City Council - Regular Meeting

Jason's [laughter] Jason uh RT director in addition to being a department head is also manning the uh the equipment for broadcasting all of our meetings. Uh and he's going to be first on the list today. Uh good to be back in the chair and we've got um you know I think a few of these will be pretty quick because we really said no to everything and most a lot of these budgets are either less than they were the year before um or pretty much where they're at u with the exception of it got a um you know they had we tried to have all of our new requests at the beginning of the cycle this year just so um it'd be more operationally focused but our IT director was out for that that he was sick so um he is going to talk about 's new request here in a little more detail u before we get to some of the other

question I may have told Kyle wrong. Is there public comment to this? There's no public comment but I know we reached out beforehand. We are going to discuss tiff and I know we'd had some kind of questions on tiff funding with the heart of Ellsworth. Um, so I I I relayed back uh uh to the teams and I I did consider this an appropriate time to talk about TIFF with Heart of Ellsworth the status funding. Twilight and I have actually talked separately. So we we wanted to have this conversation as well. So, I wouldn't say that we typically don't allow just general public comment here, but um with an organization that it was kind of left in um uh in kind of vague terms as to how we move forward, um I think this is totally appropriate. I was So, that's going to be okay. Yep.

Okay.

Yep. Um the uh and yeah, just on that note too, we will this is kind of the finalization of the general budget conversations and then we have one more budget workshop. Um is [snorts] kind of a a recap of some of the things. You know, Ashley's been keeping a change log of times when council has been like, I'm not quite sure about that or hey, I noticed this was, you know, inputed incorrectly. Uh we've had a few of those come up as well. So this next meeting we'll kind of review the change log and then discuss some things that were left a little bit you know what [snorts] is the council's will on this I think the uh a few of those and there there's there's many one is the emerald ashbor uh you know what what is the council uh per p perview on that discussion I think there's a little bit more discussion around that um could be about the the IT discussion um here uh I think you know we'll have some discussion on tiff and um the heart Ellsworth, but some finalization on those pieces. Um, I'm trying to think what else. There's a couple other flags, but we'll send out a an email to council. Oh, uh, short-term rentals um and the the funding for the budget, but my recommendation that if we're going to budget that, we should at least be uh forecasting our revenue um based on to cover the at the system itself um and the time to to implement it uh you know, as a kind of a first step. And and I think, you know, for that one too, that's that's not the end of the budget season that we move forward. I think that would really just be an initial step to fund that piece of it. And then we'll have a much longer short-term rental um uh regulation and environment discussion, which, you know, there's all kinds of areas to be at on this, which is, you know, very heavily regulated and, you know, uh completely lzair, which is where we're at now. Um and everything in between. Uh but for the budget side of things and what I'd like

to discuss in the kind of next round is hey do we want to fund this registration system which is a very good and robust one. Um but if so we'll at least need to have some sort of fee to cover that. At least that was my recommendation. We could just use tax dollars if it's the council's will um without a fee and it would just cost money to implement and get data. You know as I've mentioned there I'm a little bit more in the let's at least have it cover its cost um before we go. But we'll we'll have that discussion too in a few other items and and counselors too when I send out that email if it's if you've got hey no no no I wanted to discuss this or something new has come up that you feel like needs to be addressed I know we'll talk capital improvement planning but we've got some discussion of the city seal and some other pieces and and cap when Sarah's up talking about capital improvement too that that is going to be a multi-phase conversation. Um, so we'll also do a probably a little bit of a recap of [snorts] where we're at in the budget conversation at the uh the next meeting, which is not next week, but the Thursday thereafter. So

what's that? The dangerous buildings. The dangerous building, right? Um, yeah, I think there was some conversation on the one that I would didn't attend on that front. So, um, and then there's some other like smaller things that have come up in between now and then and benefits. Unfortunately, that I think the workers comp is expected to be a lot more. So, that might be an additional $100,000 that's needed to plan for workers comp uh increases. Just all the fun ones, which is some things there that are kind of out of your out of our control that you got to take and there's going to have to be some give and take on certain things.

Yeah. Yeah. Um and there's been a few that have gone in the other direction, too. So, we um that's kind of where we're at now. Jason, if you're out there, do you want to come in so we can start with it? [cough] Right. Good evening, council. Jason Engles, IT director. Um, I guess I'll just go through this in the order that it appears in the book. Um, starting with my new requests, [snorts] um, which begin on page 39 per my notes here. Um, this would be so the new requests I had I had three of them. Um, Charlie cut all of them. So, I'll go through them in case you're feeling particularly generous and you know, maybe you want to let me have them anyway.

Um, so uh, anyway, the first one is upgrades for the uh, council chambers audiovisisual equipment. Um, we've had a lot of complaints about the audio quality, um, display, you know, placement, things like that. Um, so we would like to upgrade the equipment in here. Um, so we had requested 15,000 for that. Um, so that's what that item is for. [snorts] I don't know if you just want to move on to have questions, how you want to.

Yeah, I guess maybe I'll Yeah. [laughter] So, as is noted, I'm kind of no to everything this year. Not that it's not needed. I I agree. The the quality isn't awesome. We have had some complaints. We've tried to reorient the workshop meeting to be directly over that that mic that seemed to have helped. The video quality is not great, I think, when you all installed this, but this seems to be part of those things that we need to update every few years, but it works. Um, and you know, kind of following my pattern of just this year is the year we're gonna say no to a lot of things that are important, but you know, if it's not in the absolutely have to have, can we last one more year with this piece? Uh, you know, that's I'm also always surprised about how many people actually watch these meetings. So, it is from a citizen engagement, from a citizen um, you know, not tonight's a great example. most folks uh especially younger families that can't attend these meetings like if they want to know what's going on or something important is happening this is their only way to do so. So having clear video, clear audio, um a lot of transparency. I think this is an important request. Um it's just it's hard to say yes to this and saying no to so many other needed requests too. Um so that's why this is a no for this year.

Okay, my next request is next page, page 40. Um, we did in uh we did request a new employee u in IT. Um, we are very very busy. Um, we have what I would consider a [snorts] non-traditional IT department where we do a lot of work outside of IT. Um, and there are only two of us. Um, I hope you have a chance to read the memo I wrote. There's a lot of good data in there. um you know doing some research and looking at some HR national HR data um typical average IT staffing to all staff ratio for municipalities in the United States is about 3 to 4% IT to all staff. Um with two of us now we're at 1.43%. Um with a second person we'd still only be uh with a third person we'd still only be at 2.15%. So, um, to even get us in the average range, we would need three more people, which I'm not asking for, don't get me wrong, but, uh, just to illustrate that, you know, even for a traditional IT team where we would be understaffed without all those extra obligations. So, um, and I think also important to note, uh, our neighbors across the street at Hancock County, um, 10 years ago had zero IT staff and now they have three. uh they have fewer employees, they have fewer a much more narrow focus of responsibilities, they don't, you know, have the traffic signals and those kind of things that they're working on. So, um they have three for a smaller workload than what we're doing. So, if you haven't, I I appreciate if you do get a chance to read the memo. Um there's a lot of good data in there. Um, h have you looked in or is it even possible to um hire a consultant to help you guys that would be at a lower cost to the city without the benefits and all that stuff until we get to the point of

being able to afford it more employees? My ex what we could my experience with that is it's not always well received or not wellreceived but it's it's difficult to manage those type of relationships. Um and and define boundaries of who is responsible for what. Um so [snorts] if there's a chance that this could happen within a year or two, I'd almost rather just them belong as it is uh than try and manage that kind of a relationship honestly. So

yeah, and just to chime in there, like that's really one of the super sad parts about this piece and we've, you know, we're assessing we've brought in a consultant to kind of be in this piece as opposed to having to hire multiple people take multiple years. Um, in this category like the work that we need help with, I'd say too in it like these these guys are the experts are the experts of the experts in so many categories imaginable. I wouldn't want to hire a consultant to do the high level work that I'd rather have them doing because they're the closest to it. They're the best at it. And then the flip part about that is to hire a consultant to do like their ticketing work. That's that's not really like that part of the reason that they're so great too is you get to walk into that office and I'm having my problem by computer. So that's a harder thing to consult out. That really is a body at the desk. So, it's kind of inverse to a lot of our other functions in the city. Um, you know, we could look at consultants, but then we'd be having them work on the lower value items. The the additional staffer, at least is here, is more of like an entry level position. Um, and the credit to IT too. You'll see the requested amount. Uh it's the first time in my history of being here where a department has requested an amount and they did the really hard work of every single dollar that would be included for that person.

Yeah, we did benefits, you know, furniture. We tried to think of everything that would person would that person would actually cost. So So it's that's the that's the 115,582 is the all-in true amount. you know, in previous years they'd be, hey, $72,000, that's all it's going to cost the city. And and to the credit of it, and I I I I've been hearing some of the other department heads saying, uh, we can we have to pay it, you know. Yeah, we got two. [laughter]

No, nothing's free. I mean, you you provide a service to all the departments. So, you know, it it's Yeah, it's kind of You guys do a great job to cook. You know, Steve has said I'm going to say I you know,

could could paid externship internships with a small stipen help you on those low ticket items? I mean like graduating or or third year computer science major from possibly I know how good they are because they keep me going. [laughter] A lot of the issu a lot of issues that's a good point Carol. A lot of the issues we have with interns are the access to law enforcement data that they are expos they would be exposed to and we have a lot of background checks and everything that they would need to go through. So that complicates matters a bit past it being useful at all. Is that prohibitive?

Yeah, I mean I think just just being able part of the help desk system. I mean all that there's all that data comes into one central point whether it's a police officer or you know a city clerk or whatever. So they would be seeing you know law enforcement data that they would need to have the background check and all that process go through all that process for

I think there's an interesting piece on this on the um the internship is kind of there's always a it's a double-edged sword in some ways. It's almost like we got this grant, we got this thing, that's awesome, but like how much staff like do we have the capacity to do that? The problem I've had with interns in government especially is the like the churn aspect u because you you know for uh for it it's also going to be we're going to have to train somebody new as an interm as they cycle in and out and that like that investment that you have to make in training somebody to do x y and z is usually pretty significant. Um my experience in government when I was uh director of communications um in uh in Massachusetts uh we you know I didn't have a large staff I had to depend on agency staff and it was always let me try an intern and it was so much more hassle than it was worth time-wise and then they'd leave when I had the projects. The one area that I found it was helpful, which is I'm wondering if there could be a component of this was like social media, um, digital media, some of the posting stuff, like that was an area where I could create like a a pretty quick like onboarding training process. And these youngsters like knew better on all those things than I did. So, I was able to like have a new intern. I was there for seven years just every semester. Here you go. Here's the new internship for the social media aspect. You know, here's your portfolio. Here's what I need you to do. that was like a week of training and then a pretty light lift for that piece. So I do wonder if there's anything in it that would be in that category but to get to those lower ticket items like I'm just thinking about you guys now would have also a new management responsibility that would take a ton of time. Um but it's an interesting concept

we can think about definitely it would also be a ser I mean know I know I know this is secondary but it would also be a service to the community because internships have been cut back now and these students are looking for some kind of experience to get into the workforce in Maine and certainly in Maine we've had we've had high school students reach out to do those kind of internships I've never worked with any like college level um but we really can't it's hard with the with the type of work we're doing in in the time maybe it would take to get someone up to speed and just it's almost you with a high school student in particular you it's a time loss I think. Oh no I'm talking about I'm talking about students ready to graduate in computer science and they're amazing.

Yeah that would be different for sure but I just we would have to we'd have to put them in a we have to think that through. I was thinking HCTC and I was like I wonder what the city council is going to think when they try to do their onboarding with a high school student. [laughter]

Yeah. I'm with her, you know, juniors, seniors in college, you know, seniors in college that it would be a stepping they might even get one that might even come stay. You know what I mean? But I do hear the concerns about the security, the sensitive information that you you two have to deal with. Yeah, we we're it's it's under there's a se sieges policy. We get audits by the the FBI and I mean they they check all that. So yeah.

Yeah. And this this one out of all the new requests was the hardest to say no to. Um in fact I think we talked much earlier on um how much pressure I was seeing on them in the system and that I really felt that they needed additional support. And I think if you were to pull all the managers, you know, to say, "Hey, who needs it the most, it would be it." I think a couple years ago, we um added somebody to HR because our HR director like literally hadn't taken a week off in over a year, maybe two years.

Um and it's just like I had burnout point. I think most people in the organization was like, "Do this with that person or else the whole system is failing." And we're teetering on that with it. Well, I think one thing it's frustrating for us because we know what else we could be doing, you know, like we're we're held back because of what we're the hours in the day. Um, so I just think we're frustrated because we really know what the next level would look like and we're we want to get there. So So do we think we can get there in the next It sounds like it's a priority within staff.

Yeah. And it's it's one of those things, too. There's systemic risk. Um, you know, I I I hope Jason and Nate stay here, you know, another decade. Um, they're some of our longest serving employees actually. Um, but you never know. And to me, it's also as an organization, we've seen this in the past where we just don't plan well enough for succession and creates and if you know, if they got sick for two months, then we'd be in a much more expensive sit situation and we'd have to be like, "Hey, there's going to be some service downgrades. Your traffic lights might not be able to be fixed

um on time. your police cruisers like we're not we're going to lease them and then we're not going to be able to outfit them because it is not going to be able to do that. Um and we're going to be scrambling you know it's not just one department that we're going to be scrambling to fix. It's going to be every department that touches it. Uh so there's a systemic aspect to it.

There's also I think a future efficiencies in the whole system aspect to it. AI is coming and and these two know this stuff better than anybody on staff. Um they have unique insights that have been helping me and a lot of our department heads. They do trainings with our department heads. Um there's a lot of areas where I don't think AI is for a long time is going to help us. Sadly, they're our most expensive parts of government. The fire department is not going to be able to be AIDed. They do very critical health and unpredictable manual labor. Same thing with the police department. Unless we want to go to a drone nightmare scenario. U [laughter] we're gonna need I want real police officers. Um so that but some of our other parts of the organization that are really stressed

and we don't can't hire um a lot of [snorts] new staff without big financial finance um city management our planning group economic development. Uh these are organizations with code that with one or two people in the entire thing for the fastest growing city in Maine where we're just maxed out. and [snorts] another person in it would actually for the lower I say value but the more entry level work on tickets you know the 75 to 100 tickets or once plus the walk-ins um they're just you you all included have probably knocked on their door more than a few times when you're coming through city hall their days always getting interrupted uh so what we lose out on in terms of efficiencies in the organization and future planning um is using their big brains to help us be more efficient in the rest of the organization and you know Nate our deputy here. I mean, he has a background in municipal software budgeting. Uh, you know, there without without his help on this budget process, what's in your hands right now, every there's I think there's like 1,700 Excel formulas [laughter] in here. Um, you know, more than the city manager,

uh, like, yeah, if the budget process is is going south, um, get rid of me and keep Nate. [laughter] You know, I've done a lot of extra work, too, without the finance director here on this. um and Ashley and our deputy and um but it is doing that that's very not typical in an organization which department you really spend a lot of time working well depends on the time of year finance this time of year is [laughter] a lot of um I would say probably police police they have a lot of technology and it has to be done very carefully so it's secure No, no. Yeah.

And there's other things too like we're holding back. I think that's one of the things with HR that we really found when they needed some support is the whole organization was holding back from asking HR for help on a bunch of things because they knew how stressed our HR director was and then even when they got that extra person like nobody can believe how they [snorts] survived as one. And the answer was like as soon as another one got added all these mission critical items for the organization performance reviews a performance review process um there's a lot to HR tracking workers comp uh oh all all all the whole aspect of you know somebody get

and they handle payroll and HR and like this group is is like that as as well I think um you know and the thing some of the things we're holding back on them is digital modernization uh we're opens two components with open gov and the water department um and [snorts] to digitize our water systems that they're not just on paper anymore and um that's going to be enormously helpful and then the parks and recreation systems uh as well as our procurement and then uh this next fiscal year it'll be grants management um and but we're trying to be as light as we can on it uh but like we need seven or eight more digital modernizations that they would be really helpful in all these calls.

Well, and part of the problem with we appreciate the taking it easy on us, but we end up having to come in at the end and kind of do cleanup on like [snorts] well this should have been integrated here along the way and that should have been integrated here. So, we end up having to do those integrations like on the back end. So, um while it's appreciated, but [snorts] it doesn't it's not a zero. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. For like the procurement needs login credentials for everything. It's like, okay, now they got to add a bunch of login credentials and how to automate that system and how new people [snorts] come in and how do you make it secure. Um, so sounds like the most critical new hire that we need.

Yeah. And it's one of those things, you know, we're at that 7% threshold um that, you know, next budget cycle we have some debt service falling off, but we're going to get to capital improvement planning a little bit later and we have a lot in that bucket, too. M

um so you know fees, revenue generation, some of the tougher conversations about um what we need, how do we fund this, you know, and this this cycle, a lot of people came in with requests earlier on. We talked about kind of where we're at in the budget. Um some of the just general increases in collective bargaining agreements, benefit increases, uh just maintaining the like the half hires that were made last year. we added half a police officer, half of a firefighter. Well, now this year, that's a full police officer, that's a full firefighter, that's a full um dispatcher. So, those costs are kind of now all in this year, but next year, you know, police and fire need more. Um, and, you know, other departments are kind of holding back and they they need some more, too. So, it's it's going to be a tough next cycle, too. But, this one, you know, we you always have to judge year by year, is going to remain at the front of my list. This kind of maybe doesn't relate to it, but hey, I was a contracted employee for the city of Boston. No benefits, but I worked right there in the office and I had a parks vehicle. I had all I was essentially a parks department employee, but I got no benefits with that.

Kind of poor kind of. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know if that is a possibility for us and maybe it is not the position to do that with but when we are thinking about hiring people on especially with how expensive everything has gotten um if that's an option for the city

it you know it I was young out of college it worked and then um I think the they had budget increases in the city and I was one of the first ones to like come on as a um like they hired me as the city employee with all the benefits and stuff when they had the money to do that. So, it might be something to look into and if we can utilize that. I like not that we're in a competition here, but I like this idea and the intern piece. Yeah. When I was on campaigns, I was running operations. I had two 200 contract employees work for me. And um yeah, that was very nice because you didn't have to do those pieces. Yeah.

Um, some of them they were a little upset when they realized their withholding like wasn't included in their contract [laughter] and they got tax bills. That's They did take the taxes out of me and I'm contracted to University of Maine. That's how I teach. Oh, interesting. We didn't [clears throat] They take the taxes. That was 14 years. Mine's going to go for them tax. Well, you need to take the taxes, but we had it until like we didn't worry about that. You just gave them a check and it was up to them to be a 1099. But that was right when what 2009. So we were in that whatever the many crisis millennials have been through. Um and yeah the the city was really hard up and that's how they were hiring new people. So

you know I I've gone through this 400 5 600 page book twice before you guys saw it. I mean developing it another you know there are zillion different meetings with folks. I tried to take out as much as I possibly could, but once we finish the cycle, too, I'm going to go through it again. And, you know, if um there have been times in the past where I've said, "Wow, we budgeted $700,000 for that and there's 1.6 million." It's just like a random error. We can still be in line here knowing that was like for year one. Now that we third cycle here, there's less opportunity for those types of big mistakes to be in there. Um but I'll look out for that and you know yeah what's that's the thing that's tough is like what has to go

in here um what to in order to fund this that really is like the question of or do you want to raise taxes even more than they're already pegged to be raised um because this is so critical and there are certain things we talked about in finance too. We have like two or three things in finance that we've held off from bringing to you guys. Um, one of which is outsourcing some accounts payable, accounts receivable, and reconciliation work. Um, because it could help free up another employee that's doing, you know, the general ticketing type work of finance, which is paying the bills. And that's, you know, that place is like a Wonka factory. 8 a.m. to 6 pm. Boom. Like that is the loudest. But if we had them doing at outsource, we could, you know, bring up the folks to help on some higher level. You know, we got 150 things in finance that needs to be done. So that's it's like another area where um you know, we're already holding back on some mission critical things just to kind of fund everything at its level from last year. Um, so I I'll keep an eye out for that too on like as I do my final pass of the budget of just, you know, is X as valuable as like the risk of not doing why this this request. Um, just kind of like, hey, you know what, that that's super important, too, and we need to fund that. Um, maybe I'll use some AI in the budget to do some reading for me and say, "Hey, how can you stitch together this amount without crushing me in the city?" [laughter]

You better know when it's hallucinating. I have a new part-time job. That's what I do. I go AI into until into what hallucinates. [laughter] Yeah, it's fun. I should know. I'm not going to use AI in the budget. distracting any, but I I I sat in the city on the school department's presentation on it and they're addressing those issues on how to set up so that the high school students use it for the right way. You see what I mean? So,

poor Jason's up here growing moss under [laughter] find a way. You know, I mean, it it's I want to fund this for you, but I Yeah, this is No, I tough understand. And I, like I said, I like seeing the fact that the other departments that are using you are paying for you. you. Yeah. Your time is valuable and and the materials that you use too. Yeah. You know, I mean it it you know.

So I just need to know for the change, do we want to see this in the budget or do we not want to because currently it's not in the budget that you have. So do we want to see what it looks like in the budget? Do we want to I'd say this is this is in the revisit along with the short-term rentals. I mean, that's one way to do it. If you want to have a higher fee on short-term rentals, they'll cover this. You could make that fee. Boost that up five, six grand. We'd be we'd be home free. Yeah. [laughter] You could do parking kiosks. That's the thing. You can pursue very politically and profit [laughter] your revenue. You know, that Airbnb, it's funding our IT department. Yeah. It's it's the hard thing about all this is I've been I've been Yeah.

What's this about fear? like um we'll re revisit it at the next budget conversation. Um can you do a when you okay do the new budget log like with some of these requests that we are looking at like without what it changes the total with and without it like what if page or something. Oh yeah, we can build the calculator that we did last year at the end cycle where you can basically we kind of did something like this. We put it on the big board. We had like

if you do this, it's going to go from 7.1% to 7.8%. Um if you take it out, it'll go from 7.1 to 6.4%. Um you know, I can show you what would happen if we didn't have the benefit incre like the employee benefit increases that we had no control over because we can't even I [laughter] guess anything about it is just be sad. Just to make everybody really sad. Yeah. Um, you know, [laughter] it'd be be good if we didn't have to increase, you know what I mean? [snorts]

Yeah. So, we I I'll we'll definitely have that kind of functionality so you guys can see the calculator on and have these pieces and like you bring it into the budget, this is without offsetting cuts. This is what it be. The same thing for the emerald dashboard piece. you know, you'll be able to see that in the budget if the council wanted to move that in. That's not currently in here. So, if that moved in, this is what it would be. Um, if uh, you know, you wanted to toggle the fee on short-term rentals is is and that that one though is is just like such a projection piece. I really would be wary um to go much more than just a very general, you know, equivalent of one night's rental to cover the system and see where that revenue projection would be. Because the other thing I would hate to do is be like, it's going to generate this much income which would pay for this and it doesn't come near to that. Um, and I do feel like without much further discussion, especially the short-term rental piece, um, that's really should just be a a reasonable fee to cover the registration system and a little more in the near term.

Yeah. Um, and in the future, if the council wants to consider that, you know, based on a lot more research on, you know, pressures on the housing market that short-term rentals are creation, infrastructure issues, that that that type of market is, I do think there's an enormous cost to overregulating that piece of the market. Um, which is one of our biggest valuation increases generators in the city. Um, it's, you know, it's definitely pushed up property values pretty significantly. um which is you know not great if you're not looking to sell your house necessarily. It can mean a higher tax proper um or property taxes that you have to pay as a share but it is real money. It is if you know it does create real value in a in a um and there's all kinds of research on places that have overregulated that part of the market and it ends up being a net loss to the city. you're like, "Well, we gained $3004,000 in revenue, but you've devalued the housing market so much that you basically like you lose that much revenue. [laughter]

So, it might seem like you're got a new income stream, but it's a total washer and net negative um because you devalued housing in order to do it. It's one of the really tricky parts about overregulating the markets. Um, you are intervening in ways that you may not understand what they're doing. So, sorry for that. sidebar button. Quick, jump in while [clears throat] you can, Jess. Move on to the next one. Page 44.

Uh, we had asked for funding for new video conferencing equipment, which is essentially these Zoom appliances, Teams appliances, whatever you want it. Uh, those are all purchased around early on in CO. Um, and they still get used a lot and we've had a lot of issues lately with them dropping out, uh, crashing during meetings, uh, things like that. So, we were just trying to get ahead of that. Kind of behind it at this point, but [laughter] um and get them replaced with some more modern equipment, but that's all that is. And this one was the same. No. Um to the other upgrades. Definitely think it's needed. Um but

is this for all uh let's see. So, it would be this room and the auditorium. This room would have been under the AV upgrades for this room. So, this these numbers would have been for I will miss some, but there's some at the PD. There's training room, auditorium, wastewater. There's several. So, um, this would replace basically everything above that one because [snorts] that was under the other item at the beginning. Oh, for the council chamber a upgrade. So,

and then there is there any uh benefit or or non benefit to um upgrade peace meal one at a time? Oh, we can. It's nice to be able to buy all the hardware at once because then you're on one piece of hardware to manage firmware updates, software updates. It's much easier to just do it all at once. A staff of two. Well, exactly. And we're trying to get better about buying stuff in in larger batches because of that very reason. So, um it's easier to manage one batch of one large batch than

a few of this type and a few of that type. I would also note this isn't just like a request because oh we should get the new equipment and this is the like it is a problem. We especially in the auditorium and a couple other areas you just you lose you can't hear anybody. The the thing isn't working right. There's like one that works. The one in my office still works okay.

Yeah. The the smaller ones seem to be better. These bigger ones are the ones we've had the trouble with. So So anyway, that's what that was. Uh my next budget item is uh my the Kobe Kobe budget which is on page 76. Um Kobe is the fi the city's fiber network. I'll go next in book order. Probably messing you up. Okay. Um it's on 78 I think for us.

78. Okay. Um, [snorts] so this is our city fiber network and the shelter that goes with that where we have the equipment. Um, so this funds electricity, building maintenance, network maintenance, pole rental fees. Um, biggest change here is I, [snorts]

uh, dropped our revenues a little bit to better align with what we're actually seeing in reality. And I've increased maintenance by $5,000 because when MMA, the insurance company, did an inspection. They noted that the outer coating on the building appears to be delaminating in places from the underlying concrete. So, we need to have that looked at to see what can be done to repair that. So, I had a little extra money in there for that. Uh, and this was no change for manager adjust. All right. Next would be my technology budget and I have it as page 192.

194.

194. Um, so you'll note here a substantial decrease. And I'd like to say it's because we made massive cuts and we're way more efficient, but it's the reality is it's because we've shifted a lot of our costs onto the individual departments. Um, particularly with software expenses and shared costs. So, historically, any software used [snorts] by any department came out of it. It was budgeted under IT. So what we've done is if it's a piece of software that just benefits the PD or the fire department or the city clerks or the finance office, they now have that under their budget. Um, additionally, we've taken the shared services like Microsoft 365 which is used by all departments and broken that out by department based on the number of employees in that department. Um so that's why you see the IT budget has gone down but there will be an equivalent increase on the individual department so it's a wash essentially. Um so that's what you're seeing there. Um and I know several departments have noted it. Um it's it's just what like what was done with the legal fees and I think in the future you'll see more. Um it gives a better cost [snorts] uh better representation of the true cost of a department. I think for me it's nice for the departments to maybe see what the software they're using actually costs and maybe they might decide that it's not worth that cost where it was hidden before they used it. Um I I don't foresee much of that but it could happen. I just think it's better for the departments to see what these things are actually costing the city. So

and that's just the cost for the the equipment and the programs. This is software equipment. Yeah. Software. We have not done hardware. That will probably happen next year. Yeah, this was decided so late in the process, it didn't really have time to kind of break all that out too. So, and then the other thing is time is money. Yes, because it all takes time to do this and we do bill water and wastewater for our time because they're enterprise funds. So, they are funded by rateayers, not taxpayers. So, we bill them for our IT services. Um, we also bill the school department because they rent space on our servers.

So, they're paying for space on our server infrastructure, too. So, we do generate a little bit of revenue.

Um, and some of the upgrades we're planning for next year, uh, we we need to upgrade the phone recorder at the police department. That's at end of life, end of support. Um, we we're going to be upgrading the security camera storage unit, which is very old and very slow. Uh, we're going to continue our and we're going to continue our desktop and laptop replacement process so that we can stay ahead of the Windows 11 support expirations and all that. So all the manager adjustments here are relative to the uh uh the pulling out of the IT person and you'll see like systems enhancements from 130 to 90,000. That's

yeah that was that was the ease and the the AV upgrade. Yeah. So that's that's the the main thrust of the manager address in this category or these categories. Um the as as Jason noted, we kind of you know level funded on some of the systems enhancements that you know we need to have those those things moving forward. It's hard to a lot of those we can't we really shouldn't because you run to end of life situations where you don't get security patches anymore and we really need to make sure we stay ahead of those [snorts] things. Yeah. So, that's that stuff. You know, unfortunately um you know, it's still a high amount at 92,000 for all those enhancements, but that was what it was last year. And um you know, that keeping that together is important.

We also build in a number there just for unexpected. There's always a lot more unexpected things than you would than you would expect. [laughter] So, um a lot more. Um so, we we have a we have money in there for the unexpected, too. And as Jason noted, um, you know, that's it's part of a broader effort to true cost departments. I think, you know, we did a lot the last two budget cycles on, okay, this is an expense for your department. You know, it doesn't go in somebody else's department because you got to track it. You got to see what that department actually costs. Um, this year's big changeover was the IT piece. We had a fair amount of these last year on building costs and um other pieces that went directly into departments. Uh next year we're likely to we're going to we're going to slice out the benefits. That's the last really big piece. It's a complicated project. Right now it's kind of kept in the lump sum. You know, you can see it by individuals and I mean Carrie, our HR director, literally tracks it by every single individual employee in their um benefit cost. So it's there, but we're going to pull those out next year into the departments. Um so we'll have an overall benefits u uh line too but you'll be able to see it in the departments and then track over time. Um so we the city council and now and in perpetuity we'll be able to say okay this is how much that department is cost. This is these are where the cost centers are increasing more than others. Um but that'll be the last really big change. I'd also note that you'll see some additional TIFF revenue this year um into the IT department. Uh thank you to Twyla for all your work on the redesigning the tiffs. One of the things in that process that we realized was you know the city is is not dispersing tiff eligible funds in departments such as it and assessing was just really doing the city manager's office and economic development. But uh there are other areas. Our finance department does a lot of um u you know economic development type things uh that

are to fund those grants and to um that's a small amount here. Um but I know Twilight's you know uh trying to keep enough for economic development proposals and infrastructure upgrades and we'll get to econ a little later. She really um pulled back her budget as much as possible too. Um, and we just got some edits back on our new TIFF districts and um, some of them are more functional, but it validated, you know, the new TIF districts are designed like this too to specify which departments um, can receive some new funding. So hopefully as those grow, we can help offset, you know, that's why the staff is so stressed so many ways is we're just fastest growing city in Maine. services are exploding in terms of need in all of our departments, but city staff levels have not grown nearly as much as the service demands have. So, um you know, how can we use some of that 59 cents in the dollar, capture some of the growth, and help it fund some of those areas um like it in the future, but $5,000 isn't going to get us to the the new staff member. So,

next street lights. I have 254. It must be 256.

Um, so we've updated uh this budget to reflect the street light project we're working on with Versent and RTD. Um, that's coming along. The new lights will be installed by they're supposed to be done by June. So, um, that's the current uh plan. Uh, new lights have been purchased and all that. So, this reflects new maintenance costs, new expected power usage. Um, this also covers the ornamental street lights on Main Street, High Street, Merrick Street. Um, so this is where we're at. Um, it's an increase over this current year, but this current year was under budgeted, so it's really not a big increase. It's it's probably going to be less actually than what we're going to spend this year once you factor in what we went over. Remind me on what we were paying for the

we had [snorts] the lease. The lease. No, go ahead. 62,000 for the lease annually for five years and then we're but we bought them. Yes. So we the lease bought them. So now we pay back the lease. Then after the lease is paid off, we're responsible just for the actual electrical usage. Yeah. And maintenance. And that will show next year. The lease will be paid off. No, the lease is paid off. We have four more four more payments, four more years. Okay. So, um the the electrical cost drop immediately, but you don't see true savings until that lease is paid off. Um the lights have a minimum 10-year lifespan. That's the warranty is 10 years. Um but it's they'll often go much longer. So there's there's substantial savings o over the life of the lights. So

Okay. Do they warn you when they're getting ready to the lights will tell us when they're out? They will send an email or some kind of an alert tell us that. So they're smart.

Just another plug for the IT team here. You know, not a lot of IT teams uh figured out these kind of proposals to make them cost. You can just see right here on the this year we were over budget on power. This is kind of a consistent theme I think throughout this cycle as noted before increased cost of gasoline um due to recent events um but also double hit with the loss of our renewable energy sources. The solar fields that Ellsworth has a fair amount of credits from were down for a significant period of time. So we got kind of double dinged in power in terms of loss of our renewables increase in the fossil fuels. Um it was a tough very tough year for power. Um, I think that's why you've also seen in some previous council meetings and requests for uh additional reserve funding or budget freezes. Uh, you know, we're trying to make sure that we'll be able to cover some of these overages and things like power. But next year, you know, you're down $30,000 even from, you know, we even if there was to be that same situation next year, well, these street lights don't take as much power. So they're, you know, whether the solar panels go down or whether the fossil fuels increase, like our entire street light system is just taking a lot less power and will cost less money. Um, and also it's a big upgrade. I think in the next couple weeks they're supposed to start getting more full. Were you were you saying at the last management team meeting?

Yeah. So by the they're telling me end of May, 1st of June they'll the install will be happening and it's only supposed to take a week or so to do the actual install. It's 509 likes and a lot good bulk of those are currently not a lot of them don't work now. Yeah, it's so it's one of these upgrades. It's not just let's swap it out to save money. It was a real big catch on his part to be hey don't replace these things at a great cost to give Versent a new light that we're going to have to buy back from them.

If they upgraded a light to LED while we were in this process, it's substantially more money to buy that new LED than one of the old, you know, sodium lights. So this it was just like it's going to be a little painful for a little longer. It's it's worth the wait. I have a feeling though that this is going to be like when we repaired the roads last year and people complain the roads the roads are terrible. Why did you fix all these roads? The lights I don't see any lights. My lights are out. And then why are all these lights on? It's coming through my window. [laughter] That light hasn't been on in 12 years. One one thing that we can also do with these smart lights is they can be dimmed. So we if we have a problem area, they can be dimmed. Um, and they can also have deflectors installed so you can block the light in a certain direction. There's lots of options.

And that they're dark sky. They are dark sky compliant. Yeah. Awesome. Not colored. We can't do any fun things with them. [laughter] They are actually uh slightly orange tinted like the old style sodium lights. Um, they're 2200 Kelvin color temperature. I think we're the only only the third second or third time in Maine to do that. Um, the the technology is relatively new to make those lights and mask you know, mass production. So, um, I think people will like it. One of the complaints I see on LED is they're too white, too bright. Um, these shouldn't have that problem. So,

and my last section is traffic signals. I have page 260, so property 262. Um, I have requested additional funds and maintenance on the traffic signals because the past few years we keep going over budget. um due to mainly on unanticipated failures and everything traffic signal is incredibly expensive. The people that come fix them are very expensive. The equipment is expensive. It's it's all hardened, ruggedized equipment, so it's very expensive. Um so I've increased that request just to hopefully get ahead of that. Um, one positive note on that front or [snorts] two positive notes is we are still expecting DOT to come through in the next couple few years and make some significant upgrades to the signal hardware. Um, so that should help with those costs, you know, in the hopefully short term. But also on the work plan for 2027, they [clears throat] are showing that we might be included in a pilot project where they will be giving us uh maintenance funds for the signals. Um they're doing that with communities that have shown good stewardship of the signals so that we can, you know, try and keep up with those expenses. So hopefully in the next year or so we'll be seeing, you know, money from that pilot, [clears throat] but doesn't help us this year. Haven't they reached out in the past on having you help with other signals in other cities?

We've had some conversations about me helping with Trenton and Bar Harbor. Um, we haven't gone very far with that because I don't know what that would look like. So, and I knew it would have to be at a benefit to the city somehow. [laughter] I don't know how that work. So, maybe funding a I mean, yeah. So, we didn't go down that road too far, but we never we haven't said no. So, as long as see it, we'll need a van. But if it's a city, remember this. In my thought process, if it benefits the city, it's going to benefit you because that revenue, right, it's going to come into your department.

Um, last year I talked to you about the that light down at water and maim and you said the state came in and was doing that pilot. Yes. I got another pilot project for the timing. That equipment is actually still in there. It's still there. They haven't come to take it back yet. Oh, okay. So, how did you do you feel like it worked well? I think it worked very well.

Um, and it worked very well and it was set up in a very temporary way. So, it wasn't even set up in the way that it would be set up correctly or permanently. Um, meaning that the detection they were using wasn't the proper detection for that type of a setup. So it would work even better if they had had the correct detection cameras. So I believe it was very successful just just from observing how it adapts to the traffic in real time. Um yeah it what's the it would be great to have that future of that. What does that look like?

So that was a DOT pilot. It was a DOT project. Um, part of the upgrades they're looking to do with their hardware would be adaptive controls. I don't know if they will use that adaptive software or not. Uh, there are a lot of different adaptive options. So, I don't know what DOT is going to go with on our project. So, I know they've used aolite in other places. This is a different one. I can't think of it off the top of my head. Um, this one is actually Europeanbased. Um, um, but It uses the camera to sense the vehicle. So, so the cameras we have now do vehicle presence detection. So, I have like stop bar [snorts]

detection. This uses a camera to look way out um and and anticipate what's coming in real time and it adapts those timings in as you go. And like with the upper light to the lower light, it can adapt those timings based on turning traffic and tell the lower light you need to adjust your timing now because this one's seeing more. Mhm. Without going too far into the weeds. That's Yeah, it's very intelligent software and AI. So, we might lose that for this summer season. I'm guessing they'll come collect their stuff. Yeah. Before too long. Sad. [laughter] I think they were just waiting for the snow to melt better weather. Well, let's not remind them.

They might forget. [laughter] There's quite a lot of value there. Do that. I could get somebody's Well, it's not their equipment. That's the vendor's equipment. I'm guessing the vendor holds the guest. So, it sounds like a pretty good system because they still in a lot of places rely on the ground sensors. Yeah. Yeah. We don't have any we don't have any of those left. So, the frost got the last one. Those were very problematic. Yeah. Cameras can be too, but there's no perfect solution.

Well, thank you. I just also note that in addition to being excellent employees, they're also just really good people. I know I Nate was over at the STEM night at the school um volunteering. I know you've done a lot of like the traffic light demonstrations on the old one to show kids like how it works. Um just I think it's one of the things we try to model in our new employees coming in is do they have that kind of love of Ellsworth? um you know, a real uh anchored in purpose and what these jobs mean to help people and um these two kind of set the mold for that. So, thanks to you and and Nate, of course. Thank you. Back to the Thank you. Back to your cabinet. [laughter]

All right, we'll head to economic development next. I think page 568. They don't do well in page numbers though in it. It's very interesting. They put the page numbers together. Yeah, we got to go way back there. Uh, Twilight Fischer, director of economic development. And I will share for Charlie. I don't know that you probably didn't get to see the slides I sent you. No.

Okay. Uh, I'll probably just pop them up and we can talk about them, but um when we get to the tiff part because Beck with Hill was undercalulated um for this coming fiscal year and I discovered that after we talked for a second. Um, let me try to share my screen. So, we'll start out. I think on mine it's 567. That's what you guys have. Yep.

I just wanted to point out um on the first page that at the time that I submitted 57 happened the last time, too. Okay. Oh, you can't see any of that at all. That's [snorts]

full screen. Where? Sorry. [clears throat] Yep. No. Yep.

Okay. Thank you. Um, okay. So, at the top, what you'll see here is, and I have department requests circled. It could have been, I guess, what we're what I'm suggesting council approvals. When I went and looked at what our tip consultant Reagan had been [snorts] um mapping for the past five or six, you know, five or six years, that was all good, but there was nothing for FY27 yet because I don't know if that's going to be part of her final presentation. And I reached out to her this afternoon, but she must have been busy. I didn't hear back. So based on the two and a half percent projected increase that she uses for tiff applications um I just ran a projection model for what FY27 would be for Beck with Hill using our current mill rate and it actually bumped it up $18,82 for this coming fiscal year. Again, that's a projection, but it's something that I I feel more comfortable putting in there than not because there's no reason to think that based on our past u information that she pulled up that it wouldn't happen because that Beck with Hill is solidly growing at like at a good clip now because it's so far into it into the 30 years. So, my proposal then would be that that go into the economic development budget which we'll get to in a minute. I just want you to understand why you're going to see the two 213,3 number as we go through. Okay. And then a few other things from this first page under department duties and responsibilities I wanted to point out a little bit with the hiring of parks and recck director. Um and with Danielle coming on in planning some of these things I'd like to go back and and modify. Um I think Rody has taken over a lot of beautifification and parks and wreck. So that's listed under my current department duties. And then the support of outdoor recreation and economy also

has fallen under parks and wreck. And then the support of design, construction and maintenance services cluster. I believe Danielle is taking on more through planning. And then what has um been added here is now that we don't have uh Tracy Shekel as the ery consultant. She was giving 20 hours a week. That's a lot to try to fill. But I am doing as of now the administration of day-to-day operations at Urky. Um including just anything that comes up with our tenants or the leases or if anyone wants to come in and look at an office. Um any facilities problems I pass through to Rody, but it's still yeah it's a it's a lot of kind of day-to-day stuff there. Um maintaining the website and the Mailchimp newsletter and um making sure rents are coming in. But and then the other piece is I thinking it's looking like we'll be increasing um management support I'm calling it of the tiff districts because Nate Moore did a lot of that in the past but we're finding out and this is nothing on Nate Moore he was handed a lot that he knew you know he was learning as well but there are so many pieces of tiff that come up that we're all just like we don't know like we're learning this and the tiff consultant is helping to ask uh to to clear up some of our questions but for us to really understand tiff and to have it operate as it should in our budget and even moving forward to know we're getting the right um estimates and and using it correctly. It's going to take quite a bit of management [snorts] support and I think that can fall under the new finance director or it could fall more under econ since I you know I'm learning a lot about it and along with Charlie and um and Reagan [snorts] and Larry. Uh, so I just wanted to point that out that that's going to I think become more of some of what I'll be working on. Um,

why anybody know why this is not moving along quickly?

Okay, never mind. Figured out. Thank you. Okay, so then we'll go to I think the next page which is five Okay, 568. And then what you'll see here also is again um that new number at the top which I would be recommending we put in instead of the one I have. And then the extra $18,82 I'm suggesting go into the professional services line item of the econ budget because I had reduced it um to 30 from 60 I believe. Uh but then we're looking at things like the downtown or the uh public restroom downtown. Where is that going to come from? And this could come out of that line item if we put it in there. And that you'll see come before council on Monday for the workshop. Um but just to kind of give you an idea of how that might be used if it goes into the prof professional services line. And then um the other things on here that I wanted to point out is signage improvements uh is for the wayfinding signage project. And then um the econ dev services for 5,000 is for small projects that come up that are related to the Beckwith Hilliff and that's already in there as money that can just go for anything that comes up for EAD. I mean, there's stuff all the time that that's actually a pretty small number, but um and you'll see in the line items, I think, on the next page, what that could go toward. Any questions for any of the other line items?

I think everything pretty much

And I just note um the manager adjust was there was no manager adjustments here. Um and I support I know we did talk a bit about the um the restrooms which we'll talk more on Monday and then come back at council to talk about it was such a big request from business owners we've been putting portaotties out there um in the near term. I know you'll talk more about that, but what the one of the reasons the managers adjust and the department is so similar on this one is, you know, Twilight in addition to getting two new diffs put forward, in addition to getting a DEC affordable housing grant for the developer, which unfortunately we didn't get, but you know, was worth the effort because anything housing related is worth the effort in my opinion, and I think it's going to set us up for something in the future. She also sat in on almost all of the uh budget meetings by all department heads. Um Sarah arrived last year kind of right at this time and I think we'll probably have a rotation of department heads do this because it really is hey get to know how all the spending in all of the other departments goes. Um so she really had incredible input on all those things and you know seeing the budget freeze seeing the increases in other ways she just of her own accord came in and um after showing what really econ needs I'd say this is similar to kind of parks and wreck but at the department level she's like I'm pulling it all back to as much like to as bare bones this is what like the most bare bones econ type budget you can put forward so it's a big reason why there's really not much more to cut in my opinion um in this area. She's already gone pretty much as as low as we should go while still maintaining some core functionality for a lot of our current projects.

Thank you, Charlie. And yeah, you'll see on 569 most of those arrows are going down. The one uh that went up again was the signage um improvements. So for the wayfinding signage, I did add that. But um and then the IT service and subscriptions which again apply to all departments that was not my doing but it was put [laughter] in there and that's perfectly fine. Uh but that so that went up because it was never you hear that Jason [laughter] we found somebody that agrees with it. No I get it's fine. I just that's something that's going to show that it's going up because it wasn't in there before.

So um but everything Yeah. I mean, I've really tried to cut a lot of other things um back, including even like legal, which doesn't have to be, you know, as much as it was. I think it was 2,000. I cut it in half. You know, just anywhere we could just cut it back a little bit. Um so, any questions on that? Um and then on 570, you will see I just wanted to point out again for professional services and we're increasing that item. As of now, it says this account covers anticipating consulting services or match funds related to the village partner initi initiative. Uh TIF accounts, thriving communities program and reconnecting communities program. The latter two are for our high street um corridor. Uh but you know, anything in the TIF accounts that's already been approved under Beckwith Hill, professional service services can cover. And then that $5,000 one a little bit further down, two down, econ services. This covers the cost of professional services to repair, maintain, or install anything related to econ programs, events, or facilities. And I don't know, I just copied this over from the prior year. I'm not sure why electricians, carpenters, and welders are in there, but uh you know, these are just kind of uh service costs that can come up as part of running econ programs. And just stop me if you have any questions. Otherwise, we're going to move along. If you go over I think two pages then to 575. I think this may be when I have the next Yep. So here I wanted to point out again how the numbers change a little bit um if we add in that extra $18,82. And so then the modified numbers that you'll see up here on the screen are that it adds a little bit um to the overall expenses. Uh the expenses go up to $413,03

and then the revenues are instead of 624122 they're 642924 and then the net total stays the same because for the extra 18,82 that go in we're spending it again. You know what I mean? So our bottom the the net total is the same. Um and again I just wanted to show you that these were the Beck with Hill revenue figures for 24 25 26. Our tip consultant came up with them and there was nothing for 27 but based on that 2 and a half% projection that's where I got the number and our mill rate. That's where I got the number for FY27. Um, and if that changes, if I hear back from her and she's like, "No, I have reason to believe it's not going to be the same projection," then then we'll have to come back again. But, um,

why did it go down in 26? So, every five years there's a rev a revaluation. That's what she said. She does her projection. Yeah. Like there's a if you look at the TIFF and I'm just going off of the ones we just submitted where I saw her 30-year projections. Every five years she said that she's accounting for a 10% reduction for some sort of revaluation. So I could that's a question for her. So why did it go down for for which one? If you look at her Twila's notes there FY26 it actually dips down to 627. Oh, in terms of the revenue. Yeah. So,

yeah, that would have been the year that she projected that. What did she call it? It's in it's in my u I'd have to look at the application we submitted, but yeah, that that goes down and then it goes it it goes pretty quickly back up again. I I don't know. That is a question for her and and I will ask her to include that in her final report to council. Yeah,

there's another piece too that these could be actuals. We were kind of talking about this earlier and I um [clears throat] is the valuation changes from last year on like 30% increase to the waterfront, 18% to commercial and residential. Um so that you know we had a roughly I think 4% increase to city government across the board. That's school and city and county blended. But when you have a waterfront valuation of 30% increase, that whole category of the city absorbs more of that 4% increase of the government. So some people saw a net reduction in their tax bills last year. And a lot of people say, a lot of people are screaming about their tax bills. Mine actually went down. And it's like, well, how did that happen? because the waterfront as a sector of the economy increased by so much more than the other pieces that for some folks um they actually saw a net decrease in their tax bill last year but I don't know that could be that that because this isn't all mostly I don't think this is waterfront really

no um so that could be one of the reasons like the waterfront increased at a rate higher than that for that fiscal year and therefore it dropped the revenues that would come in because hey you know this district went up but other pieces of Ellsworth went up more. So, you know, the mill rate based on this district's value pulled in [clears throat] less revenue.

Okay. Um, but good questions and I will circle back with her on that. Um, so I wasn't I'm trying to understand that piece too. Um, and then if you go to uh 576, the only thing I had on there is this the one. Yes. So here again, you'll just see at the top um I mean this is something that I don't know actually what you think about this moving forward, but so because we added in these city department um allocations now for staff time like that we're that we're allowed to like take put something from their salary basically like the added hours we can call that like a salary allocation. Um so that becomes for me that tiff tiff revenue account should be a tiff revenue city department account so that we can keep that separate. Okay.

Because then it's the Econ Dev budget, city manager budget. We I am very happy that the transfer to Irky I took the 50 grand out to save some taxpayer dollars because I really am determined to make the rents that come in through that place um you know at least make it budget neutral. I don't know that we'll make money, but um there was no re I didn't see a reason to have to keep 50,000 in there for so fingers crossed that I'm not wrong about that. We do. I was telling uh Charlie that now that we have a robust facilities team and they're over there, they're noticing a lot of things like just deferred maintenance stuff that needs to be addressed. So, um but I do have enough and you'll see when I get to Irky in a little bit, the budget, I have enough in there that we can pull from that for now to fix some of the furnace issues and the hot water heater was broken [snorts] and stuff like that, but nothing too major. So um and then the so what's left from what's not been allocated then I am proposing would go in to the tiff unallocated call it like other economic development um monies because that and that could go toward I don't know like if we get the downtown um corridor district there was some money that could have been ported to heart of Ellsworth like that was part of but um you know was already in the Beckwith Hill that once there's a downtown district uh and there is unallocated money for lack of a better term some of that can automatically be ported over to a nonprofit doing downtown work for example and there's never a lack of uh reasons to use this money it comes up all the time we can use tiff for that we can use tiff for that and we're not always sure we can but having this tiff unallocated other economic development line um allows us to kind have some flexibility with that.

Okay. So, does that make sense? That tip on allocated is this net or the net request which is the negative. If you go back to 575 and you see that ne net total is negative 229,921

that's how much you know we have not now but that can't be just as mentioned we can't just say great let's reduce the overall budget by $291,000. note like that has to go to economic development eligible activities per the district um to be invested in the district or under very specific um reasons to do so. you know, last year we did a, you know, some of the assessing pieces. Um, and also because of that undesated, it gives us the flexibility unlike the budget cycle, which is okay, we're going to collect those monies. We have to, it's mandated. And if something comes up, economic focus grants um that we want to apply for uh that needs a match in order to get, you know, really big dollar figure, some any of those pieces, like there's still some funds there to do so. or we let it carry over into the next year and build a um an undesated fund balance in tiff. That's one of the things that we're working on as a team as Tyler mentioned is you know we don't they had been carrying an economic development or the tiff a fund balance and we've been under for most years but we got a um you know there's there's probably a a significant house significant um amount of designated beyond the 229. We didn't spend our tiff monies this year. the prior year before that we didn't spend it as one of the things I noticed in the budget was they weren't even for a while changing the valuation increase in the district um I should say that it was happening that we were assessing for it but it wasn't being put into the budgets so essentially there was you know there was actually money coming in that wasn't even seen in the sheets um above what was there so

it's not like it's still there like it got used by the general fund like it you know it just ended up being in the general eneral fund and not that goes against the tiff, right? Like the rules of the tiff though, but I don't think like the audits weren't catching it. So, this is part of this was part of the re-evaluation redesign moving forward. It's going it's going to take some work to get it operating the way it should and it's not like we can I mean at this point it would have to be even if we found out what that number should be and go back and ask council to pull from whatever fund and say can make this right, make it whole. How would we I don't I think

that's part of the reconciliation process. You know, there's there's going to be a number. There is in the 2024 audit. Um this is what your tiff balance is. I I think in some ways we're fortunate because for a lot of these years those those tiff districts had an increase by a ton of value and um you know more recently they have. So we we'll have to figure out what that undesated fund balance is. Yeah. Does it get penalized by not rectifying that eventually or the audits aren't I mean if you if we ever and I don't I really don't know how this works. I I'm determined to find out but I don't know if there's ever like a separate TIFF audit like if the state ever requests it's just a TIFF audit like outside of your normal

what would trigger it is if we edited the TIFF district. I think what the real inflection point is going to be here is going to be in 2030 when this district expires. Um and uh or if we wanted to edit it between now, but the new tiff districts are kind of set up to mirror the functional or the expenditures of the current tiff district too. So that we could kind of we'll have two options for the hopefully you all be here. We we [laughter] the little background I can offer to what I've seen other municipalities I've been associated with is that they take a percentage and this goes for this, this goes for this, this goes for that. So to make the upgrades to the district

to expand, you know, you make it bigger than what you really need it. So the expansion of it. Yes. You see I mean so uh hypothetically you could take 1% or 2% for recreation right and that's a broad term that's a broad term that could be used for playgrounds or could be used for uh activities you say I mean with the parks and recck department um that can't fund parks it can fund trails yeah can't fund parks can fund trails um I would also note that I think that the why I mentioned the 2030 inflection point, you know, and we're we're doing our own.

There are some guidelines that you have to follow because it's evolved more than what my experience with it was because when they first introduced it, it was like whoa. Yeah, it's it's changed a lot and I think there's I think the one of the things in 2030 there's um we're going to do our own internal audit to figure out this undesated fund balance like a lot of things on our current reconciliation amongst all areas. This is u a piece of it. So we'll have a this is your what was undesated or left over from those three or four years and then you're due to due froms in your general account like that'll be a liability to the city. I think the real inflection point will be how large is that or how small it is

um compared to our um you know our our cash on hand and then this the piece in 2030 that we'll have to decide is do we want to sunset the tiffs and I believe like this just let it go and then that goes back to the general fund. If you have a bunch of und designated fund balance, um if it's a big liability, then it's we can just say, you know, that's a wash now. But that could be a big mistake because in new rules for tiffs, we can extend the period of time, but we have to have 75% of the funding go to I think um housing initiatives. Is it what it is? Um yeah, it has to be affordable housing. 75% of it has to be used for affordable housing or it could go toward a transit orient oriented development district. Mhm.

So, it's a future off and I think we've talked about a tiff task force um to really tackle both those issues. What the initial fund balance is our new tiff districts, how do we have stronger mechanisms for them, you know, sequestering that growth so we don't hurt our revenue sharing for the schools. Um we can continue to invest in infrastructure to manage all this growth. But then also that 2030 point, let's start thinking about that now. Let's do start doing you know our internal reconciliation so that you know we're not surprised. A lot of actually I saw a news article on how many tiff districts are expiring this year in towns and people are just like whoa I didn't even realize that like what do we do I'd like for us in 2030 I think there probably is a good be nice to have a plan forward

so that 25% says in econ 75% but at that period in time yeah we're going to have to that would trigger um the audit and we'd have to show you know here's how everything got spent over the last decades um since it's there when Tammy Mo was here 2019 we pretty good records on these things. Um 2020 to to 2025 a little bit rougher. Um but we, you know, this is an area I think we'll have enough data to go through and get a pretty good figure. We'll figure it out. But okay, so I think that's good unless anyone has any questions. So I don't want to take too too much time here and then any questions for that? Yes. Yeah. Okay.

I think so. Um I don't know if this is the appropriate time that tip unallocated 229,921 the heart of Ellsworth's request. Yeah. And you said could potentially come out of that unallocated. [snorts] Is that a portion of it could because there are some things like

um some of it can go toward open gov. We're going to expand our open gov um what would you call it? Applications, right? So, and so like some of that we're kind of earmarking like a lot of it is kind of earmarked but yes because once the downtown corridor the new one is approved then that can be ported whatever council decides can be ported over to downtown uh purposes like part of Ellsworth that's doing like for downtown initiatives. So this specific which which one am I in right now? Which uh tiff am I in? Is it all of them? So if you go to Beck with Hill is probably the one that's No, you're you're in this the economic development tiff budget is the Beck with Hill one. Beck Hill one.

Okay. Which is the only one that I saw that has any unallocated funds basically. Yep. And that one is the one that would be eligible and has a I guess maybe if you don't mind just g let me give you a little more background Tabitha just so um so there's kind of a few ways to parse this is one I think we have correct me if I'm wrong for heart of Ellsworth but I think it's a 25,000 is what the current allocation is the request which is based on a excellent presentation from um the uh was it Eric or um yeah treasure

treasurer and a recreation commission member and a heart of Ellsworth board member great data person I think he's the COO of litham hotels um you know somebody who knows data pretty well and did a robust analysis of all the heart of Ellsworth type groups around the state and we're at the very bottom of the city contribution to those organizations um and he did it in like six different metrics so his percent population and um it was an excellent presentation you So, like all things, I've said no to everything this year, including this piece. Um, but after the TIFF presentations with uh with our consultants and you know, really realizing in a lot of ways like we have we've been using general tax dollars for even that 25,000 and 59 cents in the dollar is essentially when we use TIFF funding as opposed to general tax dollars. And there's all these tiff eligible expenses that we've essentially been using $1 to pay for as opposed to 59. Um, so using that calculus, you know, I really in the near term I could see going up from the uh 25,000 to 45,000 which I think is about that that calculus. Um, and I think it could be considered uh econ as that proportion in this budget. But and this is the second more complicated piece. Um we just applied for a new tiff district um for the downtown. Uh and you know I'd like to get I believe it's um you know it's really important to get to that one-third level uh of the full funding request. And in some days we should use 100% tiff funding not just um going from 25,000 to 45,000 using the Beck withhill tiff. And in our Beck with Hill Tiff, this is where it gets wildly complicated. There is a weird note that we were all reading these things that's it says $100,000 like for a tiff portage district. I was like what?

But over the course of 30 years over the course of 30 years you can get. So that number in the development plan everyone thinks it's annual and it's divided by 30. No, it's just the total amount that can be spent up to. So for like um Bayside Road, which is in here, we have up to $2 million to be spent on the Bayside Road over 30 years. Over 30 years from that TIFF district. Once you hit that 2 million, you know, you can't spend any more. That's the unless you edited the tiff, which was possibility. So, but I was like, what is this portage tiff portage district downtown portage? We ended up like, do you have canoes over your back or um we were you can port over

the funding into the new downtown tiff district. So we could um we can't port over any more than $100,000. So if we did $100,000, we can't give a dollar more from the Beck with HIF district ever again. But the new downtown TIF district will start acquiring its own increment. And because we submitted before this deadline, we get a two-year look back on, you know, when the TIFF district its original assessed value is versus what it is now. So, actually, if it gets approved, that district immediately would have some level of surplus funds, too. We'd have to make a decision though, which is if that happens before we pass the budget, we could actually go 100% or at the $45,000 level. The council, if they wanted to consider doing the full third, my recommendation would probably be to stage that till the next year. Um, or we can wait until the new budget cycle and then port over some of this, you know, because the TIFF funding doesn't necessarily have to be done. that's getting committed and we're going to accumulate 229,000 surplus um regardless of if the new tiff's approved or not and then let's say it gets approved in August we could um you know still keep the 25,000 in the budget here for hard Ellsworth tiff dish and we expected to they've given edits they're mostly you know um you know legal ease [laughter] of edits

and we haven't portaged anything yet in this so can't until that that one's approved. The the new one. Yeah, but we could. So, you can't Okay. Yes, I get it. No immediate funding for a downtown organization in the Beck with Hill because it just doesn't align correctly in that tiff. But we can move it

once there's a downtown. The language says once there's an established downtown district. But we could from this unallocated that's in the budget for next year to Charlie's point take like what we're saving the 58 or 59 cents to the dollar and then you know proportion that to add up to another 20 or 25,000 whatever that would be 20 and that would that wouldn't have to wait on approval of the new district. That could just be something council decides we take from this unallocated that's in the new budget. So it' be 25,000. It's confusing.

Uh, general fund dollars, which it already has been and it's been for years now, and an additional 20,000 in TIFF to bring it to 40,000 45,000, I'm sorry, which would be that 59 cents in the dollar, which is just which is the immediate that could happen in this budget cycle. In this budget cycle, it's just going to decrease your unallocated from 229 to 209. Yep. Okay. Yep. And then so complicated. I [laughter] know there's going to be a better like we'll figure out a better way to have reports that make it not so complicated. But for right now, while we're still all figuring this out, this is sorry.

No, and I apologize too, but you know the other option, not to complicate things further, is you know, toilet sends the edits back in. They really quick over at DC. They're a great organization and they say we're approved. We could get it back in two two weeks, three weeks. I mean, all depends. And then you could say we're spending zero tax dollars. That's what I would love to see is that we aren't spending anything from the general fund and we free up that 25,000 for the other many things that we could use in the general fund. Y right or whatever, right? And then just fund part through correct.

So fingers crossed. I mean, they went through the both lengthy applications in two weeks. Like when we submitted them end of March, by April 15th, I had the revisions and they're ready to go like tomorrow. I just was waiting on to hear back from Reagan on one other thing. So, [clears throat] if the turnaround after the they review them again is that fast, it could be. I don't know. I'd also just note for sorry to belabver this but the DCED they're just they're incredible organization and a big props to Twila on really developing some relationships over there and good back and forth. I mean I've I've never seen an application get declined but they like called us about it. They wanted to have mult [laughter] during the rounds like they give a full explanation on hey not this but you could do this. um uh the DEC director or commissioner is probably we're arranging a time I think in um in late May where he's going to come out here and I can show him some of our other initiatives but um incredible organ state especially I used to work in state government always shocked when you see something running so well in state government um but they're they're a great group and I think a good um I think they see what's happening here in Ellsworth and um want to keep helping us in economic development so

well um

and I would I mean If I can just move Charlie, I think just to because we just submitted our annual reports to the state for for our um senior housing and affordable housing tiffs and nothing really changed. I mean, these reports are just there there's nothing. It just rolls along like we have um these numbers don't really change nor what we owe to the developers, our credit enhancements agreements are what they are. Um so I don't know that we have to go through those too much, but if you want Charlie to talk about them. Yeah, I'll talk just a bit in general and I know councelor Howerin's not here but I can speak for him. I know he doesn't like it when I do that but I you know I will note and I think it's important especially for the next tiff task force. You know I think the a deep dive into Leonard Lake. You're exactly right Twilight in some ways these were tiffs that are are closest thing to a credit enhancement agreement for workforce housing for senior housing and then for specific projects to kind of come out of them. They're kind of plug and play at this point forward. um you know those things increase and um some of it goes back to the developer who did the senior housing, some of it goes back to the developer that did the workforce housing. Um but as councelor Howland notes, you know, 310,000 of that of the Leonard Lake that's going to the more community center debt. Um so that's that's being funded out of the debt service um from that project. And same thing with the credit enhancement agreement that goes to the developer that 34,000 St. Leonard Lake senior housing. Same thing for the oral way senior tiff. Um you know the and then some of that I think oil way goes to the school as well or is that the

senior housing? Yeah. Yeah. The second one

has um transfer the school of 62,000 and um and the reason I kind of mentioned those things too not just to you note yes the war center does have a was a significant advancement. we're still paying for that with those TIFF things or those TIFF districts. Um those [snorts] are our closest things to it. But I I also feel like for the new task force, this is going to be something to do a a real deep dive on in those projects. Tammy Mo was involved in those. I did have talk to Michelle a little bit. You know, we have these two workforce housing projects um or potentially both the 150 units, the the 40 units off Beals, the one behind the bowling alley. That's, you know, close to 200 potential units. um and you know how what did they do in the past that could align those to workforce. There's some discussion on infrastructure investments and if we're going to try to get more housing in Ellsworth, we got two projects that haven't been able to get to finance fruition um that you know if we could put some um some tiff future funding essentially foregoing future tax revenue which is how these agreements are designed um to fund a debt service. the project happens, it creates a incredible amount of value for the city. And yes, you give up future tax revenue. Um, but in order to get workforce housing, in order to get senior housing, these were the two projects that were in that category. I'd say we're in even a more desperate shape for housing now than when these were done. So, I think the new task force, well, now that these are set, there's really not too much to talk about here, but how we could consider doing that with these other projects or not. there's, you know, to forgo future tax revenue, um, you know, is, but there's also they're not happening. So, there's zero future tax revenue on a $14 million building. That doesn't happen. Um, so, uh, there's some unique models models here. One's an ownership model, one could be a rental

model. Um but the new task force I think really should start um deep diving on how these happened and the benefit of that and how a similar model could be used to um encourage housing uh in the city. I have a question. Why? So this is asking uh which one am I? Leonard Lake um net request of almost 20,000 but we're not going to fund that through another tiff. We're going to take that we need to take that out of the general fund. I this is something I am going to uh circle back with Reagan on also. I don't think that number is right like there should not we should not be yeah we should be like it should

it should not have decreased that much again I'm not sure this is part of like some of the formulas that carry over I'm not sure were accurate. Oh that could be that decrease. Yes that could be a good thing. I'd be very surprised if that was anything we needed to Okay. Yeah. And there was the other one, the oral way had a balance of 3,000. That one could be because sometimes they because it's based on uh mill rate too, which our mill rate didn't fluctuate that much, right? Over the past year,

it has decreased pretty significantly. Yeah. Over the last year, it decreased a lot. I think almost two mills because of the valuation increases. So, some of that can affect the numbers. Um, but it shouldn't it should not be that's more what if anything for Leonard Lake it would be something small not like I don't understand where the 19,000 came from but good questions. Yeah. And again just we a year from now this will be much more figured out and way before but right now we're I think we're still all trying to wrap our heads around it a little bit more. We're a lot further than we were last year I'm pretty sure. So that's good. [laughter] Yes. Thank you, Tabby. We got a long way to go, but you're right. We are every year, man.

Yeah. No, this was good. Okay. Um, then begins on 599, page 599. And this is pretty straightforward. Again, um, the expenses and, you know, and revenues just uh, you go out to or, you know, what am I trying to say? Race themselves out. So, it comes out to a net total zero for that. And then if you go to page 600 um under revenue, we are projecting $75,000 for city property rent um for this year. And that's up from I think it was only $24,000 that was projected this year. Am I right about that? I don't have it in front of me. Sorry. Where's the one where it shows 24,000?

Yeah. Uh but we've raised rents a little bit. In some cases it was a lot for folks who had been there almost 10 years and were paying very little compared to market rate. Um for other people it just went up like 30 bucks a month. But you know so I think that's going to help also whenever if and when it looks like our water department will be in there and they can use it'll still save the city money but they can um you know pay what we would have gotten market rate rent for what was Jackson Lab area. So that will um contribute to the 75,000. So I'm I'm pretty confident we can get that in there. Uh when Tracy was still over there, we worked on this extensively and ran the numbers a bunch of different ways and I I even, you know, underbudgeted for that just to make sure I wasn't being too optimistic. Um so that's great. That's why I felt confident that we could take out the 50,000 transfer from the city from the general fund that was going in before. Um actually it wasn't general fund. And it was Tiff money.

Yeah, Tiff money. It was Tiff money, but still that's money that can go [clears throat] back into the general fund. I didn't keep that in TIFF. Um Well, it can't go in the general, but it it can be allocated now to Parker Bellsworth or um or other places or it just goes it can go back into the unallocated one. So, right. Y

um but and then we can not use money from the general fund for for something else. Uh, and then so looking at it, the expenses, I did keep in $25,000 for professional services in case we needed um consultants to let's say advance the food hub work or something else. And I'm kind of glad I did now because with some of the capital improvements that might or not capital improvements, but the building improvements that we need, um, we might have to pull on that professional services line item. [snorts]

Um, and then yeah, the building maintenance that that $2,500 number will have to be quite a bit more. So, we'll just pull again probably from professional services or I'll work with finance to kind of uh do some line um reconciliations there as we have to. Uh the other thing I guess that's it. No, that should be in there. Oh, the heat was a lot more this year and we did discover that there was a regulator or something on the furnace that wasn't working right. So, it was running more than it should have. That didn't help but also [snorts] we just had a cold winter. So, you know, we're still I'm still in year one of looking at some of those expenses, but um yeah, I feel it's a pretty straightforward budget. I did cut a [clears throat] bunch of things, but I feel like um it'll all it'll all work out as long as we can keep our some tenants in there for this next fiscal year. And then if we decide after that that we don't want tenants in there anymore, especially with more city employees in there, if we end up making it more of a cityowned, operated, occupied space, then we might have to do even more upgrades. But we did renew leases for probably half the tenants through next June. So I think for this fiscal year, we should use this budget and go from there. Do we make or do we get rent from the farmers market that starts on Saturday?

I talked to Charlie about that. We decided not to this season. Um they do they told me they have like a gift a financial gift they're going to give us at the end of the season. I don't know if that's a hundred bucks or 500. I don't think it's going to be significant, but they did say they were going to give us something. Um yeah, I don't know. I we talked about it briefly. They're really not using any electricity. No, you know, maybe uh the office is the parking lot's empty the time using the bathroom there. The vendors and the farmers market staff are allowed to use the restrooms, but the public anyone any customers have to use Harbor Park, but yeah, Harbor Park's right close by. It's an economic development. It was hard to know like [clears throat] to

downtown business owners are going to get some, you know, it's going to bring a lot of people into our downtown. Yeah. No, I I just wasn't sure if we were collecting anything. We could though if we wanted to maybe next year. Not necessarily. The farmers have it tough as it is. So, and I think one of [snorts] the concepts for I know to just back it up and I do want to leave some time for, you know, the hard element to kind of come up in cycle,

but was to do more of a food hub, you know, maybe look to shared kitchen space in there and some other pieces, but it seemed like we're still in a conceptual area on that. And you know, our our backup plan for the water department has been for a while now and it's been a little bit internal, but now that we're not going to consolidate services um in the indoor space in Hancock, you know, we've that we kind of put on ice that this piece of the building so that we could stop paying the lease rents and bring in. We're still figuring out that timing. We may have to come to council for a tiff uh ery allocation to kind of get that space prepared that the water department essentially those rents would cover that. um over the long term just because we're still trying to work on where are we gonna move May 1 or sorry June 1st July 1 october 30th um so we're going to iron that piece out but this is a a big cost savings to the city not spending the lease money but on a space we already own just need to upgrade it you know this is less than $10,000 for the upgrades to get our water department the piece there that's a little more complicated is the garaging space But we're working on that. And this is also kind of temporary. The pump house point is a big deteriorating asset. It's where the water department used to be. They had to leave in a hurry because and start leasing a space at great costs because there's mold in there. And we really haven't done too much to that building since.

Um so we need to do something about it's a historic building. It's right on Leonard Lake. Um that may be the future place for the water department. It may be the future place for parks and wreck. We could sell it potentially. I mean there's all kinds of things now that we have a capital improvement plan. Um, this is inky as sort of a temporary solution and [snorts] with the village partnership initiative that could mean a riverwalk between the marina and the downtown and we might want to revisit some of these food hub ideas, other ideas for the time being, thank you, Twilight, worth her weight and gold. Um, saving $50,000, you know, let's uh consolidate some services from the water department here. So, we're not paying external leases for the time being. Let's save a little money on our key as we reimagine the space. So,

thank you. Thank you. [snorts] Hard. I think we're gonna have hard Ellsworth if u or we got communication.

But that way they can information for you guys.

Thanks, Dory. Good evening, council. My name is Dory Pereé. I am a certified public accountant here in Ellsworth. I also serve as the bookkeeper and accountant for Heart of Ellsworth. Um I'd like to speak a little briefly tonight. Um my role here with Heart of Ellsworth is to ensure the financial accuracy and accountability. Also, excuse me because I've literally been on the phone the entire day. Have no voice left. [laughter] Um so um I am responsible for like overseeing the stewardship of funds. Um I'd like to just briefly speak about the measurable financial impact Heart of Ellsworth has in the city. Since 2016, Heart of Ellsworth has generated over 1.1 million in downtown investment, leveraging just 84,000 in municipal funding. That's more than a 13 to1 uh return for the city. In addition to that, the organ organization has secured over uh 646,000 in grant funding, bringing significant outside dollars into Ellsworth that would not otherwise be here. Recent um awards alone include $200,000 for tourism and over a h 100,000 in additional state and federal grants. Uh there [clears throat] this is the key point. Municipal funding uh acts as a catalyst. It enables the organization to leverage outside commitment and expanded

its impact well beyond the city's initial um contribution. In 2025 alone, Heart of Ellsworth contri coordinated three downtown cleanup efforts, saving the city an estimate of 96 hours of staff time. a clear example of how this work directly offsets municipal cost. We also see measurable economic outcome. Since Heart of Ellsworth began its work, downtown vacancy rates have dropped from 50 to 50% to just 7% reflecting increased business activity, demand, and overall downtown vitality. Um, I used to work for one of the businesses that did move downtown. Um, and it was a very exciting time. So, [clears throat] um, the organization also directly reinvests in the business community. Since 2020, over 30,500 has been distributed to 33 local businesses through the downtown grant program designed to support growth and stability. In terms of organizational capacity, Heart of Ellsworth has grown from an annual budget of approximately 119,000 in 2021 to over 573,000 in 2025. largely driven by successful securing of external funding. Additionally, in 2025 alone, 1,865 volunteer hours were contributed to support downtown initiatives representing a substantial added value to the community, equivalent to a nearly 32hour uh a week full-time position. From a financial oversight perspective, this is a well-managed organization that is leveraging public dollars effectively, bringing in outside investment, reinvesting directly into local economy, and delivering measurable economic outcomes. Finally, it is important to note that this funding model aligns with the nationally recognized Main Street

America approach which balances investment across public, private, and community partners and is already in use in nine other municipalities across Maine. As Ellsworth looks to the future, incorporating Heart of Ellsworth into a TIFF funding structure would establish a stable and sustainable mode for long-term downtown economic development. aligning the city with proven best practices already driving success in um comparable communities across the state. In my professional opinion, the city support of Heart of Ellsworth is not simply an expense is a strategic investment that produces measurable economic return. Thank you guys.

Thanks. I want to add a little bit to that if I can about I I'm a board member of Heart of Ellsworth. I volunteer countless hours of my life [laughter] to to seeing our downtown um thrive. And it's really come a long way since I moved back home in 2016. It was really uh in shambles. It was not what I remembered it as a uh kid. And so to see how how much it's grown is incredible. Um, but I think you left out the the importance of the um the Federal Historic um sorry, the National Register designation that we got and how incredibly important this is for Ellsworth um and our downtown businesses. I want to use a local example of the Grand. Um the Grand is obviously an incredible landmark here. Um but they need and they've been coming to council telling us how badly for years they need significant repairs to remain viable. Um so because of getting on the national registry, they are now um they could potentially have access to 20% of a federal tax credit to repair their building on top of what the state will actually the state historic tax credit as well. So, we are looking at giving them an additional $5,000 in our budget this year for their maintenance and repair cost when Heart of Ellsworth has actually worked incredibly hard to get this designation that the federal government and the state can help reduce that cost instead of the city. So, I would love to see if the city in our tiff budgets can fully support HART because do so much but so much. It's an incredible investment for the city just like trees. Uh a huge return on investment. I only get involved in things that have huge returns [laughter] on investment.

You always have to bring those trees. I know. I know. I just Hey, my [laughter] family's been in trees for a lot, you know? I mean, we make stuff out of trees. That's right. They're incredible. But I just wanted to throw that in there. I would love to see the council support more in the tiff um as well. So,

and I know I confuse everybody including myself on the variety of ways to potentially do that. I think we'll we'll keep a flag on that for the um the next presentation too on um you know in two weeks on whether that's the uh you know we go up to the 45 level and the 59 cents in the dollar through a mix of general fund and back with hilliff dollars. Um and then upon activation of the TIFF downtown district, we can consider um future allocations to get to that 1/3 level or not. Yeah.

Okay. I'm up next. And so we're two hours in. Does anybody need a break? No, we just assume [laughter] just keep going. I promise this will be quick. Carol.

So Amy Kenny, director of communications, you guys. Okay? Yeah. Um, so this budget uh is pretty flat. It is flat from uh 26 to 27. So this budget supports the city's broader goals around transparency, economic development, and community education and entertainment and engagement. So the biggest area really is our professional services. and you'll see that coming in at 17. And again, it's it's flat year-over-year. I just wanted to give you a little bit of detail on what we're going to do with that this year. Um, we're we're allocating probably approximately uh 10,000 to the website to do a website update. Sometimes we're finding that information can be hard to find and locate and a better website will help reduce calls to our staff. Um, hopefully help uh confusion and frustration for our residents. and overall it really will build trust. So that's that's the key, you know. So the website is often the first stop for residents, businesses, and visitors. So I just did a little analytics before I came here today. And believe it or not, that so our top five pages of hits are the homepage. Uh first, property tax assessment. Surprise, surprise, right? Um online services, trash collection, and can you guess what number five is? Cara yodel.

Oh. Oh, yay. [applause] That's great. [laughter]

It's our community calendar. So anyway, as you folks know, with Yeah. Isn't that interesting? With our new brand coming, our new look and our return to to the friendly city, we have an opportunity to really put some time and effort into our website to make it clearer, more accessible, and easier to navigate are the hopes. Um, again, this isn't just a design update. It really is about making it easier for residents to find what they're looking for quickly, reducing that confusion and improving day-to-day services. So, this investment improves functionality and ensures that the website truly serves the public. So, you know, better website, hopefully better service. um the balance of this area. I'd love for us to really um enhance our video video and hopefully um photography package. So this would fill a gap that we currently have. So we need really a robust cohesive high quality visual library that reflects Ellsworth. So this my thoughts around this is this package would create us re reusable assets, short videos, still photography that can be used across economic development, public information and education, workforce attraction, tourism and community storytelling which is so so important. And this way it would allow us to show not just tell what makes Ellsworth so special and um to be able to respond quickly to opportunities whether it's promoting a project or supporting a business or telling a story. This will be that would be a beautiful addition and also I think we're going to try to explore some tip funding for that area if possible. So um we're hopeful of that. So the other line items that you're seeing are all flat. So office equipment, printing and advertising, subscriptions, conferences,

dues and memberships, training, it all remains the same uh year-over-year. So this budget is something uh really that in my my humble opinion is quite you know it's critical um to for clear, consistent and trustworthy communications. It helps residents understand what the city's doing, what their city is [clears throat] doing. It supports economic and community growth and ensures that we can communicate effectively in both everyday moments and any of those critical situations as well. So, it's really about making the city easier to access, easier to understand, and therefore easier to trust. So, really that's it. Does anyone have any questions or

And I'll just do a quick note on the manager address. It's just a small one here. Almost no changes. I just pulled down the professional services a bit and what Amy's been talking about still includes many of those pieces. It's just likely much smaller video packages, much smaller. Um went from 30,000 to 17,000 which was the funding from last year. Um not as robust of website changes. uh you know it's a really kind of I think we need to go a lot further in these areas but in line with some of my other um you know we got to cut just about every piece we can into the absolutely critical and and also this communications budget and this department was a um uh was a a note from the comprehensive plan that the city really needs this uh and and Amy's been here less than six months um and [snorts] man the amount of earned media that Amy has gotten us you probably see it in televisions. You've probably seen it in the news articles. Um, it's probably a 40x increase to what we've had previously. Medium blog posts. If you go to Ellsworth.stories, Ellsworth.stories,

medium.gov.gov. I'll send you the link. [laughter] You know, from all of our departments and our initiatives, in-depth storytelling from what we've been doing, the branding stuff. We were just in a meeting with the school and they were like, we want we want to put those banners up. wanted like this is the friendly city. I mean it's just unreal what she's accomplished in six months. So um sad not to be able to put more into this um this year but I think we'll make it we'll make it shine. Yeah, we'll make it work. I just want to echo that I've had to work with you so much with the Arbor Commission and you're always so responsive. You've got the news crews always there for all of our events that we've done. It's been really great working with you. So thank you.

Thanks Amy. Good. Okay, we're all right, everybody. [snorts] All right, we're gonna go to my budget next. 70. I think we'll get through. We're going to go a little faster now. Not that I'm trying to Sure. Don't [laughter] worry about it. We're going through faster than the city manager budget. Nothing to see here, folks. Um, [laughter]

but there's like there's like no changes at all. Um Sarah, big props to Hersh. uh she really uh uh was instrumental in putting we kind of treated this even though it's the city manager budget that the deputy would do the department request. I'd come in at the manager adjust which uh there was only the smallest adjustment from last year. Um you know we're down from where our budget was at. It's largely due to the work Sarah did on looking at budgeted versus actuals from last year and really like kind of chewing up um every single one of our line items to be like, hey, this is actually what we're going to need in the next cycle. Um so it's much more in line with that and pulled it down a bit. I did drop us for our employee appreciation from 2,000 to 600. We were at 300 the previous year. Uh I spent all of the employee appreciation for my department on awards for other departments for the be award and the mode award um for plaques. So unfortunately the people in my department didn't get any employee appreciation [laughter] every day.

You are I think I sent an email saying hey I just spent all of our employee appreciation on other people. Um, but we're going to be doing the Bill Award and the MOT award for um, excellence in public service, the two new employees this year. Um, that'll probably be done in uh, the October city council meeting. Um, [snorts] looking forward to that. We also may add a rookie of the year. Those two awards are kind of the people that have been long-standing service, but we got some rookies um, that have come in that have been doing great, too. But, so I did add go from 300 to 600. So, we could at least have a, you know, a small amount of appreciation for the people in our department. But the 2000 level I just um wanted to get it as low as possible and beyond that you know payroll uh legal we went up a little bit on I think that's also as we've talked about with some departments on doing you know we wanted to put legal in the departments as opposed to one big bucket of money that every department was pulling from and didn't have accountability for. We just kind of guesstimated for this year on what legal would be. Some departments didn't use any of their legal. Some of are a little bit over and drive more HR, the city manager's office, legislative, which we'll get into a second, are are driving more of the legal expenses. So, this is just that $5,000 increase is to kind of be more in line with what we expect for the year.

You're surprisingly low currently on the year to date. Yeah. And this this is from print. So, this Oh, from a while ago. Yes. So, this is probably two months old now. Okay. Oops. So, um Yep. So, did a full audit of the year [snorts] legal bills and we've readjusted right okay before this

oh okay yeah um yeah and the um you know the legal one is a super important piece I mean there's gosh I want to increase more in just every single contract that we have every single piece I know we're growing city and the school department mentioned that too I just their school departments increase legal costs so um then you know we'll we might talk maybe if we could put a note Ashley for total legal

cost across departments it's one of the things too when you put it into the departments you don't say well what's all of legal cost but I want to talk about that too you know I don't there are some cities and towns in Maine that do have legal counsel in house actually our charter notes that it could be a contract or um an in-house legal counsel um I don't think we'd ever be able to not outsource some level of legal go for our bigger lawsuits. Uh but we are getting to the point where it might make sense to either have, you know, most of our stuff is pretty generic legal type things. It doesn't require extensive municipal experience. It could be somebody who's a new lawyer that wants to do some mission driven public service that might be cost feasible to bring that person in. It could also be somebody who's more of a retiree that lives in the area and is a lawyer. I think we have a few of those. um and with the outsourcing that could make a good difference and to have somebody to make sure that what happened last month and hey we didn't public notice three times the X like every time we do that it costs time it costs money um you know having a lawyer that's um can go through all of those having a lawyer in every single piece that you'd want a lawyer on to have as an adviser other government roles that I've been in um having in-house counsel um so you're not like ah we've reached our legal like line item budget and like let's not send that to legal. Like that's not a good decision.

No, [laughter] it rarely is. You don't want to do a million- dollar lawsuit because you decided not to. Imagine how helpful it would be for staff to have a door that they can knock on it and answer questions. Yeah. Quickly. Yeah. Every single review of those pieces like it's good to have somebody just thinking about the legal. It's always, you know, I love our law firm. Yeah.

Um and also next year I want to know that we do the new procurement policies, you know, we'll probably be looking to um you know, bid that out to law firms as well. Love Revan Winchell. Um but just like a lot of things with procurement, while it might not be $15,000 in any single time in the aggregate, you know, we're spending a lot of money in this category and you know, every few years you need to send it back out and see what the fees are going to be um and go through that. I am working with RDMAN on a um like a not to exceed contract and then if we exceed that there'd be a discounted rate for next year um so that at least we'd have u you know a little more consistency and still be okay well we might have reached our budget but let's not not use legal let's pull from another account let's you know um be transparent about it but

um the city clerk used MMA which you works for her, you know. Yeah, [clears throat] absolutely. Uh, that's it for my budget. Any question? We like you. We like you, too. Thank you. [laughter] Talk. She's up.

Don't get too excited. I think we're going to pivot a bit. Um just um in respect of time and not having the full council here, this is a pretty big agenda item. Um so I'm going to hand out these I'll call it the I'm not calling it the kit. Sorry to people in your household. [laughter] Um, so this is going to be um the CIP workbook for the next couple months. There'll be additional information that we're going to add to this, but this is really when you see the CIP on the agenda or that it's going to be a discussion. I would really encourage you to bring this workbook with you. Um, I do have a presentation, but I think I'm going to skip it. And there's going to be a lot of CIP discussions over the next three to six months. I think um initially we had hoped that the CIP was going to dovetail nicely in to the budget process but in the development of it um I think we realized it was a lot more than what we anticipated. So I think the goal would be for next year to have this process dovetail seamlessly into the budget process. That also allows us time um to work on the financial tools and um because that will be a big component of the um discussions coming up over the next couple months is historically we have been using debt service to fund our capital plans um our capital investments and I think we have an opportunity to look at some other um mechanism and techniques to um whether it be reserve accounts accounts um more grant funding, things like that to be um funding some of our capital projects.

So, in this booklet, you will have a memo that kind of outlines um where we're where we've been with the CIP, um the list of projects, very similar to what I presented at the last workshop. um also some um financial considerations and really um on the second page of um the memo it talks about council considerations and future actions and that's where um we're going to spend some time moving forward after we do um kind of the traditional CIP presentation with the full council but we're really looking for the council to get your feedback on the methodology of how we developed this process. Um, take a look at these projects that you see in this booklet. These are um the one to threeyear capital improvement projects that were identified by staff and prioritized by staff um and provide direction regarding the funding strategies and um just confirm the re re refinement of the five and 10-year capital improvement plan. I would note that this is a requirement per our charter that we have a um 10-year capital investment plan and that it is updated annually. So, what we've done is developed a process to do that. Um I would also note since Scott is here and he's, you know, been a real critical partner in this that a lot of the projects that are in the first one to three years are projects that department heads had initially put in their general fund budget. But understanding um the goals of this budget, they we've shifted them to the CIP. So tanker 4 um a rescue boat for fire were originally in the capital were in the general fund budget and that has been shifted. So um the IT van um network switches for our IT

servers that are really critical to keep our city up and running moved out of general fund budgeting into the CIP. So when we're prioritizing, I just think it's um meaningful to understand that that that shift did occur. So instead of Charlie saying no through um the general front budget process, it might be something that we need to consider through um the SIP. I know that was really quick and a shift, but I think um there's going to be more discussion on Monday at the workshop. Um it might be a little bit of a hybrid. I probably will go through my presentation then in full to um give a really thorough outline of what each of these project sheets mean, how they were developed, how the funding was um allocated in them, and then kind of maybe roll up our sleeves a little bit on some questions if we have time. But we have a full packed agenda on that. I just would really encourage us not to um keep kicking this SIP discussion down the road as we have with our SIP investments. So, let's really try to make it a priority um to make sure that we can dovetail this into the budget process next year.

Yeah. And I'd say this is going to be a continuing conversation. I think that's why I was texting Sarah just, you know, I think council probably should be at a higher level of brain power. My not that you don't have high levels of brain power, but early [snorts] in the discussion at 6:00 uh discussion [laughter] item. We we often times get to that level and to have the full counselor. This is, you know, I would hate to have Sarah do the same presentation twice because you really need her to take through it. Sure. Yeah. Thank you.

And I just can't I mean the the team um the department heads just um having this kind of deadline for this workshop. I the amount of time that they have put into this, you know, this wasn't just me and a consultant. It was like all the department heads that have projects in here just put a lot of work and hours into not only developing these project sheets and getting cost estimates and costing out projects, but then spending a lot of time together prioritizing them citywide. Not just prioritizing them within their departments, but as a the entire city. And it was a lot of work. Um, so Scott, you're the only one here that was part of it. And Ashley, but you were part of the tail end. So, thank you. But, um, it was a lot of work.

Scott, do you have anything? I' I'd like to know just for the chief, um, and how incredibly valuable he's been, not just in this process. Um, he's on our [snorts] project management team, you know, he it's kind of interesting. Now I've noticed like big part of that was the um the new fire engine which he's kind of come to fruition and we get to his section now and it's like yeah I mean it's in we're going forward but he's so valuable to like all the projects that we're doing in the city on just I can't tell you how many times is like hey this should have been thinking about that the thriving communities on some of the high street problems. Hey like we need a better narrative on what this is about and red flagging things. Uh we incredibly lucky to have him not just um managing the fire department to but to provide input on um a lot of our pieces. Um Chief, do you have anything you want to add while you're here? And

no, I I think Sarah brought up a good point. Um although each of us brought projects forward that we've identified for years that needed to be funded um this became like the small light at the end of the tunnel that finally we're moving in a direction that's going to allow these projects that are some of these are five or 10 years old that have been waiting and waiting and waiting for some forward progress not only internally by the city administration but also by the by the councils. Um so but each one of us brought our projects forward and we're we're vested on our own projects but as part of this plan this vetting process of what the priorities were. We did it as a whole as a group so that no one department was just going this is my project has to go to the top. It was a collective vote. We all had a process in in deciding what project needed to be at the higher end and move them down. And then we also understand that this isn't 25 projects that only need to be done in year one. This is a phased in process for for the first level sets of projects. We know this is a phased in project over several years and then the next set of projects would come after that. So it falls in line to what Sarah's kind of set down for our boundaries for the 10-year plan and it really works. And some of these projects are already coming to fruition in the background already so they may fall off her plan. um most of us are still aggressively seeking grant funding or other types of funding to help offset some of the costs and in that case then it becomes inind or you know cost match cost share balances as opposed to a full $700,000. So whatever we can do but Sarah's done well with us and again each one of us took an opportunity as a group to work through these projects. It wasn't just, you know, this is my project and this is the only one I'm concerned about.

I love that so much. This is beautifully done.

I appreciate Well, and this is just the start really of a larger [clears throat] um document that you'll be getting for this. Um but and thank you, Scott, for that. I did have to use my mom voice a couple times, but we got through it. [laughter] Um but your comments make me think of two things that um don't focus on the year. There's FY27 in there and there's 23 projects. FY, you know, don't focus on that. This was a 10-year plan, so we had to start somewhere. But that's just kind of like whatever year we really ramp up, that's we're going to work off that and work forward. Um, and so don't get hung up on the year. And um this process also is so meaningful and helpful because I mean imagine going through this you [snorts] know 500page budget book and seeing these you know

whatever project in this department and whatever project in this department it's just you don't know you don't know if that's truly or where it sets within the whole city's need. So, this is going to give us this. There will be um a public-f facing story map, a GIS-based story map where the public can go on and click on projects and look at what phase it's in, if it's grant funded, if it's, you know, proposed to be debt service funded. So, there's going to be things like that that it's going to live in that uh form for right now. Maybe it will go into an asset management um you know, like open gov module in the future, but that's where it's going to live right now. So, this is just a teaser. Um, roll up your sleeves because we're gonna get into it. Not tonight though. [laughter]

Okay.

That's I a few things. One is Yeah. If you could give a read to this, I think I'll make it um, you know, and to double stamp a few things as Sarah said, you know, this is I don't think it's necessarily not true that you that 20 to30 million in backlog of projects. Um, but we can't do that in one year. Um, and and this is kind of staff's area. We also need council. We need to take you through all these pieces. It's going to be a long form piece. The financing, you know, our new finance director when we onboard that person, we're getting close to the final selection. This is going to be a big piece to figure out between, you know, debt service, uh, between, you know, fee raising in certain areas, um, general fund money to, you know, fund future reserves, tiff infrastructure. Um, in the near term, you know, we're going to have to fund through debt service and, you know, we've already got a couple projects uh in the mix that are kind of have to do things like the courthouse road, which we don't do. We're going to get sued and we're going to pay a lot more to do it. Um, so there's some things we have to do um in that category, the obviously the track and the um uh the the fire apparatus uh already moving forward. We do have some debt service falling off in FY28. We can ban, you know, we can take projects out of this, do a bond anticipation note in FY27. Um, fold in the interest in that FY27 [snorts] for the really critical things that we feel like have to happen as we go through this project, even if we don't make a final decision by the time we commit this budget because that's going to have to be in the debt service category for these larger items. So, um, it's going to be a conversation. and you see them on here. You see a price amount. You see this like a lot of these things are going to be an engineering study for this first year to figure that out. It could be like this is a really grant eligible. We may come across things where you all say like I don't think we should do that. Like like is that really necessary? Let's have those conversations too. I'm I have every confidence thanks to the work Sarah's done to set this up. Uh that we'll have a holding environment to have those

tough conversations probably through workshops. Um and it'll be a continuing conversation. And also, how do we how do we like keep the wheel going this time? Like the wheel got broken in 2019. Tammy did an amazing job, former counselor Moat on these beautiful SIP books and and when she left that like the institutional knowledge and how to do that book left with her. Um and you know and send and and we're going to pay the cost for that now. Um, and we're going to have to, you know, the bills are coming due and, you know, pump house point, you know, all these depreciating assets that just, you know, they were happening. They were depreci's going to get

every time you kick it, this dollar expensive. Yeah. This dollar amount. This is as cheap as it's ever going to be. Yeah. Right now. Exactly. I mean, and and that's it's a balancing act to be able to fund the projects and without choking off our wallets. Yeah. And this will be we're all pretty much taxpayers.

This will be the probably greatest gift of the council and Sarah to this community, too, is an honest and frank conversation of um the state of our assets, sidewalks, streets, um our pipes, all these pieces. Um, and then, you know, that's that the other piece I really want to talk about too is the is not having this happen again where we have to create this from scratch. Um, and we we have a good budget process in place that is, you know, that isn't relying so much on me or Nate. We're still a little bit or actually we're trying to create a system that the budget can go forward without us. Um, same thing needs to be true for capital improvement. And there's some open gov software solutions for capital improvement planning that can create similar types of things and be linked to the budgets and other pieces. Um there's also just you know could be quarterly updates on things and as Sarah mentioned really starting the work now of okay in FY28 how do we come in at this like this presentation could be at like you know day one of the budget process you know let's um in addition to new requests let's drill a line on this and have some good recommendations from staff that work for us is to have much better financing options and good stuff ahead

I do like the idea of having I understand timely but even like basic outline for this information in advance because it does help really inform the budget process. Yeah. Yeah. I guess reading the one with take this one for you. Oh yeah. And we can make more. Um I might uh let's see what do we get next. Finance. [snorts] Ashley. You want me to do it? Yeah. This one shouldn't be too. Where are we at? 134.

Night. Night. Thank you.

Hi guys. Hi.

Uh Ashley Brown, deputy finance director. Um so we have the finance budget. Not much has changed. You'll see um payroll did increase a little bit. That is due to the colas and the um anticipation of the new finance director. Professional services went up a little bit as well. That is where we pay our uh bond council out of all of those things. Um our audit team um Sulasard who contracts for us that's paid out of our professional services line. Um IT subscriptions and IT services. Again, that's the new uh breakout from it into everybody's budgets. Uh tuition reimbursement went up a little bit. That is uh due to me uh going for my degree in accounting. Um and [snorts] you will see we do have TIFF revenues coming in to help offset that tuition reimbursement cost. Um, and then we were able to bring down some of the other budgets like training, uh, travel, legal, office supplies, printing and advertising, things that we don't utilize as much in the finance department. We did bring that down. Um, but other than that, that's pretty much the finance budget. We keep it simple back there. [laughter]

Any questions? No manager adjustments here as you can imagine. Um, we're pretty lock step. Uh, Ashley, thank God for Ashley. Um, you know, the, uh, yeah, I'm glad you mentioned the TIFF piece. That is one of the TIFF eligible expenses is for Ellsworth residents is also in in our personnel ordinance, um, to, uh, to support our employees to get education, which is aligned to their work. Um, Ashley, I think graduation for the associates degree in June. It's July one. July one. Um then we're going to work on that. And that's not just I'm glad for Ashley too, but that's also for commitment to the city for a period of time.

Yeah. How long do you have to stay with the city after that? What's the um it is 100% payback within like the four years. So if I were to leave and it it goes down each year. Um so I'm basically with the city until after my degree the last payment of reimbursement uh four to five years. But maybe we'll get to that point and we'll think about a CPA degree to keep her around for longer. [laughter] Just keeps growing. I'm you know [snorts] like when we're at when we're in the finance meeting, I keep telling you you're doing a great job. Thank you. And you know you are you know you're valuable. Thank you.

Yeah. And I'd also say I hope that we're creating a work environment where um do we or not Ashley would like to say but you know it'll be it's so worth it to me. That's the always for not just Ashley but for all of our employees that um that can utilize this program whether it's this program or any of our leadership trainings or other things that you know we value here. But we also want to be the type of place that's setting you up for success in life. Um, and you know, those are the best types of work environments, um, where you know that you're really cared about, um, that you're doing a great job, you're doing mission driven stuff, especially, I mean, uh, in this finance role. This is like the toughest stuff there is, the amount of pressure that's on Ashley.

Hey, at least she's smiling. [laughter] I rarely see her frown. What keeps me going? [laughter]

And I'd say the payroll is up a bit. we put up um a larger figure for the finance director um to be more competitive with uh I think that could depend on the final round. We're in the final round here um on what we come to and whether that's going to be enough or be too much. Um and if that decision is made before uh the budget gets finalized, we could just true cost the payroll because we'll know pretty much exactly how much the staff would need at that point. Um, yeah. Great. Um, thank you. Ashley, we got to debt 530. That's a yellow tab, too. If anybody just wants to pull the yellow tab and tax So, you'll see a a bit of a drop off um in the debt service this year. I think the best page to go to is actually probably 532 technically, which is that last like it it shows from our debt book. Um

uh and you can kind of see the u the side totals area. um our 2026 ban bond um and the 2025 for that. That's what's coming ahead for the fire truck um and the uh um the the school track [snorts]

um at least in the city side. And then the ban bond for the 2025 that was a lot of the road work and some of the equipment upgrades in the highway department. Um, you know, we uh we're expecting a bit of a drop off um on the general fund side of things from 27 to 28. If you go that you see that one 1,400,000 to the 1,200,000 um and then you 261 and then you're kind of stable for a bit and then FY 2030. Gosh, you guys should stay around. We're going to have a $400,000 drop off that year. Um uh but I think that's important towards the the capital improvement planning conversation too, right? Which is I know it's for the life cycle of the thing you're bonding for is important to keep in mind, but it's also keeping in mind trying to keep a pretty stable debt service um amount. And uh this is an area I think for the finance director that you know I want to be better on not just having this is our debt kind of analysis piece but there's a lot more tools. We've talked to a couple finance director candidates that have incredible expertise in how to manage debt debt service paying off debt using the tools of municipal governments. um to leverage the bond bank to shop for better rates from other local banks um to get certain types of terms for the bonds that can pay other things off at different years to be able to look at this type of analysis and you know give a Fortune 500 company level of um input into how we manage um our debt. This is also it's a previous spreadsheet and I'll probably include this in my final budget memo um but in previous memos that I provided to council and on this subject you know this is a comparatively low debt load for the city um compared to other service centers in the region if not one

of the lowest uh around that doesn't say like we should just start issuing a bunch of debt um but uh you know that that is an area that's why I'm confident at least for this first year that we can add a little our debt to fund our true like year one priorities. Uh but uh you know we really need to be thoughtful about um the future here and how this layers into our debt service and how things kind of fall off and you know and what what can be used for a lot of our our capital improvement funding for TIFF funds on debt eligible expenses there. That was one of the surprises I think to me about TIFF reviewing that project. There was so many infrastructure projects that we did, so many highway pieces of equipment that we bought with general fund money instead of 59 cents in the dollar tiff money. Uh that was a mistake. Uh it cost the taxpayer money to do that. Uh and that's why just, you [snorts] know, having good staff isn't just about, you know, isn't about light workloads. There's nobody around here um that isn't working their tail off. There's just a ginormous backlog [laughter] of of things that we can't get to every single day. But we're finally at a level where we can be future looking where we can start saying, you know, here's the 20 to30 million in stuff we need to do. Let's prioritize it now. Um, and how does that go to our debt service? Um, you know, how do we have honest conversations with the taxpayer? We did also talked to one candidate who talked about that. It's like, hey, sometimes you might need to tell the taxpayer, we're going to have to increase your taxes this year to fund X and Y in the capital piece so that I don't have to tax you in three years at a x higher rate. Um and you know if you can show like this is why your tax rate is increasing as opposed to well it's just the cost of government things are there like those it instills a lot better trust that you have people that are mining the till u that are super transparent which we try to be um and

are super forward thinking and modern um because it's a $65 million operation every single year in expenses that we have out there um and a $ 1.7 billion valuation on our city. Um, with the fastest growing population in Maine, um, incredible new hotels, new apartment buildings, new tractor dealerships, new houses. Uh, you know, that's broadening our tax base that's, you know, going to hopefully build the kind of city where people's kids can say, "Hey, I can have a job there. I can live there. my city is not falling apart because there's good people in city government that are make taking care of the infrastructure um in an excellent way and an incredible business community that's making all of this possible um and great schools and that's you know um I think that is the future of Ellsworth uh it's such opportunity here in rural America um to have growth um and yes there's some problems with that thousand Airbnbs and Um,

you know, come on, man. Stop kicking on the ear, dude.

Oh, I'm kicking on it. It's a huge huge part of that $700 million valuation increase over the these years. I think it's um, as I mentioned before, it's be wary of that regulation piece, but that's a thousand houses potentially that, you know, aren't kids going to schools anymore. We talked about the school getting rid of a class this year. And I think, you know, for a lot of people who have been here for a long time, I'm sure they want to make sure that their kids and their grandkids can come back here and live here, too. Um because if not, as we showed in some of the presentations on like Milanaka and other towns that are losing population, losing valuation, the roads are falling apart. Like kids aren't going back there. Population charts show it. Um, so if we really want to keep Ellsworth for the next generation, it

be nice to make sure that Ellsworth keeps continuing on instead of being like Old Orchard Beach and Bar Harbor that if you go down there in the winter time and everything is shuttered. Yeah, I think that Yeah, it's a zombie apocalypse in Bar Harbor in January. Castine too where I live [laughter] Milan. It's a really good comparison. Yeah, it's a really good comparison because um at a at a crucial juncture, Melanino was given a lot of resources and the offers of a lot of help in planning and and moving forward and they didn't want it. Yeah,

it was there was this mindset within the community that I know this because it happens to be part of my curriculum for history of the main woods, but um there was this mindset within the community, paper's going to come back. paper's going to come back. It's going to come back any day now. And it didn't. So, you know, it was that was really too bad. It's such a vicious cycle, too, because you start hearing this in Augusta right now in their schools. Like, they were thinking about not having high school bus transportation. Yeah. Like, and they're cutting a ton of stuff. We're like,

you create a vicious cycle in some ways too when you start going down that route. We might, you know, you might have cut your police department because especially those bigger departments. That's the only way you're going to get some significant taxpayer savings. You either don't invested in the 20 to $30 million like you guys could cut my salary by 10 20%. Might make make you feel real good. Um but you're not going to figure out 10 to 20 million. In fact, you might have cut the people that are going to get you the grants that'll help with this. Um and then what happens is you create a vicious cycle. Your roads start falling apart. Your schools start falling apart. PE people don't come coming back into your community. Um, and that's a fate I think we all want to avoid. And fortunately, we've got a growth great growth file here. Um, to your point on Rody was talking to me about this when we were our parks and rec director and he mentioned he's like, "Yeah, I remember going to Milanaka as a kid and like they didn't like you had to bring your own food and like this serve you would just like you just see the school system like oh my gosh." Um, this is not like Ellsworth. Um, it's

Well, I don't know if you know the I mean, when Melanino hit the news, this was back in the as um there was there were people that felt so strongly um about the problems that they were having. They did some uh human interest stories on people for Milanaka that were driving four hours back and forth to go to work somewhere. Um, so they wow they there was a consultancy firm from I'm not sure which city, New York or Boston who volunteered, we're going to come in, we're going to do this for you for free and they and they did and they made and the results made the national news because the consultants said they just wouldn't consider they won't consider anything, you know, it's just our way or the highway. And so it was basically all for not.

Yeah. It was really too bad. Yeah,

you take like when Lauren closed because of quality of life. It was a little hard for me because I served in the army. That quality of life is nothing compared to what the Air Force's quality of life is. But when that when the air force moved out, the the luring authority tried to do some marketing and even even the state they created the uh luring uh the uh main military authority and they put people to work rebuilding Humvees and stuff like that and they're still out there working. It's just you have they they got to do competitive bidding, but the rest of the the whole facility isn't being utilized. It's hard press up the county to try to grab all of that and to watch limestone the nearest place to go. You know what I mean? Yeah, unfortunately I think Ellsworth and I the presentation the chamber on just growth and um went at finance committee too if you those who weren't at that meeting when I look back at the finance committee meeting I think it's from Monday

um gave my presentation on growth in the city and tax base increases which are pretty dramatic about 500,000 a year it's come in just new tax revenue it's not even valuation increases um but it's also kind of more than that that's the business community doing incredible job um of growing here and enabling that growth it's our schools who are kicking butt and those awesome. It's our nonprofits, you know, the Rotary Club helping to build new playgrounds at De Meer Field, Hard Ellsworth. We, you know, the stuff they're doing around here like the moose and log for that matter. What's that? I think the moose and Oh, yeah. They also do so much. Yeah. Just volunteer po. I mean, it's just all these people that are rowing together to be like, we take pride in this place and we take care of it together.

We've managed to be very resilient in the city of Ellsworth because I remember when the Mill Mall mall was the text down there and they walked out that place [snorts] closed up and there's a lot of people that lost jobs and uh we used to have uh there used to be two machine shops. There used to be several welding shops and we had Ford dealership. Yeah. in a Chrysler dealership that we're not like Darling's Auto Mall, you know what I mean?

Lots of change lumber to commercial district to now all this new tourism growth. But to your point too on how do we not become Bar Harbor or these like these we want that year round. That's what to me that workforce housing that year round not just houses that people can't afford for the workforce. Yeah. The jobs. It can't be seasonal without the salt anyway. [laughter] Yes. Yes. I was going to say we're lucky we're not ocean friend. Yeah, we got a little bit. But yeah, it's kind of like [laughter] salt substitute. We got beautiful lakes. Get the most beautiful. I want to tell you right now, it's going to take a real long time before I go swimming. [laughter] Still, just telling you,

I feel like you go swimming in Branson. You can pretty much just drink the water while you're swimming. I mean, it's that is one of the most pristine lakes. Oh, it's I'm up in the alagash all the time. I'm like branch is as good as anything up in the north woods. So, you catch big fish still in the branch. Yeah. Are we now talking about county up? We need to talk about basically we're almost there. We're almost there. [laughter] Almost there. This is what we all This is what we all This is what we all This is This is [laughter] We're not going No. No. The one that we can't do anything about. And then we have legislative. We got to talk a little bit about that, too. Um,

why don't we just what what's the county going to do if we don't pay it? It's a good question. [laughter] It means our legal bill will go way up. They charge a really large interest rate. Oh, yeah. Um, what do we get out of them? So, they're up from 747 to 821. They're up 9.9%. You know, it's almost it's a couple percent higher than the rest of the city and school budgets. They were higher than the city and school budgets last year, too. There's nothing we can do about it. I think we're very fortunate that we have like unlike an RSU where there's not a lot we can do about that if we were in that scenario, at least with our school department. You know,

the rate of increase has been much less than other school departments. So, um so that is what it is. Um, you don't like it? Go to a county commissioner meeting, tell them all about it. Had a few counselors that have done that. 9 a.m. Yeah, yeah, that may make it tough. John Stein did that a couple times. He went I went with them, too. And they're Yeah. Uh, let's go to Legislative 172. We should charge them more for water and stream. I got to lean on you water. I shall see. Oh, yeah. We could mess around now. Fake tax bills.

Just get a rise out of it. Just kidding. County Commissioner joking. We're nearing where three of your level is. You're getting goofy. Last one. So you guys got in IT services got you again. Got everybody. They got you too

at 172. Um so that's your true crossing for IT services. um your printing and advertising, you weren't quite as high of a level, so uh we brought that down a bit. Um the uh the conferences and meetings, you know, you all don't we added a little a lot more than FY25 into 26. Um it didn't quite use as much of it as we anticipated. I brought that down to about the 10,00 level. So, you know, folks want to attend. Um, but it seems like we keep you pretty busy with um online trainings and and tons of meetings. So, you know, I'll let you think about this. If we want to come back and tell Ashley to talk about more for conference and meetings, if folks want to attend, let me know. Um, the big kind of piece that we increased by from 5,000 to 10,000 um was the legal uh the council's fairly um almost double over budget on legal related items. Uh, you know, this is one of those ones, as I mentioned before, like the $5,000 figure wasn't there wasn't some great math equation for how that was going to be. We had no prior year actuals to go by. HR, city manager's office, few other departments, there's more legal in there. Some of them didn't spend anything at all. So, you know, we'll monitor year to year to say, was last year an outlier? Sometimes there's [snorts] negotiations, other things that take more um or other pieces. And also smaller things I think we talked like that I'm trying to get better at. Um take like the the granite stone memorial stone piece that was in Nolton Park and we had a citizen upset about that and looked into it and legal advice and guidance and you know probably thousand bucks locked into that piece which was really we have like a moratorium on it now and it's like hey you know what like let's just keep that moratorium. If somebody says they want to build a new memorial, let's talk about it. But like let's not next time around I might look to those individual citizen requests and

try to be a little more in-house on yeah if we need a full legal opinion or talk to council like do you guys really want me to go down the line of legaling this out or you know I think a mortorium is very good idea.

Yeah. So we're in a mortorium. There's no there's none of those go forward. If something comes forward we'll bring it up. We'll do some legal arrangements. We'll do a bunch of staff time, but we got to hold back a little bit when we get any small thing that's if it's not part of our work plans. If it's not part of other things, um, a couple things with council, too, that I've, you know, we try to be reactive and say, "Hey, we'd like to do this." Um, and I'd like to well, let's talk to the full council about like, do we want to move forward that before I start preparing memos, pinging legal, you know, if it's something extremely pressing, of course, um, we've got to do that. And there are some of those things that fall into that category. Um but how can we maybe think about a better process for you know a council reaching out about something and bring it to a you know that would need to go to the meeting like maybe it's a first step as we talk about it in the open meeting and then say okay do we want to do that now do we want to do it later that's also Danielle and urban planning we're kind of looking ahead to the next council um uh group and when we do the onboarding we're in such a good place now with our internal work plans their project management team with our capital improvement plans. I think it's time to have like a kind of a work plan for the council. Um and once we get a new council seated, um you know, here's our project list for 26 for or for um calendar year 27. Um maybe do a little bit of introduction to that in December, in January, come back with our work plan. You know, these are the things we'd like to work on as a team over the next year and fold into our our work plans and our strategies. And then as something comes up, it's like, hey, like do you want to add that to the work plan this year? Um there's going to be a cost to that. Could be legal cost, could be taff time cost. And how do we toggle the work plan? And what do we drop off? What do we say like, hey, we're as I mentioned to Tabitha at the financing. We always what gets dropped off is housing is the longer term like super complicated, not really pressing of the moment like we'll just keep telling citizens like you know, we're working on

it. from tiff districts and um but if we want to put that housing on the work plan like let's really prioritize it. Let's not let it just be the first thing that falls off so we can chase granite stone legal reviews or reviews of things that happened three or four years ago. Um those might be important to do but let's put it into the work plan and figure out when we want to tackle it not just you know jump onto it. I feel like that's the the next iteration of us as a council and staff and community to just, you know, really prioritize and as new things come in, um, whether it be by the community or by the council or by staff that we come together to decide how to move forward on it. So, and that concludes, I think, right? I didn't list anything else.

So, kind of quick wrap up. We'll come back in two weeks. We'll do kind of the change log that Ashley's been working on. We'll have some higher level policy discussions probably in the heart of Ellsworth funding piece short-term emerald dashboard and a few of those other items in addition to some cleanup and then maybe have the calculator out and what goes forward. Sarah will be I thought we had another one. We do the two weeks. Not next week. Not next week. We skip next week. Oh, okay. Um, good. I get a break. and Sarah, we we might want to have some more sip conversation too depending on how the workshop goes and what kind of comes out of that. Yeah, the workshop not going to be much full and we only have a little bit of time.

Yeah. Um so probably to keep the and but yours that that's an important thing. Are we going to talk about it improvement? You know what I mean? the next budget meeting this I think we could I think we're we're angling to have the budget on the June meeting too for final passage um you know we've got plenty of room between now and then so we could add another let's okay let's have that next conversation maybe we have a um we could do another meeting if there's some things that aren't outstanding from the the next and meeting in two weeks and maybe the SIP is really I could maybe even see a special workshop on that one

um just so we come in fresh. Nothing else distracts us. And [laughter] uh yeah, I don't like distractions. Great. Thank you all. Thank you.