not a line item this year. I think it's well I mean it we we've we've like taken a level of detail out again. I mean I I get it but just it

well it might it's not there any it's going to get correct. I think that would be the fact is that right now the way the budget is right it could be used for another project that 200,000 it's not guaranteed to stay in that category for Harmon Park is what you're saying now right we said we'd come back and talk about it this spring right but we we had the we had the 200,000 it wasn't necessarily tennis courts it was allocated to the park if it was an open air shelter was the other alternative so that there it wasn't just empty land there was something there.

And as a quick reminder, Ben's schedule will also indicate when facilities will have met their lifespan and which ones are going to have to come out or be replaced, right?

It's not all just new. We we nothing lasts forever. What I have a another question just and this is maybe a little in the weeds but one of the things when we talk about overall maintenance uh and one of the things that we are going to need to look at as a council are there things we could do differently to reduce maintenance and one thing that stuck out was the 24 miles of park and cemetery road and my question is particularly with cemeteries can we start a limit eliminating some of those roads to save both maintenance and operational budget. And and one of the things I think we were talking about, we didn't have it last year, but we're going to have more cell phone data. Would that be something that we would be able to understand like usage on those roads so that maybe if there's segments of road that could just be taken out and just turned to green space rather than h how do we think about that as part of a long-term

yeah very creative idea and we've looked at a lot of things including this. So, uh, the answer would be most likely yes, you could take lots or roads out. There are some cemeteries that have historic preservation designations that probably would need a different level of review and approval. And then really it comes down to what does this governing bahadi want to take politically, right? Because we sold people lots of like in a development. I always use that as an example is the corner lots worth more money, closer to the streets worth more money. That's how we price them. So folks would probably come to you to say, "Hey, that's not how you sold this to me and I thought this would be like this forever." Right? I'm sure you've heard that before in other examples in the city. So I think you can and we could eliminate roads and we could turn that into additional burial sites or just green space, but it becomes on your shoulders after that for the politics side of this.

Yeah,

we can look at all that and determine, but go ahead. I I think these are all like great comments and um I think those conversations are things that we need to be, you know, kind of making that mental list in our minds to talk about this summer, but just I'm going to keep moving us along here. So, thanks Mr. Boss. Uh got a couple more slides here and then we're we're almost to a lunch break. uh in the streets ongoing projects. Um we have a quite a list of um annual maintenance that we um expect to um incur. So active transportation $750,000 um includes improvements associated with multimmodal transportation such as walking, bicycling, and transit. Uh asphalt improvements, $1.4 million. Um that's for partial and full depth patching, surface milling, and hot mix asphalt overlay on residential and arterial streets. Concrete street and curb rehabilitation of $2 million. Uh lost street improvements of $6 million. That's just um tracking of those projects. Um street improvements that are funded through lost um funds only. Leadwater services. Um $150,000. Um this um funding is to help us identify and address lead and galvanized water services on construction projects um where pavement was recently removed and replaced. Pedestrian crossing improvements, $1.3 million. Um this includes um pedestrian all pedestrian crossing improvements throughout the city. Um and whether that be uh or could include uh traffic signals as well. um roadway reconstruction, $1.8 million. Um that's for the um removal and replacement of failed portions or entire sections of Portland cement, concrete, and brick

streets. Roadway rehabilitation, collector, and residential. Um 4.225 million. Um this is the continuation of the public works 5-year plan um to pave and rehabilitate residential and collector streets. Sidewalks 2.7 million. Um this provides for um constructing new sidewalks to fill sidewalk gaps in the city. Um replace deteriorated uh sidewalks and ramps um those damaged by city activities, street trees um and sidewalk for residents that qualify for income subsidies. um skywalk system, $1.35 million. Um it's for um ongoing maintenance of the skywalk um district in this um downtown area. S uh traffic signals and street lighting, $1.7 million uh includes traffic signal improvements throughout the city um and includes reconstruction of the traffic signal infrastructure. um upgrading city- on street light fixtures to LED fixtures. Um and also we've included the railroad street crossings and crossing signals in this category. Uh traffic studies and traffic calming, $600,000. Traffic system operation improvements, $2 million. Um this is upgrade of the intelligent transportation system infrastructure um which is the traffic signal controllers management software observation camera system um and all the other components of u of that system. It also does include um citywide installation and upgrade of the um 425 plus um traffic signals that are interconnected with fiber. Um and lastly on the list, vision zero initiatives,

$500,000. Um this funding um provides for the focus on lowcost high impact strategies on the high injury network um that was identified that were identified through the vision zero effort. Um I know I just went through those really quickly. So if there are any questions, seeing none, we'll u move on. Um so I think there's a lot of takeaways from this discussion this morning. Um but um the key takeaways um that I think just worth mentioning um again we just talked about all those ongoing projects. They do take up a substantial portion of uh CIP the annual capacity we have to issue debt to maintain our the maintain the assets we have. Um some identified needs will um lead to a projected uh tech debt service um levy increase in fiscal years 28 through 30 and also for projects um that we want to add to the CIP we either need to identify non-debt service funding sources um and if that's not an option um there's going to mean delays um in those projects or maybe even change of project scope. So, um, any new project at this point would be an increase of the debt levy. So, um, we'll leave that with any questions. I know we did have a question earlier on the Southeast Connector funding. Um, of the 61 million total project, 74% of that was from federal dollars. So, $45 million. Not don't recall who answered or asked that question.

Linda. So, It seems as though the capital improvement, you had it by departments, but you also had it by ward, but I don't see that anymore. Not in not into not in RCIP plan. Uh, but the the project uh sheets actually do have reward reference, right? Like I'm looking at one for the DAIO site, but it says W 2, but DACO is not in W 2. That should be W three. I don't know. There's no page number. Maybe it's a re capital improvement plan de mo Iowa daiko site improvements.

It's about that far in. But it says W two. Okay. Any other questions? With that, we will hand it over to Scott for a couple slides. You get this down to two slides or was it just the one? Two slides. Yep. Two. Okay. We've already talked about a lot of this. We're going to do this now.

Yeah. Yeah. This is this is only I again I don't want to confuse people people that the challenge we have ahead of us. We brought it up several times this morning, but I wanted to give a timeline to it so we understood that nearly immediately after approval of the 27 budget CIP, we jump right into the next cycle. Uh, and so this gives you what it what the timeline expectation would be. Uh, you will be approving the budgets in uh, early April as long as we're able to stick to that schedule. Um, and hopefully the legislative session will also end in late April, possibly early May. And uh rumor has it there might be some changes up there in the property tax uh rules. And so we obviously aren't waiting. Every new idea on legislative property taxes we're analyzing and trying to work through, but we really need to put a clock on ourselves. And so by uh mid to late May, we want to be able to provide not only the council but the public what we think our following year's budget gap is going to look like. So within a matter of weeks after uh legislation legislators have convened and finished up uh we will give you our best estimate at that time. understanding that that gap analysis will be updated at least twice over the 6 months that follow that. Okay? So, we don't we can't wait to get the best estimates. We need to get started. So, we will have the best amount of information we've got for you in that mid to late May.

Then early June, just a few weeks after that, we will provide a list of potential cuts both operating and capital that start the conversation of these are some ideas that have come up and we I've added two from just this morning. Uh we'll continue to add ideas and opportunities. We will even as the second bullet point point says ask the public uh for additional cut ideas. Um at the same time however uh we will allow for uh potential for ads right because we acknowledge that uh city services need to evolve with what the needs are of our residents. So, um, it's quite possible that there are some new ads that are just as important, if not more important, uh, than what we're doing today. So, we don't we don't want to shut that door, uh, uh, completely. It's just the acknowledgment that, uh, it will be difficult, right? Uh, next slide and then we'll unless there's specific about that piece. Well, I I I guess in terms of the the budget update and I know we anticipate we know right now just based on the current, you know, the current property tax system where they have that cap. I mean, we're anticipating I I think I've heard you say numbers of in next year's budget at least an $8 million gap and that number could fluctuate. We're not positive, but we know it's not going to go down to zero. It's not going to go down to four or five even. Right. I mean,

correct. That's the magnitude we're dealing with. We're we're we're we know today that after we do this year's budget, which is tough, that we're facing probably in the magnitude of 8 million. If the legislature makes changes, it could be it could be even more than that from a a gap perspective. Is that that's an accurate? Uh it's in the magnitude, but that's not the tagline. We're not going to talk about that number that much. It's a it's a large number. You know, exactly. You don't know what it is.

No. And that's the point. That's not even the focus, right? I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves. We know there's going to have to be reductions at this point based on the what we know now. That is in the magnitude of what I would expect, right? I mean, it's just in terms of when we go out there and talk with with with the public like we know we don't know exactly what it's going to be, but we know it's bad

and and we can communi like I I guess I think it would be helpful even though we don't know the exact number to to just be projecting out a year just from a transparency perspective and knowing I I think you you kind of mentioned like maybe treat it like the revenue estimating committee at the capital. I think that would be a good approach to just track that over time so we know what's coming. We know it's we know it's rough and we can we can just communicate and have that benchmark. So I like the idea of the updates every six months. I just think we should start that now.

Yeah. And I I hope you you can appreciate that throwing a number out there confuses people when a month later you have to change the number, right? And so I want the first number to be talked about to have the knowledge of how did the legislative cycle finish out and what are those impacts. That's that's when we should be talking about the new number and what that looks like,

right? But but also at the same time having a number today and if we I mean if they make changes and it changes because of what they've done it's a little easier to connect those dots as well. Okay, next slide please. So that leads us into all the public discussions. Uh we have um additional surveys you'll see that that we're going to put out there. We're actually talking about trying the surveys in different ways. So we'll take your input on how to adjust on that. We have some new tools available. But you're right,

similar to what we did um for the public input this this last go round, but with but with adjustments that have been talked about where

maybe there are five, six or even seven options to choose from to get that broader opportunity to compare and repeat that over whatever number of times we need to to get to the final answer. Um so essentially that's where the meat of the conversations are going to be is over the summer uh leading up to uh late summer August early September the second analysis. Uh I've chosen that date working with finance because we should have a fairly good idea of where the valuations the property tax values are going to be and that's helpful. and then continue the discussions, refine what we think the solutions are, acknowledging that different than years past, uh the options that will be discussed go beyond what solving the budget takes. Let me repeat that. It won't be a this is what it takes to solve the budget in the cuts, but rather the target that we need to meet and a bunch of options that go beyond that. So, you do not the the public will not have to choose the council will not have to choose all of the options. You're going to be able to say that goes too far. Don't cut that and choose other options from the list. Does that make sense? That is a very different process than what we've had in the past.

Yeah. And well, part of that discussion will be how far into the future are you trying to solve? Because if the reality that we're given with new property tax laws are that we are let's call it 1 or 1.5% short every year on every budget because they don't allow us to even grow by inflation. Right? If that is the case, there's a policy decision to be made of do you really want to have this same process every year that that is very laborous and and difficult or do you want to solve for two years or even three at the most maybe to be able to say okay this is our good year bad year type of rotation again there there's going to be that so be have that in the back of your minds that depending on what the final answer is with the the rules um we may the the group may decide to to solve two or three years at a time. Finally in November we think we can come back with uh the best gap analysis that'll be available at that time and really the hard decisions have to be made in November. At that point you should know all the par parameters, variables, options and hopefully the council can coalesce around what the solution will be because there's still a lot of work on the finance side and with the departments. Every cut is a service level impact and so we owe it to the department directors to be able to to bring that forward. We think we know financially what it might save us, but let's make sure you know what the service level impacts are with that next cycle.

And and one thing to point out as well is the property taxes aren't technically final until January. Um and depending on what might be changed with roll back. Roll back in the past has been determined at the end of October, November. So, this is where we're trying to get pretty close numbers. Um, usually in that mid to late November is when we have a pretty good idea of of that uh where things are going to be able to give you that the the best guess for finalized numbers. All right. Okay. done a really good

with that. Uh I we will be breaking for a half hour for lunch if there's no other questions and come back at about 1:00. 1:00 1:00 and there should be food council behind. Yeah. Oh, and behind. But take your badge if you want to get in. Right. There places where public can talk. That's going to be hard for me to get used to because I got to find it. Wow. Yeah, I think it'll be with like what we did with the different wars. You couldn't talk at the

Uh, we'll go ahead and get started. Um, you want to start with the parking,

right? I think I have Excuse me. I think um for the City of De Mo parking garages, um here's the the picture of all of them. Uh we did include 9inth and Locust on here because of the historical information on it. Uh it did get sold uh um in 2026 uh finalized. Uh we do have the new uh 1,200 Mberry as well um where we purchased that during the process of getting 1,200 Locust. When you look at the parking system inventory, um you can see uh of those uh we do have the uh seven listed here. Year built estimated uh time for uh replacement or removal. Um then we had our 2026 insured values. is the only one we didn't have insured values for that time frame uh was the 1200 mberry where we went off of the Poke County assess uh post Poke County's assessment. Um as you kind of see we have uh um a total of just over 6,000 spaces within uh our parking garages. Uh we have 3,500 on street parking and uh 415 pay stations. As we look at the garage average garage occupancy for the the fiscal years, um you can kind of see we did have uh the extreme dip from COVID for fiscal year 2021. Um and as you can see, it's been

uh gradually increasing uh each year. Um it still hasn't made it to the precoid range. Um except for uh park and ride is about at that level of what what we saw a little bit before CO. This is um kind of a breakout by uh garage. We did remove uh 9inth and Kio because um that one we we already sold and we don't have uh enough information really to display the uh Malberry 1,200 Malberry yet. But you can see that there is a increase on all of the occupancy um on all except for the fifth and KE and the center street which is the park and ride system. One of the biggest drivers on the third in court um was the adding more individual parkers and GSA moved a large group from monthly floaters to uh monthly preferred. So that was kind of a bigger um move for that uh for that ramp. looking at the uh a revenue uh for the parking system. Uh the blue is our parking garages revenue and the kind of the oranges orange is the on street parking. Um and then on the right axis we have the on street revenue as a percentage of the total. As you can see, um, as we look at those numbers of occupancy and more, I think the ease of the on street parking, that's definitely been a driver of some additional um, revenue on that side. Um, and and I've got a slide that kind of talks about the transactions from those

kiosks as well as the mobile app that we'll get into um, before before the end of this uh, presentation on parking. Nick, before you move on, um, have the parking rates gone up over those five fiscal years? Um, I can't remember when the last time we did the parking the on Do you want to go up and chat to that? Thank you, John. And just to save me asking a second question while you're walking up here, John, the point is to figure out if this if how this really reflects demand, not just revenue, but utilization.

All right. Uh good afternoon, uh council and honorable mayor. Uh John Davis, city traffic engineer. To to short answer to your question, council member, is no. The rates have not changed. Uh the last rate change uh was back I believe around 2017 2018 when we not only changed the rates to to degrees but we also changed the hours of operation for our on street system to be Monday through Saturday 9:00 a.m. to 900 p.m. Uh so we've we've not changed our rates on street. We've also not changed our rates uh in the garages except for we now have the flexibility that during special events for high demand special events we can go up to uh a $20 uh event charge

and thank you for the reminder about the change in hours. So So there's we're we are charging for parking for more hours than we were a handful of years ago. Is that accurate? Uh yes. Okay. So that would that would also impact the revenue that we're bringing in. We're we're charging. If we're charging for more hours, we have more correct. But not within this window of not within that window. That was 1718.

That was uh yes 1718 was the the major restructure of the on street. I think if you're looking for some of the impacts on revenue, we're seeing a high impact on our weekends because of the various events we have downtown, the the success of the farmers market, which has expanded a little bit over these last five years to include uh uh uh activities or booths on uh Fifth Avenue, for example, as well as other events that are occurring uh at the Casey Center, the the uh the Iowa Event Center as well as elsewhere in the downtown. So that's what we're attributing a lot of that uh revenue increase in this time frame. We've also seen an increase on the garage side cuz we've uh had uh parking at the Fifth and Walnut garage uh that we acquired uh and that provides a lot of benefit or parking for individuals that are visiting for example the the farmers market.

Thank you. John, could you along those lines remind me when we lowered the parking garage to a dollar? Was that that I mean it was I think after I was on council so 1718 it would have been after that it it's it's been more than that mayor I believe it was in the 2017 18 I came with the city in 2019 and the rates that were there in that at that time are what we have today yeah it was it would have been probably the 18 time frame then is what you're what you're saying because I think it was after after I was on. Okay.

Thank you, John. When we look at the on street uh parking garage revenues as percentages, uh you can kind of see here for the 2027, uh about 50% of the revenue is uh based off of the on street parking. um very small percentage on the rented parking spaces and other uh and then each of the different parking ramps kind of show that um three of them at at that 12 13% and and a couple at that 6%. Um and looking at the expenditures from the parking uh fund side, uh you can kind of see that we have the operating in in blue. Um other expenses um in the red uh green is the uh transfers to CIP. So you can kind of see we had a larger transfer in the 23. Um uh we were wrapping up some of the more he heavy um maintenance work. Um so we were kind of wrapped that up and we kind of have more standardized uh about the same expenditures going forward from from that point on. Um, and then the debt piece uh that you're seeing there um going forward is actually the debt that we have on the second uh and grand um over by the old uh city city hall. From uh a comparison on the historical revenues and expenditures uh standpoint, uh you can kind of see that uh there's some years with with deficits and some years with um uh balanced from revenues and expenses side. Uh the biggest um contributor there on the ones that we had uh the deficits in 23 and 25 were

the contributions to Dart. So this is where that 3-year of of calculation that we had from from the additional from property taxes where I think the first year was about just under 300,000. The next one was just under 800,000 and then about 1.5 million. Um the payment to DART for fiscal year 24 was not invoiced to us until 25. So there was just a timing issue that that should have actually been in the 24 versus the the 25 actuals. It just uh didn't get build in that in that window of time. So the the pilot is based off of the uh insured values of those property of ours. So it's it's based off of uh the cost of what we have them as insured values but then also to uh based off the rates as well that we are based off of that same calculation of the local option for the police and fire services of those of those facilities. So there's an alteration of the value within because insurance values have kind of gone up from from that perspective. Um, and then we've had changes with uh the um uh selling of a couple different garages and adding as well because we sold Ninth and Locust, but then we also purchased um the Fifth and Walnut and we sold the Yeah. Oh, sorry. This is Park and Ride. I'm I'm sorry. Yeah. So the valuation I think on the park and ride uh increased because you have not just the parking, you also have some of the com commercial space as well that's in that in that location. So so property insurance has gone up quite a bit.

So it it doubled essentially I mean roughly looking at or and the indirect cost type of thing. So that's the the lighter blue. Um I think with the taking on uh 26 increase because of the 1,200 malberry was a bigger uh if you go back and look at the this just park and ride this this slide is just park and ride. So 12 in Malberry wouldn't be on here. Yeah, I might have to look into that. I didn't notice that. Um don't think but the insurance did go up.

We'll get back we'll get back to you on why that blue is going up. Yeah, in in the the the other question that I was going to ask about the the park and ride, I mean, because the in the FY25 and 23, we kind of depleted the we had a balance that could only be used essentially towards transit, right?

Yeah. it was uh anything over anything over 2.5 had to be uh uh paid to DART through uh the uh agreement that we have with the FDA uh the uh federal federal transit authority. Um and so anything over uh 2.5 uh had to get go for transit and we would we kicked that out to them. Uh this was on top of that that we any of those funds uh it made sense for the additional fund balance that we had that we drew that down was to pay for DART for transit services. But the DART the piece that you're seeing there that continues in 26 and 27 is the link um uh cost to be able to go down um and link with the downtown.

Yeah. And and are we replenishing that fund balance? Um I mean is that going to go back up over time or or

it uh right now we don't have that as a um we don't see that as a um likelihood in the near term. So we're we we won't be seeing an increase. Uh as you can tell from the 26 and the 27 the revenue uh does not match up with the expenses. So we do have a little bit more expenses than we do have on the revenue. So there is that shortfall there. Um and it depending on um how how much we can get it utilized if there's anything that happens around there through development wise that might actually change but currently today the biggest uh form of revenue there is the agreement that we have with principal.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, I'd be curious because that that fund balance issue that we we will not be the pilot and the indirect costs or the doubling of those is is kind of what? Yeah. So, uh the valuation between 25 and 26 nearly doubled. Okay. Double. Yeah. Interesting. We'll we'll get back to you on on on this with the balance expectation because I I noted here my apologies I didn't my understanding is DARP

may be taking on the responsibility of the link with another route and so we need to work through that for 27's numbers so we may need to bring back that aspect of this as well because if it is from the park and ride aspect there needs to some sort of route that needs to be and currently today that is the link that we have within this current budget but other routes do come close enough that they can pick that up. Yeah. Mhm.

Um looking at the uh capital improvement program for uh parking. Um we kind of have the funding for the periodic facility conditions repairs and maintenance that we need to have. um as well as we had the on street parking technology investment that we had um through the 26 amended um and then we'll have um the access and and revenue system at 1,200 malberry uh anticipated as well. Um but we break this out between the costs of uh the parking facility and the park and ride separate. Um given the fact that there is that that federal tie that we have on that on that park and ride uh facility as as regard to park DSM. Um the on street parkers have a couple of different ways to pay. um you can pay by credit card or coinage at the kiosk or through the mobile app you can pay by uh credit card. So for calendar year 25 uh we had almost 2 million transactions um 72 of which was through the mobile app. Um and then the kiosk accounted for 28 and 7% were coin and 21 were credit cards. So you kind of see that as a breakout um between the the three different fiscal years there. You can kind of see that it's similar over the course of those three years, parking questions, comments. Oh, I wanted to go back the estimated placement years. Sure.

Since we are at least on fourth and grand and fifth in Kio getting close to those estimated replacement, do we think Because if 2030 was actually the estimated replacement year, that would be at this point reflected in our CIP, which it is not correct. Currently, um that's not in the plan, but it is one where we have to figure out if what we would be doing over the next um year or two to determine what what is the best approach for Fourth and Grand.

Right. So are I I guess my question is do these facilities have longer useful life which I mean I don't that it I mean fourth and grand seems like it is in we did uh we we keep it well maintained right from that perspective. Certainly compared to the brown garage across the street that is being torn down, Fourth and Grand is in significantly better shape and the Brown Garage was utilized until until a couple months ago.

So with that, yes, we we constantly evaluate that if that's right. And as we're coming down, you can kind of see the most the newest one that we have is Fifth and Walnut. And so we do have a 50-year estimated time on that. So that's usually our rule of thumb, but I know that we've we've done a really good job on the CIP side on the on the repairs and maintenance aspect on our garages. But it is going to be that's really where you start triggering your thought process of what what do you do? Do you continue to maintain it knowing that there's going to be probably some more higher cost uh to maintain uh for repairs or do you take it down, replace it, not replace it? But that's one where we kind of have a rule of thumb of of about 50 years of of useful life. Um but we've done a lot of improvements to all of the facilities I think that would keep them going longer than that. I think it's worth councilman if you would agree. Uh I'll talk with engineering and see what the end game really does look like. Is it something that we can get comfortable with another 10 years or not? And what would it take? And then frankly with both fourth and grand and fifth and kio would fall in that same category especially since fifth and kio has the uh on top

the tower. Yeah. Would we lose that housing with fifth and kio? So I I think both need to be looked at from a 10 15 year horizon to understand what is the endgame for those because there may be economic development opportunities as well. So, it'd be good to know uh what what our options are. I would I would think you would keep the one with housing if you're that close, but maybe not. But everything has its age, so we need to know what is it even close. Yeah. What is Yeah. Keep it going. And what's the stability of the item?

Couple quick questions. Yes. Um, at first glance, it seems like we have significantly more parking than we need downtown. Uh, I going back to FY19 on your chart, 64% of the uh total parking was utilized. Was that a do you know off the top of your head or John, do you know if that was a high water mark? Was that typical at that point in time? Um, I don't know. John, do you

I I started in 27. I can't recall what those percentages were, but I can I think we can pull that information to kind of give you better ideas of whether that was the high water mark or not. It it just it it doesn't seem like with workforce patterns that it's it's reasonable to assume that that we're going to get back to those those percentages anytime in the near future. And so then it just leads me to the next question of like what's the um for for Nick or for Scott like what's the what are the calculations you put into play uh with taking a garage offline in terms of the the impacts of revenue asset economic development like how how do you think through those things? I think you somewhat nailed it. All those

Thank you. All those categories are incredibly important. Um looking at who do we have utilizing them today because there's oftentimes multi-year contracts and you know what uh future economic development is expected in the area. Those those are some of the biggest elements. um we have uh both economic development and engineering in those conversations. Um we've been fortunate that a couple of our garages have we've had pe uh companies come forward and ask if they could buy them. Um and so we've we've recently looked at those numbers for like Ninth and Locust. So we could we could mirror some of those conversations and bring those forward to again I I do believe we for those two in particular fourth and grand and fifth and Q we do need to decide fairly soon what the endgame is going to be because there's large investments every year on both of those.

Okay. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Yeah. Any other questions on parking? Okay, I'll move directly into housing services. So, with housing services, uh there's two major components there. You've got section 8 voucher program as well as our public housing program. So, um the housing voucher program is the the rental assistance in the form of housing uh assistant payments or HAP. Um there's almost uh 3,000 individuals or families per month receiving assistance and the average of those receiving assistance is about $600 a month in those payments. um from a public housing standpoint. Um those are the owned and managed by the housing services. Um and those units are available to low and moderate income as well uh income individuals and families. Uh we have over 400 units uh 25 scattered sites uh 390 in the manor sites. Now we do have uh disposition funds uh established through HUD um to provide um the sale of scattered uh sites as well. So that disposition fund um is kind of made up from those sales of scattered sites that we have done which can be done uh pay for some of the capital uh expenses in that program. When you look at the uh 2027 recommended budget, uh you can see the biggest portion of the cost is those housing assistant payments, those HAP payments. Um those are those rental assistant payments that that you're seeing. But then the actual operations of the

section 8 um public housing and then the central office which services both the public housing and section 8 side um is at 5% and capital funding uh capital project funding is is 2%. When you look at the two programs specifically, um you can see that we have balanced budgets on both uh the public uh housing side and the section 8 side. Um the revenues that we have coming in kind of pay for the personnel services, uh contracts, fees, and commodities in those areas. Uh in total, it's about $4 million each from that side. Like I said, the the major component that you're not seeing here is that the the hat payments are the the major driver of the cost in the housing authority. So, one thing to consider um as we talk about housing and uh having the source of revenue to be able to cover those costs, there's a a terminology known as proration. And pration is of HUD revenue refers to the process of adjusting federal funds. Uh appropriations to be able to cover those costs uh to operate those. Um instead of providing the full amount, HUD provides a percentage. And so um we've we've been uh lucky to have about that 96 steady uh for a couple of years now on the public housing side and 90% on the section 8 side. Um, I think if you go back a handful of years, uh, it I mean I think they were down in the 60 percentages. So, I mean it's, um, um, that's one where we kind of have to, you know, keep an eye on depending on kind of what goes on with federal funding and different

things like that, which kind of alludes to our challenges and opportunities that we have. you know, the future of of federal funding is unknown with that proration. Um, as well as kind of uh, you know, the approach that we have currently with the disposition and and section 32 programs of scattered sites, um, as well as the mainstream and emergency housing voucher programs that we have. So, those are kind of some of the challenges that we have and opportunities that we have in front of us from a housing services standpoint. I know that was quick, but any questions on housing services?

Yep. Over here again. Uh on the disposition of housing. Uh I Chris and I we you told me about this in our my introductory meeting with your team. Uh and I know we I think we had one on an agenda a couple meetings back. Uh but we have 25 I believe 20 or 25 uh homes around the metro. Uh are are any of our current housing partners like like Habitat or Home and is there any potential partnerships with them to transition these into private ownership?

Mayor, members of council, Chris Johansson, neighborhood service director. Very, very good question. So the um sto historically for all these we've always done we've always worked very closely with the nonprofits. So there's um 13 that we've been working with Habitat for Humanity on. The remainder are in a affordable home ownership program where we do work with Home Inc. on some of the home ownership counseling. Um but that is where we directly sell directly to the the resident, the tenant that's living there. There's a discount that that uh goes with the sales price to give it affordability. Um there are seven still remaining that we are still that we are still working with on how we're going to how we're going to sell, but we anticipate going through a similar process like that to keep them affordable long term.

So how long for like the the 13 that you're working on with Habitat? Like what's what's the what's the timeline that is realistic for for those to to pass through and to be sold? Yeah,

there's uh nine that have already been sold. So, there's only four remaining. The three um they've wanted to kind of only do about three or four a year. So, I that's that's kind of what's been taking a little bit longer with it. So, more their capacity to rehab. Um so, I do anticipate starting the sales process probably in the next month or so for the remaining three. Um the one that is remaining, there still is a public housing resident in it that has a very large family. Um we get relocation assistance. we give them section 8. Um, but we're not going to have anyone lose their housing going through this process. So, we've been working with her for probably two years trying to find other housing and we're just going to keep waiting until something comes up. U, but this could be one we do have for quite some time still.

And then there's the um the larger public housing units. Yeah. Uh, which comprise most of that 400. Yeah. Uh, and that's no need to go deeply into that, but that's that's a that's a much more involved process, I would imagine.

Yeah. The the one thing I will mention on that, um, we do have, um, uh, four of our elderly buildings. I know Council Member Westerard's very very involved with those. I think three of them are in our ward. Um, the one thing I will mention there, one thing we are looking at is we're always going to end up owning those at at the end of the day, but there's a different way that we could be funded for it. Um, if we convert them to a project based uh, rental assistance instead of having them in the public housing program, it um, might be more cost-effective for us to do it that way. And then even in the long run, it it's more beneficial for our capital funds if we do it that way as well. So that's really the only thing we're going to be looking at with regards to those those four remaining properties.

And then one final question on this is one of the um identified uses for the soon to be decommissioned fire station number four is is maintaining some of the the equipment or the supplies to maintain our housing stock. Uh where are we keeping that right now? So ju just met on that yesterday. Um it's currently at Royal View Manor and I know we've we've always been considering what to do. We we're going to need some space at some point, but just in our meeting yesterday, and this is very recent. I don't even know if city manager knows yet, but um we we've discussed just um not being involved in that property and have us have us find another property down the road. Um I I still feel we're another year or two out from anything that we're going to be doing with Royal View Manor. Um that's where the equipment currently is housed. Um so we're going to step aside, let that RFP process go with with uh the whole entire property, just not have the housing agency be a part of it.

You're talking about the fire station. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yep. You're welcome. Thanks. Appreciate it. Uh Chris Chris, so when uh an an individual or a a family gets an emergency housing voucher, is it for uh a short time or how does that work when they get Very good question. So the the two programs that are listed on here, just to clarify, they're both set aside specifically for um homeless individuals. Mhm.

So the mainstream program was 78 vouchers that that's where primary healthc care takes people directly off the centralized intake waiting list and puts them directly into housing. The emergency housing voucher program was set aside directly for those experiencing homelessness living on the streets. So it's a similar type program. That program through a change in the federal administration is has been phasing out. Um, so we had 120 vouchers originally and they're converting them just to regular housing assistance vouchers that we have. Um, so that that program is going away. I did want to mention it just because we did get we did get to retain all the vouchers, but the the way they were used in the past has gone away just due to the the change in the administration. So, um I know I was out at a um mostly a senior facility in Ward 2 with Linda and there were some young people that had emergency housing vouchers and they were in a senior building and it wasn't exactly a good mix and I just, you know, did you just place them where wherever there's an opening? Is that how that works or

We don't place them, just to be clear. So when you Well, someone places them. Yeah. When you issue the voucher, it's up to them to find a place to to live. We can't we can't steer people is what it's called. It's a fair housing violation. But um the individual chooses at the end of the day where they live. for this program specifically. Um they did work with probably um primary healthcare and primary healthcare kind of works with landlords that will um work with that population especially if there's any screening criteria that could be an obstacle as well because with an did they okay because it was the housing

one quick note just since we're on the topic of vouchers I just want to mention it because it just came up this week um throughout the city there's a lot of project base vouchers. Um, Lagudi Tower, LCM Mason, you might hear those. Those aren't always associated with the housing agency. That's where um the property owner has a direct contract contract with HUD to operate. Uh, Wakanda Manor um just on uh Wattress just uh south of the country club. Everyone can kind of visualize that one kind of that brick. they had 110 um project based vouchers over there that they are not renewing their contract. So one thing that always happens to those is those vouchers then come to the housing agency and then we we begin administering those and then if the individuals end up leaving that property

the vouchers then can go anywhere else in Poke County. So it's not a loss of housing that comes with it but it is the one way that we do increase our vouchers and the supply affordable housing. So Chris, does does that thinking work with like Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. So that's one where technically the housing agency doesn't have the contract with, but if they would ever not want to renew their contract with HUD, then those vouchers would end up going to us, the the housing agency at the end of the day. Yeah. Yep.

All right. Thanks, Any other questions? All right, we'll go on to the next topic is the Smid last topic. I think we're good. Um, the Schmidt, a self-supported municipal improvement district. Am I on? Can you hear me? Yeah.

No. Is that better? Let's hold it up to my mouth. There we go. Is that better? Uh, a self-supported municipal improvement district is an area that is subject to an additional tax which is initiated by the property owners to fund improvements or to provide additional services and maintenance for the area. Um, the Schmids must be comprised only of properties that are zoned uh for commercial or industrial uses or properties within a designated historic district and the properties must be contiguous. Um, the residential properties again, they're not subject to the Schmid levy unless they are part of that historic district. Um the schmids are um fall under chapter 386.3 of the code of Iowa um for the governing of those.

I have a quick question on that last slide. Um yes, there's an interesting term zoned. The Smid is comprised only of properties that are zoned for commercial or industrial uses. So, if you have a residential building in a commercial zone, is it still part of a Schmid? Could be. No, not How about if you had a mixeduse building with retail on the first floor and unit housing units up above? I'm not sure about that one. We could do a little research and I think we should because we're going to be seeing a lot more mixeduse projects. Zip it may not be the right.

I don't I believe it's based off the parcel on on that payment piece.

So yeah, we'll confirm that the language there. So on this table you'll see the all the schmids that are within the city of De Moine boundaries um the year they were established and also the end of the levy authorization. Um we have three of them. Roosevelt Cultural District, Sherman Hill, and Southwest 9th Corridor that are all expiring at the end of the fiscal 2027. Um so development services will be leading the effort to um go through the renewal process of those um those districts. um on the Schmid levy rates um in the orange the dots and you'll see the maximum um allowable rate um per the operating agreements or the petition for each of the districts and then the blue bar represents the current um rate um at which they are operating at. So, Beaverdale, Highland Park, Ingresol Grand, and Southwest 9th are all operating at the maximum allowed levy rate. Um, downtown raised their maximum levy rate recently in fiscal year 2025, but they are not um planning to raise the actual um levy rate that they are collecting on. Um and Roosevelt um also does not have immediate plans to raise their their rate. The process for each of the Schmids um varies a little differently depending on how they are operated. um Beaverdale, Highland Park Park,

Roosevelt, and Sherman Hill. Um all work closely with the city on developing their operating budgets. Um the city pays for and processes the invoices um on their behalf. Um we collect those tax revenues and that stays on the city books. So there is no specific audit requirement for those Schmids because they are included in the annual city audit. Downtown Ingresaw Grand and Southwest 9th um all operate kind of as a pass through. So the city collects those Schmid revenue dollars from property taxes and we then pay those directly to those the operators of those um Schmids. Um because of that, because we are um essentially handing those tax dollars over to them to manage, we do require that each of them perform an annual audit. Um downtown and Ingresol have met that audit requirement and Southwest 9th is in progress. They just had a timing issue with uh their auditors. So that will be completed very soon. And historically, all three of those um entities have met their audit requirement. First slide of financial data here are for the four um Schmids that the city um serves as the operator on those. Um the different the various types of expenses that we are processing fee for each of the schmids um really depends on um what their intended purpose was. um plans for balances. Um the city does keep those um fund balances um till they are we have a designated use for them. Um Beaverdale um future plans plan to maintain holiday lighting um planters and street

furniture. Um it's kind of status quo, so there's no no additional use of the balance at this time. Um, Highland Park also has no um identified future need for balances. Um, and sometimes these districts, depending on the type of projects they want to do, they'll kind of they'll save those funds be because it might take a few or more years to save up enough to um pay for the identified projects. Um, Roosevelt, the receipts, um, cover maintenance expenses, um, trash removal, landscape maintenance, and insurance, and there's also no plans for other future, um, enhancements or improvements. Sherman Hill, um, I believe they are building their balance back up, um, to do more lighting projects. Um they recently last several fiscal years um completed some pretty major lighting projects um and on High Street.

I have a question. If Sherman Hill had an interest in, for example, crosswalks, would that be an eligible expense for the Schmid if they wanted to? Um, we'd have to go back to the petition probably to reference that. Um, but we can check on that. My guess is it was not included in the original petition, but yeah, I'm not sure. It could have been because it is a legal uh opportunity. they can do it. Okay. If they didn't include it in the petition, they'd have to amend that. But I if that cuz they are up for renewal in 27 and if that is something that they wanted the flexibility,

I believe so.

We we should talk with them because that is one of the areas where where a number of requested requested crosswalks and and bumpouts as well because they have some really wide residential streets. So if that was an area That would be that would be something to address during the renewal period. Okay, thank you. The next slide here is a summary of the financial data for downtown Ingresol Grand and Southwest 9th. And again, those are um operating as passroughs. Um we budget the tax revenues and everything we're collecting goes out the door to them. The exception is Ingresol Grand. Um we do maintain um one half of a year's worth of plant maintenance um and other maintenance costs. Um I think um in conversations with them that might be a discussion topic as that area expands that balance is going to increase um by requirement and they have a lot of needs there just as everybody else. So, um, that might be a future topic of conversation that'll come up. Diving into the downtown uh, Schmid budget, um, this is provided to us by Operation Downtown. Um the Schmid revenues um have the Schmidt tax revenues you can see from 26 adopted to 27 recommended did decrease um due to valuation decreases in the area. Um contributions uh line um those are organizations that aren't necessarily legally required to um provide money to the Schmid but do so

voluntarily. the downtown or the DTM revenues that you see on the slide. That is the um city contribution um in the form of inkind and cash. Um we recently just renewed the downtown maintenance agreement. So that would be that line. And then you have other support beautifification clean and safe. Um, Court Avenue is um for security and they are earning some interest income on their fund balance. The expenses, the management fees are to operate um um just for the operations of the um Schmidt itself included um and includes staff time. Um some of the other major ones uh facilities expenses um that's office space office and garage space for the various operations whether um administration or the ambassadors um that you see out and about. Again, the downtown maintenance expenses, that is the annual expense to maintain the public park spaces within the downtown Schmid. Um, Principal Riverwalk, ML King, um, East West, East Locust, and Western Gateway Park. clean and safe expenses that provides for the ambassadors um that are providing um cleanup um on the streets and in those public spaces and then um offduty officers outside of the court um district avenue or court avenue district program. Then this also includes um some expenses at Cow's Commons. Um project expenses. Um those include

some other board approved um projects. Um prior examples of those have include placemaking projects like teeter totters um or noise installation AC across from the old city hall building. So you will see that um they're estimating cash balance is decreasing. So they are using some of that fund balance for operations. Um similar to us they do have a fund balance policy of maintaining 6 to9 months worth of expenses. Um this is still quite a bit higher than that what that number would be but they are spending that down. Any questions on that slide?

Anyone have any questions? Anger Grand.

Um so we have the annual tax revenue that has gone up with the expansion of the the improvements um in that area. Um there are sponsorships um revenues to help um offset some of their operations expenses. They do have one full-time um staff member um that cost is included in the total administration line. Um and they have um other line items for various um marketing promotions, events um and things that they do throughout the throughout the Schmid um to help support the improvements. There's um primarily being plant maintenance. Um but they also do trash collection, um repair planter railings, um and all of the plant beds. and Southwest 9th. Um, similar to the other two that we just discussed, they do have administrative and program support, an annual budget of $40,000, and also some marketing and events expenses. Um the largest expense would be for the maintenance um which or the I'm sorry, excuse me, the special projects um and note improvements and then they do have some minor maintenance on Bell Plaza.

What What was the Does it say what the node improvement was um that they completed? Two biggest projects to date. um includes several node development improvement programs and a facade improvement grant program. Yeah, I understand the facade. So, it mostly goes to the facade improvement. Okay. Okay. Because I didn't I don't think they did any node other than the Bell Avenue, but it does it's the facade grant making up most of that. Yeah. Okay. It's it's that's how they categorize their how they present it to us. So, okay, that was all we had. So, is there any questions on Schmidz?

One thing I will add, uh, Councilman Bomb, you had asked about the, uh, pedestrian crossing, our pedestrian crosswalks in Sherman Hill. It is actually as one of those, uh, available expenses currently.

One question. So the the four Schmids that uh do not serve as passroughs, do they does the city? Okay, so the question that I got very early on in my tenure uh of the Beaver Delmid was was the contract for the um taking care of plants and all that. Yeah. And uh and it sounded like they don't control that contract that that that the city manage that or

Yeah, they had asked us to to manage that uh approach for them on on getting that um the bids for that. We do that for a couple of those in that in those four ranges. I I can't remember. Um I know be I think it's Beaverdale, Highland Park, and Roosevelt. all three of those areas. Uh we bid that um in in one bid. Okay. Yep. Thank you. Anybody else? Nick and Jessica, thank you. Sure. Appreciate it. Thank you. And the rest of your staff. Scott, thanks. Do you want to close it out?

Yeah, if you don't mind. And and I got a question from Linda. I think it's worth uh clarifying about the franchise fee. as as uh Nick alluded to earlier, the 5% that we've had for some amount of years is simply a general fund contribution, but the extra 2.5% more recently voted on uh the u discussion we've had with with DART as well is that um we are making the contribution in 27 that will be about $2.9 million. roughly of the franchise fee that we just started collecting. Did we get any revenue in December or was it January?

I think it's January is the start. So, we've we've had only a couple months that we've started that. So, um it we need to pay 2 million yet in the current year and the fiscal year. We're planning for another 2.9. There should be more than that available. So we should be able to bank a little bit that that can be part of our discussion this summer as well as to what to do with it has to be used for transit only transit only. Yep. And so I think the intention just transit just transit related items

which includes the opportunity to lower DART's tax rate to De Mo right which is part of the plan in the future. But I'm glad you brought this up because that is not part of the 27 budget uh for for DART either. So, what you're going to hear from DART is uh that that they will leave their tax rate for 27 at the same 95, collect about 2.9 million from us uh from that additional franchise fee. And uh as the council directed me uh legal helping me through an agreement with them that spells out what could happen then after 27 which would be the 70% 30% split has been in discussion

and one one thing for 28 fiscal year 28 and beyond and our uh finances intention is um in the operational side we'll we'll tack that in just like we do with our um road use tax information. We'll we'll tack in that additional uh transit franchise fee as a special revenue special revenue as a part of the operational tabs in next year's. We just didn't have um uh really any information on it, but thanks for bringing that up. um that is actually a part of the 27 budget, but it is one where it was not

uh we don't quite have exactly when it was going to start and and so we only kind of threw in estimates uh as of today. So So to be clear, we we are still fully going to fund our commitment to DART with the franchise fee. We're just not going to do fiscal year 27 for 27. Correct. And I think that's about 2.9 and um 2 million as we committed for for this fiscal year as well. Do we know approximately what would be left over? Uh not quite because we weren't entirely sure when it was going to start um being collected. And again, it's subject to uh weather. So we've got a pretty uh mild winter so far. So um

it's tough to say what we'll actually see in this in this this time frame. Sure. Um but yeah. Yeah. Scott, anything else? No, no. I just uh again, I appreciate the council taking the time. Um hopefully uh well ask the question now. Um in years past, we had split it up over multiple workshops. I'm assuming that this is still the right format in the future to to uh spend a full day on it. um something you can think about but we've done this now I think three times and it's gone I think it's gone well every year but one okay

that's understood where we had to do a half day last topic right y so thank you because I know it it it takes a lot to to to deal with us speaking for a full day so good work thank you all right my staff is great thanks Thanks, Jessica. Thanks,