City Council - Regular Meeting

Did you get them in Italy? Did you pick them up in Italy, too? I know. But yeah, you can also get them like TJ Maxx. Oh, it's my phone. I record

sometimes that doesn't pick up. Oh yes, please. Turn traffic.

That's

okay. But like I said,

well, Do you guys want any water? What? Yeah, I can do it though. I just want to make sure.

How are you? He doesn't either.

All right. Hey, Dwayne. Dwayne, have you did you get a chance to speak to the gentleman in the Highlands with the with the wall? or what?

It was over 15 minutes ago.

I know, but it was over 50 years ago. I said, "Are we done?" I can gladly say yes. I prefer to belly mark if you don't mind.

How's your workouts going? Great. Good job. Thank you. It's sealed.

Oh, come on. Hey, Mike. Is that a dress or is it two pieces?

So cute. I put I have a little heater I turn on. Me too, Mr. Brown. Ma'am, how are you? Nice to see you. Nice to be seen and not to be seen and not. Am I right or wrong? You have bad news. Thank you. Oh, sorry. I wanted to be I hope your members are well everybody's here anyway. So

going to call this committee meeting to order. Um the agenda is roll call first. Sure. Mr. Brown here. Miss Dondo Dennis here. Mr. Pinnabone here. Mrs. Rose here. Mr. Graziano here. Mrs. Hartra Biddinger here. Mayor Panto here. Next we'll have um anyone have anything before we get into the main topics? Stamp isn't here yet. PFM. Oh. Oh, there they are. I see her.

Right. Sorry, I didn't see you by guys sitting back there. All right, Mr. Capos,

let me start off by saying while I was away on vacation, every single day I read the articles in the newspaper about the Hampton and the NAOSH report and I'm very upset about it because it blaringly some mistakes were made. So, Mr. Gable, why don't you address it? Well, I I think let me add some clarity on that. Um well, I will and as I guess as I read my statement. Um but uh so I'll go ahead and read the statement. Following issuance of the April 26 NIOSH report regarding the February 20th fire incident in the city. Um a formal written review requests were issued to both the fire department and the department of planning and codes. And the purpose of these requests is to obtain clarification regarding operational practices, staffing, inspections, code enforcement responsibilities, and implementation of corrective actions identified or referenced within the report. These reviews are intended to provide an additional factual clarification and policy analysis for city council and the public concerning matters identified within the NYAsh report. And upon receipt of the departmental responses, the administration will review the information, determine whether additional policy recommendations or operational changes are warranted. So that that's just a quick um I wanted to put something formal out there. The when the NIS report was uh publicized, I I reached out to members of council and mayor, you were um

Yeah, I remember you were not Yeah, you were you were still here. Yeah. So um this happened before we could have a formal council meeting.

Um The NYSH report uh provides a good opportunity for us to um communicate and have a discussion on how we can improve um our emergency management um in the city like the way we respond, the way we collaborate. Um you know, the one thing I do want to say is I I do want to commend the the chief and our emergency management personnel. um as Chief Hennings um and also Chief Scowzo and our other emergency management personnel um for the way they they handled um this incident, this large scale in incident. What could have been a major disaster was thwarted. I mean I

fire department did a great job. The fire department did a great job. Many med did a zero terrible job.

Many many lives um were saved. Um and and that's something that I I I definitely want to u make sure that is constantly acknowledged because of the um heroism of our of our men and women that uh came on site. Now regarding the NYOSH report as we're collecting information the NAOSH report in itself um as you read through it and to the untrained eye you know it provides some glaring accounts of some shortcomings but at the same time um the NASH report doesn't tell the full story um there are items in the NAOSH report that you have to really read with a lot of detail and there there's some things that um don't tell the story um the full story on the operations of the city. um minor things that that build up like the population of the city which was off, the uh minimum manning count which is not really explained um and which is misleading. um the uh details regarding um inspections in the city that it it seemingly shows that inspections are not um at least it portrays that inspections are are seemingly not occurring. Um the uh indication that um that's both in the codes department and also in the fire department. um the and and and that's and there's some explicit examples there. Um so these things are extremely alarming. Um but we want to be able to communicate and discuss with you all um what what the we

think the salient topics are and there are some and what we can do to improve um in the city operationally and what we may need from city council from a pol public policy perspective like ordinance changes etc. And there and there are recommendations and and mayor, the one thing I do want to say is I I did take input in addition to taking input from the departments. I've had the opportunity to meet with several of the council members um and and they too have provided um some decent insight based on what they're seeing, observations, meeting with the department. So I appreciate that because you know our council members are doing their homework.

Um they're trying to understand operations in order to be better policy

um policy makers. So, I'd like to take the opportunity now to have uh fire chief Hennings um address council with a brief statement and then I'm also going to um invite um our planning and codes director uh Dwayne Tilman to also um make some comments with regards to where we're at um and some some quick observations. So, I'll turn it over to Chief Hennings. Good evening. Let me get this. Everybody hear me? Okay. On February 20th, 2026, the city of Eastn Fire Department responded to a complex multi- division fire in a 250y old heavily altered boarding house with 41 occupants inside. As the incident commander on scene, I observed firsthand the professionalism, courage, and decisive actions taken by Eastn firefighters, our mutual aid, and our mutual aid partners, the East Police Department, our EMS personnel, and the Northampton County Public Safety Dispatch. The NYOSH serious injury report F2026-02 provides a detailed account of the incident and offers recommendations intended to strengthen firefighter safety not only here but nationwide. The city of East welcomes the recommendation and views them as the opportunity to further strengthen its already strong operational foundation. And at the same time, it is important to clarify that the actions taken by eastern personnel were appropriate given the information and resources available at the time the incident was dispatched. They were carried out under extreme life-threatening conditions. The response address this response addresses the each NYOSH recommendation in detail using the report as a primary

source and incorporating the city's ongoing initiatives. Our goal is to demonstrate the transparent transparency, professionalism, and commitment to continuous improvement while highlighting the exceptional performance of all the personnel that were involved. Let me just say before we start that this fire, very similar to the Hotel Lafayette, was handled extremely well by the fire department and all emergency personnel. And I thank all the mutual aid that was there. But I also want to say that this could have been it was done and the firefighter that broke his back and his ankle that was very sad and that has to be addressed. But the fact that 40 plus 40 people got out of that building unhe hurt and there were no fatalities, that is remarkable. And that just shows what a professionally paid uh uh fire department can do better than volunteers coming from Hinder and Yan, all parts of the county.

Go ahead, Lewis. I just have one question for Chief. In your statement, chief, you mentioned the building was heavily heavily altered. What exactly does that mean? So, when it was originally built, it was built as a hotel back in the 1700s. It ended up becoming a boarding house where um and I don't have the actual dimensions, but it appeared that the hotel rooms were pretty much cut in half and there was enough occupancy in there. So they split a hotel room and then they put one person on each side

basically. So it's very limited room which is no good and the two buildings in the back were added onto the original building. Yes, that was well after though. My my question to sorry go ahead. Uh just just to clarify just for me when when I hear building was heavily altered I just kind of feel like it was done quietly without going through the proper channels that's not the case or was it well let me let's I just when I say heavily altered it makes me concern question too

it it was a it wasn't I think that that's the the language that the chief used. What I'd like to do is have um Dwayne also now give some comments because the the as I had mentioned in my statement um when I when we provide a more formal response to council, it's going to focus on the recommendations within the NAOSH report. So, it's going to it's going to uh really detail the uh city's um uh response to those recommendations uh how we're following them and what else that we're doing. I would like um the director of planning and codes Dwayne Tilman to discuss and give a little bit more insight into what he's doing right now with regards to this NIOS report because it it it was seemingly a lot of the questions when I was talking to council was coming from the um classification of this building the history of this building and the history of inspections etc. Um so from a high level we are going to discuss um some of the results that I'm already receiving and you all have not received yet because it's just a lot of information that we're just putting together. So and then that way we can have even more of a dialogue as as we put a final

it's being recorded. It is it is I see the lights blinking but I didn't see anybody there. I have a question. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That's that's great. And I and I know Dwayne's going to give us what he has, but just that question. Building was heavily altered. Was it remodeled from a hotel to a boarding house or I'll let it just seems like heavily altered just seems I'll let code answer that and I was going to ask similar question to that. Um when do we know when it changes over from a a hotel to um a uh boarding house? Uh, and if so, shouldn't we have caught that during our inspections?

Okay. All right. So, after reviewing the property folder, um, what I found as far as uh the the use of the building, just to talk to Mr. Brown's comment is that it's always been considered a hotel or a trans a transient living space through zoning applications um a certificate occupancy that was issued um and even news articles note it as being a hotel use since well the the CO was issued in 1977 and what that does say it said that it was a a hotel a hotel

yep and the article I think was from 82 it noted it being as a hotel. So every document that's in that property folder notes it as being a hotel. So at whatever portion or whatever time it transition to either probably a mixed or to all boarding house,

it was never stated in the property folder. Um now as far as Mr. uh Pidamone's comment the alterations it it could have happened over time and there might have been some permits but my purview I was looking at just the use of the building looking at fire safety inspections which were done previously from my findings from Terry Folk that were called um annual systematic reports which he would he conducted them from ' 06 to 2014 for the city after he retired as a firefighter. Um, and then after that we implemented the fire safety inspection in 2016 which went right up until CO then CO hit and it kind of went off the tracks and we had a new system and it kind of just never carried over at that point.

Um, can I I'm going to ask a question and something because this is part of the codes. Um uh we're digging into some of this detail and uh chief I'm going to ask you to comment on this as well. Um and then and then then both of you I need you to jump in to just discuss with council what you're doing um right now. But in the NYOS report Chief there is a mention of 150

um at risk uh dwelling units. Can you um talk a little bit about that and maybe provide some clarity on that including your inspection process, but provide clarity on that and the definition of that? And then Dwayne, I need you to discuss um some of the work that we're doing within the department um to ensure inspections are occurring. Lewis, I'm I'm sorry. Just still back to the original question or to to Councilman Brown's question. In 1970 and in 1982, it was still classified or CO was registered as a hotel. That's correct. Y does a hotel cover what they were currently using it for? Like does that definition cover that or should it have been changed to something else?

It all it it all depends how they were using it, right? Were they using it strictly as a boarding house? Were they using it partially as a hotel? Now, the way the rental ordinance states it that hotels and motel are exempt from rental registration. But if they are using it as a boarding house or a single dwelling or not a single dwelling, a single room occupancy, then it has to be registered as a rental. Can you tell me Dwayne, I'm sorry for not knowing. Yeah. Yeah. What constitute a hotel like continuous rental for a certain amount of days or No, no, no. Just uh transient uh living. You know, you're staying for two, three days and you're leaving. You're you're not staying longer than you know, a week or whatever for

So, is that is it is it a week? Is that the cut off? like after a week is no longer uh I I would have to look at the exact definition to see if an actual length in there. But I mean, you know, it makes sense. Unless you're unless you're staying two weeks, three weeks, you know, it's it's no longer a hotel. You're a long it's a long stay for you at that point, right? All right. I might have another question on that, but thank you. That was good for there. Chief, if you don't mind, if you can go back to to that question.

Okay. So, if I remember the question correctly, um we don't do inspections. We do what's called a pre-fire plan. So, when our personnel go out, we identify the fire alarm system, other fire protection systems in the building, sprinklers, stand pipes, those kind of things. We get property owner information, contact information, so when something does occur, we know where those systems are and we know what to expect when we have to go there to either work with the fire alarm or whatever the case may be. So that would include like the electrical panels, water shut off, gas shut off, all the important things that we would have to deal with had we responded out. Chief, with that being said, are they required to have a map and on and on each floor designated which way to go in case of a fire or a plan in place?

That would actually be a question for codes. Okay. Um for for Dwayne to uh follow up with. They Yes, they would. It would have. Yep. So on the on the dwelling units, the the citation that there's about 150 dwelling units can uh that are high-risisk. Can you talk about that?

All right. So to to clarify, uh when the investigator that came out was Dr. Atwood, he would ask various questions and I told him as an offthe number, we had more than 150. I didn't know what the exact number was, but that was the number used in the document. Uh we're probably closer to 700 or thousand when you actually look at property classifications and that's like a mixed use. So you have a lot of the downtown where you have commercial space on the first floor and apartments above. So in other words, college dormitories.

Yes. And if you'd like me to cover what the high-risisk occupancy categories, I will absolutely do so.

Well, I guess the there what I'm trying to get at is that the high-risk um occupancy categories that as the chief said and as was cited in the NAOSH report are um they're multifamily dwelling units. They're commercial units um generally speaking. So there's a lot in the city. There's a lot more than 150. and the the the fire department does systematically um go into these buildings as the chief has said and and and do these types of investigations and and document um document those areas that the chief had had mentioned. In addition to that um the codes department um also there's a lot of overlap between these buildings and and Dwayne could you talk about that overlap and where where we see that? Yeah. So, a lot of the times when the overlap happens in is in a mixeduse building because we cover those buildings as far as the rental inspections. So, a lot of that uh systematic stuff that you're looking at sprinkler systems, fire alarm systems, extinguishers, knockboxes, they're all getting caught on the rental inspection and we're getting those reports from them during them during those inspections or we're we're requiring them.

How many rental units do you have right now in the city? Oh, god. You mean buildings or units themselves? Uh buildings probably uh a little over 1,200 buildings of two units or more. Right. So that that dictate what a a residential um rental unit would be. Okay. And then some of the work right now that you and the fire department are doing as it as it relates to the NYOSH report. Can you talk about that?

Yes. So we've had meetings where we're working together. We're going to reimplement the fire safety inspection um program and uh you know we're just coming together to to get the high-risk ones on the front burner so that we can attack those ones first. But we we have a pretty good game plan that we're going to start off with to get that going. Um, and before this even started, we started having monthly meetings with the deputy chief and his captain, whoever was on staff with myself and James Clues, the chief code administrator, just to just to get that dialogue between the two departments on what's going on.

Dwayne, a question just to go back a couple seconds. So, you said under the code inspections, you guys check the knockboxes, the alarms. Well, we require we we require them to to do it, right? We don't we don't inspect them ourselves. We give them the the fire department's number to come out, check the Knox box because we can't open a Knox box. Only the fire department can.

Um and then when we ask for the sprinkler system report, the fire alarm report, that's coming from a third-party um entity that's, you know, like a AAA fire protection or like a Kler O'Brien or our high-tech that they're coming out, they're servicing the equipment, sending us a report that it meets all the requirements. And if usually if there's deficiencies, they'll know what the deficiencies are and they'll they'll say what they corrected. And I normally tag them, too. Yep. Yep. And then they'll put their their uh yearly tags on. Yep. And that's one way to know that they're they're out of date as well. You get there the fire extinguisher say, you know, 2022 and you know, they got to be updated.

So when so when your staff gets there to do their regular rental inspections, they'll see if something wasn't inspected for fire or not. Yeah, that's correct. Yep. Yeah. It's a visual inspection of the tag or you can see if the fire alarm system itself is in trouble. Usually it'll even say trouble on a display for you. So So I I guess my question is in the report and and in in in the news it said that we haven't done fire inspections in 10 years or or 10 plus years.

So when I when I noted that we didn't I didn't do fire safety inspections until 2017. Once I went back and actually looked at all my information that I had, we actually do have on record fire safety inspections up until 2019 and one scheduled in 2020, but then CO happened. So, we were actually still doing the commercial inspections, but to my knowledge at the time, I thought it ended in 2017. But to your earlier point, the Hampton has still been registered as a hotel since 1970. So they would have been exempt from the rental inspection. The inspections, just the rental inspection, just the rental, but they were still supposed to do the fire.

They should have been scheduled for a fire safety inspection. So at some point, because we weren't going in to do the rental, your guys couldn't find out if the tags were expired or so. Was there a way for us to follow up to make sure they were doing what they were supposed to do or

So it it all it all really falls on the owner, right? The owner at the end of the day is supposed to make sure that their equipment is checked annually, inspect it. You know, they they have an onus on themselves as an owner to make sure that their equipment's in good working order, safe, you know what I mean? That there's no issues with The other thing I think that um they should have been coming through to the fire department is they should be given an update whatever that is quarterly what have you who's handicapped who's in that unit like I used to see chief all the time quarterly to let them know that in case we're fired we got a handicap person in this unit they probably didn't send something like that in either

but but I think and and that goes to to Mr. Brown's point that goes to an issue or a concern. I have not an issue. And Dwayne, I'm sorry you're on the hot seat right now. I know you just started at the position. So, I'm not I'm not pointing the finger at you, but you're the one that has to answer the question. That's okay. Um I know we've been in there for violations and different things like that. I I know a few people that live there that's been there for years and for months.

I think I I I don't know specifically. I don't have documentation, but I believe the the hotel umbrella they were under probably went away many many years ago, probably 20 years ago. Why didn't we uh switch that to to a short-term rental, a rooming house so it would follow the inspections and things like do you know what happened? I I don't because I I wasn't in that position of going in those in that building to kind of like call it out and I don't know why the other inspectors when they were there for complaints because we've been in it for complaints, right?

I just don't know why it wasn't put on the radar that it was being used the way it was being used. But the fact is our our code team was in this building many times up until the current on complaints. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, we would go there for bed bugs, roaches, uh you know, fire. Yeah, there was a fire. One of the mattresses were on fire. I mean, we were in there and then every time we'd issue him a violation, he would correct that violation. And Right.

I I just And you might bring it up, but I I think, you know, that that's a concern separately, right, that we're in there and nobody identified that this is no longer a hotel and it should be registered accordingly, right? Um because so so is there a plan going forward to make sure that if we go in there and our guys or girls see something and say wait this isn't registered right that they know how to report it now so we can

Yeah. So what I'm what I'm what I've implemented on the complaint form itself is a section that they have to click off on that is it a rental is it unregistered rental and what is the use being used for right so that we can kind of catch that up front just on a complaint basis portion of it and then we can kind of give it to you know if it's an unregistered we give it to to Evelyn to set it up in the system so we can get it registered and get inspections. Thank you. I I just want to uh ask the chief uh when was the last time you you were in the building to do that inspection. We did not have a pre-fire plan for that building because there are so many high-risisk occupancies in the city. Yeah.

In a collective bargaining agreement, we do it on a 21-day cycle for each platoon. So that totals to about 54 total pre-fire plans per year. Now, when our guys go out on emergencies, well, let me back up a little bit. So, first and foremost, in order to get into these buildings, we have to have permission of the owner, unless there's exited circumstances like an emergency. When our guys go out on these emergencies, they do collect data as much as they can while they're there. But the pre-fire plans with the collective bargaining agreement, we've been doing them regularly. But because the amount of buildings that we have to cover, we don't have enough staff or time to get through all of them. And we are still moving forward doing them. But as you heard, there's 1300 rental properties. We can't do them all. It's absolutely impossible. So, we do get them and unfortunately we did not have one for this particular building.

But what I'm hearing is that this building has existed primarily since 1977 as a hotel 77. I honestly don't have any information on that. I don't I don't have it. Just seems like if if it's been in place for so long and we still haven't gotten around to doing the right. But the pre-fire plans came in a later contract year. So like around 2017, I believe it was that contract year that this was actually put in place. Okay. 10 years. So this just so I understand this has something to do with the with the contract of the firefighters.

Yes. The way the the pre-fire planning is is in the collective bargaining room. In collective bargaining. Okay. Yes. All right. And and um I'm probably jumping ahead here, but I think that all in all uh whatever we didn't do really had nothing at the end of the day to to um stop from what happened. Oh, absolutely.

Because this the the investigation disclosed nothing as far as the what had happened. So, had the fire firefighters been there every other year for this pre-fire plans? Had we changed it to from a hotel to a boarding house? None of these factors change the fact that a fire occurred. 41 people got out, nobody was killed. I'm not saying it's not important, but it was at the end of the day, it doesn't change the fact that everybody survived. Am I right in saying that? That's absolutely correct. Thank you. And then I also just want to bring up that

the the chief and I we are collaborating with that those high-risk properties and my list of rental properties so that we can go through that list um and and do his inspections and do ours coming up as well. Dwayne, I'd be really I'd be very interested in finding out the munas in there. Were they altered to be one big bedroom and then put in a drywall so they have all these units? That's what it sounds like in my head.

Yeah. So, Mr. Brown, you know the the history of city hall and how many times it's moved. There's actually no plans for the Hampton. All I have is a paper property folder. Um, I mean, I'll go through it again tomorrow to see if there's an actual permit that notes that, but Chief, even in you going in there, did you notice that?

Did we notice what? It seems like in my head, my head's basis is where the Hampton um was changed from a hotel and re uh fitted for more people to come there and stay and putting up like drywalls where was a onebedroom into a bed. So there's several issues here. One, we don't know what building permits are pulled for what buildings. Yes, we do go in there and we do notice things and if we believe it's a violation of the code, we notify the codes department and they investigate.

In this particular case, because we have such a young force now, we've had a significant turnover. Oh, yeah. In the 20 years I'm here, that only takes us back to 2020. These people here have no idea what that building looked like in the 70s. So, so no institutional knowledge there, right? So that building could have been in that existence the way it stood on the day of the fire and that's the only thing we've known it as. Okay. I appreciate that. I'm not not trying to No, no, no. I appreciate to dodge a question, but honestly, that's that's where we're at.

Chief, going back to uh Councilwoman Hart Binger's question, and I'm sorry I couldn't write it down as fast as you said it. Each platoon is responsible for 54 pre-emergency inspections. No. So we do each platoon has to do a pre-fire plan on a 21-day cycle. Okay. That equals to about 17 per year per platoon. When you add the three platoon together, you're at 54. Okay.

Now, sometimes they move faster than a 21-day cycle. And we have done I believe the list is somewhere in the 520 range. I don't actually have that number in front of me, but we've done a lot. So, please don't mistake. We are doing them and we are we're we're getting it complete. But again, with so many classified high-risisk occupancies, we can't get into all of them. So, there's about Dwayne, I think we said there's about 1,300. Yeah. looking at uh rental units and then and then mixed units as well. That's just rental unit. Yeah, that's just rental units.

There's a different list that encompasses what is actually classified as a high-risisk occupancy and I have that list here if you'd like me to read off some that are in there.

I So I had a couple calls from a former fire chief uh who who and and I just I don't know did we get more properties? I I don't know where we're at. So, I just want to clarify who stated when he was deputy chief and chief, he did the fire inspections. Um, he partnered with codes, he partnered with the health department and went in or maybe not you, I'm sorry, maybe Lewis or the mayor. Do you know why we got away from that? Like why how why we stopped allowing the chief or deputy chief to do it and why we changed to the way we're doing it now? Um well I I don't know if any of you were here then so you might not know the individual that in question I think left in 2014

14. Yeah. Terry Folk. Uh so what I found was that when Terry Faulk retired from the fire department, he was brought over into a part-time fire inspector role with the codes department from ' 06 to 14. And then once he retired, there was that little bit of gap before the fire safety inspection ordinance was put into place because it was adopted in September of 2016. So then after after Mr. Folk retired from the department, we just hired him to do it and then when he retired, we just didn't take it back to the the chiefs or deputy chiefs. No, it kind of just stayed in limbo till 17.

Well, yeah. 16. You just said yourself for clarification yourself and then Charbell Cory. Yeah. Myself and Charbell Cory were doing insp. Yep.

And what what council needs to understand in addition to the fire department doing a great job with that fire was that the ultimate responsibility comes down to the owner of the property. They have to make sure that their extinguishers are charged. They have to make sure that their stand pipes are working. They have to make sure their fire alarms are working and they have to make sure that it's connected to the fire department so that it goes right to the emergency county emergency services when it goes off. If it just goes off, the people in the building will hear it, but nobody else will. The fire department won't show up. I I agree, mayor. It's it's it's 100% the responsibility of the the property owner, but I think our responsibility is to provide oversight. I mean, we do it for taxes and everything else. they're supposed to pay and if they don't we we we enforce it. So, you know, I'm glad I just looking to hear further of of how we're going to ensure it.

So, part of the part of the um the document that I'll I'll present to council after working with both departments is looking at the NYOSH report on the recommendations um and then providing additional input. Part of that input, I mean, you've heard some of it today. Um uh the departments working together is one example. All right. cross-referencing the the data within each department um is another example. You know, taking a look at what um the fire department calls um high-risisk occupancy versus all the inspections that are currently being done in the uh codes department and looking and matching the two to see which ones have done which ones also have not been inspected. So, those are going to be the the first uh the target, so to speak, of the of the departments to make sure that they're inspected. You know, there's and there's some hurdles like like you heard the chief said that the u the homeowner also has to or the owner of the building has to agree uh voluntarily to let the department the fire department in unless they have a a rental in inspection unless they have a rental license or some other um there's some other mechanism that allows the the codes department to get fire safety inspection ordinance will let us

the fire and safety inspection get in there

with regards to um what's next are the recommendations including um and we didn't talk about this but this we we wanted to have this uh pre- dialogue with council is uh uh exercising the ability of part-time firefighters to potentially do inspe inspections. Um, and that's something that we're exploring right now. That's in the collective bargaining agreement. Um, and the impetus for that was not necessarily to do fire inspections. It was to augment the the Manning component. Um, that came through uh a grievance arbitration in which the arbitrator ruled that um part-time firefighters uh could be considered part of the Manning compliment. We are now re reviewing um that language in the CBA to potentially utilize um those part- timerrs um as uh potential code inspectors. There's more to it than just that. There are a lot of other considerations.

Lewis, if if we hear a lot about Manning and now inspections, I saw the CBA where it it it it has part-time officers. Why haven't we utilized that in the past?

Um well, there there's a There's several hurdles including uh there's several hurdles from a financial standpoint, including contractual ones. From a financial standpoint, um it's very expensive. Um onboarding a um a firefighter just with their equipment and then potential training, etc. Um the equipment alone uh and chief, correct me if I'm wrong, could run anywhere between 10 and $15,000 um to upfit um a firefighter. Well, that leads me to that point that I wanted to uh say, Lewis, that we should be looking at maybe adding onto our code department.

Well, so we're reviewing that and to to go back to continue to answer your question. Um the other the other hurdles um also are consistency in pay, you know, managing um an expectation that you have to be ready to come work, but you don't necessarily know when those vacancies are going to occur. You know, at the end of the day, people want consistency in in in in a job, even if it's part-time. The other piece, those are some of the financial um implications and hurdles. The um the other piece is contractual in the contract right now. Um I if you're a firefighter, you cannot work even on a volunteer basis for another um fire department um or and that creates an issue because a lot of the volunteer you see volunteer firefighters, right? They do moonlight in different potentially different departments. Um it's it's an issue that we h we have to overcome. However, in this particular case, in looking at it from a high level, um there's a potential where you can offer now consistent hours to do code inspections. So, that that that may assist in really be the catalyst for bringing in uh part-time firefighters. It's been a discussion that we've been talking about over and over again. It's easier said than done in terms of bringing in a a firefighter uh that is on a part-time basis. The other thing is with regards to part-time firefighters and and when you look at a professional staff department like what we have that full-time firefighters um there's a lot of team team unity in there you know um you know in the NYOSH report there there's the topic that was broached uh regarding crew um integrity you know um and you know it's difficult enough when

the the platoon knows each other really well let alone bringing in a separate crew that may not know um all the players on on uh in on on the other side with the other department. It's nothing that we can't overcome per se with training, but I'm just it's an obstacle. So, it's a it's a challenge. So, those are the challenges that we we're we're facing, but at the same time, those are part some of the recommendations that we're going to be um adding in to the the NYOS report on top of what's been recommended. Uh, Lewis, that brings me to another question and and I think I asked you already uh this week. So, you talked about camaraderie and and and firefighters working together and and and knowing each other and trusting each other. What kind of training are we doing with our mutual aid partners, specifically Wilson that that come out on almost every call, I believe, or they get a call uh every call. Are we doing extensive trainings with with your guys chief and their guys or not? Not not really.

So we we are doing training. Um there's a limited amount of hours in every day. Um when we do training, we do invite them over and vice versa. So we are doing training. Uh we are also we do have a a bigger one coming up currently. We have uh a purchase that is going to cross over four departments. So, it'll be uh Wilson, Palmer, Forks Township, and ourselves where we're all going in to purchase the bailout kits. Um the initial cost for that was around $600 a kit plus the ancillary equipment to go with that for the training. Um because we're doing it as a bulk purchase, we're saving almost $12,000. And then when that equipment finally does arrive, we will do joint training with all the departments, whether we do it at a location there or do it a location here. So yes, we do have other training scheduled.

Okay. Thank Just a the last one to that with the pre-insspection. It's it's really from my understanding to get our guys and girls uh acclimated with the different buildings, high occupancy buildings. Do we bring Wilson in and vice versa on these pre-insspections so they can? We have not yet because this all started with this recent collect the bargaining agreement. So, um it's important to note that it's not mutual aid, it's automatic aid. So there are certain instances where they will be dispatched at the same time we are for like your high-risisk occupancies. Mutual aid is where if you go out and you need help, you request them to respond. Big difference.

So and that's going into some of the detail in the NAOSH report. Um the NAOSH report uh made mention that we have a nineperson minimum manning. We do not. We have a 10 person minimum manning. There are circumstances that when it goes to nine, we can use mutual aid. Um, excuse me. What was the term that you used? Automatic aid.

Automatic automatic aid and and only with Wilson um fire department that could assist with that to serve as the 10th man, if you will. That was that was part of the um the collective bargaining uh process where that was negotiated with the union. What happened was, you know, we looked at the data from 4 16% of the time um of the entire time of the platoon shifts uh we went down to a nine person manning um and then you know we looked at incidents during that time and that was the impetus for saying well um during that time you can use uh Wilson um in addition to Wilson you can also use the chiefs if they're available to serve as the 10th man nothing precludes um the department from calling in more personnel in case it's a larger fire.

And this this was all in the current agreement. This was this was this happened in the current agreement, which is which was two two years now. Yes. And it's it's opening up now. So we're we're negotiating. We're going to start negotiating in in the next month. Um and this is something that's going to be evaluated when we talk when we talk to the union. Chief, in in these two years, have have you had to become a 10th man? You or Deputy Chief Ruber? Yes, we both have. But it's also important to note that the contract wasn't settled till the end of 25. So it's only this year. That's right. That this has been going on.

It started it it really started in the last couple months because there was also some technical items that had to be worked out with the 911 center in terms of when Wilson can be called in. It has to be programmed. So there there are some technical issues. So it's fairly um it's fairly new.

So even though we had the new agreement for two years, we've only been operating under it for less than a year. uh the the contract covered 2025 because they were we did not have a contract in 25. So by the time this all filtered out at the end of 25 is when the contract was agreed upon. So it covers all of 25 but that's already passed. So we have to work moving forward. So at the beginning of the year we

covered but we didn't implement any well we couldn't do it because 25 was already to answer your question Mr. of them. I cannot I'm very thankful that Wilson Palmer and Nancy Run and Forks send their equipment and their manpower when we need when we have a fire, but I'm not sure they're going to send it when they need training. They should, but they don't. They don't do as much training as our professional firefighters do. But I just don't see them doing that because first of all, they're they're their their firefighters work during the day.

So, if I may address that particular issue, most of the time you'll find volunteers have a training night and that's typically 6 or 7 o'clock at night.

So, it all depends on which day they choose to do it. A lot of them do it on Monday nights, not necessarily everybody. So, they might choose a Wednesday night. It's whatever is a best fit for how their department operates and the timing that they can get the most amount of people together. It's difficult for the volunteers to come here and train because all of them work well I shouldn't say all of them. There are a lot of them that work during a day and it's just impossible for them to come here and do what we do with Wilson. Well, it sounds like you're you're going back and looking at pulling your data and things like that. So, I at this point, what I'd like to ask for is a full audit and ongoing reporting of the high occupancy inspections, including the hotels, boarding, and rooming houses. I'd like to see the date of the last inspection and the current compliance status. And I think in in the meantime, I'd like to see that on a quarterly basis. I think at a point we won't need to see it that often until we get caught up. Um, and when do you think we will have something like that in front of us?

Well, I would say right I I've requested that from the department. I I hope that we can give an update um at the next committee meeting. I mean, that's that's the plan. And then we can schedule the cadence as you feel appropriate. If it's what you recommended, that's fine. But let let's show you the data that we have and then we can talk about the progress. Okay. But part part of this is again looking at the NYOSH uh recommendations. There's eight or nine I believe. Um and then uh detailing what the department and the city is doing in terms of meeting those recommendations.

Yeah, absolutely. Appreciate that. Um also from the hotel's perspective, it looks like you know we're doing this hotel boarding houses, but I'm concerned even with the hotels. I think maybe we need to go back and look at that inspection as well. We have another hotel being built in Center Square. We need to make sure even our visitors are safe when they're coming in whether they're a more short short-term stay or long-term stay. So like I know Dwayne you and I are meeting on Friday so maybe we can discuss that as well. That's fine. Right now it's in the ordinance as an exemption. So it's something that would have to be changed. Well and that's what council that's what I asked Lewis if maybe at next committee meeting with the solicitor and Dwayne. I think we should look at bringing the hotel under the same requirements as the regular rentals and the yearly inspections and things.

Yeah. I I think we need to make sure that you know with all these higher occupancy buildings I mean the developments are going up left and right and we have to make sure whether it's new or old if it's an older building a lot of people worry about that but we s we've seen in Bethlehem some of the newer developments as well have been affected by fires. So we need to make sure one we're keeping our occupants safe but also our firefighters safe as well. So, can we le uh Dwayne can and and Mike, can we uh get a look at an update to the can we bring an update to that ordinance to where we and then we can discuss it at committee? Yeah, that's fine. Thank you.

So, I I don't I think right now I we're we've informed council like what we're doing. uh we've given you more information I think than um than than standard per se since we're not uh complete we're not done uh doing our um analysis and internal reviews because I've asked I've asked for a report specifically to be submitted um but we've we've talked a lot so you understand where we're going um we're the plan is to present then to council u valid and and or add um to the recommendations that were that were put in the NYOSH report. I think what what what um we've what we've discussed internally is that certainly while um there's a lot still occurring in terms of investigations, in terms of training, um in terms of of opportunity to um to do more. Um this this report uh certainly helps move things even further and and helps create a dialogue between the administration and council. So, I'll be submitting that report after I work with the department.

Thank you. Thank you. At our staff meeting this morning, I asked Lewis and Dwayne, I'd like to see those 150 to 700 buildings uh report of when they're going to be inspected and and and the follow-ups. That's part of it. Yes.

Great question real quick. Um follow up on that. um talked about fire has the pre-fire plan and code does the rental inspections and there's some overlap there. Um in an actual fire inspection, what is being missed that's not over overlapped in between those two? So as far as All right, so rental inspection is only capturing fire alarm system, sprinkler system, um extinguishers, emergency lighting, things like that. Now, if there's a commercial aspect to it, like a restaurant, the rental officers aren't going into the restaurant space. So, the fire safety inspection captures that portion of it because for some time, we were we were missing that portion of the inspection, right? We would go out. So, while they're going into the the the restaurant, per se, they're looking at the ancillary hood systems. They're making sure they're up to date, they're tagged, um making sure the fire extinguishers, you know, in that space, all that space meets um the fire safety inspection require. Well, there's like a 15 uh point checkpoint on the fire safety inspection ordinance.

And then also with the fire inspection um when they were being per performed, you could do the pre-fire plan while you were doing the fire inspection at the same time, right? Yeah, that's correct. So, in a true fire inspection, there's certain information that's captured. If there was a fire inspector that was going through the building, he would obviously be getting almost everything that we would require in our pre-fire plan. So, that would be a dual role for that individual where they could do the pre-fire plan as well as complete the fire inspection itself.

Right. And currently, who who which department can do the fire inspections? The fire fire safety inspections or the full fire inspections? That's uh you know talked about in the report that's not hasn't been done. Well, we can. So, we have some individuals in the code office and I'm sure um chief has individuals that are qualified to to complete them. So, we could do a full Yeah. I mean, I don't want to speak out of line for you, but Well, that's part of that's going to that is a gap that is going to be part of the recommendations. Um, so it couldn't be done right now or it could

No, it it it can the the language in the ordinance allows the the codes department to um appoint appoint inspectors, right? So, the the ordinance um does permit for the department to appoint the fire department to do inspections. Um and then the the the fire department has the benefit because they they can do code inspections, right? And it's also in the fire department's code in code that they have an inspector as well. Correct.

They have an inspector, but I I and this is this takes a little bit more of an analysis. I believe it's the it's it's the planning code right now. the code in the excuse me, the ordinance under that that um that guides the fire inspections which is under the code department is the one that's driving right now the inspections that was done deliberately in 2016 when council approved that language.

I could I could probably So you got to look at it this way. The pre-planning is they're just going in and picking out where all the systems are and they're not enforcing anything. The codes department is going in saying you're in violation of X, Y, and Z. You need to fix X, Y, and Z. So that's kind of where the two are separate. And then but with our collaboration, we're going to bring them together. Right. That's the way it should be. All right.

Dwayne, just a comment and and then for you and the chief and then a question for you to explain. First of all, it doesn't seem like in the past there was great conversation or communication between the fire and the coach. So, I'm glad to see you guys working together and and and we're going to do better there. I think that's going to solve a lot of our issues. Just you two communicating um your departments. It doesn't even have to necessarily be you two, but the departments.

And then Dwayne, um the the uh national fire inspection contract that we we announced a couple weeks ago. So, if you could just please give an update on exactly what that is. one more time for for council. I know we did it, but if you could do it again. I know there was some some comments that we just did that due to the fire. Uh uh and we we did that really quick for the fire, but as you know, our first meeting was in September of 25 to start that program four months before the fire. So, could you explain how that's going to help us? Okay. Going forward.

So, so that program with them, they're they're a third party agency that's basically they're not doing any inspections. They're collecting the reports from sprinkler systems, from fire alarm system companies. They're collecting that data, right? So, we're giving them the database of of all the places that have these systems in place. They're sending out letters letting them know your annual inspections are due. Please send in your report, update your report. And if they don't update their report, then that's when they come to the codes department, notify, hey, listen, 123 South Thirdrd Street, then submit their information, they're one month past, send them a vi, you know, send them a violation, and we'll have a code officer mock up a a code violation and send out a letter for compliance. And that's basically all that third party agency is doing is collecting those reports, making sure everybody's meeting those mandates. Yeah. That the owners what they're supposed to do.

Yep. the owners essentially they're providing the oversight to make sure the owners for the reporting. Yep. Thank you. I have a question for you Dwayne. Um you said the hotel rooms were sep at the Hampton the hotel rooms were separated into two units in many cases. Was that separation wall did that go to the ceiling? Do you know? I do not. And it could have been there may have been larger rooms in there. It was broken down even to smaller. So let's say there was a large room. It could have been broken down into four.

That's what I was thinking. And just just for clarity, mayor, uh you could correct me. You're probably more familiar. My understanding is the Hampton went this way and created the smaller units because there was such a need for the um transient population or people that couldn't afford housing and things. Is that accurate? Is that I'm not sure why it went that way. I I don't know. What I was told about the hotel Lafayette, the Hotel Hampton, and the Hotel Huntington was that way. Now, Hotel Huntington has gone market rate and they they've remodeled all their units years ago. Yeah. It's a fire.

Yeah, this is a fire. But I don't know why. I don't know. There's a bigger population of low-income people that need housing. And we're even now we're not meeting it. And we see that with uh the chief's report today at the staff meeting with the homeless. And we have a guy out there who's homeless. a broken hip and he can't get assistance from running the hospitals and Christian's trying to help him but not happening.

Dwayne with with I'm sorry uh last question I promise but with all this information we're gathering and and what we're learning and understanding with the Hampton um is that triggering us to do anything different with the Lafayette or the Bartlett or or or

Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We're there's there's more there's more of a view on the Lafayette and the and the Bartlett. Right now there's more of a view on the Lafayette because of the previous fire and we're just making sure that they're being co-compliant and we're having our annual inspections or even not even we're actually having monthly inspections with them to make sure that they're keeping up on what they need to do. Um but systematically those those buildings are going to be inspected sooner than than than the four years. Right. So, all right. So, I mean, they're, you know, they're they're on our radar as being the major players as far as high high risk.

And we also talked today about the housing authority who has a lot of Bushkill House, Walter House, Harin House, and they're some of them are handicapped.

That's all I have, man. So what are the next the chief police chief going to say anything about the incident? Did you want to say anything about the incident that happened at this police station today? I can say yes. If anybody had heard exempt the name

you you may have heard I know council I know you've gotten some some feedback on it. Um, we had an incident and one of the things I've always promised is, you know, with the it being a hot topic item when we deal with issues in the federal government, whether it be homeland security or ICE, um, when there are operations or things going on here in the city, if we are involved as a police agency, I would make sure that you were aware of that and the mayor was made aware of it probably within an hour of it occurring. So, we did have an incident this morning where Homeland Security was in the city and they were doing a um, a juvenile trafficking investigation. uh they were basically investigating a child endangered or being trafficked in the city. Uh that investigation obviously led them here and they responded to our police headquarters to utilize an interview room for that investigation and a potential sponsorship hearing with an individual, somebody I think trying to sponsor uh the child, I guess, that they were looking into. Uh and upon the arrival of the sponsor and the child, um I know that uh whatever action they took in reference of protecting the child, the sponsor that came in with them was found to be um in the country illegally and taken into custody as well by Homeland Security at that time. So, so that did occur here in the city um obviously obviously within their jurisdiction to do what they did and um for all those reasons, but it did happen and just want to make sure the council was aware of it.

So, Chief, just to reiterate based on the emails that I received that you and I spoke to, it wasn't an ICE operation. It was a human trafficking operation regarding a child investigation regarding a child. Correct. Yeah, they were looking for an interview room to basically do the sponsorship hearing and uh to further the investigation into the traffic. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Thank you,

DFM. about the wrong packet about the council pack instead of their packet.

Thanks for having us.

Um we are here from PFM to present the final report from phase one of the stamp plan. Um stamp standing for strategic management planning program. Uh my name is Lauren Sukovich. I'm a senior managing consultant with PFM. I'm joined by Gordon Man, managing director. We here a couple of months ago. Um it was dark and cold uh by this time of the day, so January, February, to uh present the financial results. And today we're here to present the subsequent chapters um which are the management review and the initiatives that came out of those first two analyses. We were hired by the city in April of 2025 to complete a multi-year financial and operational plan, a five-year plan for the city. Um under this engagement we completed three assessments. The first as I mentioned was a financial assessment which um most uh of the folks here have heard the findings of but we will include in this presentation some of the highle findings. A management review um where we interviewed several department heads and other leaders in the city. Um we also evaluated the city staffing levels over the review period. And finally the initiative and plan development. Um and in that section, we essentially used both of those two analyses to come up with initiatives recommending here are some actions um that we think that the city should take over the next five years. Um the the full plan will also include prioritization of those initiatives, which ones do we think are the best for you to address in the near, medium, and long term? And we'll also highlight um some of the initiatives that we think are good candidates for the next round of stamp funding. So the the first major finding and what we basically presented a couple of months ago was that um Eastston entered this program in a really strong position financially. We've worked with a lot of

places across the Commonwealth under this program and and its predecessor, the early intervention program. Um, and a lot of places use this program to address structural imbalance, meaning that they have recurring expenses that are higher than their recurring revenues that they're bringing in. So, they're they're using this plan basically to address some financial challenges. In East, the story was very different. The city had really outperformed that pattern um and had uh not needed to increase the real estate tax um in many, many years. In Pennsylvania, structural deficits, so that recurring revenue is not fast enough to to cover the recurring expenses or the growth of that is really common in Pennsylvania because you usually have one major revenue source, which is the real estate tax, and it doesn't grow very much unless you keep growing um the tax rate. Meanwhile, your expenses keep growing every year because of price inflation and wages going up and all those kinds of things. Um so we we didn't find that for the city of East. In fact, um Despite the fact that the city had not increased its tax rate, uh the city had ended the last couple of years with surpluses. Um and a recent rating report said that the city's uh financial position was healthy and described its liquidity position um as strong. The story of East's finances, which we presented a couple of months ago, is grow fast, spend fast. So what does that mean? On the revenue side, we found that a lot of the stability that we talked about was achieved by revenues growing quickly. Uh mostly that's achieved through the earned income tax um and a little bit through um the real estate tax. We'll talk about kind of the major drivers of those things, but the resulting revenue um grew at a a rate of around 3.4% in the review period that we're talking about. So this is really right coming out of COVID from 21 to 2024.

the grow fast piece or I'm sorry, the spend fast piece is on the the expenditure side and this is really spend faster. Um so this chart shows the the major revenue and expenditure categories um for the city in the review period that we looked at for our financial analysis and we found that the expenditures grew a little bit faster um than those total revenues. Um that was around 4% compared to the 3.4% on the revenue side. uh the city generally spent more um on its on its workforce. So cash compensation um health insurance was a a big driver but continues to be a big driver when we do the forwardlooking projection. Um and we found that uh the total expenses were were growing a little bit faster in that area. The nature of the grow fast spend fast is also something that we'll dig into a little bit deeper in this presentation. And really what we mean is that the nature of that fast revenue growth was really concentrated in economic development. So earn income tax and real estate tax growth the base of that growth um expanding is is really kind of like the driver of the 3.4% and on the expenditure side things that are not necessarily flexible immediately meaning collective bargaining are driving the 4% on the expenditure side. So, it's the economic development piece on the one hand, boosting your revenues without needing to raise tax rates.

Deferred maintenance. Deferred maintenance. Yes. Um and then and then those kind of inflexible expenditures on the other side. Deferred capital expenditures.

Here's the um main trends that kind of drive that financial. So, as I said on the revenue side, um one of the findings that we found during our financial analysis was that um the growth in the real estate tax was really driven by LERA. So, um the city has a local economic revitalization tax assistant, that's a mouthful program. Um and those that tax abatement or the the um assessed value of that tax abatement was almost entirely what made up the the growth in that tax base. If you were to take those properties out of the calculation and and pretend that those properties didn't exist, your real estate tax base would look like many other uh municipalities in Pennsylvania, which is that the base doesn't really grow very much at all. So, Lura, we found in that initial valuation was additive to the assessed value. The income tax, as I said, um was was growing naturally without having to adjust the rate again. Um and that was really spurred by an increase of the number of residents with higher incomes. So when we compare demographic information, there's some growth in population, there's a little bit of growth in the number of jobs, but really the the thing that is driving that growth in the base is the wages of those resident um earners. And you do have some some commuters in there, but primarily it's the resident earners. On the expenditure side, there's there's three trends we wanted to highlight. Um the first is that most of the projected expenditure growth comes from cash compensation. And really that's going to mean the year-over-year um wages and and other pieces of cash compensation that are decided during collective bargaining. So in the previous slide when I talked about those um expenditures not being necessarily flexible. That means that you have to go through the collective bargaining process if you want to make those changes. Similarly, but also this is partly uh driven by markets is um another big driver for the city in the baseline

projection is um employee health insurance costs. Those costs were previously understated. City's um self-insured for health insurance. So, the money goes from the general fund into a self- insurance fund and then you pay those claims out of the fund. When we looked at the actual claims cost, so that the cost that that when employees go to the doctor and they they submit their claim, that claims cost growth was really high. It was like 13% year-over-year. So when we project that forward, that's obviously going to be a major driver of of the what I'll show is small but existent um deficits in baseline. Um the final trend is actually to your benefit which is that your pension costs uh your required pension costs called um the MMO have actually dropped in recent years and we recently found since we did the financial analysis that they're projected to drop even more significantly um in the next couple of years. So those adjusted um projections are actually not part of the baseline because we received them afterwards. But I'll talk about how that would impact if we had them today and we and we layer them in how that would basically impact the small deficits that you'll see in the next slide. So again, this this uh projection was uh presented publicly a couple of months ago, but it it shows um small but manageable deficits. Given the taxing flexibility um the level of reserves um of this of the city of Easton, this level of deficit is not really alarming. Um it exists and it and it grows in that kind of structural way where the deficit gets a little bit bigger every year and we will talk about some initiatives to address that deficit. Um but really it's a relatively small deficit that could be absorbed by making small reasonable changes over the next couple of years.

One of the changes you recommended was in our trash hall that it should be exactly what is charged to the city we should charge to the residents. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So adjusting those fees user fees should all be that way.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's actually on in this I think this is one of the priority initiatives that we highlighted is to talk about the way that you adjust fees to kind of keep the pace with growing expenses directly. Um the operating result that you see here, that little yellow bar at the bottom, that's your deficit starting in 2027. that'll shrink um by about a million dollars just from the updated pension projection uh in 27 and 28 and I think by one and a half million something around one and a half million in 29 and 2030. So the small deficits are actually a little bit smaller just because of the the funding levels that your pension is at the projected um required contribution goes down

from uh the management review. So, flipping a little bit to the more operations side, um we talked to your um department heads and some other city leaders about operations and we looked at your headcount and what we found is that in the last couple of years, so let's set you know the 2021 to 2022 um increase aside that I think was a lot of furoughed employees that were brought back online kind of coming out of COVID. In the last couple of years, you've really only added a handful of employees. Um, and this is sort of pertinent to the to the topic tonight, but if we look around, there's been tons of of growth. And when we talk about grow fast, um, it's not necessarily just a revenue a revenue thing or a revenue trend. There's been more um, people. We see that in in population trends and there's been more um, physical space development. So, when we talk to department heads, we sort of discuss that trend. You're seeing development. You're seeing more people coming in. We don't see a massive growth in your headcount. how has that impacted your operations? And largely we heard that they were able to absorb a lot of um the the increase in demand. We'll talk about one area where we recommend actually that you know maybe some other staffing needs are are appropriate there. Um, but for many of the departments that we talked to, they said that they were actually able to absorb that through streamlining processes or other efficiencies, but they had some concerns about the way that the city would be able to kind of scale up going forward. So, we'll talk about what that would mean for different um areas of city government. So, with those analyses in mind, we have the financial piece, we have the operational piece. When we're developing our recommendations, we're trying to really There are three key questions. How can the city continue to support that level of growth, that economic growth in the tax base? Um, using the tools that you have in your toolbox. So, the city is not, you know, you're not in charge of the entire economy regionally

or globally, but you do have some tools in the toolbox to kind of encourage that growth. What should you do to prepare yourself if that growth slows down or or doesn't um continue on the trajectory that that you anticipate? and where should you scale up those operations um to respond to growth in the population or to service needs. So this is where I'll I'll spend the most time tonight which is discussing the the initiative chapters that we developed uh for the plan. The themes are managing growth that's really kind of on that revenue side finding financial flexibility in addressing some of those expenses um that may be a little bit you want you wouldn't want to react to them in the future. You may want to plan for that more gradually now. um and scaling city services which is really focused on operations. We're only going to share a couple of initiatives from each chapter. Um so you can find the full list of initiatives in the full plan. The first topic area is managing growth. The city had a robust growth in the tax base um during the review period that we looked at. Um resident earnings as I said um were the substantial driver of that growth. Um and there was also some increase in the assessed value um of taxable property which drives your real estate tax. Um so if you wanted to continue to cover those expenditures, the rising um operating expenditures without increasing your tax base, you would need to manage your growth so that it's encouraged and targeted in those areas that continue to generate more revenue. The chart that you see on this slide is um first the deficits that we project in the baseline. Um so that's that gray bar starting at zero because you have a balanced budget in 2026 and growing to 2.6 million in 2030. And it also shows two pessimistic scenarios um where we show basically um the growth in the earned income tax slowing down uh more rapidly in in different you know proportions over the next couple of years. And so those those

small manageable deficits just get larger um if you don't experience that kind of natural economic growth that we anticipate in the baseline. And these first two priority initiatives address how can the city kind of target its efforts to address um encouraging that kind of growth that leads to um more growth in your tax base. The first thing that we recommend is to evaluate and extend um the city's alert program uh which I believe is up for renewal in 2027. As I said, we found when we were reviewing the city's uh growth in the taxable assessed value, a lot of of the growth, almost all of the growth in the taxable assessed value was attributable to uh projects or or buildings that were in the LERA program that expiring and kind of slowly entering the tax roles over a 10-year period. Um so what we recommend in the plan is to address um answering the question is the lura program an incentive um for projects that wouldn't have otherwise occurred um is it is it uh you know rewarding projects that would have occurred without the program and does it exist in its current form in the most targeted way. So, while we can see that a lot of the the um taxable assessed value growth is attributable to LERA, there may be ways you can tweak the program to be more targeted or you may want to just renew it in its current form because that's the way that it's best generating revenue for the city. Um the second initiative we wanted to highlight here is updating the comprehensive plan. Land use is one of the ways that cities can target economic development and can influence the way that growth happens over the next 10 years. has a comprehensive plan that it adopted in 2017. Um so it's starting to come due for an update um just purely based on the the time that it's been around. But also if you look at some of the initiatives and things that that plan

highlighted, they're a little bit out of date. So for example, we notice in that plan they they reference the vacant lots at the the forks of those two rivers. And as you can see entering the city, that's not really a problem anymore. There is massive development in that area. So, it's probably time for a refresh on that comprehensive plan.

In addition to that, we also recommend adding a certified planner position to guide um and kind of oversee that project. So, you have someone that is has a planning background that's able to um take ownership of that that very lengthy and comprehensive process. So, in addition to the fact that it's it's time to update the plan, um these plans also take a long time to develop. They're they're years in the making. There's lots of public input. Um so now is kind of the best time to start that process. The next two initiatives, so Mary, you had mentioned this continuing um to ensure that the utility fees cover the cost of services. This is something we wanted to highlight that the city has already been successful at doing. You've already um been updating your user fees as for example, your trash uh hauler increases the contract costs. You increase over a couple of years. I know you you didn't you know on in one year, you spread it over two um to the actual customers of those services. And that's something that we recommend that um the city continue to do uh to manage that that revenue growth. The last thing here um is to consider real estate tax increases as part of multi-year financial planning. And I'll just caveat here that we're not um we're not proponents of um increasing real estate taxes or increasing any other taxes just for the sake of increasing taxes, right? So what we do in the plan is we kind of outline a framework um that the city should use to evaluate whether it's time to start assessing um is it time to do some kind of incremental real estate tax increase and what is the kind of best use of that real estate tax increase. So there's some questions in there like does the city have a deficit or are there projected deficits? Um are the alternatives for bringing balance into the into the city budget are those worse um than than doing a tax increase? Are there other ways you can address that that wouldn't be like a severe cut to services? Um or is the city relying on on one-time revenues um to funded

services? Right now, we didn't find, you know, that that there was like a big use of one-time revenues that would drop off or anything like that. So, but in the plan, there are questions and a reasonable and well thoughtout way to address is it time to start thinking about this. Um what you'll find in this presentation is that most of the recommendations come with multi-year planning is the best way to do this and and for real estate taxes that is absolutely true. You wouldn't want to balance your budget in one year and close the books and and not revisit that again until next year. You want to show okay if we are approaching this cost-saving or revenue generating measure what does this do this year and how does that impact us down the road? We'll talk about them more when we get to the expenditure side because particularly for collective bargaining that's very pertinent. So that is kind of the the highlevel overview of the managing growth chapter. As I said there are there are more um initiatives that are in the the main plan but those are the ones we wanted to highlight the next section. So kind of flipping a little bit to the expenditure side. There's one revenue initiative in here that I'll talk about but primarily we're focused on um expenditures here. Um the finding flexibility chapter addresses um some of those areas that I said are not as the able the city is not as able to react to those in one year if you needed to for example make um cost cuts. So this table basically shows um it breaks out the 2026 adopted budget. I think this is the proposed budget but there there were not significant changes between the proposed and adopted um the different categories and we give it kind of a rating of how flexible those costs are. So, for example, cash compensations, health insurance, and pension are a little bit less flexible because while you can change headcount in some cases, or you can make changes to non-bargaining positions, once you have a contract, a lot of these costs are locked in. And particularly for the pension, the costs are are locked in for

folks that have have already had those benefits promised to them. Um, one of the areas that you'll see in red is the debt service schedule. That's um you know without making any any refinancing changes or any big changes to your debt schedule. Your debt schedule basically sets what those annual payments are going to be. So as I said there's one revenue initiative on the finding flexibility section and that um first one is um water system assets. Uh the city is considering monetization of its water assets. Um and that can take many different forms. Monization doesn't necessarily mean one thing. Um it can be a large upfront payment. It can come in the form of of annual installments. It can be some kind of combination of those two things. Um what we recommend in the plan is using the that um potential windfall or annual payment to leverage flexibility. And what do we mean by that? So, if you were to to gain windfall or something, using those proceeds today so that you can either reduce costs in the future or continue to generate um annual revenue. Right now, the general fund relies on $2 million a year from the water system um to support its general fund. If the monetization, if the form that the monetization takes um eliminates that payment, you would want to make sure that you're not only replacing that, but you can also leverage this this one-time moment to gain flexibility further down the line. Shifting a little bit to the expenditure side, the next couple initiatives are going to talk about um how to use the collective bargaining process to also find some additional flexibility. The first one and the biggest one is going to be keeping base wage growth at a manageable level across all cash compensation. So we talk about cash compensation. It's not just hourly wages or base salaries. It's also overtime. It's also shift differential. It's also longevity. It's the holistic cash

compensation um that your employees primarily those that are part of collective bargaining units are getting. So, we recommend that the city use again multi-year um financial approach or multi-year projection approach to understand how do any changes that you're making to collective bargaining impact you down the line through the lifetime of that agreement. Because kind of flipping back to this chart, once those benefits are set, once the compensation levels are set, it's it's hard to actually adjust those if you need to find some flexibility. Two other personel that we wanted to address here. Um, one is um, overtime spending and specifically for the fire department. The fire department is the city's largest user of overtime spending. Um, there were a couple of years that we saw that the proportion of cash compensation um, that was uh, made up by overtime by the fire department was really significant. Um, the average amount that the department spends on overtime is around $750,000. Um and in one year it was as high as 850,000 making up around 17% of the total cash compensation that that department utilizes. Um most recently uh the city as we have all heard and you guys have been talking about um the city has negotiated a measure with the fire department um that allows some changes to the minimum manning provision. So, in addition to the operational change that that may that that may be or not, um this was also estimated to save the city around $400,000 a year in overtime expenses. What we recommend in this plan is to continue to monitor overtime spending through this year. Um and then at the end of this year, make adjustments to the budgeted figure or to or to the provision so that you're ensuring that if you had intended to save that dollar amount that it's actually happening in practice. this is the first year that that we would have seen that result. Um so the city should be pretty careful about monitoring that

and we recommend um on a monthly or quarterly basis for that. Um aside from the the cash compensation, health insurance is the other major driver of personnel growth u for the city. Um as I said, the city is self-insured um for its health benefits. And when we looked at the claims cost growth, um the annual growth rate, the year-over-year growth rate from 2020 to 2023 was around 13%. Uh so this plan offers a couple of different initi or a couple of different options I should say um that the city should explore to address uh bringing that that growth down. I will say like Eastston is not alone in this. East is one of the cities that we work with that we see um the claims cost growth particularly for prescription um health benefits across a lot of different communities. we do see um health insurance is becoming um a really really fast grower of expenses for our municipalities. Um I'll just reiterate here that that uh using the multi-year um perspective when you're doing any of these changes to collective bargaining provisions especially because if you can see we have cash compensation um overtime more specifically and then also talking about health insurance using multi-year approach also helps you to see how those pieces interplay. So if you had an increase over here and a decrease over here, understanding how all those different provisions kind of work together to get you to that final number. This last section um on scaling city services addresses uh more of the operations piece that we heard um from departments. Um, as I said, when uh departments talked about their operations, a lot of the time they they mentioned that city has been or their department at least has has been able to kind of absorb um any increase in the demand for services that they've seen. Um but there had some concerns about the way that that demand may grow if you know population continues to expand and building

development continues on the trajectory or or speeds up um from the current trajectory. Um so the the table that you see on this slide just identifies a couple of those service areas and how those service areas u may be impacted. So for example um if you have higher population or and we know that um the city likes to have a lot of festivals that draw lots of people into the city um every year. If you have more people using your roads, you may need for example more maintenance on the roads. That drives up the the workload for your public works department. Um, so this may seem like it's it's shifting gears a little bit, but the the one thing that we heard from multiple departments um was about uh improving um the city's financial software. This is something that touches almost every aspect of city government. It is the way that um you all are informed on the the financial health of the city. Um and what we heard is that the ERP system, the enterprise resource management system or the accounting system, however you want to call it, needs an update.

Um it for primarily for for reporting capability and also so that it can interface with other systems and can integrate more seamlessly. We put this in the scaling up chapter because not only is it is it crucial for improving budget practices and improving um your doing your multi-year projections um but it also has the potential to also increase um efficiencies. So scaling up doesn't necessarily mean adding headcount. Um I know the city is pretty careful about doing that which we think is is a good financial management practice. But finding efficiencies um can also help you to scale up your output without necessarily adding adding people. So technology is is certainly one way that you can do that. Um the next initiative that we recommend is improving the annual budget document. Um, the city's budget document is not unlike budget documents that we've seen in other places, but it does read a little bit more like an output from an accounting system than a strategic planning document. And that's really what an annual budget is. It's your strategic priorities for the for the year. And you want residents to be able to read it and to really understand where their taxpayer dollars are going and what you all prioritize um for the year. So having the the better financial software is definitely step one in order to to you know improving that document. But there are some other things that um that we recommend in the plan like including department um level descriptions or adding a little bit more narrative um that can kind of help the public to understand what's in there. We also include kind of a starting point um in the plan. you'll see that there are department level summary pages. Um so that that could serve as a starting point for a direction that you could bring your your budget document in the future. Um this last slide touches on um really the the topic that um you all were discussing previously. Um I'll I'll talk about first the I'll talk about the fire station first um and then I'll end on talking about the inspection issue. Um,

so the the uh city's um central fire station, the fire station that I believe is closest to this building, had an assessment um in 2021 um it was actually I think an assessment of all fire facilities, but the assessment really focused on the central fire station and sort of the shortfalls um that that station had. We know that when it was constructed, it it was used um a grant uh to construct it and there were some design issues. And really what we read in the in that assessment is that um the fire station is not um is not the best design or use um for the operations that the fire department basically needs. Deployment is an issue. They have bays that are kind of difficult to turn the equipment around. Um so in the plan you'll see that we we rely really heavily on the expert um who who developed that plan. We are certainly not you know firefighters or or experts on the operations but we are experts on the financial piece. So in addition to some of the recommendations um operationally or or um facilities wise that were made in that plan. We also pair that with a funding strategy to address, okay, how would you actually go about funding a fire station uh repair or you know maybe potentially the the plan recommends moving it or making major changes that obviously is going to need um to come with some funding. Last thing that I'll address um is the um is the inspections. So, as I said, most of the departments um that we talked to said that their operations were um were actually functioning okay. They were hitting their performance metrics. They were turning work around in the time that they expected or that in their targeted time frame. Um but inspections was one area that when we talked to department heads, um we found that it was potentially currently strained. Um you heard a little bit about that tonight, understanding that, you know, since COVID some of these inspections had not been taking place. there may be some coordination um that

had not happened in a couple of years. Um so this is this recommendation um to outsource um or potentially contract with a third party to address some of that backlog is directly in line with the way that the city is handling um the the backlog right now. Um so we we certainly support that uh that current um method to to kind of fill the capacity gap and contracting out in some cases is the most efficient way to increase that capacity so that the full-time staff can focus on other areas. One area that we heard was a big area of concern which I'm sure for all of you who you know answer phone calls from constituents and emails is um code enforcement. That's another another thing that kind of falls under that same department. So contracting out some of those services may be the best way to kind of gain efficiencies in that area. So you've heard around 12 I think 12 um recommendations. We have around 24 25 in the full plan. So this was by no means um a holistic um you know uh representation of what's in the plan. Um, so now I'll I'll turn it over to Gordon Man who's going to discuss what the next steps are, understanding that um, you know, you need all obviously some time to absorb the recommendations.

To the last slide, Gordon, I just read your early intervention plan from 2007. just to just to uh for reminiscing sake just to give some perspective. I use I have it on my desk to read it often and I probably read it 15 times in the last 19 years.

Well, I I hope you reuse this one as as as often. It's really remarkable the turnaround that Eastston has had from what we said that we are 20 years later. And I know I've said this before, but even just personally, I grew up as a little kid in Bethlehem and Eastston was the place you didn't go to, right? And um now I have cousins who have moved here from Bushkill Township because Eastston is the place they want to live. I mean, you have your turnaround is is pretty remarkable. I don't in any way want to downplay or minimize the discussion you had about the high occupancy fire tonight. That happens, by the way, everywhere. That happens growing cities. It happens in smaller cities that it's it's a problem because of largely driven by affordable housing and some other factors. But the other stuff that you talked about with code enforcement and fire, you are in a I think this is a better position. But with some with great growth comes great responsibility if you want to the Spider-Man quote. You are in a situation now where because you are growing because you are such an attractive place to live. You have to scale some things up and you have to do some things differently. You spent a lot of time talking tonight about code enforcement because if you're get of all of these things and the pink building next door and the foundry wherever that is if they're all

pink building is only temporary till next year. I'm aware that's what makes it a target. Although I kind of like it. It's a long time.

It is a target. It gets demolished May 30th. If you're going to continue to have that development here, you're obviously going to have to enhance the rental inspection and the code enforcement process. At the same time, you're always going to have the limitations that Pennsylvania governments have. You're always going to be partially or largely dependent on a real estate tax with a tax base that you can't reassess because that's done by the county, right? You're always going to have those sorts of limit limitations. So, you're not going to be able to just hire 10 more firefighters, 10 more code officers, 10 more police officers. You're going to have to look at automatic aid or mutual aid. You're going to have to look at part-time firefighters. You're going to have to use contractors for surge capacity. But you are in a position where now where I can think of a lot of other cities in the Commonwealth would gladly trade places with you to uh to think of to take on the challenges and this plan is designed to hopefully help you take on those challenges. This is not goodbye or this is goodbye but not farewell. Uh there is one other person tonight who's here, Kabir Hussein from the Department of Community and Economic Development. Uh they funded a large part of our work and what happens after this is you move on to what's called phase two. So you have the plan, it lays out a bunch of initiatives and recommendations and then it says, "Okay, these are the ones that you should hit first and the ones with the little blue check marks or whatever are the ones that the state steps up to the plate and funds on an ongoing basis." So first and foremost uh is the financial software. We are public financial management. So I guess that scans with who we are. Uh but we know that that is a a a

we've only been trying to do that for 19 years. Yeah. Well, there you go. 20th year is the charm. Um so moving forward with that kind of uh with that kind of update is important. Uh the other thing I wish he had stayed to hear this, but he left. Uh we think over the fiveyear period you're going to have to invest in the fire station. Right. Well, we already have that. And you have our captain here. So, the chief left. All right. Well, there we go. At least one person gets here. He was the guy puffing his fist. You live here in Oh, okay. Well, touche. The we we just in the process right now of doing an evaluation whether we remodel or build new. Good.

And I think Fire Essentials are build new. I think so too. I mean with given I mean you could read the 2021 report. It's um not real kind to the current facility. These are the types of things that you're now in position to do. It's been great working with you. We hope to continue working with you. We're not pring questions if you want to ask those. Uh but we did want to kind of put a cap on this part of your process as you head into the next. The only let me make a quick comment because it's I I I I just want to make the statement there is some overlap.

Um can you qu can you discuss that the there there is overlap between items that are already in process and what we're doing versus your report and recommendation.

Yeah. So I mean just to give you one sense when we presented the the baseline projection uh in I think that was December um this was your deficit and because the idea of identifying deficits is not to tell you there's a brick wall there and then laugh at you when you run head first into it but to tell you there's a brick wall there so that you could avoid it. So over the over the course of the three or four months you receive better news because your pension funding is very well is is doing very well. So this this margin got smaller. So a lot of the things that we highlighted are already in process. You heard a lot tonight about we highlight in the report the need to add capacity to codes. Well, you heard extensively about that tonight. Uh we had highlighted uh the the the importance of a comprehensive plan. That's something that you're working on. Health insurance. I mean you're you're I would say this even if he wasn't in the room. blessed to have two strong financial and professional administrators here. We've worked with them. So, there wasn't a whole lot along the way where we caught them off guard where they were like, "Wow, I just didn't know that." So, a lot of the things that we've talked about are already in process here. Uh some of them are not because it's a five-year plan and you can't do five years worth of stuff, you know, today. uh but that does uh there is a bunch of the initiatives that we talked about in here are already uh are already in progress.

I think what one thing that we found interesting um was the um the growth rate that you projected on earned income tax. Yeah, it it it was um it it was slightly better than I think we expected when we first looked at it at a and a half% growth rate. So I mean that that was extremely helpful when looking at the numbers. Um the other thing which was very very helpful

was for this year's budget. Um we had the opportunity to work with PFM uh concurrently where they were modeling out um 26 projections as we were putting the 26 budget together. Um so it really provided additional resource to say to us that um the budget that we presented we felt really comfortable with in particular with um health care spiking in 24 and 25. The 26 number had to be solid. Um and we had made some internal changes as you know we we changed the broker um and I think it was a good change because it provided us u just better better data and and better outward looking figures for us. So when we put that number in front of council and then we looked at the PFM number we were we were fairly aligned. In fact, we were talking about even our 27 number when we provided the two-year budget and we looked at an $800,000 uh deficit um or gap as the mayor likes likes to say was a gap. Um you know, we had good discussions like what all this does is um create discussion points so we can continue to move the city forward. But so this was from that aspect and then I know there's more and Lauren you did a great job like as well as you did Gordon and I we really appreciate from an administrative standpoint this process because we talked to DCD earlier today and um there were there there are this is not uncommon in fact we're in a better position because of if you all remember the ARPA bubble is really affecting a lot of communities a lot of municipalities in the state and it's not quite a bubble, it's a cliff, meaning you fall off the cliff and there's there

are cliff scenarios that are occurring right now throughout the Commonwealth. I mentioned one to the mayor which is awful. But nevertheless, I think this was so beneficial to us. Very beneficial. Those are just examples. Yeah. And what I wanted to say is that the difference between the 2007 report and this report one was early intervention report stamp program but the fact is it's a much different city only because only because this council has been very supportive of the administrative administration's recommendations. It's not easy. I mean the in 2007 you were here closing a pool right?

And that didn't go over well. However, however, just to let you know, Gordon, in 20 years, we're closing a pool, but not for good, only to get it remodeled, but the high pool will be closed for two seasons. Well, the good and the other good news is that this council, you know, um is getting very involved, you know, so individually,

there's a lot of conversations that I have with the individual members um that, you know, in order to understand policy, you have to understand operations. So, they're able to have a dialogue with the managers on uh policy issues as they affect operations. So I mean it's it's been positive but um but anyway the um the timing could not have been perfect as we hit as we got out of the ARPA bubble and also got us got a hit with health care

and and I and you know I and I think as we look forward um I mean spot on, but we needed your analysis to tell council too what's important. I It's so important these items that you're recommending. Very important. Very important. And you can tell Secretary Siger that we're going to come to him for enterprise software. Noted. Anything else? You did a great job.

Thank you, Lauren and Gordon. Anyone have the Anybody else on council have an item for discussion? We have two more the agenda. Oh, two more items. Sorry. Home rule change. There's no charter change. I mean, Gordon, can you imagine somebody would want on council wants to change the charter that was changed in 2008? All of it? No, no, that that's not accurate. He He's pulling your leg. Well, you want to check for government?

Just just uh uh the mayor being on council. That's all we're talking about. But we're not actually talking about that tonight. Um what I've asked uh our solicitor to do is he's just going to update council on if that's something we look to do, what the procedures are and the process. That's really all we're hearing tonight. So uh in any change to the home rule charter has to be voted on by the public by the public.

So the first and most important date that needs to be understood is 13 Tuesdays prior to the election. There's always a there's always an election commission meeting 13 Tuesdays before the election because any any referendum regardless of what it is, any referendum that's going to go on the ballot has to be approved by the election commission 13 Tuesdays prior to the election. Uh so that regardless of whether you're changing a home rule charter or anything else that would require the reference,

there have to be also uh uh hearings, right? Community hearings. Well, that's where things get the if you're looking to there are different kinds of changes to the home rule charter. So, the the way the law reads is a little unclear because if you just look at the statute, it seems to indicate that once you have a home rule charter, it can be amended by a by an ordinance.

But the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania says that yes, but not really. If you are making a relatively minor change, if you're not changing your form of government, yes, if you're not changing the form of government, uh an ordinance is sufficient to put a change to the charter onto the ballot and that can be done like any other ordinance. The exception is a change to the form of government. The courts have said that a change to the form of government needs to be handled just like the initial process to establish a home rule charter. So first thing that would have to happen would be a government study commission would have to be first you have to put that on the ballot. So there'd be an ordinance establishing a government study commission that would go on the ballot. Then there would be a vote on that that would establish that commission. Then the commission would do its work including public hearings including all the steps that were done when the charter was originally established. And then if there was a recommendation produced by that commission to change the form of government, that would still have to go through the process, you would still have to put that onto the ballot for a second vote. I think it's a three-fifths vote. I I don't recall right off the top. It is a simple majority.

So that's that's the basic process for changing to making changes to the charter. It comes down to what kind of changes are you making. Um, for example, Northampton County recently amended their charter to add term limits. No one challenged it. So, that term limits was done by a simple ordinance. Whether that's a change in the form of government is not for me to say. Uh, but uh it was not challenged. It was passed. It is now part of the Northampton County Home Rule Charter because that was perceived as a relatively minor change. if they wanted to. There there's one unique exception for moving the the statute specifically says that if you're moving from atlar moving to at large council members that doesn't necessar that's specifically set aside as something you can do without a government study commission. Um, but if they wanted to do if they wanted to go back to having a commissiononly form of government, you could do it, but you would need a government study commission to do that. So that's that's where we would be is a major change uh to the form of government would require government study commission and it it that is not clear from the way the law is written because the way the law is written the the statute that discusses establishing a home rule charter is where the government study commission is. It it's and it appears on first reading that amending the home rule charter simply requires an ordinance. that the PA Supreme Court has said that yes, but that's might be what the law says, but the way the PA Supreme Court has interpreted the law is if you are looking at a major change to the form of government, that does require going through the whole process and that process can take some time because of the having to put on the ballot to form a government study commission

takes two years. Yeah. And then to go through now, is it a necessarily a I don't make policy. I just tell you what the rules are. It's up to the the you as the the governing body to make policy whether it's a good idea or not. The current charter has been around I believe in its current form for 20 years roughly.

Is it a good idea to put together a government study commission for them to look at it and see if there are recommended changes? That's a policy decision that this body would have to make as to whether that is a good idea or not. Whether you want to form a committee to look at the charter and then decide whether you want to go through the process is again a policy decision that would be up to this body to decide. So that's that's my understanding of the rules. Thank you Mike. Absolutely. Again this was just a quick update on the legalities of it from Mike and um we could have discussions in the future. The second thing I have do you want to create a committee or not? the recommendation is that maybe you want to look at the whole charter and set up a committee.

So, what I'm letting do the council do is hear everything that that was said and we'll bring it back to the next committee. Decide what they want to do. You're getting closer and closer to 13 Tuesdays. Well, I don't think it's going to happen in this election anyway, but we know it's a proc couple year process. I mean, um that does bring up a question though. I know like we've talked about wanting to push back the budget date because we don't have for example healthc care costs and things like that. I mean is that something we could put an ordinance together and clean up some of those currently says the mayor has to present the budget October 1st. We could change that date.

That would not change the form of government. That's a relatively minor change. It would still require an amendment. So it would still have to go. And that's the and it's it's sort of like updating our our zoning ordinance. I think that everyone knows there are certain updates and changes that need to be made to the zoning ordinance. The question is do you take a peacemeal approach? Now with something like that, it's a fairly simple change. It might be something that's worth pursuing immediately before you even put together either a smaller committee just to look if there's other changes that need to be made or go through the whole government commission process. Yeah, it seems like it's something that's brought up during every budget process that I've been involved in. So I I I missed I I apologize. I stepped out to

So the It would require a referendum. No matter what? No matter what. It's just you would not have to go through the whole government study committee. I got the rest of it. I I got the rest of that's that's what I thought. That's how I read the charter, too. Okay.

Yeah. Thank you. The second thing I have for tonight is um so I spoke to majority of the council individually at different times. So last year I I brought in a affordable housing ordinance um that says that any apartment buildings 10 or more of market rate rents would need to allocate 10% of their units to workforce housing or pay a fee of $10,000 per unit to the redevelopment authority. Um and they would do it and it passed in June but I'm coming back tomorrow you all have in the packet to make an update to that. So, one of the updates that you'll notice in your report or in your packet is uh section 176-2 under definitions where it says housing for which an occupant is required to pay no more than 30% of their gross household income. Originally, we had no more than 30% total housing costs, including rent, mortgage, utilities, and any applicable fees. Um, we're deducting the utilities and any applicable fees uh from feedback and doing other research with other municipalities depending on how you use your air conditioning, how you use your heat, your cable, your internet, you know, that's something separate. So, the 30% of their gross house household income would apply just to their rent uh payments. Um, so that's the first change in 1762, the updated change. Second down from there is the median income change. So currently we just have the median income is based on the Lehigh Valley report for household median income. I made the change to be just the city of East Southside downtown Westward and College Hill. I just don't agree that we're taking Parkland and Whiteall and everybody else in which is going to drive it up. So we're going to use the

city of east and only uh to get the median income which is determined by the ro most recent American community survey um the ACS or US census. So that's the second change. The third change would be um the residential units that are considered work for first workforce housing would not exceed 85% of the median income for the city of Eastn for a one-bedroom apartment or no more than 95% of the median income for the city of Eastn for a two-bedroom apartment. So that was the change uh there. The original plan that we have,

the plan that we have on the on right now is up to 120. That's what it was approved last year. Uh it goes from 80 to 120. So we dropped it significantly to no longer go to 120. It stays at 95. So it stays under the 100%. I mean, we're just not paying that kind of money here. We still aren't. I mean, I realize that people who living across the street in their marquee are making that kind of money, but that's not who we're looking to target. Agreed. We can we these are the workforce housing numbers set by HUD. We can lower them. I'm fine with that. I think you lower them. That's absolutely fine. I would be in favor of lowering them. I'm not in favor of $95,000. I don't I don't think that's 95 what? $95,000. Everybody on this end? No. 95%

95% of 69,000. It would drop. It's 95% of 69,000 which is the city. And that's for a two That's for a twobedroom. For a twobedroom. That makes sense. And that's two people. So that's why we the the current the way it's currently written you go up to 120 of the area median income. This is we significantly dropped it to 95. Uh and also I think the biggest change is um as I stated currently they have to allocate and this is

that do for homeowner if a person a young person who's starting a family wants to buy a house what are we doing for them? Who cares about these high-end rent rentals? I don't care about them. I care about owner occupied. Somebody who grows up in East becomes a firefighter. Can't afford to live in East. So, I don't we don't have anything for home ownership. But I think when you talk about these that you don't care about, I think it's important mainly because they're getting tax breaks. They're getting $7 million in taxpayer funded grants and this is a way to create lower income housing for

getting $7 million in taxpayer grants. Those grants would go somewhere. The legislature makes a decision. We're going to give a hund00 million dollars in you in in um grants for economic development and you you compete for it. So it's not t it's taxpayer money. Of course it is right. But it's not it's if we don't get it be around gonna get

I'm not disputing it but I don't understand the point on that because regardless of who gets and you do a great job of getting it and I'm glad you do but it's still taxpayer money that's going to developers to help them create their project that is not affordable. These are for units that are not affordable to the people that we're talking about. So now we're incentivizing them if they get these grants from the state, federal, local, they have to allocate, which currently is 10% of the units. I'm recommending that we increase it to 25% of the units. And instead of a $10,000 per unit fee to opt out, it's $25,000 per unit fee to opt out. So So in other words, let me hear it clear. So they would pay that fee and they don't have to worry about

if they choose to opt out, they would pay 25,000 per door to the redevelopment authority. We can use that. Got I'm only agreeing with you. If the $25,000 goes into an affordable housing fund, so doesn't just go to redevelopment or you pay John Kingsley, right? So, it's supposed to go um to to he doesn't get paid, right? It's uh so so technically it's going to go to the um we want it to go to home east which is to pro purchase and rehab more affordable units like we're doing like we currently doing on southside on burwick and and center. So um

which are which um there's there's a a tendency there to develop owner occupied. It's not just uh right. Home East is doing owner occupied for low to moderate income first-time home buyers. Uh and also doing rentals. So, how's that work? If they they pay their their rent, put a part of their rent will go in an escro account in order for them to No. So, it's not a lease to own. So, currently what Home East is doing is they have units that are for rent to lower income unit uh residents. The three-bedroom on center is going to go for like 1,300 a month. But they also have homes, single family homes like at the old Oliver lot. Yeah. that are significantly reduced in price uh and interest rates and things for first-time home buyers. Gotcha.

So that money will be used to create these units. Some will be for sale, some will be for rent for that target group. But I'm going to be designated for that then

for that, right? Uh and I believe that is it. Uh yeah, owners who choose to not designate the required pays the 25%. And that those are basically the changes. So we're just changing the uh 10% to 25% opt- out fee from 10,000 a unit to 25,000 a unit. Uh we lowered so as currently you could make 120% above the household median income which again Parkland, Whiteall, Sulen Valley, that's a significant amount of money. Now we're lowering that but people only between uh 80 and 95%. Um so those are that's what's on the agenda for tomorrow in East of the city of East. So Palmer Forks their median incomes to people that are higher earners won't count in the calculations for here.

Yeah. And what is the median income for about 69,000 about 69. It just went up. Yeah. Yeah. So that's on the agenda for tomorrow and that's all I have. Mayor, anyone else? Thank you. Can I just ask I know we're here late but briefly um I I spoke Frank and I we spoke last week and Mark and I touched base. Can you say pinnabone please? We have three Franks in city hall now. I thought you're going by something else now. Francis Francis Frank Rosiano. Yes.

I've had a few people approach me about um the fee schedule for events and I I think we need to step back. Um, I know that Arbor Day that where we had nonprofits um tableabling and not selling anything, they were all approached from what I was told on a Sunday at the event um and charged fees. Um, I know that the the village on College Hills trying to have a resident band, you know, not a professional band, and they were told to get a business license. And I'm I'm worried that some of these smaller events where I I I understand, you know, Baconfest and there are people making significant money, but then I'm worried about some of the smaller events maybe not happening or not being organized because we're adding these extra hurdles. So, I think we have to step back and take a look at um the different types of events.

If people look at each individual vendor, we don't we don't charge vendors that don't that don't sell anything. So, the Arborfest vendors who are little nonprofits and many of them volunteers were charged at Arborfest. And then also um the band, Mr. Green's band is playing um up at College Hill on Saturday and now um the organizers sending him and his band to city hall tomorrow to pay $25 business license fee. This is not they're not professional. In some cases, like a a neighborhood band is renting equipment as well. They're not making anything off of this. I just worry that, you know, it's not and then also we start getting into so are bars that have bands are they going to be required for a license and that's not really fair to a small little neighborhood get together where they might have 20 people.

The only thing is we're trying to recoup the $150,000 of overtime. I understand that. But it's not I'm not it's not baconfest though at Arborfest or like a neighborhood ban that's a popup at Nevin Park. That's what I'm I'm worried about. If if I may, Councilwoman, I apologize if I didn't get back to you cuz I thought I did. And you and uh Francis, um I apologize for that. Mark and uh John Kingsley are working together to see if they can make those changes, those updates, and they're going to bring them before us. Yeah, I think I think we can do that the same way we deal with the uh the amusement taxes. Same way. Look at it that in that way.

I just want to take a step back and look at everything because I think I I I think it's Yeah, it's not one sizefits-all. And I would just hate for these small little events that people volunteers are putting together to go away because I do think that will happen and continue down that line. We're not the same. That's what they're they're going to work on. And and do you do you have an update on when you're going to bring it to committee? We'd like to try to bring it before the next committee meeting. Beautiful. So Okay. Or at the next committee, I'm sorry. At the next Thank you. And mayor, just to update you because um you weren't here. Uh, Congressman Raskin uh uh visited uh on Saturday. Saw that.

And he was on college and I had some time to to sit and talk with him and and he was very uh complimentary about the city. So you get my $2 million for my community center. I did not. I did not. But he he asked me where you're at. I told you on vacation he said then you didn't really want it. So he said he said if he wanted it he would have been here. But but he did, mayor. He gave he was very complimentary on the city. He's a good guy. Anybody else? Okay, we're journ till tomorrow night 6 o'clock, same bat station. College Hill Presbyterian. College Hill Presbyterian. That's right. I hate those away games.

They were a good idea on paper, but that's my that's the middle name. If you don't know that by now, sister, you're in trouble. How you beenrystal

thing, huh? Did you try the salsa?