City Council - workshop

It is 6.30, and I'm calling to order our city council work session. On July 28th, 2026, and we'll have roll call. We'll begin with Mayor Pro Tem Love.

Love here. St. Pierre here.

Krim here.

Pena here. McShann here. Hymas here.

Gibson here.

And let's make note that Council Member Silva is out of town, and so is Council Member Mayfield. I'll make a motion to approve. Do we have to approve? And I'll second. Okay, and we'll begin with Mayor Pro Tem Love.

Love, yes. St. Pierre, yes.

Cream, yes.

Pena, yes. McShann, yes. Hymas, yes.

Gibson, yes.

All right. So we'll, invocation. All right.

Dear Lord as we gather today to serve the community of Elgin we ask for your guidance over the trust placed in our hands. Grant us wisdom in our decision clarity in our discussions and patience in our deliberation. Help us to keep the well-being of all our residents at the heart of everything we do. Working together with compassion fairness and foresight to guide our city forward. Bless our leaders, our staff, and the citizens we represent. May our work today bring unity, progress, and peace to our community. In your name we pray. Amen.

Amen. Our new business. Review and discussion of proposed City of Elgin FY 26-27 annual operating budget as presented by the city manager.

Yes. You want me to keep reading?

including but not limited to possible discussions of revenue and expenditure projections, department budget, personnel requests, discussion of major funds, capital improvement needs, and anticipated challenges and review of proposed tax rate and fee adjustments if applicable. City Manager Eades.

Appreciate it. Thank you, Mayor, city council members, Robert Eads, for the record, city manager. So today we start our budget workshops. I stand before you this way and only because of respect for what we're about to do and the process that we're undertaking. As the charter states, I shall be bringing before you a balanced budget, and we will be working up to that. But the work that needs to be done prior to is critical work that must be had collaboratively, where a lot of work by the staff that stands with me today and others that aren't present with us have been working on for quite a few months. You may not think that or assume that but if you look at the budget calendar and the things that have been happening and the changes that have been going on and the actions that have been made as particular to just not budget items but our finances as a whole and things that we've been working on and dealing with have not gone past us. We all realize what we're working through and working on. So as we work through all of that, we run a city. I dare to say we run a great city. And so I'll challenge anybody to come before me and tell me that we're not doing that. We do have some challenges like any other city. And if somebody comes up here and tells you that we don't, then they're lying to you or they don't know enough to tell you different. So we do have those. What we've crafted, I think, is the first. Thank you. What we've crafted is the first of a series of workshops that will concentrate on a few things that are critical. And what I think is critical when I began here, when I interviewed, in fact, September of last year, There's one most critical thing that I mentioned and I will continue to mention, and that's our staff, the individuals that make things work. The relationship with council is, that is symbiotic and that must be there. The relationship with our community has to be there. Trust needs to be built and be there and be nurtured without a doubt. But without our staff that trust us, that we recognize that we truly invest in them, by making sure that we're making adjustments when we can make adjustments, and being honest when we can. That's, I think, all that our staff would expect. And so we took a brutally honest approach in what we're doing. There's a couple things, as you remember, when I got here was there's certain things that need to be get, need to have done. One primordial thing was finances, finances. And yes, we got knee deep into that, started searching for the next finance director and all that good stuff. And that's, that's, we're getting to that point. And yes, we will be giving an update to this council, positive updates on that. I'm limited in what I can say because of what's an HR issue that must be dealt with through HR channels out of respect to candidates that have been approached and that have accepted a position with us. They still need to do the work on their end. Past that though, there are other things that were challenges put before us and challenges that were made to me. One, get a rate study going for our water and wastewater rates. We got to make sure that we're paying those or charging the rates that we need to charge because what's happening in that sense, before we get to the other types of funds, is that if we're not paying or charging what we need to charge in that respect, then that fund, it's an enterprise fund, which means that is strictly run as a business. Not when we speak to say let's run all government as a business. You don't want to run government as a business, let me tell you right now, all government. Because if you did, you'd close the parks department down. You'd close the police department down. They don't make you money. And they save lives. Right? Now let me tell you, that's what we're gonna have the conversation first about is gonna be general fund items. We're gonna separate those two conversations to make it very clear when you walk in, we're gonna be talking about general fund. which is that this is for the betterment of our community. That's where tax dollars come in, and that's how we fund those things. Where we don't necessarily expect a return, we may charge a fee, right, to pay for some of the services, but it's not running a business. So please help me out when we're talking about running a business or not. There are certain services we have to do that with, but for the vast majority, we do not want to do that because it doesn't translate equally. Getting back to what we were, what I was charged with doing. So we kicked that off. I got some really smart people and good people, again, that work with us, so we kicked that off rather quickly with that great study. That's coming to us, and before you, City Council, exactly when, Mr. Gonzalez? August 11th. August 11th. So that's just days away that we're going to present that, and we're going to show where we need to be. And it may not be something we like to see. I didn't get paid to tell you what you would like to hear. So you're going to hear what you need to hear, what I need to hear, what our community needs to hear. I will, though, also provide a path that is reasonable. that we could all march forward with because if we're talking about plans that we cannot use then they're going to be shelved just like the other plans or other things that we may have done. I've been in other cities that very expensive plans but because they're not reasonable you've spent time and money for nothing. That was built into our plan and we expect to have that before you and approved. Another plan was contrived and requested and done. You got and accepted our competition benefit plan. Because again, one of the things that you said was, we want to make sure that we are truly answering that question from our employees because they're coming up to us to say, I am taking another job somewhere else. Now, taking away the unsatisfaction motive, the overwork motive, the lack of trust in leadership motive, whatever their motive is outside of money, that's one thing. You start knocking those things away, and you get to the core issue of being money, benefits, that sort of thing, where you've got to pay the bills. And if you can drive 10 miles and get $1 more, $0.50 more an hour, and that's more than what you're paying in gas, you'll probably take that job. I can't do my job if I'm trying to save water in my hands. I need a bucket. Because we're losing them as soon as we're able to attract them. if we're able to attract them. And so this, although we ran through it quite quickly, there was not too many questions about our compensation study. We'd like to dive into it with you a little bit more, so we're gonna give that presentation to you right now. We're gonna get a little specific on how the metrics were done a little bit. And because this is a budget workshop, Where we have that open dialogue and conversation and let me let me already preface this by saying too that this conversation is for all the people that stand with me here behind me and don't know if we got public here but at least the team that I stand with with the city employees we come with our eyes ears wide open. We're honest brokers and what we're trying to do with everybody we're truly trying to do the very best. There's been a lot of changes. Let's be honest about this too. What was done in previous years and budgets. I'll be honest I've never seen one meeting don't need to see one meeting. I don't ever don't care. Doesn't doesn't affect me. And so we kind of turned the table upside down and just did something from scratch. So it looks a little different feels a little different perhaps. Maybe that's what we need. Right. But what's true is that it's going to be honest brutal truth. But I think we all just got to be fair and honest brokers across the table as well, because we all are trying to do the very best for our communities, as we talked about when we were together and had our strategic planning session. I think you all saw that. And we're hoping we can get a lot done. Luckily for everybody, today we're just talking about certain things besides this comp plan, which I think we've accomplished maybe in about 30 minutes. We're able to possibly have a break if the mayor and council so chooses. But after that is when you're going to have the more traditional departments come up to you. What may be a little less traditional is that we're going to have a lot more people from a lot different perhaps levels of departments come and be able to speak to you. So I think you need to hear from everybody. You need to be able to question anyone you want. I will ask, please, let's maybe keep it on topic where we're talking about salaries and whatnot. If we can do that, we're ready to be prepared to be able, if we don't have the answers for it, we're going to get you the answers, right? But like they say in, you know, Senate hearing meetings and stuff like that, these are invited, they're willing invited guests. But we are here, like I said, with open arms and open ears to be able to engage everybody in here so that we can get through this and maybe accomplish something.

Last thing I'll say for logistics sake. Can we throw it up there? Not right now? Oh, that's right. We're going to do it later.

Okay. So I'm just going to preface this by saying one thing, too. One thing that's going to be a little bit different, and you're going to just, this is going to be fact-based, and it's got to roll through, so I apologize. I'm going to take another couple seconds. What you're going to see running throughout these budget workshops, which again, may be different, apologize. But at the very end, it's going to bear the fruit that we need. You're going to have to trust the process. So on that screen, what's going to be happening when we get to the presentations by our staff is that we're going to throw up a screen that's going to be tracking not only what's being requested, but you're going to see up on your slides. So you're going to see the individual slides. Our departments come up here. They're going to battle with you all tooth and nail. You're going to tell them no. You're giving them half of what they want. You're still going to tell them no. You can tell him zero. You're still going to battle. We're going to get to a little bit more. But what's going to end up happening is there's $4.6 million right now worth of requests for new. And today, we're only talking about new salary or new positions and new equipment. That's all. We're not talking about Can we get more toilet paper? Can we get more training? Can we do that? Can we do? No, no, no, no, no. We're requesting right now new people and new equipment. All right? It's going to be very simple. We're going to start breaking that down. And they're going to have to go ahead and pitch it to you. They pitch it to me.

And I still have some questions I'll tell them.

And I told them, get ready because I'm going to be brutally honest with them. And they're going to have to go ahead and answer those questions. So before you do, I may jump in there and be like, hmm. So let's just say we have, as an example, somebody come up there and say, hey, I want 10 of these. And it costs $100,000 to do it. But you may say, well, all right, after all this conversation, great conversation with the great people, you say, hey, so I don't know. Can you do three of those for 30? And you're like, well, if I had to, I will. Well, it kind of smells like you probably have to.

OK.

Throw it up on the board, my friend. So what's going to happen is you're going to see the request, and then you can see three of those widgets for $10,000 for $30,000 up there on the board. That's the first part. Go to the next one. So we've got a running tally going. See? So go through all this conversation. This is day one. This is for new, right? Personnel and equipment because what's going to end up happening as we migrate over this entire process The revenue side of this comes later when we get the final rolls settled when we get all those dollars that we can say and solidify to say this is what's truly estimated to come in and We know what you're requesting. It started off at 4.6. You'd love to fund $1.2 million. Your revenue came in at $900,000.

What are you going to do about that $300,000 gap?

Well, I'm going to tell you some scenarios that you could do. You'll figure out a couple on your own. But that's where we start doing the work. Because if we do nothing and just sit here and go back and forth on $4.6 million, we get nowhere. And we'll end up with $4.6 million worth of requests. Today, you start shaving that down to something more manageable. You start asking the questions. And that board is a massage board. It's an Excel spreadsheet. So let's just say we get down to the very end. Who knows? If there's $1.2 million worth of requests and $2 million comes out of nowhere, some lotto ticket that Mayor Brotton won and she wants to donate back to the city, God bless her. Thank you very much. So now we got an extra $800,000. Remember, we had $400,000. $0.5 million worth. So what do we do? We come back to the board and say, you remember? He wanted two more cop cars. Maybe we'll give him one more. And you want another park bench? Throw two more over there. Because I don't know how that's going to shake out, but it needs to start today. So that's a track that we're going to follow. Pretty simple stuff. You're going to see it on the board. Our community is going to see it on board. They're going to be able to hear you, watch us. It's live streaming today, but I'm here to get this going and first start off with the comp plan. So it's going to be a lot of what you saw already. We're going to go into the detail, and you do have exactly what's on the screens is in your packet. It's on front and back. And what we're going to do is we're going to start off with the police department when we start talking about the comp plan. Because what we're going to do is we're going to drill down on this so that we can explain it a little bit better in more detail. as it relates to our community, this city, our departments. And the way we saw it when we got the report too, is that the biggest disparity that we see in departments is PD. We heard it. You all saw it. And that's what logic is telling us right now. So as a whole, that's the biggest one to kind of look at right now and say, you can see it graphically. And we're going to show it to you again to say, if we can start working on that one today and see how we fit this through and just know it. Remember, no decisions are coming out tonight. Nothing. You're going to see this comp plan. There's nothing even to do with this. There's nothing like move this up a little, change that up a little. There's nothing. This is for information only. This will come into play a couple meetings down the road. We just want to answer questions, more clarifying questions. I think there were some questions also that we can maybe drill down on. We can get to some of those answers as well. That's what we're here today to do. It's a workshop, friendly conversation, no throwing no grapes. Let's get this going, I think, and we'll call out Pam Anderson or Pam Anderson. I'm thinking somebody else. Wow. Back in the 80s. Yeah, we got another Pam here, Pam Sanders. She's from the 90s. That's our HR director, not the singer that I was thinking about. Ms. Pam Sanders, you want to come up? Somebody's got jokes tonight.

Good evening, mayor and city council and city manager. All right. Last week, Lori Messner from Logic Compensation Group presented the study to all of you. Like Mr. Eade said, there were some questions, so we brought it together, brought it back, the slides that we believe questions existed so that we could explain them a little bit more. What you see on your slides here is the left side of the slide is our civilian staff, the right side is the police. The gray is what our current pay grades, pay structure is at. That doesn't apply to any employee specifically, it's just the pay structure. You can see how far below police department was when compared to the market. The civilian side was a little bit closer to the market, but PD was drastically lower. And y'all stop me if you have questions, okay? The top of this slide is our current pay structure for the police department. And it has all of the ranks and the steps. They get a pay increase based on every year of anniversary service in that position. With the current pay plan, we had some overlapping. If we had a more tenured officer who promoted up to a sergeant, he or she would have potentially taken a pay cut in order to go into a sergeant role. So with the new proposed plan, that is fixed. Each of the steps is more consistent. Officers will move up at 3% per step. Corporal and higher will move up at 4% per step. You'll notice on the bottom slide, commander doesn't exist there anymore because that is going to be moved to an exempt position. And we've made sure that the commander will make less than the police chief but more than the lieutenants, even with the overtime. If you look at the very top row, you can see that cadets is 23 an hour and I think it's 29 an hour or 26 an hour to start. So you can see how far off we were. I also included this as an extra handout too so it was a little bit bigger for you to read. By accepting the proposed pay plan for the police officers, we will bring the officer minimum to within 10% of the market, again, even out the steps. It will remove the steps to reduce that overlap that I was talking about. It keeps the commander maximum below the police chief minimum, and it changes the commander to an exempt position.

Pam, can we pause for just one second? I just wanted to, for like newer council members, just to make sure that they understood how this, like that step program. Did y'all understand? Okay, I just want to make sure. I just want to make sure we're all on the same page.

So in order to, if you approve the police pay scale, we will place the police officers at the pay step closest to their current pay rate. All sworn police officers will receive at least a 3% increase from where they are at now, and no employees pay will be reduced. Do you all remember this slide from the meeting where it talked about we had one outlier

Sorry.

I was just going to say that we're moving off from police. Now we're going into non-police.

Correct. Okay. Sorry.

I got one more question for you, Pam. So the 3% increase, and we're talking about sworn police, that's not admin or like higher positions, or is it everybody?

It is everybody. Okay. But right now we were just talking about police. Perfect. Okay. Okay, now we're moving into civilians. So this was a slide that Logic Comp showed last week, and I saw a lot of eyes light up as far as who's the one outlier, who's the three outliers. I wanted to explain to make sure that everybody understood what quartile meant, and that means if you look at the first 25%, that's your first quartile. Next 50%, from zero to 50% is your second quartile. 75% is third and 100% is fourth. And what that means is that's in relation to the minimum versus the maximum. So our one outlier for the record is the city manager.

So, yes. And so, but if we further describe, as Possibly Plan was gonna keep describing, I think it almost screams at you if you look at the pie chart.

68% of our people make less than 25% of their pay grade. That includes people who have been here in excess of five, 10 years. They're still at the low end of their pay scale.

And if you add up to the 50%,

The numbers get smaller.

That's going to be 90%, right?

If you add the two together?

Correct. So that should tell you. The one good thing, the only silver lining in that, is to say that there is a lot of growth potential in the front end of that. but it's telling currently today, Will Rogers, you got a problem, Will Rogers. You don't have middle management, Will Rogers. You don't have a middle class, Will Rogers. You don't have anybody stepping up into those positions.

And so. So that kind of answers my question. That's, yeah, that middle part. Yeah. So that's where we're kind of lacking.

So with the last comp study that the city passed, the directive was to move people to the minimum. It didn't matter how long they'd been here or what value they brought. It was to get them into the pay scale because we were so far off. And that's what the city could afford at that time. And so now this gives you a visual as to how many people are still way below that market. The next one talks, go ahead.

Sorry, no, and I was gonna say market. When we say that, that's not some magic word. Y'all saw the cities, too, and it's very comparable. We're talking Mainer, Bastrop, surrounding cities, so we're not going off until, you know, these bigger.

Right, we used good comparables and gave consideration to geographical location. One of the things that was discussed was the city of Elgin decided they wanted to be between that 50 and 60th percentile of the market. And what that means is if you're looking at a group of 10 different companies, 50% is right in the middle. That means five companies pay more than we will, and five companies will pay less than we will. And that's kind of where we wanted to stand.

We just couldn't afford to be more aggressive at this point. I mean, we'd love to be leading the pack, and that's how they kind of ask you, do you want to lead the pack? And it's like, well, yeah, we'd love to, but we just know we can't be that leader at this point.

The funds aren't there. They're not there. Correct. And that's the approach that we took.

And I might be jumping ahead on this question, but I still wanna stay on this slide. So when we're talking about nobody in that middle range, are we gonna be looking at creating new positions that can be filled like middle manager type positions or?

We won't be creating new positions. Placement for current staff will be based on tenure up to a certain amount. logic has the calculations and it will also give considerate will in the next slide we talked about the job titles that will change but there won't be any new positions created as a result of this study yes ma'am We've been playing catch up for several years.

A long time.

I mean, if you think about it, so total net employees.

Right now we have 165, but that includes our seasonal.

All right. So eight is the middle. Eight people are in your middle.

That's all I've got to say. There's one guy.

You know, the expensive dude in the room, yeah, it's me. It's public, and that's what it is. But eight people sit in the middle. That's, oh, above middle, I should say. And that shouldn't be true. Again, it's just like anything else. Your middle class is what drives us, and that's how you keep folks. And so you look at the better cities.

Yeah, we're going to grow into that. I'm not expecting anybody to sit here and decide, oh, we got to jump into this.

But if we don't set a path forward, we're going to stay there or start getting those graphs to shift further left And we're going to be like, oh, why are we at 80% first quartile? Because everybody's leaving after two, three years and saying, I'm done with it. I'll pay the extra gas because they'll pay me $10 more, which covers gas and then some.

We're a stepping stone.

Yes, ma'am. That's exactly what we are. Or that's what we have been. We are wanting to move beyond that.

Eliminate that.

We currently, we've done very well at retaining our current staff. We're currently with a 12% turnover, which is exceptional in the HR world. We are watching the other cities around us grow, Manor, for instance, and they're doubling their pay scales. We're going to have people leaving because of money, and that's not why you want somebody to leave.

We had this same conversation 30 years ago. We've had it every year since I've been here. And so I guess my problem with all of it is we do these compensation studies and we make a knee-jerk reaction and bring people up a couple of levels. And then two years later, we're falling back behind again. I'd like to see it. Yes and no.

So in the past, we've been given a box of dollars that says it fitted in this box. Today, we're not doing that. Today, we're looking at the dollars ahead of time and not shoving them into a box. Because when you shove them in a box, you can only spend what's in that box. You can't bring everybody to where they needed to be. And we focused a lot on the lower levels.

It fluctuates here so much because of the rapid growth. Yes.

And I would say, too, it's... and i've been in places where it's all about choosing one of the others so you either like fix the table or give the immediate satisfaction of just giving a high cost of living so give a five percent but don't fix the table and fixing the table actually is the part where you separate the departments because like, hell, you've been here five years, 10 years, and you make 20 bucks an hour, and because you're making all these changes, whatever, so I'm walking in and I'm gonna make 19.50, but you've been here 10 years and you're making 20 bucks an hour. There's no gap separation. And so while we're creating these sort of things, That's what we're trying to chew this up. And I guess what we're doing now, I think, and what I've learned and seen in just history of what I've been doing as well is that with this too is that you're trying to do two things. You're trying to pay to at least cover cost of living because that's gone up by close to 3%, if not a little bit more on some things. So that's just that. But also you're fixing the structure over it too at the same time. Because I think it's been one or the other. And so one year you're able to do one, and the other you're able to do this. So you're falling behind on one or the other. And this, I'd love to take a bigger bite. But this one is saying, no, we're going to stop the madness. You're actually going to put your big work pants on. You're not going to do it at the... at the level you want, but this is the, trust the process. This is the process you wanna take, and when you can be more aggressive, be more aggressive. But use the same system, because this is the way you knock it out, or stay trying to knock it out, because any other good city will tell you that's the process that we used, and we got better as a community with greater developments who had more dollars to put to it, so then we're able to do, I don't know, 4%, 5% COLA, and then we did something creative like a 2% or 3%, And they're like, hell, I'm never leaving the city, right? And then everybody's happy where they're at work, and then it's like, well, yeah, Bob came in, and Bob's not close to me. Like, yeah, now I'm situated. Well, we're going to be there. It's going to take time, and I'd love to turn on a switch, but this is that unsexy, hard, grinding work, and we're going to lose good people. Still, I'd love to say we're going to keep everybody. No. but I can't sit here just looking at everybody and just be like, yeah, giving everybody the back, everybody together, have a little backdoor opportunity to lead. No, I can close some of the doors to some of them, most of them, can't do it for all of them. And it's not gonna be with good jokes and good looks. Let's keep going.

So Pam, let me ask one more question. Kind of to Liston's point, because he made a good point of how rapid everything is growing. How good, or when do you think we'll probably have to do this again?

In three years. Three to five years, we'll have to look at it again. In the past, we've looked at just getting to that market and not looking at being somewhere with a 50 or 60th percent. We've been at the bottom of that market, which is why we can't keep up.

So we're crawling up. Yes. Slowly, but we are crawling up.

Yes. Okay. Okay, the next slide talks about the job allocations and what the consultant did was looked at our job descriptions and the requirements for each of our job descriptions and some of those did change so that we had consistency across the agency. So all of your admins require the same level of experience regardless of what department they're in. And with that, then there were also some job titles that will change and some jobs will change. I didn't include all of them. I included just the first few so that it corresponded with the slide. But for example, the circulation clerk that works at the library will now be called a library clerk. That seems to be the trend. An admin assistant one and receptionist. If y'all remember, I had admin one, two, three, and four, clerks one through five. So this kind of breaks that apart and retitles things. So an admin one and a receptionist will now be titled as an office assistant. A meter reader will be titled as a meter technician. An HR generalist will now be an HR specialist. That's trendy, it changes about every three years, so I'll be back to safe. And then a code enforcement supervisor will now become a senior code enforcement officer. Most of these position title changes do not change the actual job. Except with that code enforcement, I think there might be three total that it changes. That position no longer will be in a supervisory position because we hired a building official. So that was too many layers and very minimal people in that department. So that changes from a supervisor to a senior, and that will be the only change in that position. And while I don't have it on the slide, you have the job allocation page in front of you so you can see how things were grouped. Again, that was completed by the consultant, not by your HR department, so there's no bias involved in it. All right, they presented you with four options at the council meeting last week. Of course, I am gonna stand up here and recommend option four. and I'm not gonna waiver from that option. But I do wanna give you the details so that you can make an informed decision. Option one, if we choose option one, that puts us exactly where we were last year. We bring people to the minimum and we do nothing more. And that does not help morale at all. The cost of that is, of course, your lowest. Your police department is going to be $225,000 across the board. We've recognized that that needs to be addressed. So I'm only going to be looking at general, which includes your utility fund and your general fund, because we haven't broke those dollars out yet. But it's going to be, I think, 93,000. I can't see. 93,000, aside from the police departments, if you do nothing more but bring people to the minimum. The next one will bring people to the minimum and apply a comp ratio. What that means is they look at what your mid is, and they place you based on your years in that role up to the minimum. I mean, up to the mid, I'm sorry, up to the mid. And usually what happens, if you've been here 15 years, you get to mid. If you've been here five years, you might be 1% off the minimum. It's not a very fair placement to anybody. The next one brings employees to the minimum, it applies the comp ratio, and it ensures a 3% minimum increase for every employee under the new structure. When you do that 3% increase, no matter what, what you're doing is, I don't want to say replacing, but you're accounting for a COLA that you would normally get. Since I've been here, this council has been generous and given a COLA every single year. this takes care of that so you don't have to do that in addition to this. And in option four, before I get into that, the numbers at the bottom of this slide are the differences between option one and option two. So of course there's a huge jump between option one and option two, but when you get down from two to three, that's only a $60,000 difference, and a $40,000 from three to four. When I calculated the COLA aside from a comp study, and if we were to apply a 3% COLA and nothing else, that dollar amount does include police, but it's $272,000. So keep that number in mind as we talk about this. Because if you look at your general and you minus out that $272,000 that you would normally give for a COLA, it doesn't make this jump look as big as what it does on the slide. Option four gives you 3% minimum, does the comp ratio, places you based on tenure through the scale, so there's full range penetration, and it gives every employee a 3% increase, regardless. No employee's pay will be decreased.

I wish we knew what it costs to lose an employee as opposed to keeping one. In other words, every time we lose an employee, we've lost all the investment we've made in them. Historic information. Well, yeah. They require. The thing is, I think sometimes if we had that figure along with this figure, they'd probably balance each other out pretty well.

Probably so.

So in other words, we can keep doing business as is and keep losing employees when we could have given them the raising capital.

I don't know. That is true.

That's kind of a weird way to look at it. But in my opinion, we'd always want to, I mean, I would want to start at option four and work backwards in terms of what we can do. But we're not at that place yet.

Councilmember Krim and just add a little more to that not to belabor the point is to say when you ought when you do that as well You're affecting the rest of the employees down line because they are picking up while we recruit Others they are picking up job duties assignments and everything else and so our level of service drops Because we can only stretch ourselves. So then I

We'll always use this scenario. If I pay a guy $4 an hour and put him on a $300,000 piece of equipment, he's probably not going to take care of it as well as he would if I paid him a reasonable salary. In other words, I'm going to lose equipment and all that kind of stuff.

Any other questions before I move on? So the RFQ required them to provide us with a three year implementation plan. And when they looked at how far off market we were, it was better for them to say you need to address your base pay now. You don't have a lot of room to divide that up because we were so far off. So their recommendation is in year one that we address our base pay and set our classification as it should be. In year two, we would apply soft pays that they talked about if funds are available and that means the bilingual pay they talked about, the certifications for police officers or wastewater utility folks and any other certifications that the city council deems appropriate for positions. That would take place in year two. I would recommend that we do an internal study then to make sure that those dollars that they looked at hadn't changed. Because as I stand here, there are people watching this and they're going, okay, we're gonna jump ahead of Elgin now. So I would recommend that we do that again and not rely on what we have this year. Year three would be an opportunity to improve our benefits and the improvement and benefits would be to enhance our vacation leave and our carryover to enhance the contributions that the city could or would apply to dependent and spouse health coverage. There are many things that we can do with our benefits that don't cost a lot of money, but it's more appropriate to do that in year three because your people are looking at their paycheck today, not their health insurance.

is parental leave something we could look at in that year too?

I wrote that in my vacation parental, I have about 10 items. I just took that slide out because I didn't want to see.

Gotcha.

All right, that is the end of mine. Any questions that you haven't asked? Before you say anything, y'all are not doing anything tonight as far as approving anything. This will come back to y'all the second meeting in August for an approval. So that gives you time to think through, ask more questions. But we'll bring it back as a resolution at the second meeting in August.

OK, no other questions on this particular topic? Okay, so it is 7.13, and I'm going to give you a break to grab something to eat.

Three minutes?

No, no, no, three minutes. It's too many. Ten?

My gatekeeper has said ten.

Okay, so we will adjourn at 7.13, and we'll be back at 7.23. Thank you. It is 7.23, and we're reconvening after a short break, and we will pick up with a department budget request, and I'll turn it over to Mr. Eads.

Wonderful. So you can give us a couple seconds here, Mayor. We're loading up. We're going to get our... Screen up the one that we're talking about and we welcome everybody back. And so we have a slate of departments that are going to come before you. And we'll load these up for you. As we present the order that we're going to begin with. and the way these are gonna go. So we'll have the Department of Press come up. I believe the first is our city secretary. And so just before you start, Mr. City Secretary. So just if we look over here to the right, what you'll see, and we're gonna probably... Wait for Pam. Wait for Pam. Not Es. So I know it may be tough for some people in the room to see. But generally speaking, what you're going to be seeing are a bunch of different columns. And we'll be able to hide some. We're going to see some things that we don't need to repeatedly see. So there's a way to hide those columns as need be. But on the left, you're going to see the department that's calling them out. the name of the item that's being requested, the category, if it's gonna be a personnel or if it's gonna be a piece of equipment, the itemized cost of it which we've already pre-plugged which by the way are going to be the ones exactly the ones that you're going to see right now but pam has already pre-plugged those in here so we don't have to do it again if it's going to be a new item um because again this is going to be for not personnel this is for oh well i'm sorry this is going to be for personnel or or equipment, but if the equipment's gonna be new equipment, or is it gonna be a replacement of equipment, then also we're gonna be talking about if this is also gonna help to bring levels of service up, if it's gonna maintain levels of service, and most importantly, as we discussed, and those notes are gonna be also key points for our staff to work off of. The last column, which is gonna be, I guess that'd be column G, for all you that are able to see that, is that's where we're gonna start tallying up. And so right there, I think there's already one dollar amount in there, which would be the comp study at $44,592, if I'm not mistaken. What is that? Oh, delete that, please. Let's start off with zero. So if we go to the very bottom, right? So hit enter. It should be clear. Oh, it's still there. I can delete that. There we go. All right. So if you can tell, if you go to the D, this is a couple hands going on. Hold on. I'm sorry, guys. OK. So we're looking at the very bottom of the page. And what I'm showing here is the grand total from all the departments at the request that you're going to hear tonight is going to be a grand total of $4.6 million, $48,648. Now, that shouldn't be shocking to anybody, because that's typically what it's, well, I take that back. Don't know what it's typically been brought at. But I've asked the staff to be very honest and ask what you're going to ask. But be prepared to fight tooth and nail with whatever is going to come out of your mouth. because I will ask the same hard questions of you too. So don't put anything up there that you'd be embarrassed to talk about. then as we're running the tally on that recommendation item is where we're going to start putting those numbers up there and see how this will just keep flowing flowing flowing and we'll travel with this for the next conversation when we're talking about other things when we're talking again we get back to then hey let's talk about the money that we have to talk about how much are bringing in sales tax property tax all that kind of stuff we can marry it up with well we started at 4.6 we're now at like 1.6 We're making, oh, like 1.3 million or 1.2.

Let's start making a difference.

You're seeing this side by side, and you get to start picking your favorite kids, right? Because then you can start to actually prioritize stuff. So having said that, don't mess this up. You're great.

I know you're gonna do great.

City Secretary, let's get this rolling.

All right, good evening, Council. So what I am requesting this year Is a new person a new body I need a records clerk so This is to account for the growth of the city and this is to maintain the legally required level of service So the city's city secretaries office is responsible for the three prongs of open government that being open meetings public information and lastly, but everybody kind of forgets about it records management and preservation and Okay, so I'm also responsible for, on a side note, elections, council requests, boards and commissions, non-profit grants, agendas, agenda packets, on and on and on, okay? Excuse me, Peyton, I'm sorry.

Yes.

Just a quick note, when we're bringing these folks, this figure will bring them in with what we're trying to accomplish? Yes. Okay.

This is, I'm not sure how to say it.

It reaches the minimum.

Minimum base pay only for the new pay structure.

With the new pay chart, right? So let's assume that it's with a 3% already included, but at the very minimum. Minimum. Yes. Yes.

Okay, so the city secretary's office, this does not include the police department, I might add, has seen a 46.3% increase in the number of requests for the first seven months of this year, this calendar year, compared to the same seven months in 2025. So I've received over 180 requests, public information requests this year.

186 public information.

A little over 180. They're rolling in, so I can't give you an exact number, because I'm pretty sure I just got two. I've seen a 77% increase in the number of requests for the first seven months compared to 2024, which we'd only received 100 requests. Okay, so I have increased from 2024, just these seven months by 80 requests. I roughly spend about three hours average for each request. And over 30 requests have been sent to the Attorney General's office for an opinion this calendar year, and that's kind of an estimate. Some of those include PD ones that I've sent off for them, since those also go through my office. This is an example of one of the requests that I've gotten. As you can see, it's about three pages long. This position would address the strain that is placed on my office. It's designed to alleviate strain on the department to focus on council priorities, including Elgin 101, bringing things like that back, assisting with staying on top of council requests, devoting more time to training staff, council, boards, and commissions, et cetera. They'll also be reorganizing, reclassifying, maintaining, and appropriately destroying records, which the city is behind on because we're not currently able to maintain that portion. Does anybody have any questions for me? Yes, ma'am.

And you said that this would include possibly bringing back the Elgin 101?

Well, so this would alleviate the strain on my office. So like I said, I'm the one doing these public information requests. I also collaborate with all the other departments. Most of these requests require at least a minimum of two departments. So they'll be doing that for me, and I can focus on priorities like reviving Elgin 101. OK.

If I could just ask one question. So say that the level of requests do go down, let us pray, right? If they went down, what would this person continue to do? I know you said the keeping of the records and all of that, so just if... If you could just elaborate just a bit on that.

Yeah, of course. So to put that a little bit more in perspective, we currently have two storage units full of boxes of paper records that we need to inventory. We need to properly store some of them. Some of them are historical documents. And then we also need to maintain a destruction schedule for records that meet retention. And right now, I'm going to be honest with you, I can't do it.

Thank you.

If there's nothing else, I'll go take a seat.

Um yeah so I mean I think what the discussion could possibly be and let me let me just start with that if I don't think think there needs to be some dialogue in a lot of this because what's going to happen is we're going to end up with 4.6 million dollars worth of totals at the bottom or zero and so i think really and there's no finality to any of this remember we're gonna have a lot of other meetings that's going to discuss a lot of these things and i know it's tough to start making list at this point because you don't we don't have i don't have even the knowledge of what the money looks like at the very end but what i would say is this should be almost a priority list if nothing else of things that you deem to be high priority and look by the time the middle of the meeting happens you may be scrubbing some of this or you may be moving things out, and you may be saying, look, you had a really good presentation, Reagan, but, you know, we just, we're just over, look, we can get to the very end, and we could be at $2.6 million, and I can tell y'all, we didn't do much work. And so, the exercise could go without that, and we could just work and just leave without knowing. I wrote that kind of down, but what's gonna end up probably happening is you're gonna have to remember the conversation later. And that's what I did not want to happen. Is that to have a little bit of conversation and say like, there is some more to it. I get it. And there's no motion to be made. Again, this is just a conversation to say, yeah, there seems to be probably more than not, or maybe not. To be able to put on that, because if you're asking me, my opinion, it goes up there because I see it. It's across the hallway from me every day. And there's plenty of work to do. But you ultimately have to vote for it. And I'm voting for it just as blindly, and not maybe just as blindly. I do have more background information on some of the finances. But as for priority, that's a critical component that has legal attachments. some of the departments in here they don't like if you want to get cross and that's sort of the introspection I think then will need to get happen and to be like more critical on some others is to say look if we only have so much We cannot, cannot miss deadlines for these purposes. We cannot miss critical infrastructure for these reasons. We grew 10 more square miles, so we need police coverage in those areas.

That sort of conversation, you know what I'm saying?

Mayor, maybe I'm speaking out of turn, but I would suggest in those terms, this to me would be almost a mission-critical component. With the caveat to say, it still has that question, does it carry the same weight throughout the entire year, and does that have enough work behind it? I think the question was valid. I think Peyton was well-spoken in saying that, to where elections haven't gotten easier. And where we're backed up today, I don't know how to catch that up. And it's not going to be just by getting a couple guys out of public works.

Thank you, public works.

But it's going to take some serious people that are on deadline, on point, and that's not going to happen unless it's housed out of our office. So my suggestion is consider it, please, to put it on at least the considerations and we'll keep going down if it looks too heavy for you guys come back up and we'll chop it off and just keep going but start making some of these priorities and some are just like yeah that's that may maybe a little bit too much right now we just can't do that this year

Robert so one of the biggest things that drum jumped out to me is when she said that her office is in charge of the three prongs of open government one of the biggest things that we've had conversations about as a council as a community is transparency and so if we want to foster that we need to make sure that we have the people to do that so and I think that fills a gap that's obviously there

I think that would be a priority, especially with the 77% increase from 2024 and 30 opinions going to the AG office. That's a whole lot of time.

And one question I would ask to that. So when we talk about those 30 that go to the AG, I'm just making an assumption I don't know, but does that require more man hours to get those to them?

Yes significantly more so that also includes Coordinating with our attorneys and if we have to bring in a different attorney, which we did when I was on maternity leave So mark can help us with some of this stuff But we had to bring in a different one because some of this stuff is specialized so when we think is send things off to the Attorney General and We have to collect all the information well ahead of time so that it can be sent to the attorneys so that they can get a brief written and we have to kind of explain why we would like to withhold the information. The city operates as like public information is public information. There are certain things that we can't release like critical infrastructure. So we have to coordinate with Bo. We have to get those maps. We have to do that. I don't know if that answered your question.

No, it does. It does. Thank you, Peyton.

So I think it's simple as that. There's no vote to be had. I mean, if it just seems to be that that's kind of like the goal at the end, just say, you know, slap it on the board and let's move on to the next one and keep going.

So we're not voting or taking, you know, if you just want us to say, let's put it on the board. Yeah. Put it on the board. Yeah.

In 30 minutes, you can say, take it off the board. Let's just keep going. How about that?

That was on the board.

Yes. Next.

All right. For HR, the one thing that I'm asking for is that you implement the comp study as presented and recommended. You all know the price associated with that, but it is a to-be-determined amount based on what option you all select. The next item is for our IT department. HR oversees IT and has since the last six years, I believe. Heidi Rodriguez is our new IT person and she's back here. I didn't want to throw her to the fire on, you know, she's been here a couple of months. Anyway, we have made strides since she started. We've started a new help desk ticketing system, which is something that they've attempted and we've never gotten there until now. The amount of IT needs in the city is tremendous. The PD alone can keep somebody busy for 40 plus hours a week. And that doesn't even touch the other departments. The library has patron computers that are constantly having to be overseen and updated and replaced. So we are asking for an additional IT technician. We've also considered maybe an IT intern if that rates a little bit better. But we're looking at technician now so we could have somebody with boots on the ground. And we've listed the reasons why. I can't see them because I don't have my glasses on, but they're all there.

So what I did want to point out too before we kind of move past that one as well so just understand also how you joined us today she actually replaces the position she wasn't an add-on correct and so she's covering and covering very well and covering more ground a lot of ground but Guys, I'll be honest with you. I come from a background in IT as well. We've been getting away with a lot of stuff. And I'm not going to say that too loud, but we've just been getting away with a lot of stuff. And we need to get serious about what we're doing here. And we're getting bigger. And there's no reason why our IT department should have one paid employee. Let me say that again. One paid employee for our entire government. And one contractor.

Yes, we still use a third party, mostly for off-site backups and support to our IT personnel. So, you know.

Is that that bullet point that says reduce dependency on outside? Yes. Roughly about how much are we expending on that one?

About $20,000 a month. Oh. It's significant. For the third party? Yes. So we would review that contract, yes.

With an employee as opposed to...

Continuing to pay the contract as it is. We would still keep the third party because the off-site backup is huge for us. So there would be some re-evaluation of the current contract and re-rating and that kind of stuff. So we would still employ the third party. It would just be at a reduced rate and reduced need. Yeah, maybe.

don't well I haven't done any surveys to see what everybody's charging right I know the level of service yeah but the number of hours based on what we've learned from internal reviews with current staff we've identified a lot of things that we could be doing ourselves Yeah, we'll bring down that number, and then at a possibly different rate as well. So this is a huge opportunity, and yeah, I'll be honest with you. I had to stop at one. I've suggested more than that, but we'll take one. Just double the size of IT.

We'll ask for another one the next year.

Yeah, and I just want, oh, so sorry, I'm here. But I just want to go back to the first part when you said that help desk ticket. Is that an internal thing? It's an internal thing, yes. Okay, just wanted to, yeah.

And on the third party, when you say he's doing outside stuff, what exactly is that?

Our backup of our system, they do it off-site. Gotcha. And they manage our cybersecurity right now.

But he's not our employee. Correct. So that's another. It's hard to keep control of contractors when they're not under you. So quality is different. Yeah.

Yeah. So with the new person coming in, allegedly, supposedly, is there a way that we can eventually work toward doing our own backup and cyber security? Yes.

I mean, that's going to be a few years down the line. There are some priorities first. And of course, you're going to need more than two people to really do a good job. And again, we can start with an IT intern, but it would be nice to have somebody who knows what they're doing and can get boots on the ground. I'm negotiating.

No, there's no negotiating. I think we need a full-time employee and add interns. I'm serious.

You're going to be at 4.6 in no time. I think it's him we need to worry about.

Look, I'm telling you, one bad actor.

I have a meeting with them August 7th to start the conversation So I don't know that they'll have something produced at that point, but it's to start the conversation in the direction. We're headed Are y'all done with me

Okay, so are we putting them on?

Just real quick, Pam. On the compensation study, that's something we've already approved, right?

No, you have not.

We accept that. No, you've accepted it. We accepted it. And what that means is that you're closing out that consultant's contract. They did their job.

Okay. Kind of committed to it.

Correct. Next, we're going to have Yachty from Municipal Court come up.

Oh, hold on.

I know and I know stop might kill me with this

I know the commitment for how much and which part of the comp study implementation, but I know that might be too much to bite right now. I'm selecting one, two, three, four. If you're comfortable today with where you wanna be on that, it makes our life easier to try to work the math on it. We're comfortable in stating we know where we wanna be on that, which is option four, for a lot of reasons.

Have you worked the math on option four? Is that recommended option four?

We're recommending also.

But I will tell you as a city manager, I want you to be comfortable with even putting that big number on the board.

You're gonna need to see that number in the end anyway.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So you don't have to fill numbers out there just to fill a number. You can say, we can skip that one and just put maybe the IT one. We're a little comfortable that way.

Because you can always put it back and bring it on.

You don't have to say one or three. You can just say, let's talk about that one in a little bit. You have that option too. although I know staff wants to do something different.

Yeah, I think seeing a number is good, because looking at this, I mean, we're just looking. I think seeing a number, we can gauge where we are. 648. 679. 679?

Round it off, 680?

679, yes.

Give a tip to the outside. 679. OK. All right. Between three and four, and what is implied with that?

Between three and four, it was $40,000 difference between the two.

You're splitting hairs at that point.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, and you're getting only one.

Because we hire people more than that. Yeah. Your biggest jump is from one to two, because one does that.

Mm-hmm.

All right, y'all ready? Yes. Yes, ma'am. Miss Yachty's going to come up, and I'm going to stand over here.

Good evening, Council, Mayor. I came before you to request a new personnel that will be serving the court as the juvenile case manager. As some of you may remember, legislation passed the House Bill 3186 back in 2024. that require all courts to implement a diversion plan. And this person will be in charge of implementing any strategies for juveniles to reduce racism and then also to avoid adjudicating them in the court in a criminal case. I don't know if you have questions.

Yeah.

This was passed in January 2025. Yachty has assumed that role in addition to her current duties. And so this would help relieve her so that she can focus more on what a court administrator is supposed to be doing.

So this is something that's been mandated by law. Correct. So we need to be in compliance.

The next thing that we are requesting is for part-time bailiff. At this time, the court security is being provided by the police department. We have a bailiff, and then when we have open court with the judge, she does require for us to have two officers, and sometimes we pull away from the CID, one of the officers there, to help out on Mondays. But at this time, I'm being told there may be conflict in scheduling for next year. So we are trying to prepare to open up those positions for next year.

Todd Johnson, commander of the police department. So years back, when we were a much smaller department, they were a much smaller court. We just had a part-time officer going over to be a bailiff when they had court. Usually it was twice a week, something like that. As we've gotten bigger as a department, those positions are actually working all day. And court's having a lot more court. So the people that are handling the bailiffs part-time, they're working in the evidence room. They're having to leave that to go do bailiff. Possibly, if we have a crime scene, they can get pulled away. Now the judge is left with no bailiff in the middle of court. So we've been trying to... Schedule it and make it fit where we can in the holes really the last couple of years Just kind of working with them. Sometimes they'll have to reschedule court, but we've always been able to make it work But now it's getting to the point where our evidence needs are a lot greater So our time is a lot less to pull away and then when we do pull away It's not guaranteed that they can stay there in the court and you have to have somebody guaranteed in the court during the hearing

Is the part-time position, who's the administrator over the position? Would it be PD or the court? It would be the court.

They're asking for two beds, but it would be the court.

So you'd just be the house?

Yes, it would actually be us, but they would need to be commissioned.

Yeah, yeah. You'd be looking for somebody willing to work part-time, maybe from another department or somewhere, whatever.

Typically, for the bailiffs, you'll find retired officers that still have a commission that'll do it, or that are working full-time at a different position, they'll do that on their, they have a, usually they'll have an easier schedule, so they'll coordinate their time to come in part-time for a bailiff's job.

And this 7,000, this is for the whole year?

Correct. That's for each.

Right, yeah. So 14 total, but 7,000 for the entire year for one.

Yes, we have four.

It fluctuates because court always fluctuates. You could have five dependents, you could have one, you could start off with five and only one . So it's kind of a good estimate based on prior years.

Can we put one on the board for right now?

Yeah, the mandated one is to go on the board. Well, I'm talking about the bailiff.

I'm talking about just a 7,000 instead of 14. That's just my recommendation. But then the mandated ordinance, we need that.

Yeah, the only issue with that is for court, for certain court hearings, one officer comes over for a true trial, jury trial, two have to be, because one has to be by the entrance, and one has to be up by the judge, where the defendant would be. So that would still leave one spot open to have to be covered with a non-movie officer.

Go ahead and put them both on there for now. And we'll look at the number in a minute. And the case manager.

Thank you. That's why I was like, let's start with a small one first. I'm just saying. I'm just saying.

You can get all hungry all you want, but you're going to have to come back. Right. Get on a diet fast.

I don't know nothing about a diet.

That's what you get for eating that lettuce.

All right.

Christine.

Christine. Ms. Alvarez.

Hello, Council and Mayor.

Christina Alvarez, Main Street Manager. I was gonna say, my boss is gonna come up here with me and talk about the Tahoe replacement. Do you wanna do that first? OK we are asking for an event coordinator position. I'm still covering a lot of Amy's position and so we would like to move the admin to our event coordinator to open that position up so we would have a staff of three that would help us be able to make sure all the events are coordinated it would give me more time for business development. I attended the governor's business development thing last year and have not had time to implement any of those ideas for our downtown businesses. So it would just increase our capacity and really help us out. We're still doing the job of three people. We're just doing it with two. Do you have any questions?

Can you clarify Ulysses' role right now. Would he be the coordinator.

Was there any. Totally different.

Totally different. Totally different.

We have never had an event coordinator. Exactly and we have actually paid a local community member to come in and do that for us when times get really tight. It would be nice to have that as a full time and not have to pay a contract fee.

So that's a good question. So do we know roughly how much that contractor costed us during the 150?

We do. We know what we paid her in 24. I did not bring those numbers. She is not available as much in 25 and I mean in 26 and will not be available in 27. She has taken another job and with her retirement she can only work so much a year. So her hours for us have dwindled which mean like Dia de los Muertos, Holiday by the Tracks, a lot of that will be internal again this year.

So I got a question. This is a qualifying position for hotel occupancy tax. I'm not saying entirely.

I'm just saying it's possible for somebody. A percentage, yeah. A percentage.

Good call out.

Or even if I'm opened up for more tourism, a percentage of mine could go to that.

Oh, we're rating that already. So yeah, we're going to get to you.

Can I get you on record for that?

Raiding your salary? Oh, that could be on record.

Oh, I thought you meant my salary. You meant hotel, motel tax.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

I said your salary. In a positive way.

OK. Any questions, comments, concerns? Y'all are all welcome to come to my office as we get closer to Hawkeye and see what it's like.

Sorry, now that you said that, no joke, I got three pigs in my truck. Three little piggies. They're yours. They're about this big.

Yeah, I was like, real pigs?

I'm just saying, there are three pigs I gotta take care of.

I'm like, is nobody gonna talk to Petey that he got real pigs?

They're non-edible. They're actually just their decorations. I'm not allowed to bring more decorations to the city hall.

I was like, nobody's saying that.

I know, I can't. Go ahead, Mr., who are you again?

Evening, Council Michael Gonzalez, Public Works Director and helping out with leadership in the Community Services Department. Thank you, Council and Mayor, for having me. Thank you, Mr. Robert Eads. Thank you so much.

For extending the invite to me.

I appreciate that. Excellent job, and I'd like to say and add that with that community events that we're going through, if you've been downtown, with some of the events that we have going on. It's getting kind of wild. It's getting kind of crazy out there. At the height of our parade madness, I think we had eight parades a year. There's 52 weekends in the year, and eight of those, a parade was going on downtown. And we kind of reduced that a little bit, but the special events that are happening in and around town is just... In our staff's opinion, it has the need for one of those. Another thing that we're doing is we're going to a lot of trainings, definitely with the downtown group. The community services division pre-existing is going to a lot of trainings. They're making Elgin known amongst the state, and what we do is we challenge these staff to go to those trainings outside of our city limits in their own vehicle. You can get mileage reimbursement, and that's something that you can do, but we like to send them off in a way that we know is kind of a safe, newer vehicle, make sure they can get there. Another thing, when they get there, we have Elgin's name branded on the side of the vehicle. You're looking around the parking lot and you see Kyle, Seguin, shirts, Cibolo. Why can't we get an Elgin? Definitely up there, not as one of those life and safety things like we might consider a police car or something like that. Something that the staff considers a need for us as we travel around the state. What we'll say, though, is this is amongst the community services division as a whole. So Main Street's going to a lot of trainings. The Parks Division is going to TRAPS. That's the Texas Parks and Recreation Society. And then the library's going to some trainings as well. So it's shared amongst those different departments, and that's where it'll be kept in fleet and kind of issued out to the department that's going on a travel training trip. Where one of the wheels... I think I've heard a figure before of 60 or something like that. How many actual events a year do you guys, are you involved with?

The city itself, I want to say 10 to 12, but downtown there is 30 to 60 events.

In all

coordination that comes before council comes through our office.

So we're responsible for gathering that information. You have a hand in pretty much all of them. All of them. Yeah. Yeah.

We're talking about events. So all that data that's gathered that's brought to you all on cost comes through our office as well. Right.

If they do, if they apply for park permits, it goes through your office.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I've seen that raggedy old car get out of the way.

And I was the one driving it when the wheel came off. It was an adventure.

We don't have any liability in there.

Any questions?

Next item. You're going to wrap up community service, see what you want to throw on the board. Is that your approach here? Yes, sir. Go through them all? Come on up. All right, let's do this.

Good evening. I am Heather Fowler. I serve as the library services manager for the Elgin Public Library. Tonight I am presenting a request for two full-time positions for the upcoming year. A peer support specialist and a marketing outreach specialist. And to just ensure that I keep on track here, I'm gonna look at my notes. I want to be entirely clear right from the start. Neither of these positions is being requested to launch new standalone programs. Instead, both roles are explicitly requested to absorb our current overwhelming service demands. This investment will immediately stabilize our daily library operations today, while establishing a solid foundation for future service expansion as our community grows. Here is why these positions are necessary. First, I'm going to begin with the peer support specialist, which secures a highly successful existing function This role has been fully funded by the St. David's Foundation grant, which officially concludes this December. Because of this timeline, the city will not be paying this salary until January of 2027. This specialist serves as a vital pillar for all standard adult programming and sustains four critical mental health initiatives that our residents rely on daily. Because this role requires a mandatory State of Texas certification, this sensitive workload cannot safely or legally fall onto regular library staff. Funding for this position simply moves a proven essential service from temporary grant funding to a permanent municipal function. Second, I'm going to move on to the marketing and outreach specialist. Over the past year, our library experienced a 22.6% year-over-year surge in new registered patrons. To keep pace with this influx, we had to increase our monthly programming by 30%. jumping from 90 to 115 regular programs a month. And this does not include any special events that we do. So if we were to take those into account, it's going to run well over 1,400 for the year. Currently our tech clerk shouldered the heavy daily burden of all the multimedia content creation, graphic designs, and digital engagement. This has pulled them away from their core responsibilities. Adding this specialist will centralize our marketing and mobile pop-up outreach, finally freeing our tech position to return to library database management. By approving these two positions, Council is not expansion building. You're stabilizing the core database systems of your library and securing a vital public safety net that already exists. Thank you so much for your time. Do y'all have any questions? I will attempt.

You wouldn't actually be looking for the full 39, 686, because part of your grant funding goes through December, right?

That's correct.

You'd be asking for the remainder. Correct.

Starting January 1. Starting January. 27. Whatever that figure would be.

Yes, sir.

Oh, there we go.

That's your correction. Do you want it? We'll get you that.

Okay, $10,000.

29.7? 29.7. 29.7.

And really quick, Heather, can you just, I missed it, I heard it, but I missed it, the percentage of increase?

Okay, so for our library patronage was, yeah, close to 23%. And then we increased our programming 30% just within the last 12 months.

Okay, yes, y'all are super busy. I like to take my daughter there and yeah. Thank you so much.

It's a lot of people. Yes, and I do see you in there, so I really appreciate your support and bringing your family.

Thank you.

Children are our future. Yes, they are. And libraries, kids who read have been proven. They do better in school, they do better in life skills, I think that it's extremely important. Yeah.

Libraries are very important. Yep.

I guess I put it on the board.

It's all good. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Okay, Michael.

See? Now we got rain coming. See? Because you know me.

Good evening, Council and Mayor. My name is Regan Anderson. I am the Recreation Program Manager for the City of Elgin here.

I'm probably gonna go a little out of order than what's on the board But first I'm gonna just give a little bit of background into myself Just kind of help set the stage a little bit I've worked in a number of different facilities throughout my career community services as well as municipal utility districts cities nonprofit organizations all of which in a community center aspect, a recreation center aspect. So a lot of what I've done in my last four months here at the city is kind of look and talk to staff, talk to patrons that are coming in and get a feel for what is the city of Elgin missing? What is other places that I've been to? What of other places that I know people that work at and I've lived in and all that kind of fun stuff? have that the patrons here, the community members here, all wish to see. So one of those things, just in general, is a replacement plan for the equipment. Most, actually all of the equipment in the weight room is current to when the building was originally built. And if you see in that handout I just gave you, a lot of stuff is supposed to be replaced a lot faster than what is currently happening. So essentially, we'd be asking for $20,000 this year to start a replacement plan for that equipment, starting with cardio and some dumbbell-related weight stuff. We have a lot of people that come into our facility. We average about 4,500 people a month that come into the rec center. that comes out to about 150 people a day that are coming in and using that facility and what you don't want is you don't want people to come in and see out of order signs on all the machines typically what happens is if something breaks we don't have staff in the city to fix it we have to put in an order call somebody it takes three to four sometimes five days before they finally come out and then of course they don't have the part so then they have to come back another three or four or five days later and all of a sudden one of the machines, one of the cardio equipment that people come in and use has been out of service for two weeks. Now all of a sudden we're catching flack on all that kind of fun stuff. Moving down the list, I'm actually going to skip the full-time position for now and save that for last. We're asking for two part-time positions, one front desk slash fitness. Our recreation center is open crazy about hours. If you look at it compared to any other building in the city, if you look at it compared to any other recreation center in the area, the recreation center is open 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., Monday through Friday. It's open 8 to 8 on Saturday, and it's open 12 to 8 on Sunday. It's a lot of hours. It's a lot of manpower that you need to be able to operate that building effectively and efficiently. And right now we're operating on a basis that if one person calls in sick, we're scrambling. It's all hands on deck, calling everybody who can come in. Now we're pushing people over hours. Now we're having overtime, all that kind of fun stuff. So adding an extra position here would alleviate a lot of that stress. It would make sure that we're able to operate be more present in the building as we can have more staff schedule at a time. Right now we operate pretty lean where sometimes there is only one or two people in the building and if we have people at the front desk that need help, both those people who are at the front desk helping them, something may or may not happen in the gym that they need help and we're just not able to be everywhere all the time. So adding this position would greatly affect that. And trying to get a two-for-one here. What I like to do with a lot of part-time positions is give them a specialty. It gives them a little bit more sense of ownership in their day-to-day life rather than just feeling like they're sitting at the front desk just checking people in. So one thing that I feel very strongly about is our fitness in that area. We have a lot of great fitness programs, but we could do a lot better. So having someone dedicated come in, working the front desk, having that man coverage, but also being able to then step aside and look at the fitness schedule during downtime. reaching out to new contractors, new instructors, getting new programs going, all that kind of fun stuff. We have the space. We have the ability to do those types of things currently. We just don't have the manpower or the time to be able to make it happen currently. Secondly, a marketing programming assistant. We offer a lot of wonderful programs. We have three very, very good programmers that do things weekly, monthly, special events, all that kind of fun stuff. Right now, the way it kind of works between the programmers and the recreation center staff is they each kind of all do their own programming. I'm sorry, their own marketing. What that kind of relates to is when you start looking at the newsletters, you start looking at the Instagram posts, you start looking at Facebook and all that kind of stuff, you get a lot of Not uniform unified voice Things get lost in the mud things forget to get posted all that kind of stuff so having one person be able to come in on a part-time level and Look at all of that stuff and kind of wrap their mind around it and give the city one voice Give the department one voice and be able to help in other departments as well would go a long way to making sure that all the programs that we're offering are Especially the free ones that we're already supplementing are being known about it. And we have great programs with, for instance, this past Friday we had Splash. We had 250 people show up for Splash on Friday. This coming Friday we have the block party at Veterans. And we market all those things and we just need the marketing programmer to come in. They're also going to do community engagement. Make sure that what we're offering is what the community wants to see so they'll come in they'll be the front force on surveys Hitting the ground going to sip shop and stroll and all those types of things driving the wreck on the go the mobile wreck van out to all those types of things and really hitting the community and making sure that what we're doing is what the community wants us to be doing and Lastly, the full-time athletics, aquatics coordinator. This is one that I hold pretty closely to my heart just because it's a role that I came up in as I was coming up through Parks and Recreation. I oversaw athletics prior to this role in Georgetown. And one nice thing about athletics and aquatics for that matter is it is a generator for hot tax. So a lot of things that this position does are big, big programs that drive in select teams, they drive in sporting tournaments and all that kind of stuff. People coming into the city from outside the city to stay overnight because they have soccer tournament on Saturday and then following into Sunday and they're doing those tournaments in the morning and then they're hanging out in the city in the afternoon and the evening and they're staying the night and doing it all over again on Sunday. I'm gonna read a little bit more verbatim here, but a lot of what this position would add, they'd be looking at athletic rentals. Currently, we don't really have anyone that monitors athletic rentals. All the athletic facilities in the city are just kind of first come, first serve, up for grabs. We do have a process in terms of who can rent them and how they can be rented. But we don't have a regulation system there to make sure that's what's happening. So this person would come in and make sure that anything that's being used in a way that should be a rental is being paid as a rental. They would add internal youth and adult athletic programmings. Currently, as far as athletics goes for the city of Elgin, we currently offer an adult kickball league once per year, and we are adding a rec rally event, which more will come on that. We're in the early stages of planning for this. That's it. That's the only athletic programs that the city currently offers is one kickball league in the fall, and then this one-day rec rally that's coming up. The pool hour, so then moving into the aquatic side, one of the biggest things that we've heard this summer is that the pool hours are not long enough. Adding this position, a dedicated position, to the pool for that summer would allow us to increase those hours greatly, especially on the weekend, because this position would be able to cover a lot more on the week than what we are currently offered. Currently, I spend about 20 to 25 hours myself operating the pool. which is obviously a very significant amount of my time, especially when I've been required to oversee the recreation center, help oversee some of the parks and maintenance there, as well as the pool and all the staff that associate with all of those things. And a lot of that has to do with in-service, managing the deposits, scheduling the lifeguards, and any issues that arise with the pool itself, and just making sure that it's running smoothly. We have about a little over 100 people per day coming to the pool, And with that comes all the chemicals readings and making sure that the chemicals are staying in order And a lot of things are we're just not able to do because we don't have the manpower to do it and some of that is Pool rentals not currently offered this year because we don't have the staff of the manpower to be able to operate outside of our current operating hours swim lessons are currently not offered this year, but with this position we would bring some lessons back and This position also would be a CPO certified, which basically is just a pool operator. They would be able to be there year round to make sure the pool stays in tip top shape. That way when we get ready to open in the summer, the pool is ready to go. We don't have algae all in the pool and all that kind of stuff, which was a concern this summer. And finally, this position would be LGI certified, which essentially is a lifeguard instructor. Currently, we have to pay an outside source to come in and certify all of our lifeguards. That's about $5,000 to $6,000 right there a year that we spend to have somebody come certify our lifeguards every year. as well as all of our recreation center staff is CPR certified, the LGI would be able to certify them as well. So that's another couple thousand that we're spending on that as well. And then at that point, anyone else in the city who wanted to be CPR certified, we could have the LGI lead that program and lead that class. Any questions?

To what degree of self-sustain through revenue? What does that mean to you? Yes.

So cost recovery is a big thing for me, especially my last job. We were really, really, really harped on cost recovery. And it's one of the things that I look into everything I do. This athletics-aquatics coordinator position would be self-sustaining in terms of additional revenue generated within two years.

If I can point one thing out, and I think it's gonna bear witness to the next presentation too, I think, which is gonna be police. So one of the key things that we have that's good in certain ways and then has some challenges in others is our proliferation of all of these muds that we're bringing online, right? And so there's a challenge now that we have these area swimming pools, these regional swimming pools within these muds, right? So we are... We are really now marketing our own services to a lot of people. Yes, some may have some regional pools, but a lot of the community doesn't have access to those pools, but some do. And so we'd like to be their choice pool for a lot of reasons. So we have that contention, right? And just like when we're going to talk about police department, too, it's like we don't. by bringing online some of these services and yeah, excluding areas that we don't cover because of the exclusion of muds, we still stretch our boundaries in areas that we're trying to cover. So all these expanding things that get us bigger and greater and as we grow, we have some growth issues as well. So when we do come to that, I was glad that you mentioned that, Council Member Cram on, as you put it, cost recovery. that we think the same because we're getting bigger and we'll be expected to get more service, but we also have to remember the other side of the ledger means that we're going to have to start paying for those services as well in a greater amount.

Correct.

while we can just say well less people will come because now they're swimming in their muds in their districts that's not entirely true and i think we're doing a pretty good job in attracting people to our pools i think we're we can be doing a whole lot more and we will be doing a whole lot more But I just want to put that in context because I think that's true all around as well because our growth is, there's some things that we have to remind ourselves to be cognizant as we do this thing as well is to say, this is cost of growth. And so there's going to be some components that we just can't get around and we're going to have to do.

And to add to that cost recovery aspect of it, my former position was the athletics coordinator in Georgetown. And my last year there, I generated enough revenue in three months to cover the cost of my position. So this position is something that not only will cover the cost of itself, but also can help sustain a lot of the other activities that we're doing for free that we're already covering from other areas.

Is there any way we could look at like dividing this? Like maybe just going after one piece of it, like either the aquatics or the athletics? Just a question. In like cost benefit analysis, and I understand both of them would get the cost recovery, but I feel like it might be something we can look at ramping up instead of, like so we can start it instead of, But that's just my thought.

Athletics, aquatics combined is a pretty common thing for most small towns. Typically once you get to be a little bit larger is when you split it apart. A lot of the concern with having it go split right out the gate is what does, and not that there isn't anything that they couldn't be doing, but what does aquatics do then at that point in December, January, February? Yeah, that's kind of what I'm asking.

Could it be a seasonal thing to start out with?

So the... It could be, yes, for the aquatic side of things. That's correct. We did have a seasonal aquatics coordinator position that was cut this year. And obviously that was before my time, so I'm not sure what happened there.

That was before my time, and that was a previous interim city manager. Let's be clear about that. I may do with what I had, and we did pretty well. We hired the most part-timers in a while, so about 30 people joining our team. But having said that, I think what you're getting at, which I think what we can see is that we have that seasonal type approach. But the athletic side of what I think you're talking about, which I've been involved with in some sports quite recently, too, as a parent and paying all those ridiculous fees to stay over and all that craziness. We might not have all the advantages of all the hotels that we need and all that stuff. We still have a place that we can send our people and attract folks, so we want to continue to do that. But I will say this, to answer hopefully a little bit, is that there's still, I wouldn't say, and maybe there is, you can correct me, because you're the expert here. is that there is a 365-day cycle of sports, without a doubt. Yeah, correct. That I think we can pick and choose to see what we start to attract, because that's where it gets rather complicated. That's when we say, okay, are we focusing on, is it gonna be baseball, softball, or are we gonna be going after soccer? What leads can we start off with and inch our way towards, in addition to the foundational pool, swimming, Aquatics what can we start to track perhaps an intro way into that? because that Play in that sports league is a rather complicated system that involves parents parents leagues and all that other stuff that so starting sport by sport getting all the A NATIONAL APPROACH TO IT AND THEN ADDING THE SPORTS I THINK IS WHAT MAKES SENSE. ABSOLUTELY.

AND KEEP IN MIND WITH THE ATHLETICS SIDE THERE, WE'RE NOT TALKING SPECIFICALLY JUST ABOUT LEAGUES. THERE'S ALSO CAMPS AND CLASSES AND CLINICS AND PRIVATE LESSONS AND ALL THAT KIND OF STUFF THAT GOES INTO THE ATHLETICS SIDE. KIND OF THE IDEA OF THIS, THEY WOULD BE MOSTLY ATHLETICS AND THEN DURING THE SUMMER THEY WOULD HELP OUT WITH THE POOL. on top of me and one other staff member that are currently operating the pool. We would all share that responsibility in the pool. This person would lean a little bit heavier into the pool and then some of us can help offset some of the athletic stuff over the summer. That way the lifeguards can have just one voice rather than three different people coming in and kind of giving them a different direction. But really, it's a lot of things that go into the athletic side of things and a lot of different programs that you can offer, all from beginning three-year-olds all the way up to adults at any level of point after that.

And so I'll lean on your expertise because you say this is where you come from. So what I'm hearing is we have facilities and it's an untapped market that we're not capitalizing on. Correct.

Yeah, we have multiple baseball and softball fields that we're not really utilizing internally. We have obviously the rec center with the basketball court and volleyball court that we're not currently utilizing other than just open play here and there. We have the Shenandoah soccer field that there's an organization that uses that area. Currently there's not a contract in place with that, nor is there a contract in place with any of the organizations in town on how that operates. So this position would also come in and kind of Look at holistically of the whole City of Elgin not just internally athletics but also all the different organizations that operate within Elgin and use a lot of our facilities and come up with contracts that Make sure that they're using our facilities in the way that we would like them to be using them And also to make sure that they're taking care of our facilities Also keep in mind triad is coming online and here in the next couple of years. That sport complex will be a pretty decent size, and we'll draw a lot more athletic-related activities as well. Y'all too good.

I'm trying to figure out how to cut something. Y'all doing too good. Let me, let me, let me, time out. I was at a home run just eight nights, and there's a large group of the population that cannot wait for people to come back.

Imagine if we did spring and fall and fall. I mean, there's just...

I wasn't planning on cutting. Y'all doing a really good job.

Thank you, Christina.

Smart move, Christina, smart move. Just let me relieve a little bit of pressure maybe, right? So I should have right-sided this, and I'm going to right-side it now. So remember, on the onset, I'm to present a balanced budget to you all, right? So we're right now having a conversation, and what I'm hearing, what we're deliberating is I'm getting, we're all getting feedback as to how you're feeling about different things, right? So I'm not asking you all to necessarily do my job, right? You're having tremendous impact on it. Believe me. But I'm not doing, like having y'all sit here as nine trying to do these types of things. Crunch time, when it gets down to it, and we're debating between, hey, we need to move something here. We've come up with like six ways to do this, or three ways, and we're short some different ways. Because that sort of... Greater Cut then 4.6. I'll tell you what your answer is probably going to be With all due respect it's gonna be close to 4.6 It's gonna be close to 4 right because you do want to help you want to be able to get what we need You're gonna need me to come back with some suggestions Here is tell me the priority list and how you're feeling about these things not necessarily like That was good, though, Christina. Take his money to give you mine. But when something is out of the realm of possibility, just like, hey, you're just overly, just like, I know we can't do this this year for sure. Let's go ahead and show that city manager, not Reagan. City manager, let's hard focus on whatever it is. It could be quality of life, right? So that's what I'm gathering here. So I don't want you all to think you're having to do this work to do the cutting, do the minute, take 1,000 here, take 1,000 there. This is an exercise to get out what your priorities are so then I can go back and sit down, sit back with my team, and we can say, okay, let's rerun this. What did we talk about? What did they talk about? What do we feel that they were talking about? And what didn't they talk about? Why didn't they talk about it? So we start running this down and say, hey, we're getting closer to a number that's more agreeable. So next time we see it, it's going to probably be closer to, I don't know, is there a 4.6? I don't have a number, but it ain't going to be that. So when we come back, it's going to be way trimmed down. It's like, okay, so now we're getting closer. Because if you see the news there where budgets are coming from city managers and all other places to say they're starting off with a budget deficit of a million dollars, five million dollars. Well, that's what it generally looks like because the request from the city manager is we need to expand what we're doing, get better. That's what you're expecting us to do. But we also have to provide you the tools to say, how do we get there, city manager? We pay you to give us those answers. But I'm gonna tell you the priorities that we'd like to put on you. Because there's $27 million. No, general fund is different. But let's just say, and this is how we prioritize it. I could give you now in some cities do this they come in they don't have this conversation they say that's a balance budget conversations done I did my charter work and we're having little to no conversation that's not how we do this and I want that approach because I can't walk away with this and you guys still are like we didn't address some of the key things that I was sent here to address

My streets are still unsafe.

We didn't fix the roads that I've been sent to do. That's the kind of key things that we need to hone in on. Because in the public works, you should see his list. And I bet you, donuts of dollars, you're gonna wanna say, I wanna give everything to that guy. And I'm gonna tell you right now, we don't have the money. And I love it because the calls would start going down on potholes, pipes busting, and everything else that you get calls on. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

So please.

Just know the idea is to have conversations, not to solve world hunger.

Got it.

And that's going to be a major part of what I do with your input, and we're going to be getting there. So don't feel pressured to be like no rigging nothing.

Christina, your presentation was wacky.

especially not today, that's not it. But give me some, give us feedback. Like, hey, but we wanna see a little bit more in this. Maybe focus a little bit more on that outdoor stuff and less about this, whatever it may be. Because that'll give me the direction I need to, even though we're gonna have some upcoming conversation about that, but this is where it's done.

Because the budget is the document that tells us

our game plan for the year in written form with the dollars we're using because that's how we communicate with dollars right and so we can go out and work hard but i can see everybody's kind of like standing back it's like well we're never gonna get anywhere because we're just gonna give everybody what they need that might be coming up we may end up at 4.6 and that's fine guys but we're getting the cues and we're taking it so I didn't mean to stop you on that, Reagan. I know you're, she already took your money, so you might as well sit down.

But we're gonna have some contracts for the people that are using the fields?

Correct, that would be the goal of this, one of the goals of this position.

That's the kind of stuff is, can we see some of that come back? Are we gonna get that, is that something that we're gonna look forward to?

So that would be revenue coming in? Correct. Because they haven't paid before.

This position, it would be primarily a revenue generating position.

And even if it turns out to say that if you don't fund the position, because you don't agree that it should be funded, that could be just looking at me and saying, well, why can't we just do that right now and figure out some other way to do it in some other way?

Right. And I'm not saying do that, because I could stack stuff right now. But I'd like your approach with that position. That's a great question.

Now let's close. That's the kind of conversation here, and that's what we're talking about.

So on your part-time front desk and stuff, who manages your volunteers? Or do y'all have volunteers?

So right now, our event coordinator kind of oversees the volunteers. I would say we don't have a huge base of volunteers, and a lot of that is just we don't have someone to manage and make sure that everyone's coming back and all that kind of stuff. So it kind of turns into just as we go, kind of reaching back out to people that have volunteered in the past, like, hey, can you come back and volunteer, redoing paperwork, all that kind of stuff that may or may not be involved with each event. So that would go with that position as well.

Do you think it would be a possibility to put that with an intern or with a volunteer? It could be, yeah. As the front desk and... when we get our youth council up and going absolutely absolutely So with the equipment, I used to do that at the state all over the state, and that's a liability issue if you've got faulty equipment. Correct. So I definitely see that being looked at. You may not get it all, but I see that needing to be looked at because we don't need to get sued by somebody getting hurt. Absolutely. So we should have taken care of ourselves.

Thank you.

That's just my two words. All, not all.

Correct. Anywhere's a start as long as we can start replacing it. Just be aware that however much we get this year, we'll be right back next year trying to replace some more of it until it all gets replaced. And then in five to 10 years, we'll need to be replacing it again. It's ongoing. And we do some studies, not studies, we keep track of how many people are using what machines and stuff like that. So as part of this process, we would also be kind of changing out some of the lesser used equipment and bringing in some more preferable equipment to be used in that matter as well.

What did you say? I do have a question though. When it comes to repairs, does it come out of this amount or is there a separate amount for that?

So it comes out of our, we have a general line item. I don't know the name of the line item off the top of my head. It's the, that's the wrong paper. The minor office supplies and equipment line item is what it comes out, is what repairs come out of currently. Awesome. No other questions? Thank you, council and mayor.

Okay, we're gonna take another 10 minute break at 8.37 and come back at 8.47.

And you can grab dessert while you're up and moving around.

Everybody go. Okay, we are back on target.

I know it's getting late, but we want to hurry. You have a quorum here. We can rock and roll. All right, so we're on it. She's coming. Oh, you know what?

Oh, he seems so happy to let it go.

All right.

He's going to attack.

You have a long list. Mm-hmm.

there's several pages like it goes on the more i flip the more pages i see with your name on it sir thank you very much thank you very much i love you all page one of five all i can say is brace yourself

With TMI.

Okay, our recording is on, in case y'all forgot.

All righty, I hope you took a Valium, because your sticker shock is coming.

All righty, go for it, Chief.

All righty. I need to adjust the screen. Okay. The first pages are going to be on new equipment. And first one is the drone. Todd, you can come on up. And I'll be relying on Todd. He's the commander over criminal investigations, and that's what the majority, if not all, of this equipment pertains to, is evidence collection, crime scene investigation. Anyway, so that being said, the drone is, we have No drone that can fly in anything other than perfect weather. And so we are looking to up our game, if you will, and have a truly mission, 100% mission capable drone at all times. We have a training drone is what we're using now. We got that free with the training that we went to. And if there's anything you want to add a little bit more about the drone program?

them larger size and make it smaller size for internal and this keeps us from having to send officers to places we don't want to send an officer first we want to send a drone first instead of an officer we haven't just what a month a month or so ago well where we had a trespass we had a burglary neighbors were still inside we were there pretty quick we set every perimeter up got a drone up had it up then we had to bring So, again, the drone was really good when we got it. It was part of the training. It comes with the kit. But, you know, something you get for free is you get the paper. It guides through what we need to get through. But the capabilities of, if it falls down, it turns itself back up. So you don't have to walk out into, say, an open field to fix your drone right at a suspect.

Yeah, even to continue on with that anecdote, when we did send the drone into the house, it died halfway through. And we finally had to go in and get it, and it was, oh, yeah, by the way, pick up the drone on your way out.

Teleperp, come outside.

And that's why you don't have just one drone, because the battery power only lasts so long. When you're up there, you can't tell the size.

Are there programs for smaller towns from federal entities that can help us with things like that as far as the training yes, and

But as far as getting the equipment itself, that's up to us. And rest assured, I do search high and low for alternative sources of funding, particularly for big ticket items, ongoing expenses, and even personnel. And we are currently awaiting the results of a grant request for personnel and software and other equipment as well.

The next three things, the safekeeping drying cabinet, the cyanoacrylate fuming chamber, and the air science fuming hood.

I'll tell you a little bit about those momentarily, but I'm going to say right off the bat, that's non-negotiable. Those are health and safety and life safety issues. Those are to be used in our evidence room. The drying cabinet is used to be able to dry wet evidence in an environment that will no longer be further contaminated. You can't hang I say a bloody towel.

T-shirt out on the line.

Yeah, exactly, because there's other things in the air. So it provides a contained, it's a containment chamber. The fuming chamber is used to develop lightened fingerprints off of pieces of evidence. And if you just look at the term cyanoacrylate, that's commonly known as superglue. But what that is is cyanide. And so you have to have a cell or a contained chamber. We're currently using a 10 gallon or whatever gallon fish tank. And Frankly, we were doing that 44 years ago when I was a crime scene investigator for the Austin Police Department. And that's how we did it then. But to be fair, that was one of the things we had to cut, you know, the fuming hoods and vent hoods from the construction plan of the new police station. We had to build to the dollar on that project. and knowing that one day we would have to come with our hat in our hand asking for these things, and today's that day. And the fuming hood, the bullets explain what it is. It's for safely handling drugs, particularly your fentanyl and things of that nature. This way the evidence technician doesn't have to have their snout with the evidence.

We do want to keep y'all safe.

Well, thank you. Absolutely.

How long would these things typically last?

Years.

So long investment.

Yes. Again, you've got to take care of it as well. yeah as far as

How often would you say that you use some of these things or?

Some of these things. The fingerprinting or the drying, that could be from a homicide scene all the way down to just the death where the suspect cut himself. And that was whether we can't store that while it's still wet. So until it dries, you're prolonging getting yourself to the lab. The fingerprinting, that's dated. And the fuming hood, not just the drugs, also when we're printing something, if you're ever, hopefully the car has been broken into, but if you have been fingerprinted, you see black powder everywhere. Everywhere, yeah. Well, when they're trying to do that in their evidence room, and fingerprint a specific item, if they get powder everywhere too much,

And with these items, are they just like a one-and-done buy, or do you have somebody that comes by and actually inspects them and does repairs at the same time?

They're going to be a one-and-done. Essentially, it's not an annual repair. It's when they're starting to show signs of wear, you call the service out there to make sure. But, like, ventilation, it's built. So it's only ongoing calls to be built. Okay.

And that will come out to us for the check. Yeah.

Without a doubt.

You haven't approved yet, so to say. Okay, the Pharaoh Crime Scene Scanner, that is a state-of-the-art device that is more or less what I like to call a force multiplier to assist the detectives in major crime scenes where they can go in and actually take pictures if you will of the room and it creates a design of the room itself and our reconstructs it for evidentiary purposes and you can mark evidence and it's a I'll just read it provides to the millimeter accurate measurements and you know full scene 3d mapping preserves the evidence and spatial relationships far beyond traditional photography and sketching methods and something like that would have been particularly helpful in the homicide we had recently and it was a two-story crime scene and inside outside upstairs downstairs and we were there 12, 13, 14 hours.

I was going to say how quickly are these generated?

Yeah, and that's to replace somebody with cameras and or in a measuring tape as well.

For accuracy, but also even the generation of the video and the mapping is minutes to the hours as compared to somebody being there for that long as you're getting the accuracy and speed.

Or in the middle of tonight because of accidents. How big is this piece of equipment? Okay. You've seen it on TV.

Yes. Yes. Uh-huh. NCIS. 48 hours.

And then we can slay it to the drone as well to do overhead. We can connect that to the drone.

The clear investigation software that is We currently used clear already. This is a secondary module to it and it's to enhance what we already have and You're the expert on it, so I'll let you talk about it.

So clear investigations, it connects all the different data points from, well, we're back to homicide. If you're looking at, you have a suspect, if any homicide, a suspect, I mean a victim, now you're trying to find out who's connected to the victim. So sometimes it's worth you have to do this. So people aren't waiting. Victims aren't waiting for some kind of closure. But again, it's not a guaranteed thing. Clear is a great. We've already tested clear. That's why we didn't get this. You want to do the digital note taker tablet as well? The digital note taker, nothing high tech. I'm sure you've seen them at the size of your laptop. The reason those are needed now is because with discovery going to court, everything, even detectives notes now are required by law to be part of that case. So they're interviewing somebody and they're just writing their own personal notes, but it's about the case. They need to see those notes in that case file. And if the defense attorney gets something and see me interviewing somebody on camera and they see me making notes, they don't see my notes for that interview in my packet. That could ruin the whole case. That's something similar. And those notes might be me doodling the guy's picture because I'm bored. Drawing on it. It has nothing to do with the case, but because that paper's not in there, that case could be thrown out because we didn't give the defense attorney everything on that. So that's something that's mandated. Yes, we can take it by paper. This, there's no mistaking it. There's no losing it. It automatically uploads that file, and now there's a track of it.

And there's one.

I'm sorry?

Yes. There's one.

No, that's for each detective. Each detective would have one.

At $49.60.

Those are less expensive ones, but they do what we need to do. We have all the bells and whistles, but again, we're...

Remind me how many detectives we'd be purchasing these for? So that would be close to 49,600?

4,960 per. And then he needs 11 of them. No, no, no, that's all of them. That's all of them together. Yeah, there are 300 of them. That's what I was getting at. No, no, no. Yeah, no, no, I thought that was like per, okay. Yeah, I thought that was per.

There's going to be a lot of bells and whistles at each one of them. I know.

You can go buy one of these right now for council.

I was going to be like, what's the minimum you need?

No, that's how we were able to get all of them in that number.

Okay. Okay.

Thank you for that clarification. Yeah, it's a big difference.

Okay. The continued... rehab of the post building, which is the small building that sits adjacent to the police department. And we have been using it just for general storage for the last several years. And I mean, tires and other stuff and things. And so we are as part of our accreditation, we have to have large items storage, particularly for like a vehicle. and our bulk storage as well and has to be secured and to do that you know the windows have to be have metal so it can't be broken into and it does not have an AC system in it now or some sort of climate control to be added to it and the then but we don't need the entire building for that. And so one of the things that we had to cut from the new police station was a gym for the officers, you know, to for us to really push physical fitness and wellness for officers because two years ago I paid for what's called tactical physicals for for each of the officers and because we are like 40 some percent more likely to die of a heart attack by the age of 50 and so we want to encourage physical fitness we have tried partnering with local gyms and to do that, and that has been problematic in and of itself. And one of the other reasons we would like to have a gym is where we can do our own physical fitness assessments for new hires and have the equipment in there to do it. And so this will purchase for the physical fitness equipment, which is, you know, rowing machines and free weights as well. And I am looking for other alternatives to purchase that equipment as it is right now, such as seized funds and that nature.

I was going to say, I heard the rec center has a gym. Is there any way that we can potentially start partnering with them?

Which we have. And in the middle of the night is when we have access to the gym. Because otherwise, if we go during the day, we are taking it away from paying customers. Okay.

Thank you. And overall. Yeah.

We've got some bullets in the bag. We can't hire somebody just because we don't have 57.

And it keeps officers from getting injured or more significantly injured, which then drives up the insurance cost, workers' compensation, et cetera. And it's just the right thing to do as well.

So what we're looking for now is basically equipment. For that section that you're not going to use for bulk storage? Correct.

Okay. And then with regard to securing the interior of the building to keep anybody from getting into it, well, for all of it, but particularly for the evidence storage. Any further questions on that? Okay. All right, then the storm-damaged fencing, this is really more of a public works thing, but rather than replace the chain-link fencing that was between the post building and what would be the southwest corner of the police station, there's about 50 feet of fence.

How long was it?

And again as one of the things that we had to cut from the original construction of the police department was having a masonry fence around the building and had to do the chain link fence which you can still see into the back of of the police department where officers parked their cars and were moving evidence around at times into the post building. So I thought this would be the perfect time to go ahead and start it as a process and do a section at a time to create or to build that masonry fence.

And you say masonry?

Block, yes, ma'am.

Okay, cinder block.

Yes.

Okay.

yeah the uh there were so uh two different bids on it one and this was the lower of the two the other bid was to put a whole new footer in and it was it was going to be a nice wall and last forever this will still do the same thing and thank you that was the thing is that we bring the materials into this that the contractor does not have to sell us the brick you're saying we have our own brick and a brick factory Okay. Vehicles. All right. Page 96. All right. As we have not purchased any new vehicles since 2023. And at that time, we were bringing four new vehicles on every year for patrol cars. And each patrol car upfitted with everything that goes into it is right at $100,000, about 108, depending. So over the last, now pushing four years, the last of the cars that we have, the newer cars, they're all no longer under warranty. The aging fleet, what we normally do is we take, as the patrol cars age out, we will decommission them and turn them into administrative vehicles for the detectives. And we have been unable to do that, because if, back up a little bit, if you've been by the public work yard, you've probably seen, we've got about 12, 11, 12 cars over there aged out, old cars. I'm hanging onto those, hopefully, because I can sell those and offset the cost of this. And they are unsafe to be driven. It's not that the mileage is high because our officers really don't put a whole lot of miles on them. These cars idle the entire time that they're being used during the day, and that's to keep all the electronics in the car running because it can't shut off, and then it'll reset the computer and have to be rebooted, and they'll lose anything they've got that they're working on. So that being said... is my goal to replace everything at a 2019 year model and older all the way down to the 2014 s and that includes the surplus vehicles we got sitting out in the public works yard so to do that and then there's a couple of new purchases in there as well but we can't obviously we can't buy that many cars it's just can't do it So there is an option that is to lease the vehicles. And leasing is kind of a misnomer on it, because we're just going to be financing them. We're actually purchasing them. However, for whatever regulation, you have to call it a lease, because the final payment is a balloon payment of $1. And then we own the vehicles after that. We don't have to turn them in. We don't have to, like a traditional lease would be.

Say that again for me, please.

we're finance would be financing the vehicles. And, and the, what I'm asking for is the number of vehicles that I'm asking for will cost about $1.5 million to replace those we are to buy the new vehicles and replace those other ones. And then to have the permission to engage in a contract for a lease, and with a annual payment of about $300,000 or less, that If we go back to the historical of us buying four cars a year, we were spending well over $400,000 a year just to purchase four cars. This way, for the next five years, there'd be a five-year lease. We could do a four-year lease or a three-year lease, but the cost goes up, of course. And to do that, then we could have the payment of right around $300,000 or less each year for the next five years, and then we own the cars after that time.

For the balloon note of $1.

Correct. And because it has that, for whatever the rules and regulations of the banking industry, the government, it's lost on me. They have to call it a lease. And so, OK. But then when we met with the representative from American National Leasing, who they do all governments, The comment was made, well, why can't I just go to a bank and get a loan and finance it that way? He said, you can. He said, but what we offer is we will take all those surplus cars of yours, and then we can sell them to another police department that will buy them. And this way we don't, as is, and we don't have to decommission the car any further, meaning remove the lights, remove the sirens. everything off of them that cost anywhere between fifteen to two thousand dollars per car some of those cars frankly aren't worth that amount but we still have to spend the money to do that right and so then whatever they sell those cars for will come back to us and then we can then start truly getting into a rotation program for our cars would that rotation be like every two or every three years on the vehicles We've never been in one. We've never been able to get to that point. So I can't answer your question to that extent. But I would say certainly let's look at five years because when that lease is up, let's start thinking about doing another one. And like I said, then we actually own the cars at that point. So then also asking for eight patrol cars, and that is because I am also asking for four new officer positions in the form of police cadets, these ones that we would send to the academy and grow them from the ground up, if you will. And I know Pam builds that into the cost of a new employee, but I wanted you to see it here. you'll have the full picture of what it is that we're asking for and that's to replace patrol cars that are 2019 and older and also for potential new hires and over time the animal the one animal control truck that needs to be replaced the vehicle that christina was talking about the wheel fell off that was our vehicle And that was a surplus vehicle from out on the lot. But it was the best one we had. And so we let her use it. And no one got hurt. Well, she has to use a car. And but so when we ended up putting money into it to get it serviceable for the second animal control officer position that we got several years ago, because they need a vehicle. And that's what they use is a 2009 Chevy Tahoe that used to be a patrol car. And it is still unsafe, but it's the best one we got. And it is frankly not a humane way to transport animals and to care for animals before we take them down to the pound, down to Bastrop. So then part of that expense also will include the upfitting of the animal control truck to have the kennels and all that on it. And that is expensive as well. But that's all built into that amount of money. The forensics van, that is a new purchase as well, that we carry, we have so much equipment that we take to crime scenes now, and it has to be all in one vehicle. Anecdote to a case about where we needed the drone, it was, oh crap, the drone's back at the station. Somebody's gotta go back and get the drone. We've got so much stuff to carry, and it's all been trying to stuff it all into a Tahoe. So it's time to get a van. And then the CID administrative vehicles. That is, like I said, we normally recycle patrol cars and strip them out and turn them into CID cars. the ones that we would consider doing that for are already too far gone to do that it's just let's just cut the head off this beast and get the cars that we need finance them and we can finance them at a rate that is less than what we were paying before it is a hard it is a big pill to swallow i get that and and i will say particularly on our patrol cars, the one thing that we are judged on is how fast we can put a patrol car in front of somebody's house, the one and only time that they will ever call the police in their life. You know, you sent me the other day. Put me out like that.

But anyway, we had one this morning, too. I heard. Just told her. Yeah. I just told her. But anyway.

Anyway. So.

What's that?

Oh, yeah. It wouldn't even be due until fiscal 27, 28.

Is that because it takes a while to get all these vehicles in?

No. No, that's the leasing companies.

So this $300,000 would not be due technically this year. This would be due next budget.

Yeah, not even in this budget. Yes. And you will see that in the radio lease as well.

Okay. Yeah. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm.

As of the numbers that were pulled the day before yesterday for this budget year, we've already spent $147,000 in vehicle maintenance. That is money to a garage or a shop. And that is, again, these aged cars are eating us alive. And as of today, I signed check requests for enough that we are now over $150,000 in vehicle repairs. And we're only halfway through the year. So again, that $300,000 that we're gonna, if we project it out, that's $300,000, that's the payment on cars.

So the replacement vehicles, Are they newer than what we have now? Are they in better condition?

They'll all be brand new cars.

Like 2025?

No, they'll be 2026s, and with any luck, maybe a 27.

And we must have got some good gap insurance for these vehicles. We're talking about a five-year lease.

Well, and that's the thing. That is something that needs to be discussed. Do we want to do a three-year lease? And this way, the vehicle will be under the majority of the time, whatever, how long? It'll be under warranty. A warranty the entire time.

What's the change in the annual payment if it's a three-year lease?

It will be depending on whatever the interest rate is at that time.

The last calculation that I did was at 5.5% interest rate, but that was back in March.

And those vehicles that we were pricing were 2025 and 2026. And they of course, are no longer available. And, and they were it goes, say about 30% per year would be a good guess. And I'm sorry, I did not bring that information with me since it was so old. Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. This is just to get this on your. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I would like to see what we can save if we do a three-year. So obviously it's less interest. If we have a year before we have to pay that first payment, it's a little bit mindful, more mindful spending maybe.

Yeah, our rep from American National, he promised he would have me those numbers by tonight or by today. And of course, I don't have them. And I could answer that question. Then we've also dealt with our queried Mack Hike Ford as well. And Ford Motor Credit also, Ford Motor Credit? Okay, they also have a leasing program for government vehicles as well. Samus down in Bastrop has a government leasing program as well. But the last, but I know American National uses same, dealership in Bastrop, Laredo, and other places as well.

So it could be local? Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's some of the hard parts about getting the price on a specific deal. One, it changes so often. Two, we don't go in there and just pay a sticker price. We have it just like anybody else would. That's what I'm asking for is a

number of not to exceed a certain amount because this way I can get a price or an annual payment that is not to exceed a certain amount. So that can be built into your planning. All right, personnel. I am asking for an administrative position. Did we do the radio piece?

Did we skip the radio?

I mean, I know we want to go home and everything, but there's a lot of money over here.

Let's talk about that. Just assume you said yes.

All right, the radio lease is $400,000 through Motorola, and that will have a $69,800, or $70,000, seven annual payments, and it's a seven-year lease. And that is actually, the radio service life is much longer than that. why we have to get new radios and these are for 38 vehicle radios and that's to replace every single radio vehicle radio that we have and to add and new radios for if we get new cars new patrol cars and then 13 handheld radios we have already replaced the bulk of our handheld radios in a lease that we did last budget year And the reason we have to replace them is the regional communication systems of these, one for Bastrop County, they are switching to an encrypted radio program. And our radios are not compliant.

For that.

Yeah, it's called ACH encryption technology. Travis County has already switched over to that they've already thrown the switch on it and we cannot communicate with Travis County we can they can hear us we can't hear them and Williamson County has also already switched over and we communicate or we we interact with every agency that borders us that is in both Travis and Williamson County as well so Bastrop County is anticipating that they will switch over mid-year 2027 and this has been known since about 2023 and that is why we have taken on to start replacing these radios ahead of time and so we don't have to take such a big bite this is another big one If we don't get the radios, we can't communicate. It's that simple. And again, we can't afford to buy them, so I'll lease them. And so at 69 or $70,000 annual payment, right now, that's the best I can do. And I have gone through LCRA, them, to try to purchase radios, bulk radios from them. They cannot even compare in the price with Motorola. so this is one of those things that we absolutely must yes and we have planned ahead to the best of our ability with it and the time has come yeah and not to make it sound any better but Mainer because they were well over a million on their radios and so

That sounds better.

It does sound better. Doesn't make it taste better.

No. I know the question is coming from a 70-year lease, but these radios are last model, last 20 years. So that's why.

You're over here reading my notes. I'm reading your face. I'm reading some of my notes. Remember you said your face?

A 70-year lease is nothing compared to what the average model lasts.

And the... The one kind of silver lining of the cloud is that we can sell these radios, the car radios and our handheld radios. And that takes some of the sting out of it. That money will be returned to the general fund.

The encryption thing is not a universal thing. It's regional, more or less. Correct.

That is why we're able to sell the radios, let somebody else have them that does not need them.

I was going to say, who would buy them if they couldn't? Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. The CAD, or Computer Assisted Dispatch System, in RMS Records Management System, that is when a call comes into 911, the dispatcher enters the information into the CAD system, which then will dispatch or assign the call to the Police Department, Fire Department, EMS. And so as part of being within the regional communication system of Bastrop County, that they transitioned to a new CAD and records management system. And they did that with their ARPA funds, our American Recovery Act funds. They got millions to do it. they have absorbed the cost of this. And with regard to it, what we're paying for is licensing fees, that there is a per user cost for CAD access and RMS access. I am hoping I can get that cost down, but I bring it to you at this cost in case I can't get it down, but that is what it will cost at the most. And that is one of the things, we gotta have it.

What's a user? Is that your cars?

Per person, per license, yeah.

Per license, per person? Yeah.

And I do 50 licenses, and this way, because that even includes our administrative personnel that have to have access to it for case preparations and to pull records and whatnot. It's even for me to have access to it. Okay, personnel. As part of our accreditation and our accreditation manager that we've been using for the last four years is just a consultant. And as we near the end of the year when we get our inspections and audits and as we go to finally get our accreditation, He will no longer be with us after that. And so, yes, sir.

That's a positive thing. You're not saying that in a weird, bad way.

He's going away. He did say it kind of slow.

Well, actually, he's being poached by the Austin Police Department. Oh, say it slowly. Go ahead. Say it slow. Say it slow. Yeah, they've approached him about, because they're going back into a CALEA accreditation as well. When I was with them, we were CALEA accredited back in the 90s, and then they let it lapse. And then as a result of what CALEA accreditation, well, I'll get into that in a little bit, but it is a full-time job to manage the weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly and annual inspections and audits that we have to do and as part of the Process to ensure the professional To ensure professional policing this is I said a full-time job and It's either get an administrative person to do it, or I have to pull somebody off patrol to do it. And it'd be a very expensive, if I do that, it's a very expensive administrative system to do that. And they, but there can be also other duties assigned to this particular function, which is help manage our fleet and our IT as well. And not do IT, but help, as it was mentioned before by Pam, that The IT person can spend 40 hours with us because every car is basically a mothership in and of itself with communications technologies, night vision, just making sure the lights work on it, you know, the computers and things of that nature. So then the fleet maintenance with regard to managing, you know, the repairs and contracts with shops and things of that nature. But, and that all goes hand in hand with the duties could be with a compliance, or would be with a compliance coordinator. And.

What's the benefits of the accreditation?

Well, let me check my notes here. What that is, CALEA is the Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies. And Texas also has one. It's the Texas Police Chiefs Association as well. We have chosen CALEA because it is a national and international accreditation. And the standards that we abide by are the commissioners that help set these standards and professional standards are federal judges, senators, deans of colleges to determine what the best practices in the policing industry is. And to that end, what ultimately the goal of it is, Big thing is it reduces your civil liability because the first thing that is attacked, particularly when you have a critical shooting or a critical incident which is a shooting, is your training and then your evidence, storage and how that's handled gets attacked as well. through having the constant and repetitive audits and inspections of our processes by outside auditors that continues to ensure that we have reached the that we are a truly a professional organization and just as a note that in the United States there are close to 18,000 law enforcement agencies. Only 1,307 of them are CALEA accredited, soon to be 1,308. And when we get that designation, we will be in the top 1% of law enforcement agencies in the United States. And that's .072. Say that number again, .what? .072. That's in the top 1%. Now, if you want to look at it for how many agencies are CALEA accredited in Texas, There's 2,700 law enforcement agencies in Texas. There are only 45 that are CALEA accredited, soon to be 46. We will be in the top 0.16 of law enforcement agencies in the state. That is a big deal.

And that's feather in your cap.

Yes, it is. We've been working on this since 2022. And we really, what the big hurdle frankly was, was the police station. Since it would not pass inspection, it was built to CALEA standards, and particularly the evidence room, because that is the Achilles heel of every law enforcement agency. And so that is why you see so much in evidence collection, preservation, and particularly with the Poth Building as well. And, you know, just on the credentialing of it, you know, it is recognized by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Leaders, Law Enforcement Executives, the National Sheriff's Association, and the Professional Executive Research Forum, or Police Executive Research Forum out of Boston as well. And it's going to be a proud day. A lot of people have worked very hard on this over the years. Okay. Then the detective position. Our current caseload right now on detectives is they're averaging 35 cases per month and it's, you're getting farther and farther behind on their caseload. It's just because of the growth. As the city manager mentioned previously about the mud districts. the people that live there and all good people. Yeah, we know we may not go to their house, but we got to deal with them when they come out of their neighborhoods. And so, but that being said, you know, that goes back to the number of police officers that we need, and then the ensuing number of reports in cases that need to be investigated as well. I have one of my detectives that is assigned to be a crime analyst. I have applied for grant funding for a crime analyst and will soon be applying for grant funding for a victim services coordinator as well. However, if I get the crime analyst, then I can return that detective back to the mix of working cases. and but it's still not enough and that is we've got to have the detectives to work these these cases particularly the violent crimes which are as we grow we're getting more and more right and did you say you're looking for a grant for victim services yes through capco and um but it's not the violent crimes that we spend the bulk of our time on it's the petty crimes and um And they just keep coming and coming. And it's like they said on what was on the Seinfeld show about the mail, it just keeps coming. And so anecdote on that. One of my CID sergeants and a patrol sergeant were in a very, that's the right word, concentrated conversation with each other the other night they were having a meeting between CID and patrol and the CID sergeant was begging the patrol guys please collect more information when you're doing your initial report out at the scene and you know ask more questions get more information because when we get these reports there's not enough information and we are spending an inordinate amount of time as a detective collecting basic information. And the reply was, we don't have time. Calls are waiting. You're the dollar the detectives go detect. You see the vicious circle there. And so the then that will lead into the cadets and we have not. Yeah, absolutely.

What we're trying to avoid is you've all probably heard or seen or tried an Austin file report for something very small, and you get the answer of do it online. And then a month later you get an email saying, yeah, it's been reviewed, and it is not, pretty much we're not going to do it online. Okay.

And cadets, as noted earlier, we have not added any new personnel since 2023. And before, we were adding four per year until we reached a certain level. Well, those were taken out of the budget last year. And when was I saying that?

Was it last year? Last year. OK.

And I am asking for those to be put back in. And the one thing about the cadets is we prefer to hire them when they're, either send them to the academy or hire them while they're in the academy. This way we can get them as brand new officers. No baggage, no bad habits. We train them the way Elgin wants their officers trained. And there's nothing wrong with lateral transfers. Always try to keep at least one, maybe two vacancies in case that rock star comes along that we can grab one on a lateral. But that being said, we have had the best luck with recruiting our own people and then sending them to the academy and then bringing them through our own training program. So that process takes over a year. So when you see the four cadets positions, that doesn't mean we're going to go hire four people immediately. That's going to take time. We'd be lucky The next cadet class starts in October. I don't think there's any way we're going to be able to groom that many or that many people to get them selected in the academy. We'd certainly be the one after that. So we're looking at even after the beginning of the new year or even mid-year. I didn't see where the second, if they had another class scheduled after that. Yeah. They run them seven months apart.

How about retention? What is the retention rate here?

Excellent. And that goes to the last batch that we hired. We hired eight. We were given permission to overhire in 2023. And we got eight, ultimately it was actually ten officers all at one time, two laterals and eight out of the academy in They are all still here for the most part. However, when we send somebody to the academy, they have to sign a two-year commitment.

Okay.

Their two-year commitment when they got out of the academy in 2004 was in March of 2004. Their two-year commitment ended in March of 2026, four months ago.

And they're still here?

They're still here.

Okay.

They're all here. Yeah. And they knew the comp study was coming. That has been well received. And that's why they're here tonight, some of the other officers. And very, very appreciative of anything that y'all do. And so yes, we lost one who wanted to go back closer to home.

Did he pay back?

Because they have to pay back everything that we've invested in them as well.

Okay, so there is a payback system if they leave our, okay. Yes.

Yeah, she's a collection agency.

What is the cost per cadet? Can you break that down for me? Because, I mean, obviously looking at the pay rate that you gave us and then this, it's more. So I'm assuming that includes some training, but can you break down the actual cost?

The academy itself is $2,200. Then uniforms. Okay. Then, yes. And they are employees. We pay them to go to school. That is their job. And that is not to do anything else.

But learn.

Because if they don't pass, then they have to pay it back.

Yes. Yeah. That way we save the tuition and the salary up to that point. And then as soon as they get out, then that's when we pick them up.

So there is potential for savings on the front end of that as well.

I say we throw that up on that board. Everything is on the board.

Have we said no? You can put a circle around it.

Yep, that's a good thing.

Right, that one, yeah. That goes into the next budget period. That's why I like the little line you did there.

Well, and truth be told, if you look up there on our tally board, the total is running up on the top, so we're at 1.7 with a total of 4.6, and we got the world-famous Mr.

I was going to say, wait a minute, we got Michael standing back there flexing already, so.

So, he's left after, yeah. He can ruin that number real quick. He is. I'm looking at it right now. He can be a buster. Michael.

What? Who?

The most expensive for last is what I'm seeing, the most stressful.

Do we have streets that can be swept?

Michael, come on. I just wanted to say one final thing, and it's in the notes, that our trending call volume is up 38.6% from 2025. And if you want to extrapolate that on out, that will be, pardon me, 2025 we answered 3,277 dispatched calls. Then in 2026, today we're at 2,651, and if we stay on that same trend line, we will be at 4,555 calls for service. And that is the 38.6% net increase in call volume. However, that does not include all activity. That does not include traffic stops, that does not include community engagement, that does not include when we encourage our officers to get out and go walk Main Street, get out and go walk neighborhoods and just talk to people. Every encounter is documented. And so when you add that activity into it, as a reference, that is up 63.7%. To start back in 2024, we had 10,825 total encounters. And that includes the calls for service, everything. In 2025, that went to 17,721 encounters. And if we go to 2026 year-to-date, we're at 9,086. And if we stay on that same trend line, we'll be at 20,374 encounters. I've only called twice. Wow. That just gives you a little perspective of what the with the officers and the detectives are dealing with and we try to try to use technology as best as much as we can this way we can reduce the officers and and so get them back out the International City Managers Association and the International Chiefs of Police Association they use what's called the rule of 60 for staffing I'm sure you've all heard the old adage of two officers per thousand people that is incorrect that has never been accurate And what we do is, on average, 60% of an officer's time per hour should never exceed their obligated time, which is 911 calls, should never exceed 60% of one hour. That's 36 minutes. Therefore, 24 minutes out of that hour should be unobligated time devoted to community policing projects, community engagement, special projects, traffic enforcement projects at the intersection. We had a very significant traffic enforcement initiative on Main Street these past two weeks on the truck route. And so hopefully we'll see that fall for a while and then it'll come back. So that being said, they're running from call to call right now. Hence the, I don't want to call it an argument that was in our briefing room between the two sergeants, but.

At least you don't get any PIRs. Oh, I'm just kidding.

Well, that's, y'all approved the, I've got my own person for public information.

Thank you for keeping us safe.

You're welcome.

Much appreciated.

I feel for Peyton because she, on her PIRs, we get about $1,300 a year on those. And some of them are easy to fill, some of them are not. And we, too, have to do the Attorney General thing.

So Michael said he's going to come down running with the chair down on the aisle. He's going to bring it. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Commander. Michael, you get nine minutes.

All right.

Nine minutes.

Well, I bet you he's going to be like. Why did he bring his sign?

It's upside down.

He's like, y'all gotta know my name.

I want y'all to remember, you'll rue the day you never funded these items. No, I'm just kidding.

I took a picture with one of these items. All right, let's go.

We're burning daylight. Here we go, here we go.

There ain't no daylight.

So as you guys can understand, Michael Gonzalez, Director of Public Works and a couple other things around here, but really what we're focused today on is these few requests from the Streets Department and then we got the Grounds and Fleet Maintenance after that. So one of our primary missions there at the Streets Department is not long stretches of paving new roads. it's replacing and repairing small patches. So our utility cuts are kind of the most common thing that we come and patch. You get a main break or a sewer backup and you have to cut open that roadway and you go back and patch that street. That's what we do in-house. These long stretches of overlay and things like that, those are contractors that come out with bigger, larger crews. So the primary vehicle that we use to do those patches is the backhoe loader. They're John Deere 410 at around 135. We have two loaders in our streets department. One was bought in 94 and the other was bought in 2005. So this would be replacing a piece of equipment that's near about 20 years old, but what we do is we bump off the last one. So if you need to in a system to maintain, just bump off the last one. That's what we do with each of our vehicles. Stretch out the miles as long as you can and then just bump off the last one that's really unsafe, undrivable, things like that. pickup truck for streets, same thing. This would be our streets department that are rolling around to different sites to making those utility cuts and patches. The crack seal machine extends the life of your roadways by putting in a coat of sealant over those cracks. So the main thing you want to protect is waterproofing on your roadways. Any roadway, no matter the age, is going to develop cracks over time. Crack seal machine extends the life of that roadway. Well, don't you have a crack seal machine? Yes, we got it from the county near about 15 years ago for $1. This is the replacement of that machine. Paint machine, same thing. We're doing striping, not only parking lots, but crosswalk striping and things like that. Water truck. It was around the 1990 model. It's got a transmission in it that's no good. So water trick there, important for processing base. We go in to make those patches, things like that. So the street resurfacing project is something that had been funded many years ago. This is a recommendation to bring it back, Look at that price tag. That's something we've got to start with. If we think of these priorities, it's in priority order from top to bottom. And when you go to cut, you cut whatever you want. But from the bottom up is how the staff sees that as a priority. Street resurfacing was a program. What we do is we hire a contractor to do large stretches of roads. Ward four, I think, no, it's Ward four. Ward four was the last ward to kind of get the majority of that. Spent some time in Ward one before that one as well. And then sidewalk repairs is a program that we had not to do long stretches of sidewalk, but just areas that had bad upheaving and cracking and things like that. You see that in some of our older neighborhoods. Older neighborhoods that have sidewalks, that's where we go and repair.

Some of us don't even have Kirby.

That's right, yeah.

We have Culver's and Ward 4.

I'm aware where your ward is. I know where you're going. So we can go back and do questions about each one of these. The last one there is the street sweeper. And understandably, if we go through these budget exercises year over year, it's low-hanging fruit, the easiest one to cut. And I want you to think of it as, oh, that's something you use on special events to pick up litter and that kind of thing. While that is true, these things are intended to preserve roadways as well. So there at the edge of the curb, you get silt and buildup, something washing off from somebody's driveway, grass clippings, leaves in the gutter. And then what you have in those silt buildup is vegetation that starts to grow and then rip apart the seams of that roadway. It happens. It's understandable. Our way to combat that right now is for a team member to do curb and gutter cleaning with a backhoe, a dump truck, and two guys loading the silt. into the backhoe. It's fine, we do it. With a four-member team doing that specific task, they're not doing road patching, but they also can only average about four city blocks either side of the roadway, those that have curbs, to remove that sill. One of the common areas is kind of the low-lying area of Avenue C. We're there quite often, and it just kind of gets something that backs up. So the street sweeper is there to reduce that number to two operators, and they can do a longer stretch. We don't know how much they can do because we don't have a sweeper, When we do it in the way that we're doing it now, completely fine, it can happen. It's a four-member team, two big pieces of equipment, do about four blocks a day, and that's about as much as we can do.

Hold your questions to the end, sir. Yes, Mr. Gonzalez, please let's stop here because I think... Take a breath. So I think there's been pictures of us on your street.

Yeah, we sent them to him. Yeah, we sent some photos. Pam, you can put eight years up there instead of seven.

Yeah, for sure.