City Council - Special Meeting

It is 6.30 and we're calling to order our special meeting for the City Council on September the 9th. And we will begin with our roll call. Deputy Mayor Person, St. Pierre.

St. Pierre, here.

Mayfield, here.

Creme, here.

McShann, here. Hymas, here.

Gibson, here.

Love here. Council member Roland is on his way. He got trapped in the traffic that stopped on eleven hundred. So he's trying to figure his way around, but he will be here shortly. Council member Pina is out with her an event or something going on with her family. So do I have a motion to whatever?

I'll make a motion.

I'll second it. Okay, it's been moved and second to approve the absence, I guess is what we're doing. First, Council Member Pena. Is it for Pena or we just leave Roland? Well, we'll announce him. We know he's coming. We know Pena's not, so it should be for Pena. Okay. Okay. And so, Council Member Crimm. Crimm, yes.

McShann, no. Hymas, yes.

Gibson, no.

Love, no.

St. Pierre, yes.

Mayfield, yes. Oh, and Roland's not here for the inpatient, so let me just pick that up real quick.

for bear our heads.

Dear Heavenly Father, as we come to this meeting today, we hope that you will help us have clear heads, remove the fog, and Father, we pray that as we go in through deliberations for our future budget and what to decide on for the citizens of Elkin, that we will be consistent and be conscious of what we are doing and to know that what we do now will affect for a couple of years to come and possibly more than that. So we want to have our minds clear. and father we pray that as we uh move forward that we pray for our city we pray for all of our citizens and we pray for everything that we are doing in the sweet name of jesus we pray amen amen we'll stand for our pledge of allegiance it's 6 32 and council member uh silva is here that will be noted please now if you stand for a pledge of allegiance

indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

And we have public comment, open for public comment. You have three minutes to address a topic and if it is an agenda item, we will not speak unless it's already on the agenda. Other than that, we will not speak to the comment. And we have Justin Compton.

Here we go. Hello, everyone. Can you hear me? Yes. All right. I'm going to start a timer on my phone to keep me honest as well. So Madam Mayor, city council members, thank you for your time tonight. I want to start with a quick introduction. My name is Justin Compton. I'm 25 years old and I've been a resident of Elgin with my wife since June 2024. when we moved here for work. Elgin is where we chose to start building our lives, find community, and start our family. We have a daughter who just turned one year old. And so for all of these reasons, I wanted to come stand before you today. I came across coverage Tuesday night that didn't appear to have the fanfare or acknowledgment that it deserved. On September 2nd, a letter from our police chief to our mayor was published on the Elgin City website. and published on the Elgin City website, and it was sharing Chief Noble's decision to pause Elgin's flock camera program. In the letter, he pointed to public mistrust and reports of misuse nationwide, and to Governor Abbott ordering state agencies to pause funding for flock cameras. These things, he says, made pausing the city and grant-funded cameras the right decision. So that story was more widely covered by other news websites on September 3rd, and I only found out about it on the evening of September 7th when I checked local news after the holiday weekend. I wouldn't have found it if I wasn't searching for things along that topic. In Chief Noble's letter, he said that the pause stays in place until you, our elected officials, decide whether resuming or canceling those subscriptions is in the best interest of this community. So I'm here today to ask you to cancel the flock subscriptions. I believe that we should not turn these cameras back on. Automated license plate readers like flock cameras, which are the most well-known in the country right now, are drawing unusual pushback across the country and across unusual political lines. People who disagree on almost everything else will still share a worry about permanent searchable records of ordinary driving tied to ordinary citizens. We know that in many cases these records do not always stay local. In Pflugerville, for instance, reporting showed roughly 1.6 million plate searches were made by 459 outside organizations in just six months of use. Ordinary errands in a small city can feed into a regional or national lookup network, and cities have struggled to guarantee who outside their own police department can look those plates up. These systems also go beyond reading a plate. Floxone materials and reporting describe vehicle fingerprinting, make, model, color, stickers, roof racks, even damage, so a car can be searched and tracked with a partial plate or no plate at all. This is much bigger than what most residents think of when they hear a license plate camera. Accuracy is another problem with Roseville, California analysis finding roughly 71% of cameras and alerts were misreads and LAPD review finding about one in three hot list alerts were false, which led the department to move away from flock as a system as a whole. Tonight you are reviewing and discussing the budget for the upcoming year. May I finish this last sentence? Tonight you're reviewing and discussing the budget for the upcoming year. So our city has spent real money on these cameras. And I believe, I'm sure many of our residents would agree, that these funds could be put to better use for our community. With the pause of state funding leading to this review of Elgin's block program, I'm asking you to cancel these subscriptions and put those dollars towards needs in this community that residents can see and measure while protecting the privacy and safety of our residents first from the big corporations that run these shows.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

Okay, that was our only public comment. So next we will move on to our new business. And we know while we're here, this is a budget workshop. So it's gonna be talking about a review proposed of the city of Elgin FYI 2627 annual operating budget as presented by the city manager, including but not limited to possible discussion. Expenditure projections, department, budget, and personnel requests, discussion of major funds, capital improvement needs, and anticipated challenges in review of proposed tax rate and fee adjustments, if applicable. And we will turn it over to Mr. Perry.

Hello, Council. I appreciate everybody coming tonight. I understand a little bit different setup. I know that we throw a lot of numbers up on the screen and there's a lot of squinting. So I wanted to have the big screen in front of all the council. We also have printouts for everyone to kind of follow through. Just as a reminder, tonight is a workshop, so ANSWER is here for us to try to provide additional data to you guys, for you guys to come to the conclusions that you think that it could be a vote, which will be at our next council on the 15th, potentially, on the final budget and tax rate. I have attempted the best I can to kind of further break down the numbers based on correspondence and questions that I've gotten from everyone and to try to look, we're not taking any official votes tonight, but to try to move forward on some general consensus items and I'm gonna probably start backwards with council tonight with a couple of the items that don't directly impact the budget. that you guys adopted and are looking at, but there are expenditures which there's been a call for more transparency or from council standpoint of we want to know when we do approve something, where does it actually go? And so what I'm gonna do is try to work through that, just getting general consensus from you guys, someone, obviously if you don't like what I have up on there or staff has put up there, I do hope that you will inform us of that but generally just walk you through what our thought process is right now and answer those questions for you guys. And then we will work up to kind of those items where we've broken down what the impacts of the tax rate is today, that's 783,000. That still holds and stands. I've brought some additional numbers at different rates below that, so you can also see what the impact of those different rates are. And then we've brought forth, which I believe, again, looking for general consensus, if council were to direct as part of the budget of adding additional positions, what that cost impact would be towards the tax rate. and then finally the compensation study of what the different impacts of those decisions would be towards the tax rate essentially my goal is you will have the numbers in front of you those who brought calculators or have the phones you will be able to sit there and understand what your decision and what impacts that has on the decisions and what you get for it The hope is that either through general consensus or direction at the end of this meeting of where I think you guys are, if it means we need to bring forth something different than what you guys have already approved, aka not adopted, just approved, that we can be prepared for that come the next council meeting, which is scheduled for the 15th. Again, as a reminder, we are working against a deadline. So we have the 15th council. If we can't come to an approval or a conclusion at the 15th, we would have to reconvene on the 22nd. And essentially that will be until we can get an agreement. Agreement by council is six votes positive. it's a super majority so it has to be six for yes regardless of how many are in attendance or not it is not just simple majority so hopefully through these conversations we're able to find places that we all align with and ultimately that is the goal that we're looking for for the city the budget for this So I'm gonna do my best to take it through if I'm going too fast Please raise your slow me down because I want to make sure that there isn't something that you feel You're not getting the information that you can make an educated decision with with you guys is upcoming vote Any questions on the format All right, we're gonna see. So all of you have a printed out version. What this is is just a reminder to council. The next three slides are blown up. These are the department budget requests that would be one-time expenditures, essentially based on the general fund. So we've taken out all personnel positions. We'll talk about that later. But these were basically between all the different groups within the city. They came before you a couple of council meetings before. They went through kind of, it's been dubbed the wish list. I think it's more than that. I mean, they put together what they feel like it is needed to operate and then went through their reasoning for that. So what I wanted is just to remind council that we do have a pretty extensive list. Again, these are all equipment or programs that are meant to be basically one-time expenditures. With the exception of the couple that are by the Elgin PD, which has to do with the vehicle lease program and the radio lease, those would be ongoing expenses. But everything else you can see is a lot of equipment type things. The other things that I do want to call to you that are on here that would not be considered equipment are under the streets maintenance program. They have the street maintenance, half a million dollars, and then they have the sidewalk repairs, 50,000. That is an actual project that you go out and you hire a contractor in order to do that work. Again, currently that's not in the general fund to do any of that. We list that out each year. I can tell you, having been here for 25 years, some years it makes it into the budget that you are going to repave streets within the community and some years you're not but I did want to show that in there and just in case anybody questioned about it not being a project it really is kind of a A project, the half a million was kind of decided many, many years ago from the city about, that's plus or minus four to six blocks worth of city repaving. The city has gone to a little bit better where you guys have generally gone away from trying to do seal coat jobs, which is just oil and rock, where now when you do a repaving job, you're putting down hot asphalt mix, which lasts a little bit longer, definitely looks a lot better when it's all said and done. Generally that's why you only see the four to six city blocks work. Before you probably would push it to 10 to 12 when you were just doing oil and rock down on the streets. Ultimately what I want to bring to you on these slides is the grand total of all departments of one time expenditures or funding from the general fund that is not personnel related for this upcoming year was just over 1.8 million. Nothing on this list currently is in the approved budget that you guys have approved to move forward with. The vehicle lease program and the radio lease program, I think it's pertinent to this council, if there is a general consensus to move forward with either one of those, there would be no impact to the budget or cost this fiscal year. However, based on those programs, when you are at this point in time next year, those costs will come due on those two programs. So it's imperative that you're thinking about that, you know, as this budget. You can see up there the potential reoccurring cost in the future for the vehicle lease program is approximately $300,000. And for the radio lease, it's approximately $70,000. So that's $370,000 that would be next budgeting year coming out of the general fund for reoccurring costs looking forward. And we'll come back to those too. But I just want to make sure everybody is clear on the numbers that are being presented in front of you. Are there any questions of those?

Not so far.

So what I attempted to do, Council, we've had the conversation that Previous councils, we went out for certificate of obligations in 2021. If council will recall, that was actually broken out into two different certificate of obligations. There's 2021, which was the utility, and then there was 2021A, which really was general fund items, which was mainly the PD and parks. I presented last time that in looking at the bond language of those is they have ongoing maintenance and equipment that basically you can use from the certificate of obligations. Currently, the city has a positive balance. What this means is all the projects are done and paid for. you still are having a positive balance in that account. Generally, you do not carry positive balances on certificate of obligations. You are to use the money and eventually you would pass new certificate of obligations for newer projects. Currently, you guys, for the general fund, you're carrying a positive balance. We'll talk about the utility fund obligation. You're also carrying a positive balance. Generally, you've paid for all the projects. We've gone through all the accounting with Gradient. We've backtracked all the costs and everything else. Ultimately, through a lot of the transactions, you guys accrued a lot of interest when interest rates were very, very high sitting in that account from the 25-odd million that you guys took out. The remaining balances in here, a lot of this is predominantly attributed to the interest that you accrued in those accounts. Again, the projects that we had hoped to do on those, those have all been completed at this point in time. Again, the previous slide I showed you, the 1.8 million related to expenditures from the general fund, in talking based on the bond language and looking at it, There was wishlist items, if you want to call it that, from the Parks Department and from PD that were one-time purchases. What I'm looking for from council is general consensus is we know we're not gonna be able to fund those from the tax increase or no tax increase, no matter what, but they are needs of the city is it does not impact your vote for the budget, but this is in the transparency of council to basically show to have city staff move forward. We've kind of put together a list, went back to PD, went back to the parks and said, these are some must haves that we really, really do feel like we need. if general consensus or if council has general concerns of us going ahead and distinguishing this account that can be used to help fund some of those purchases from PD related items and from the parks department related items and I'll kind of stop and pause there and open to feedback or tell me I'm wrong and thinking that way or there's other things that you feel like we should be doing or not doing

But I assume some of those items are included in this.

Those items are all coming from that list. Correct.

So I have some questions about the police department's list. Are there things like the drying cabinet and the fuming chamber that should be things that we should consider as to be purchased together because it would not make sense to buy one and not the other?

I have Commander here, and he can answer that a little bit more. Both of those items are on the list, and as you can see, of the plus or minus list of where we sit today, at $100,000, both of those items are there, and combined, they're at 10,000.

Right, and I'm thinking like the fuming chamber versus a hood, the fuming hood would filter. What items do we have here that should be included together?

so they are they are broken up so indicates that only partial approval comes the one that says with filter those are the kind of things that are ordered together they must be used together the other two can be No, it makes sense but we don't want to get the fuming chamber without the hood with filters, right? They can operate separate if you had to. If council wishes to go to that level of detail on it. These lists, again, are going to staff. This is what they kind of came up with. I would basically be looking more from the council's direction of, yes, we're good with extinguishing the funds. And if you so chose, We could bring it back and you could do it by resolution, although that's not required But this is was basically going to the PD going to the parks department and saying guys If council thought that this was a good use of the money being that we can't find anything out of the general fund this next year from the list Do you guys think this would be a good? I'm definitely I can bring different departments in and you guys can ask them line item by line item do they really need those items but I kind of felt that that was done when they came and did their presentations to each of you guys the council that night So these really haven't changed from those. There might be some rounding of numbers. But from the essential, this is the same list that council did see and goes back to the original list that council saw up on the big screen. And each group came and gave a presentation.

So this money here will be used out of the CEO loans? Yes, ma'am. And not the general fund?

That is correct. So two separate funds, correct? Separate funds. I think that $438,7101 is as accurate as it can be within a couple of days.

So by my math, I'm still looking that we would still have like $148,000 available. If we did the $100,000 for the police department and the $182,000, that's $282,000, and we have $430,000 available.

It's $282,000 for just parks. So you'd have about $50,000 left. So the parks total is $282,000.

Okay, so then are we looking to get two of the Kubotas? That is correct. Okay, so that's two.

One Kubota and there's two mowers. Where it says Kubota mowers, it's 31 times 2, which is 62. And definitely staff, if I say that incorrectly, please jump up.

And so these funds will not affect our current budget that we're working on?

These funds are not going to affect your votes next week or potentially the following week. They are not going to affect the tax rate. They are not going to affect the budget that's been presented to you. These are simply going through because council has asked, and I believe has asked city staff to say, how do we get through some of these items? What options are available to us that don't include doing taxes? This is an option that is available to council and or the city manager at y'all's direction. But again, this is probably something that would in the past probably just have been done and moved forward with just because that's generally what you would do. I know council has asked for more input slash kind of understanding of how some of these numbers are being done and so i'm just simply putting them out from you guys to kind of get a general consensus this is not going to be a separate line item on the budget this is not something we're tacking on there this account has been shown to council on every single financial report showing that balance sitting there going back for the last year I'm just probably doing a little bit better job of explaining what that number is.

I can't see why we wouldn't Well, we would say no to funding these things if the money's already available.

Exactly. And would leave a little bit left over, like $50,000 or something like that? Yeah.

Ultimately, I would work with the departments. I mean, generally, the goal of a CO is you close the account. You don't leave it open for any reason. Because that'll have a negative impact, potentially, on the next time you go out and you do a CO. Well, you tend to spend it for a reason. Yes. It's not meant to be anything other than spent.

And it doesn't affect our tax rate or the budget.

Correct.

I like the idea.

All right. I think that's enough on that topic.

We don't vote on that, but consensus.

Yeah. Definitely want to hear the nos and yeses to kind of have an idea.

Or head nods.

Yeah. Head nods. Head nods are good.

Your explanation has actually made it make more sense.

I try. When I'm talking to myself in front of the mirror, sometimes it doesn't come back the same way. Very similar, and again, this is just, again, we can go into more understanding. We're not necessarily trying to make a decision, but again, I'm just showing you some of the tools. The utility fund from the certificate of obligations in 2021 is very similar. It was drafted up. There is a lot of things that need to be done project-wise and or equipment-wise that are necessary to run y'all's water, wastewater systems. It is holding a positive balance there. This one is a little bit different in the fact that if you recall when you guys were presented the utility rate, they also had some of those maintenance projects that have become long overdue and some of the equipment that's needed to do maintenance projects and operate the system are long overdue. What we attempted to do here with staff is Presuming if you should basically approve the rate that would fund the maintenance projects and equipment, there would still be equipment left over that is not part of that utility rate fund. We were essentially saying, hey, this is leftover dollars from the CEOs that we could apply to these either projects and or equipment. I will tell you that this list will flip. If council does decide later on with the utility rate fund that you don't want to fund the maintenance projects by the rate payers and you want the taxpayers to pay for maintenance projects, then I would come back and basically say, no, we would like to use these funds to get those projects done. At the end of the day, it's been presented to council on a couple of them, like cleaning the basin and the bar screen replacement that these are. projects that we do believe should be part of the utility rate fund. However, if you guys choose to not have rate payers pay for them and you would like taxpayers to pay for them, those would then become our number one projects as opposed to moving forward. obviously we are not uh we're not voting on the utility rate fund until we're done with the budget and everything but i did want to put this in front of you guys just as a thing because it was a very long list of wants in there obviously the utilities are very important to the city of elgin and how we run that business But essentially that's the difference between the black and red is if you fund the utility rate with those projects for rate payers, then we do have equipment that the taxpayers would benefit from because we're not paying for out of the general fund and we could use the CEOs. You can see that the proposed funded is less than half. count we still have some ongoing projects that staff would basically say it would behoove us to leave some of the dollars in that ceo to account for some of those ongoing obviously the water treatment plant that came before you guys some of the water and wastewater system projects just to make sure that we have some the goal would still be to expend the ceo for 2021 on utility type projects within this next fiscal year is essentially did you say that maintenance programs do qualify for co money they're they're projects so if you mean projects yeah it has to do with the maintenance of it so the wastewater treatment plant expansion these are cleaning out those existing basins that we could they would qualify to use money out of this okay so that it's improvements and maintenance and equipping um that was the way it was worded out and so Not looking necessarily for a head and on you guys may want to come back to this when you guys when we're talking about the utility rates schedule, but I did want to put it in front of Council just to have the understanding that it's another avenue of something that you're not able to fund the general fund currently and to help further. the conversation of understanding the difference between rate payers and taxpayers and somehow those get blurred but we really want to make sure that we look at those as two complete different entities when we're making our decisions in my opinion when you guys are considering decisions of that because they really are two different businesses i agree you can be a taxpayer and a rate payer but you know you want to you don't want to make that decision necessarily based on that fact because in actuality a lot of your rate payers as you guys continue to grow aren't necessarily taxpayers and that's just the way it is we no longer have involuntary annexation you know they have to want to come in but they still are using your system wastewater and water through some of these developments not only residential but commercial so on and so forth

So one of the questions I think we had asked before was, can we identify any of these proposed purchases that are on our list of grant seeking items?

A lot of these are not going to qualify because they would be under maintenance when it comes to plants and stuff. You're not going to get grants for that. It's only going to be upgrades and capacity upgrades, which that wouldn't qualify. On the equipment side, That's going to be really tough. There's not a lot of grants out there that are saying because there would be every city and municipality.

I thought we had that screen replacement or the cleaning of the basement is something that we talked about potentially going up for grant money.

That is the Texas Water Development Board that you guys went out for a grant, but that was everything related to the water treatment plant. This cleaning of the basin is specific to the wastewater. So two different plants, not related. and the cleaning the other cleaning that was talked about was the ground storage reservoir that's out at Pistol Hill which is currently not in operation because it's 40 50 years old concrete has not been cleaned out again it's a maintenance slash capital project to get it back into operation that also was presented as part of the Texas Water Development Board grant but again that's not related to anything on this list

Potentially though I understand the difference between the rate payer and the taxpayer but potentially we could fund most of this with this CO and then if we pass the rate study could we not apply that to the deficit that we have to try to get us out of that faster?

So let me so two things one is it would not apply to the debt you couldn't apply it to the deficit?

No I mean if we pass the rate study that you're saying that this stuff could be funded by passing the rate study if we pass the rate study could we not collect that increase

and apply it to the deficit and then fund most of it through this stuff what i would do probably in that councilwoman is you would go with the option that did not include equipment and maintenance projects and you would say that's the rate study option that you would vote on without it and then you would say we are going to fund these projects with the remaining of the ceo money It wouldn't go, it's not like you can move the million to the negative 1.8, but it would be a difference in which rate study you were approving. And so there would be a difference there.

I guess what I'm not getting there is, so we were talking about if we've got the CO, we've got the money, we want to use it, we don't want to leave it there. But what we're saying out of the total of 1.1 million that we could fund almost 500,000 out of potential rate study if the rate study was passed. But that would then, leave a balance of that seal. We were saying we don't want to do that. I thought we didn't want to do that. I thought we wanted to use it all up.

I was saying from today in council, you guys have just approved the water treatment plants, which you guys have the impact fees for the base bid. And we talked about that we may have to increase that contract if we decided we wanted to maximize the $1.8 million for the grant funds. That was not awarded in that base contract that we did with the contractor. There's still a balance that you would add in. we talked to council and the contract and we said we would come back later with a change order because you're continuing to collect impact fees these would be impact fees that you would be able to utilize the balance of this towards that project to where you're not exhausting necessarily all of your impact fees for that one specific project hence that was the reason to leave plus or minus the half a million that gives you a buffer towards that project If tomorrow the water turned off and no more houses came in and no one else pulled an impact fee, then we would be having a conversation, okay, if we wanna maximize the money from the GLO, and as presented, I know it's not, it's the most craziest grant because you got good prices, you're gonna lose money, but if we wanted to maximize all of the money from the general land office, we know we're gonna have to increase that contract for the water treatment plant. this would give you kind of a buffer and again the ceo money is there and not necessarily saying we're going out tomorrow and doing this but i'm thinking over the course of this fiscal year these are the investments that council could make without burdening the taxpayer

OK, so I get you. We're talking about that potentially 500k to be used for that. That water treatment plant. Which I think is a good idea. I'm a little conservative.

I would like to have that as a buffer.

That's good contingency planning, I think.

I just want to be clear what you council approved. You have the money to pay for the other night. So I want to be clear. So again, not necessarily looking for a consensus, but this is staff's thought process of, again, another potential lever to have discussions with. And again, Trying to narrow down the tough decisions you guys have when it comes to the tax rates and you know All these things that are ways. How do you get them funded? But at the same time do it in a transparent manner that you guys understand Any other questions on the utility I think what I'll end up doing is you'll probably see this again when we actually bring to you the utility rate approval because I'm sure y'all will want to go back to kind of make sure you understand what project slash equipment and everything is related to their utility rate versus what's not. um so not necessarily looking for a general consensus other than if you wanted to tell me bo you're out of your mind and this is not anything that we would consider doing i mean you're always out of your mind but we agree i can take that um So before we move on, there's been some discussion and I brought it up last week. I've gotten some follow-up questions just about where the city will end this year. Right now we've done, yeah. Pam's gonna pass out a slide. But from where we will end up in the general fund at this end of the year, ultimately we will be at a positive balance. Again, just to go back over everything with council, when we do a budget year, we assume zero dollars in the bank, we look at all the revenues that we're gonna take in, we look at all the expenditures we're gonna expect to spend, and then ultimately, a balanced budget, you're looking at zero dollars in the bank at the end of the year, right? What ends up happening is if those two don't mix, if you have more expenditures than revenue projected, then you're raising the tax rate to get a balanced budget. That was not proposed to council this year. We were able to balance the budget without having to do any kind of tax increase because we weren't gonna come in with a negative number. We have come in and decided we do have a positive number at what we're projecting. We still gotta get through a couple of payrolls and everything. But one of council's main concerns over the last couple of years has been what your reserve account sits at. As you've seen the approved budget not adopted, there's not a line item in there to contribute to the reserves. It's not part of your budgeted year process again. I don't think council has contributed to the reserves probably in the last four to five years at least of anything. with a positive balance at this year, and I know that is tugging at a lot of the heartstrings. We ran the calculation and right now we have, is it 46 days? 57 days of operating. plus or minus rule of thumb has always been ninety days of operating which you guys have just over two point nine million sitting in reserves today it's not being used on anything that you guys approved it's not a line item shown in the budget because there's no expenditures coming out of it right we're not using the reserves last year there was a line item that basically moved about three hundred thousand out of the reserves in order to balance the budget In this budget, there's none of those line items or transactions. So 2.9 plus today, it's expected to be at 2.9 plus at the end of next year, based on everything that's projected. That said, council has had discussions in the past about how do we add to the reserves without necessarily adding the tax rate? You know, how do we make efficiencies? How does staff do a better job? You know, are those things any kind of combination of that? Because reserves are important. A 90 day fund is about 4.6 million is the number. Pam, I believe 4.6 million is a 90 day. plus or minus and you guys are at 2.9 so not bad through a lot of the stuff we've gone over the last couple of years we were able to through the accounting we backtracked an actual reserve account at just that three million maybe five years ago through all that transaction data that we've been going through and mining through with gradient So you've whittled away with the biggest chunk kind of coming from last year, but not much. I mean, it's been pretty consistent. We just know you haven't been contributing to it as a budgeted line item. The end of this year, you guys will have a net positive number and it's a decent number. You're talking probably about a million dollars that you will be into the positive. again that number isn't related it's one-time expenditures so you use it i haven't we haven't presented it to try to cover reoccurring cost or anything else like that but essentially it is a number that it does exist if council wanted to take consideration again it's not part of your approval process or budget but this is again putting the cards on the table for you guys to understand it's a consensus is, do you apply some of that to the reserves? Do you carry over some of that just based on some uncertainties with the city currently, you know, at least, and then come back and do another mid-year adjustment? It is one or do you say you know what we want to use some of that for some of these one-time Expenditures that didn't make these list bow because that list again was much larger than what I presented with the CEO dollars And you say you know what we're gonna go back and do that It is fiduciary that I did bring it up to you guys because the reserves has been repeatedly discussed on council and that we wanted to do away where we felt like we were doing a better job of saving for a rainy day so main takeaways reserve account not in the budget we're not taking away any dollars from the reserve account to balance your budget with the tax increase or to no tax increase okay that's the amount that will be there that amount's been shown on all of y'all's financial reports in the reserve account so it sits there this would be an opportunity you could consider and you could say you know if we were to budget this next year an amount let's use that dollar amount so that we know we've put it away it's a time that you could consider and say you know what if we were going to budget that amount this year like a hundred thousand whatever the number is i'm just throwing shooting from the hip here and we haven't put any money away for the last five years but had we done what we think is reasonable this year and we go backwards we can pay ourselves backwards towards the reserve account and be basically say this council has put that money to the reserve account in a good orderly fashion and we played catch up for what we've missed over the last couple of years that's an option for council my one thing is is i'm trying to keep the taxes related to the taxes on that these are one-time expenditures not what you would expect to see reoccurring we're not going to have that the budget's not set up that you're going to end up with another one million dollars at the end you know a lot of these come from different line items moving around and cross-checked and stuff like that i believe there's some of that is due diligence by city staff and efficiencies that have been picked up i think at the end of the day they've done a very good job to be stewards of what they were allocated and not not using money that's available just because it's available when it's said and done so again not necessarily part of your budget approval process but it is something from a general consensus I would love to have an idea what you think the priorities would be for that money maybe you're dead set and you say it should be used against the budget or something of that nature but I will definitely caution that you will just end up right back there and in a deficit this next year that you won't be able to climb out of necessarily so I'm gonna open up the floor to you guys and I can answer additional questions on that but I wanted to make sure we got through that before we started on the budget

I'd like to see it put on back, because we don't know what the future's going to hold. And so since we haven't done anything in five years, good god. I think since we got it, we should put some of that back.

So what I'm hearing, Bo, because I heard you say if we had a policy and it was about 100 grand, what we're looking at is at least half of it going into reserves. It's a possibility. Is that staff's kind of recommendation?

I think. i think the number we're going to end up at is just under 1.2 1.1 somewhere in there staff is going to recommend that we hold a little bit of that back to just kind of carry over because we're talking through the end of the year you know type of things a lot of little changes going on if you guys notice um just as a buffer you know with that payroll everything else coming that gets us through the end of the year type of deal and we could always come back with a mid-year adjustment if we're still carrying that positive and it's not been absorbed somehow But I think any number between, when you're talking five years, any number between 100,000 and 200,000 I think is relatively on the count. I don't think I would go above that one million mark and put every single penny over because you would stress a lot of people out. Not that it's going anywhere, not that it's gonna be allocated to any of this other stuff we've talked about. It's just that would use a lot of cash. And so it would be something along those lines that we could basically show and again moving it over showing it on the balance sheets obviously once it goes in there staff doesn't consider it available to be used you know as a general policy unless it's using emergency and we're putting it back and whatnot generally if we're having to use those reserves you guys are willing to know of hey it's being used again clarity pam's going to tell me nothing has been pulled from the reserve account to balance this year's budgets last year they pulled three hundred thousand don't know you guys approved it I don't know if you realized that's where the contingency came from at the time with all the other numbers so I'm just trying to lay this out in front of you but yeah my recommendation would be any of those numbers between a hundred and two hundred thousand and it should be a feel-good story for council that would be a major accomplishment if you look back over the years it'd be a feel-good story for staff for being good stewards of it to come out into the positive at the end of the year to where you could you know do something that for the future or for the rainy day gets you guys a lot closer

I wonder if one consideration might be to tie it to our revenues as a percentage of saying, you know, eventually we will have a bigger tax base than what we have today.

I think you see a lot of cities do that because obviously the bigger your tax base goes, your operating expenses go up, which means the amount that's needed for 90 days goes up. Elegant being the size it is, you probably were able to pinpoint a random number and not necessarily tie it to that. but you know it is something that would be there I don't want I want the cards on the table for you guys to make that kind of decision or general consensus again it's not part of the budget approval process but I want I want you guys to say hey you know that's something that we think should be done whatever that is And again, it's available if you can use it for the one time purchases. But, you know, from what a lot of us and staff have had the conversation is, you know, this would be a great time. This isn't going to happen every year, guys. Right. Especially if you don't budget it in, it's not going to happen. So you rarely do get these moments. But it is there. You guys as counsel, that is your decision to say we're going to use it for reoccurring cost and take that out of the tax or whatever the case is and then next year when you're here it's not going to change anything so i'm just i'm putting that out in front of you okay so head nods on put some back whatever that number is yes yes absolutely you got your nod all right we're moving along we're moving along So what I do, I'm going to jump slide. So this was just handed out to everybody. I'm going to walk through the numbers. This is where the calculators come out. This is where you guys get to start with your pencils and everything else. We kind of talked about it last week. This is just furthermore, essentially in discussions, if we went from today's tax rate, which is the 61 and lots of decimals, up to the 68 and lots of decimals, I presented to council before, general fund dollars available, which means you could apply it to general fund costs, you know, after you're dead. You would essentially have $783,000 and some change available to make decisions when it came to additional new reoccurring costs and positions and stuff, or if it came to the compensation study, so on and so forth. I've gone ahead and moved forward because I've gotten from council, I know that that's what you guys approved was at that 68 number. I've taken that same number and I've dropped it down to 67, 66, and 65, and I've given you the same numbers that it will generate. You go from 783 to 666, that just sounds bad. And you go down to 65, it says 66, you're down to 548, and you go down to 65, you're down to 430. There's a lot of cents and decimals that go into it but in round numbers for council to make decisions that staff can work with and essentially we're not getting down to every single penny and stuff like here but these are round numbers for you guys to say if I voted ended up voting for that rate or you as a council that's the rate you approve this is a how much is available for you to make decisions with new reoccurring cost as it comes around. So I wanted to make sure that you guys have them printed out. Those are the numbers in red. Basically, I drop it. The 68 is the 783-999-939. And then if you drop down to the first line item in red, you'll see the 666-188. And then that is essentially based on a tax rate of 67 and change. Then the next one down at 66 and change is the 548-439. And then the next one down at 65 and some changes, the 430, 690. Those are the numbers you can play with. Again, y'all are not approving or disapproving anything tonight, but this is just another swipe at making sure that you had the number in there. What we did talk about is, I'm gonna flip it, is based on conversations and emails, I took it upon myself that I felt there was some tacit agreement that these positions, many of them mandated or they were positions the city was gonna lose because grant funding was going to expire, that specifically to the library department. these are the all-in cost of filling these positions that would be starting october one in the budget january or march which is basically three months in or six months in i can tell you in talking to staff you know we felt january one would probably be where we felt good with all of them because that would kind of align with the library but those are real costs there that includes all the benefits so these are going to be a a little bit different than that was shown for the screen to you guys before, because some of that was just base salary. I felt it imperative that we made sure we were looking apples to apples. I don't want to say we got 783, give you a bunch of numbers and you guys said we're going to spend 783 and then end up that number is really a million because we didn't add in benefits and a bunch of other numbers to it. So again, when we're talking about the numbers, these are there for you guys to play with. So again, simple math broken out is if you did the 68 as you guys currently approved, you would have the 783, 939. If you said, Bo, we feel good about all those positions. We wanted to start them in January. Essentially, you would take that number minus 255, 967. And what the remaining is left is essentially that is what you would be negotiating and looking at if you guys chose to fund any of the compensation study.

So leave us with 527.033. Are there any positions up there that you guys

And again, every position up there, I at least got one council member that say that's a good idea. Just to recap, library position, that will go away if not funded. It is currently funded through a grant through the end of the year. But you will lose that position if it's not funded going forward. The IT technician we talked about, there is a contract and there's a lot of expense that goes with the third party. This would not necessarily relieve that entirety of that contract, but it would reduce it. We won't know the exact amount to reduce it for. It would be a lot easier and a lot better by the time we get to the next year, but we know a lot of the calls and a lot of, right now we have one IT person that handles

I was going to say, what role does this person play in IT? I mean, is it just support?

They would report into them as a technician. And they would be, at any given time, we'd get lots of calls. So the other day, the Fleming Center went down without internet. And basically, we couldn't answer phone calls or anything for an entire day. And it wasn't because she was handling another group that was down and just couldn't physically get over to get ours addressed. There would be, for this year's budget, and I know there was a great push, I would not feel comfortable in providing you the offset with the third party contract, but I do think that if this position came in, that that is one of those realized cost savings you would see in the next budget cycle.

And we need him. I think we need that guy.

The court, the part-time bailiffs, that is basically being the judge is saying that's what we need to do. If we don't have that in there, basically we're pulling officers off the streets to go in there, which means they are not on the streets. building maintenance technician that was brought up obviously y'all's the amount of buildings that you guys have throughout it's astronomical as you walk around I mean their assets their taxpayer dollars they are assets on your books they're worth money you can't maintain them that asset gets depreciated very very fast or you to bring it back up to what you envision it to be becomes a lot more costly

I have a quick question. Yeah. So on the bailiffs, I know that we said two to offset days off or holidays, or how does that work?

I believe, Commander, she requires two there. Two required for specific trials. Some pre-trials can have one, but the majority of trials have to have two. One has to be up by the bench, and one has to be security by the door. Okay. Those rules are set out of our, or out of you and her hands. Out of, yeah. So I just, I don't get on the internet much, but you go YouTube some court proceedings. I would understand it sometimes there for that.

Yeah, I've got buddies that are bailiffs.

The juvenile case manager, just to repeat, that is a mandated position by the state. We have someone serving in that role. They are still doing their entirety of their normal role, so they are working two jobs during the same time, but we basically took and said she is qualified, she has the parameters for it, And we're going to assign her that, that she is that person. But it's not like we added another person to take over what's required. That's by the state. They didn't give her their salary? No. No, sir. So this would actually be trying to bring in a juvenile case manager specific as required. and then the last was a records clerk um there with the city secretary just with the amount of work and everything else with elections and everything else as we're growing city it's it's a lot to keep up with uh on there and so somebody's doing that job too right now two jobs yeah right essentially So open to comments. Again, these were the ones where I felt that were kind of mandated outside your hands. There was a potential future cost savings in there or they basically had a ROI that council could legitimize if you made a decision for these positions. Obviously the list, just to go back to it, was just over, I think it was 21 total positions that were requested by all departments when they came in front of you guys across. This would be a small, a good bite out of it, but it would be some movement into the thing. we did add some new positions towards the end of this year with the pio and we were able to add the pio and we were able to add the building official that started this fiscal year and those again are being part of the balanced budget already been accounted for and stuff so

So these are the mandatory positions plus a couple more, right?

Plus a couple more. The records clerk, I guess you would say, is not mandatory. And the maintenance technician, not mandatory. The library, if you didn't like that position and you said, let the grant money end and we'll do without it, technically, that's not mandated. I want to be careful when I say mandated. Not all of them are mandated. Right, right.

That's kind of the point I wanted to make.

They're not mandated.

But these are the ones that staff said, hey, we want to have at least these. Yes. Gotcha.

And then from our conversation last Tuesday at council, we did state that we wanted these. These were ones that were also stated. We wanted the mandated ones and then.

So I think the determination is whether it's October or January, and I'm shooting for January. Yeah, I'm counting.

And staff feels comfortable with that, with that layout. The biggest thing for you guys would be is if you said, staff, we want to see additional positions added, we would go put additional positions up there, and then you would see how that changes the dollars. you know what i mean i wanted you to see if you did january for these positions the 255 967 that's the impact against whatever those available funds based on the tax rate that you went with so i'm not saying that you couldn't add to this list or subtract from this list but this is where i felt that council wanted to start with and put a priority over these positions as opposed to first funding the compensation study. And that's at least the general feedback that I've gotten just tacitly listening to.

Head nods over here? Yes.

This is just with you guys to kind of look.

I'm getting no head nods over here.

We nodding, we're in agreement to further look and bring it to the down.

I just said definitely with nods over here and then see y'all move.

We're kind of talking about start time. January, March.

Oh, January, March, oh, okay.

But the list I like.

Right, yeah. So then let's talk about start time since that seems to be the discrepancy for you. Right.

What is the rule? So I was looking at January, right? But that kind of gives them one quarter, gives us a quarter off, then three quarters to measure the area.

Essentially what you're getting there.

Yeah, return on investment, right? That's kind of three quarters. So is that the same as six months or two quarters?

So you could almost look at them individually. juvenile case manager every day she's doing the two jobs until we go out to fill it generally why i said january is you put it in the budget october one it's coming out of those dollars it doesn't mean we necessarily have that position filled but we are allocating those dollars to that position Right. You're not going to hire somebody tomorrow.

That and I think what's important in going back to something we brought up a time back is SOPs, right? If we're gonna bring in a person to take a position, we wanna have that position duties identified and some SOP established so that when they walk in, they're gonna have something that they can say, okay, this is what I have to do, this is what I'm gonna follow. And I think it takes some time to put that together. I've done that before and it's not, it may not even happen in three months, I don't know. But it's important to think about those things because I think that's the expectation from the council, right? We want them to have standard operating procedures when they walk in.

We also wanna make sure that we don't, assume the March date and then fall into a deficit if we end up hiring somebody before March. Now, the possibility exists. We won't. But I would really not like to revisit this at the end of the year with the deficit because we didn't properly plan.

And that January kind of puts you in that middle range. I mean, some of these positions you may fill by January. Some of them may still go long. The object is we're allocating those dollars for those positions to actively go put them out there to go recruit and bring in someone to fill them ultimately. But I agree with you. If you put it in March and the right application goes out and the right person comes in in January, You don't want to be in the position of turning people down that are the right people that you want to come in because you're like, I don't have budget allocated.

For you right now. You got to wait until March.

I mean, they got to give a two-week notice anyway. Just give them something.

Two weeks is a lot these days. Some of them are like hours of notice. Wow. and again feel free to shoot me comments and stuff if you see modifications but this is where i felt there was a happy coincide of where you guys generally align and most importantly of those numbers across the top is your all-in cost includes ss med tmrs cost group health so that is the true cost that the general fund will see for these positions And again, a lot of the positions we put in front of you guys, I'm only putting the ones that are going to be 100% impacted with these costs to the general fund. There's not any split staff or any of that kind of thing that are up there.

And all these salaries based on the market? Yes. We're not bringing them at a deficit?

No, no. These are basically looking at what we felt would be in the categories from the compensation .. So again, gonna bring everybody back to this sheet. This would be your little cheat sheet. Let's see if this actually works. There, that number right there is assuming that you guys, based on the approved tax rate, that's 68 that's currently sitting. So that number generates you that many dollars. If you drop down to 67, exactly one cent less, that generates you this amount of money now. If you drop down two cents from the approved, exactly two cents, it's going to generate you that amount. If you drop down to 65, three cents, it's going to generate this amount. That's kind of what I'm trying to bumper you guys in with the dollars available. After you just saw the full-time employees, it's wherever you're falling as a council person or where you feel comfortable with, it's those numbers minus the numbers you just saw on the previous slide. Keep that in your mind. You guys all can do that pretty quickly and easily. I'm going to take everybody back through the compensation study. Four different options. Pam's going to help me when I mess up. And then we're going to go to the fifth option, which generally I had multiple council people kind of reach out and said, Bo, based on our understanding of the compensation study, where the city really really lagged was 13 classifications which is approximately 30 to 35 employees that were well beyond below the 90 mark if we just took those and looked at those positions in a vacuum to bring those up you know based on the compensation study just those positions those employees what would that total cost be We put that as an option up there so you guys can talk about that as well. Other than that, I hadn't gotten any really, gotten a lot of deep dives of very, very specific breakouts. I think I reached out to some of the council members. Consultant has a study. Consultant has their proprietary programming and stuff. They will turn over whatever option you guys do that we can kind of work on a go-forward basis, but we can't recreate their numbers from scratch as a staff and get into a lot of the detailed details and say, well, what if this, what if that, and recreate those options that they came out with. there they can it will take time and it will take money i think it was 350 an hour 350 an hour is what they would charge so i'm going to apologize to those council members i thought some of them were good questions i i can appreciate the detailness of saying hey can we split this different ways But we are kind of limited in what we can kind of present to you up here and still feel comfortable about the numbers. Because at the same time, I don't want to come back at a mid-year adjustment and say, staff gave it a good shot, but we're off a couple hundred grand. And you guys kind of look at us that. And I don't feel it's fair to staff to try to go in to take someone else's work and to try to find the inner workings as best we can. so i'm going to walk through the options again and again what i did trying to do is i'm trying to keep you guys in an apples to apples you have general fund and police those get paid 100 out of the general fund we're showing you total costs but when i show utility fund in edc that means these amounts are being paid out of these funds they're not coming out of the general fund So generally when you're looking at total cost of any of these options, please look at total general fund cost. I am providing you the information of all funds here, but when we're talking about the tax rate and the money that you have available to make a decision on whatever option, these are the dollars you're looking at. We took out October 1 because historically the city hasn't really done any type of compensation on October 1. We've always deferred it to a calendar year of January 1. So basically same proposition. You're looking at a cost if it were to go into effect January 1 and a cost if it were to go into effect March.

Well, just to again to clarify this, these figures covered those 13. Yes, positions.

All of the original four options and just not 13. It's 13 classification. Yes, about 36 and 36 employees, 34 employees. But yes, all the first four options include those. The fifth option is only those.

OK, so from what I understand, going back, if my memory serves me, the vast majority of our employees are still below in that one bottom one fourth.

Correct. We just highlighted that had just been specifically asked by some council members. Right, right. Because it was brought up on multiple slides. It made reference to the 13 classifications.

Somewhere I heard 70% of our employees were still in the bottom one quarter of their pay scale.

Right, but we were really focused on the 90s for the 13 classifications. And then that was shown on a couple of slides. I know more than one council member kind of picked up on that and said, okay, if we just focused on those, what does that all-in cost look like? And again, these are the numbers. Feel free to ask me questions. Then bring Pam up to answer them if I can't get the numbers out correctly. But this is a little bit of where you get to be council people of the kind of the picking and choosing of what your decision and the impacts are gonna make if you move forward with any of these because they all have pluses and minuses on there. But I wanted to make sure that the math was good enough for you to make the right decision for you as a council and your constituents as you see fit.

So I just wanted to clarify something, I think, that Councilman Krim, you just mentioned. I think you said that some large number, aside from the 13 classifications that we're talking about, or 34-ish positions, that a large number were less than 28% compatible with the rest of the market, and I don't recall that. I thought that it was generally 90%, and anybody that was under the 90 hit that 85, or whatever.

I'll have Pam clarify that on the next wave.

We met 67 employees that were paid in the first four times. That's 67 employees across the board. That's where that time and position comes into play, because the people in that bottom quarter have been here 10, 15, 20 years. There was a slide that I showed that here here

And this won't do anything for us when we're talking about compression and stuff like that, right?

This particular option, no.

The only thing that won't help your compression is going to be your timing position.

So if you don't see TIP up there, then you know it's not addressing the compression issue. And not all the options presented by the consultant had TIP as something in consideration.

Time and position is costly, but it's also a very good thing to have to have that kind of experience instead.

so this is option one again the first two line items general fund and police this is essentially telling you these are funded these are the two numbers you're adding together that are basically come down to here that's what would come out of that tax difference Option one, this includes everything. Again, we're adding in all the costs. So these are 100% costs. We want to be as close as accurate to exactly how you're spending those dollars in the tax. Everybody will get this as a handout to make notes on. I'll make sure that you guys get these slides. Option two, this is, I'll get Pam if you just want to give the highlight of option two with this included.

Option two is brain to memory and comp ratio.

He's the one on the podium. Yeah, the podium will be good.

Is that better? Yeah, okay. Option two is bring to minimum and comp ratio. And what comp ratio is, is if we have an employee, I'm gonna use Michael as an example. Michael's been here 15 years, close to it. He may only be 3% into his current pay scale. Comp ratio will place him at 3% in his new pay scale, regardless of how long he's been here. Comp ratio will contribute significantly to compression.

And again, you can kind of see the price differences. Again, we gave you the total numbers, but also the general fund number. That's kind of what you're looking at of what this cost of option two would be. Similarly, option three, I'll let Pam describe the difference here.

Same thing, you have a bring to minimum comp ratio and it also gives a 3% across the board. So every employee will receive at least 3%, not including police because they have a different step scale.

Yeah, and that is one thing I just want to bring up that y'all might remember. The police, you'll see the cost is the exact same because they are on a different pay scale irregardless of what option you pick. It's the same cost that's coming from there. So I believe option three is actually the most expensive to the general fund now that we've kind of done the breakdown for you guys based on where the actual staff was. I know there'll be questions when it was originally presented just based on salary to council. Option four was the most expensive and three was a little bit cheaper. But when you actually start looking at which fund is going to be paying and where the people actually sit position wise, Option four is actually cheaper than option three when you break it down this way. And again, you guys voting specifically related to the general fund and everything else and the impacts to the additional tax revenue. Option four is this and Pam, maybe give a description of option four.

Option four is bring the minimum time and position and 3% across the board and does not have comp ratio apply.

or no effect to the compression.

Now this will improve your compression because the new structures were written with that in mind.

Okay. What's the pro and con against starting January and March?

From an employer perspective or an employee perspective? From an employer perspective, it is cost savings. But from the employee perspective is I'm still doing the same job and I'm still making the same amount of money. I know it's out there in reach, but it's just not fast enough.

When are you gonna leave?

You never know.

And you have a whole quarter to figure it out. That's the key.

We do have many of our staff that are young and that are raising families, and they do chase the dollar, so that is important.

It's getting expensive out here.

And then last, this is, again, taking those 13 classifications, 34 employees only, and applying the bring to minimum and time and position to them. and just those employees so this wouldn't apply across the board it would just be those 34 employees when you break it out and you look at it obviously the police doesn't change but when you're checking the general fund based on where the employees actually sit and which fund is actually paying them the 431 when you compare it to the other two options, which are the most costly ones. Stop there.

I want to go back to three. I want to explain this three you see in January for utility fund. Now go to option five utility fund. We have a lot of experience in our utility fund a lot. So this is where that when I said it was going to be costly, it's costly on the utility fund side.

it's not as costly to the general fund and again you guys are having that budget conversation based on the budget which is the general fund the utility fund conversation the rate study which is paying for all of that that's a different conversation for you guys to look at so i don't want you that's why i'm trying to keep them separate because i don't want you to negatively impact the general fund by making decisions of items that are paid out of a completely different fund and you don't want to be using one fund to supplement the other fund than what you should typically do and in this case you don't want to have the general fund supplementing the utility fund but those again we're not here for a decision tonight but i wanted to make sure that you guys will have this math to where you can basically say whichever direction you come from. If you know what rate you feel like that is the rate that you can pass and approve as a council person, this is how those funds could be applied below it from the new positions and or one of these options and start date. Or if you're coming from the other direction and you're like, I want to do this comp study and i want to start it at this date and i want to do these positions that will basically put you in a tax rate so i'm providing it to you that you can get to your conclusions from either direction that you want to come from and i'm not telling you which direction to come from that that'll be for each of you individually but i am open to additional suggestions but i don't know how any other way to break it down for you guys than this based on everything that i've seen correspondence or talked about at any of the council meetings i'm open to suggestions and i will definitely execute on those if you guys need it in a different form or fashion with staff

Printed form.

Yes, this will be printed and given to you the these slides.

Okay We're we're might Refresh my memory. What are those 36 folks? How do they compare to the other the bulk of the employees that are still below the market baseline? I mean we said they're in a critical position, right and

Meaning they're below the 90.

I believe all of our positions are critical.

Well, I do too, but I'm trying to figure out how to distinguish between what I feel like I want to cover all employees, but I'm trying to figure out how would we determine these 36 votes. What criteria did we use?

They were below the 90%? 90%?

I think so.

They were below the 90%, and that was...

I mean, I don't want to quote that because I don't have it in front of me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. You got it. It was about 34 to 36 employees across all positions. That would be utility and whatnot. And so, again, the data, you have to apply it correctly to understand where those costs are hitting and whatnot for you guys to make the decision on the tax impact. Giving you the total all funds is not fair to you as council members to make decisions on. So we've tried to break it out in this way. So ultimately, and I'll let you all think about that, the plan would be on the 15th is obviously we have the budget for adoption as it is currently at 68. a few things can happen either you guys through discussion can tell staff you know what we know for a fact that's not going to happen you need to come with something else for us to adopt in the next week and we will run that math and do those numbers and come with it What we are going to do as a staff is right now is we're basically presenting that same budget back to you guys. All the verbiage that has to be read specifically is all the same. We will do it similar to the same thing as we're going to pre-do the calculation. I'm proposing to staff that to keep it as simple as possible it be in one cent increments we're not trying to go in there with half cents quarters and a bunch of other decimals because we have to run the math and the math has to be correct in order for you guys to adopt it and then we want it read correctly we will probably have the ordinance and rate printed out all these different ways ready to go essentially with the math pre done you know if it's a 68 and change 67 and change 66 and change and 65 and change we won't have the budget obviously because we will you will have to adopt it and have direct staff to address it differently if it's anything different than 68 which is perfectly fine and commonplace we've showed you guys all the math all that does is change that 783 number may go down, basically, and that's why we've shown it that way to you guys of how to apply it. but that's ultimately what staff feels that we can be the most preparedness for next week. Again, if we're not able to reach the six positive votes for whatever it is council decides, we will roll that to the next council meeting on the 22nd, in which case you guys have to come to some kind of adoption at that point.

If you look at those positions that we're talking about, newly funded positions, those that are mandated And we're going to require a tax increase because we don't do anything without a tax increase other than a zero balance budget.

correct if you unless i mean it's within it i think you guys all said it's a bad idea but there could be someone that says you know what fund those positions with the excess money you have and we'll kick the can down the road and let the next council deal with the next budget i did say that i was suggesting that you guys all said that's a bad idea but in your question of saying well what else could we possibly do i mean those are decisions you guys How was it said today at the growth summit? Very well paid and hugs and kisses and whatnot. It made the very high dollars. Very high dollars.

The very high volunteer dollars.

Volunteer dollars, yes. I will come with.

So just for my gratification and a nod, do we have heartburn about the .68 at this point?

I do not. No, good, I'm not. I do not, I'm not, nope. I'm verbalizing. Okay.

And as opposed to that, is there another number that anybody's thinking of? So I was looking at the .66 to see if it would fund our 13 classifications plus, Which one were you looking at? 6-6.

So that would be $548,000 and some change.

And that doesn't include new positions. If you add the new positions, we're looking closer to like the 6-7. It'd be just a little over six, seven. We'd be shy by like 21,000. So we'd have to cut it.

I thought it was the staff picks and mandatory positions.

Yeah, those six positions plus that option that you were looking at. That gets us up to 687. And the 67 would bring us 666. So we'd be shy by about 21,000.

Yeah, right. Again, I'm not going to get you down to the pennies and cents, but those are I want to give you big enough numbers where you can get close enough and then direct staff to figure it out.

So we'd be able to work with possible six to seven.

Dependent on which options you think that you guys want to apply it to. And again, that's Ultimately, the direction we're looking for, I just want to come prepared. It is not as simple as you guys pick a random number to change the rate to. No, it can't be random about this. And then we try to do the number and get the ordinance to you guys correctly to approve. There's more that goes into it than... You said like any time that you do your math you always try to do just like a little bit of a buffer Yeah, when we're talking about like Pam said if you guys were like, oh man, we're 27 $27,000 short. We don't want to go up an entire cent Those are things staff you guys who would say this is what the rate is now Go adjust the budget and we would go adjust the budget to make sure that we came in on that now if you said Go adjust the budget a quarter million dollars That's the only way I can balance it out at that point in time.

So for me, I like looking at the 67. That's just me, I'm only one person. But as much of a burden that we can take off of the taxpayers, that's what I'm kind of looking for. But still being able to do as much as we can to get to all of these things. And I think that the compensation study is very important because since I've been on this council, and I think even before that, it's been talked about, there's been a lot of work put into it. And if we're at a point where we can get our staff to the right pay, I think the time is to do it, right? But also with the limited amount of tax burden on the taxpayers.

One of the things I think we need to consider too is that when we talk about the impact on the average assessed value of a home in Elgin is about $290,000. That's not market value, that's the assessed value. The total impact on that person would be $203 a year, about $17 a month. I'm not saying that's good because there's nobody on this council that wants to raise taxes. There's no incentive for me to do that because I pay taxes. But my point is, for what we're trying to do, when you talk about employees, I've always made the comment it cost us to lose employees. The average, when we lose three cops, if we lose three law enforcement or police officers a year, the average cost to the city is anywhere between $50,000 and $80,000. multiply that times three, we just gave them their raise. So we pay a tax. It's a hidden tax called a turnover tax. And that's something we really have to consider. We need to be good stewards of the taxpayers' money. In one respect, I think that's what we need to do because we need to protect their investment. What they've already put into these folks, we need to protect that investment. and longevity longevity is part of that yeah i agree and it's not just police officers it costs us every time somebody from any of these other departments quit you know so because you got to go retrain yep background background checks verification certification and somebody else picking up the slack in the meantime that hurts absolutely

Yes, I would like to see that.

I agree with that. I'm comfortable with six seven. Nobody's going to do it. So we're not voting.

We're not. But they've got. But what I would do is and this is what I would bring back to council is based on those directions. If you guys wanted something less than the 68 is I would bring back to you and say this is what staff recommendations would be. These are the costs. So what I would do is basically say We know that this is where you guys want to go on the screen right now. You want to fund these positions. So this is my baseline. I know I'm funding those positions. We've already discussed that it's probably most likely the January across the board. Those dollars are going to it. and then let staff come back and say based on that this is what our recommendation to council would be on the comp study that we feel would help with all the needs from that perspective and give you those numbers of what that selection would look like for the 67 and for the 68 just so you could see what it comes back as between those two But I do need to know if that number's going lower, that's more iterations I need to run. So I've got 68, which obviously we would give you that recommendation and have ready to present to you in a slide. We'd have 67 with that recommendation to present to you in a slide. Is there a need for us to do any other iterations for council for next week?

I don't think so. And how useful is that comp study system been?

I haven't used it yet. It hasn't passed.

Pam, what do you think makes a bigger impact, the comp ratio or the time and position?

When you say impact, can you define that?

Well, you said that the comp ratio contributes to like the compression, so would not the time and position be a better option rather than the comp ratio?

Absolutely, time and position would be the better option from a staff perspective.

Okay, thank you.

Michael wants to pass out papers. I'll explain them in a minute.

So we did do an executive summary and we do have some sheets to fill in on your budget workshops. Again, we're trying to keep them color coded so that way you can keep track of what is the next.

I got this one. Put them in the front of the book. Now, these green pages are on 68 cents. So if we're going to do 67 cents, these are really null and void. Right. And the executive summary, it's hard to write until you have the budget completed, so the executive summary's also written on 68 cents. So just remember that as you're reading through it.

But what we will do is, in a very concise manner, have a slide or two on each of those tax rates that show directly how it applies to those positions from staff based on if those funds were available to you guys. But now you do have, if we make a recommendation, you guys have all the background of the dollars and cents and where we're coming from on that recommendation so that, again, in transparency as well as we can do, you understand where the dollars are coming from and the process put forward.

At the back of that packet I gave you is a staffing summary. It includes all the positions that were requested, but you'll notice that they have zeros. I also included a legend at the top of that, so it would help you identify new positions, title changes with the comp study, and so on.

What page is that?

Ooh, fancy.

Right behind the green.

Right behind the green. The first white page after all. There you go. This one right here. My bad.

It's all right.

Again council if you guys have questions continue to put them in there. My goal will be to try to complete prior to the council and distribute those slides with the numbers because I know from you guys it takes a lot of time and thought and effort into it. I always have a you know putting it in and then saying make a decision now that that's sometimes unfair to you so With this direction from tonight, we will get with staff to pull those together and get them out to you as soon as possible. That way you've had time to digest it prior to the 15th.

So we'll have 6, 8, and 6, 7.

Correct.

For next Tuesday.

We'll have this out to you guys in hard copy and emailed the slides. And then I will work on only the slides that would be presented to you guys related on those two different options for it. i do not plan to go back through everything that we went through that is not related to the budget i feel like we got good feedback um we got the one that we'll revisit when we're talking about the utility rate study but i think we've gotten direction and feedback from you guys on all of the other topics that unless you find a reason that you think it needs to be rehashed or discussed um but feel free to continue to send in questions and we will do our

Would you, Beau, would you do me a favor and include that impact on the taxpayer figure for us? In other words, we suggest it's $203 a year for the average assessed value at home. And then what 67 and 68 would do. And remember, guys, too, there was a comment made about how that impacts our most vulnerable part of our community, which we always consider 65 and older. Their taxes are frozen, folks. They don't pay a dime toward any rate increase. Again, none of us want to raise taxes, I believe.

Good point, Nisten.

Because I'm 65.

No.

I'm older than that.

I'm not there yet.

Any other comments for us?

Okay, it is 8.09, and we will resume an executive session. The council will adjourn to public meeting, and any time during this meeting, a convenient executive session pursuant to Chapter 551 of the Texas Government Code to discuss any matter as specifically listed on the agenda and are as permitted by Chapter 551 of the Texas Government Code. The one thing that we have is deliberate the appointment employment, evaluation, assignment, duties, discipline, and dismissal of the city manager and deliberate the appointment and employment of acting or interim city manager pursuant to Texas Government Code Section 551.074 and consult with legal counsel regarding related legal issues pursuant to Texas Government Code Section 551.071. We will go into our executive session. It's 8.51 and we're reconvening into our regular open session and there's no action to be taken and it is 8.51 and we will adjourn.