City Council - Regular Meeting

Lone Star Tick, I've got a cousin, two of his in-laws have got that, you can't eat meat, you can't eat dairy. And there's little kids in that neighborhood, and that really needs to be addressed. Two weeks ago today, or yesterday, I called up here, and I think I talked with Tina and with Kendall. And I asked, I said, we know it can be addressed. And I understood it was within a week's time. Well, now it's been two weeks. So we really appreciate it, that it get addressed. Preferably it's SAP.

Jim, could you say that address one more time?

Yes, the address that's concerned is 2009 East Spring Hill Court. As you're coming off 183rd, that's Spring Hill Drive. It's the first cul-de-sac on the right. It's very visible. We don't live in Mission Hills, but there are nice homes in there. It's dividing the property around it.

I love the Mission Hills. Thank you. Appreciate your concern. You bet, thanks. We'll sure get it taken care of. Okay, thank you.

My name is Gary Smith. I live at 2021 East Springfield Court. So I'm right. I just look across the street. Look at that place every day. There's stray cats that are running through the neighborhood. There's a lot of kids that live around there. Not sure I'd like to see something. Something get done over there. I've talked to a lady here a while back. I think it's Tina Powell. About sidewalks, and out front there, right where the, well, that's where the wheelchair ramps are, that thing is all busted out. She said she'd get back with me to see whose responsibility that was to fix, and she never did get back with me. I just want to know, if I need to fix it, I'll fix it. But it's really, really dangerous. with all these scooters and everything running up and down the road. Somebody's going to get hurt. I'd like somebody to let me know. After the meeting, we'll have somebody get in touch with you. I'd like to see how things work in our HOA, how they work. Does the city take responsibility?

away take responsibility i think we've got the answer but okay during this time i sure need to i need that answer yeah but after the meeting we'll have okay or leave your phone number and we'll get a hold of you okay yeah thank you appreciate it kind of comes under the head sometimes grass grows pretty fast when you hit two or three inches of rain every two or three days. Um, I to me, moving down the list here, I just want to check and see if anybody has any conflicts related to We're good on item E, item F, we don't have any appointments. Consent agenda, there's four items there. Hopefully everyone's had the opportunity to review those. I think Craig gave us a copy of the one that was added. Item four, one of the pump station improvements for 167th Street. And I will make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Do I have a second?

Second.

40 seconds. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries 4-0. Unfinished business? None. New business. Item 1. CFO Burke Carroll. The show is yours. Take it away.

Okay, as I mentioned before we got started, we will hold true to the one hour timeframe for our council meeting today. And whatever we don't cover on the general fund, we can finish up tomorrow night when we do streets, library, and bond and interest funds as well. So just be respectful of your time. We're gonna work through this if we need to. have a lot of discussion. I don't want us to feel rushed. We can pick it up tomorrow. We can even add meetings to our budget calendar. So in front of you, all of this stuff was emailed to you last week, but we went ahead and prepared a council packet, printed items for you as well, so you can keep track of these. At our future budget workshops, I will give you additional inserts for your book, so you will have all the documents as we proceed. You will find in your budget book of materials, tab number one is our budget calendar, and you can see from that we are making great progress on all of the items and deadlines that we have scheduled, and we started scheduling these early in January, and we're all the way through, we're in June, almost hitting July now. We're right on schedule for our first workshop. We even crossed it off our list. Tomorrow night we'll have another council workshop and then our next workshop will be July 9th and then our final one will be July 22nd unless we decide to throw some additional meetings in there. Tab number two is the results from the budget community survey that we've given out. There were 42 responses from the community that took the survey. You know, we put a broad array of items in that survey. There were items for the general funds, streets, community centers, senior center, bond and interest, utility funds. So, you know, it covered quite an array of items for the community to, you know, engage with. As we prepared the budget, one of our guiding tools was our 10-year CIP, so we were trying to determine which projects to do. We made sure that we incorporated the 10-year CIP first, and then also we wanted to take into consideration the importance of what the community asked for as well. So we looked at this, what was more important here and there, and if we had to make decisions and cuts, those were the key drivers. Section three is, and this will be updated as we do different workshops with different funds, but this is a budget in brief and this is something that the GFOA recommends providing when you are doing a budget workshop is to provide just a real quick synopsis of your budget workshops of high level, so you can look at it in a glance. So hopefully this was helpful to you as you were going through the presentation and broke it down real high level. data-driven, it's not intended to be lengthy. So when we do the next few funds, this will also be updated to include water, sewer, capital reserve funds, and all of those types of things. Section number four will be our today's workshop materials, and then tab number five will be what we end up doing tomorrow. I just want to start off by saying thank you for being here. Thank you to the staff that helped me put this together. I mean, this isn't one man's job. I mean, we're constantly tweaking, meeting, trying to make sure we cover all the different bases. And this city's growing so fast. I mean, there's already things in here that's changed since last week. I mean, that's just how fast this changes. So it's hard to keep it fresh. and up-to-date to the minute because things are always changing. But again, thanks to the staff that helped put this together. And Kayla's here, she helps keep me organized. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. You didn't know I was going to call you out on that, did you? Okay. So, with that being said, let's get started into our budget workshop material. Today and tomorrow we will be talking about our general fund revenue, our citywide personnel and staffing. general fund department highlights, our general fund projects and transfers, our general fund project, our fund balance projections, and then any additional follow-up from council, which we can do at any time. I want to just talk about, there's going to be a lot of times where we're talking about operational within our department, so we'll go down through all the different departments within the general fund. And you may be thinking, are we going to do that project? Are we going to do that project? A lot of those projects are going to be handled down in the later portion of the presentation. So one of the things that I did differently this year was in the past we had a tendency to use an administrative line for capital outlay, discretionary capital outlays if we had big contracts or grant funding or we were going to pay for stuff. big ticket items out of the general fund, we would pay it out of there. I've learned that a best practice with GFOA is you don't do anything that's big in capital within your operating budgets, but make a transfer to a capital reserve spot or a designated fund that kind of monitors those things better. For instance, we've paid street costs out of discretionary capital outlay, out of administration. Kind of gets lost in there because there's a lot of different things in there. My approach this year is to, well, last year, in 26, we transferred out to the street department. But all items that we want to pay for street will be a transfer to the street department. So those dollars remain in that fund to accommodate those tasks. And they don't just get, you know, losses. One of the things that you're kind of seeing in the financials each month this year is our admin budget looks overspent because 2025 street costs are coming in this year that were allocated to that line item. So it's real confusing and trying to figure out a way where I think, and the mayor asks, you know, it looks like we're kind of high in administration on our budget. And I said, well, a portion of that is 2025 costs that are coming in that are happening to be booked there because that's where we said we were gonna do it in the past. So again, trying to transfer out large capital projects to different buckets. So those can be handled in there and those dollars remain over there and outside of, you know, general operations. Does that make sense? So you're gonna see that as a change. Okay. So, let's talk about revenue. Pretty exciting. I think we're very fortunate. That's one of the things, it's easy to do this budget because we do have good revenue numbers. We have good growth, we have sales tax, we have all kinds of different items that really help generate the revenues that we want to do to use for the projects that we have lined up. This here is the area city mill rate comparison for 2026, and this is where we are today as if we decided to keep our mill levy exactly where we are and exceed the revenue neutral rate. So this is where we kind of rank amongst all the other cities. The book looks better than this chart, but you can see Goddard right here, we're at 39.299 mills right now. Keechon and Viola are the only ones under us, and everybody else is just substantially starts growing the other direction. So as the mayor likes to say, the rain around Wichita, we're pretty competitive. So it's not like we're out of line or anything. We're really pretty much in a very good position. Again, we also talked about early on, we weren't going to increase the mill levy. So all the projections that we have in here are staying completely at the 39.299 mills. These projections do take into account that we will exceed the revenue neutral rate, which we'll talk about in a second.

I'll just mention briefly that because of one cent sales tax, Mays is probably going to lower their real levy this year. It'll be interesting to see how much they lower. And also in talking with the Hayesville mayor, he indicated that they were going to lower their real levy. because of their one cent sales tax. So it'll be interesting to see after the vest clears. There is a lot of pressure. Ryan Beatty's made several impassioned pleas about the municipalities to try to hold close to the neutral rate. But most of those other cities aren't experiencing the growth that we are right now. But I think it'll be interesting to see how much they lower, even if they go down to the revenue control rate, but that's just a little general information. Then the last thing we need to point out that some of those cities in the 60s, clear out on the end, they pay for their own fire protection so you kind of have to make an adjustment. We're paying 69 mils for fire protection. How many mils did you say? It's like 16.9 mils for fire protection for the county.

So there's lots of contextual differences. You got some cities that have no library, no pools such as we do, which our library and pools are 8 mils, whereas NACE doesn't have either of those. It's hard to compare apples to apples because we're all different shapes and sizes. We deliver somewhat different services in some regard, but you get a pretty good idea of where you compare, especially if you consider the context, like library pools and whether or not they have their own firing methods.

The fire, the fire is an amazing one. It's on the Big Valley. It's kind of a hybrid. Thorough Water Reservoir, Fire Department, Cheney, Garden Plain. I'm not sure about that, but I think they did. And I think they had a 1940s fire truck. Great mayor over there, Bill. Unbelievably outstanding.

Another thing to consider, I mean, there's been a lot of talk in the legislature about potential changes for next year. So lowering the bill levy down to our revenue neutral rate may get us stuck somewhere where we may not want to be into the future. We don't know what those are going to be. So this to me is pretty conservative, keeping the revenue neutral rate, not raising the mill, just pretty much being flat in my opinion to kind of see what the legislature gives us next year, to kind of see if we're gonna have to backtrack, if we're gonna have to reduce something. I think this is a conservative method and we should always kind of think about that next year as we're thinking about our budgets for next year. City of Goddard's assessed valuation in history. So this came in a little bit, a little bit under what we expected it to be. I believe last year when we were doing our projections, I had kind of hoped that it would be closer to 11%. We came in at 8.34% for 2027. Our total valuations at 94 million, 94.5 million. 8%, 8% out. I'd already kind of factored that in last year, so it kind of dipped down just a little lower than we expected it to be. But I believe from what I've heard, that's really kind of standard. amongst the other municipalities in the area except for Mays. And I think they had some IRBs that came offline. So they had some more valuation come on that we didn't have. But typically everybody was kind of seeing 5%, and we saw 8%. So we kind of feel we're still good. I think it's been mentioned that last year was a slow build season for us due to the rain and the backlog of engineering and those sorts of things. We could see an uptick for next year, kind of hope we do. If we don't, I factored in 8% going into the future out through 2030. So just letting you know, that's kind of what we're seeing. Our trend lines though. we start talking again just briefly here about our revenue neutral rate just as a reminder the revenue neutral rate is the mill levy required to generate the same amount of property tax revenue as the prior year the revenue neutral rate also excludes revenue from new growth because property value increased in 2026 the city r r decreased so As the value goes up, the amount of dollar mills reduces. So any mill levy above the R&R generates additional property tax revenue and requires a public hearing under Kansas law. So our numbers came in like this. Our total asset valuation that we've already talked about was 94.5 million. Our revenue neutral rate was set at 36.274 mils. Our current mill levy is 39.22 so you can see there's a difference there of 3.025 mils. Dollar-wise, one mil on the 2027 valuation generates approximately $94,554 in additional property taxes. So if our current mill levy is 3.02 mills below R&R, that is approximately $286,000 of additional property tax revenue above the revenue mutual rate. So if we did not adopt or approve to exceed R&R, we would be cutting our revenues down by $286,000 just by reducing our mill levy down to R&R. On July 6th, we will be bringing to you, unless you tell me otherwise, we will be bringing a resolution stating that the city intends to exceed R&R at our budget hearing and our R&R hearing that we'll have on September 8th. We have to do that whether or not, if we decide to increase the R&R, That is the time we have to say we can, but when we get to the budget season or the budget hearing, we don't have to adopt it. So I mean, if you don't elect to say I might, then later you can't. So you've got time between July 6th, in September 9th to say, no, wait a minute, we're not gonna do that. So this is just a step that we have to do. It's procedural. We did it last year. I mean, it's all common. So we will be bringing that to you on the council meeting on July 6th to see if we're all in agreeance that we need to notify the county. When that happens, the county will take our numbers and send out the flyer to all of the citizens stating there will be a budget hearing for the city of Goddard and we plan to exceed R&R and this is what it is and that's when people kind of start getting excited because they see those things come in the mail and they'll know that we are not raising our mill levy but we are exceeding R&R. Any questions with that? City mill levy rate allocation. So just as a general reminder, the general fund doesn't get all of that 39.299 mills. It's divided up just a little bit. So our general fund gets 33.92, our debt service fund gets 2.379 mills, and our library gets three. Approximately, the general fund gets about $3.2 million, our debt service gets about $225,000, and our library gets about $283,000 out of the total property tax levy. You can tell down here in 2024 to 2025, that's when we raised our mill levy, six mills. And that was, as a reminder, we did that to start funding our five and five street program. So that was the major initiative for that. From 2025 to 2026 last year, we raised the mill an additional two mills to start adding more dollars towards that million dollar street program that we did. We have held steady. We had talked about increasing it another two mills this year. Unless you tell me otherwise, that hasn't happened in any of my numbers, but we're completely open to doing whatever you like. But this is showing steady, you know, 39.299 mils out through 2030 at this point in time. I think it's really good just to remember why we raised our mills. Six mills back a couple years ago and another two. Those dollars have gone into the street budget and you can see all the street work that we've done. That's very expensive work. A million dollars doesn't go very far. Only a couple blocks, I think.

The important thing too is the fact that when we did that, we put out a map and showed everybody where we're gonna spend the money. And I think, I know I had a couple of my neighbors said, well, if we need to fix the streets, go ahead and do it. If you say you're going to do it, then tell everybody what you're going to do and then follow through. I think two years into this, we're on track of following that, and I just think it's important. point out that the middle of the increases haven't covered the full million dollars, but because of the growth we have in the community, the increase in our sales tax, the increase in the fees that we've had, The money that we saved by making changes in property custody and insurance, figuring out how to get rid of the sludge and get a piece of equipment and still have half the money left over. I mean, we've done a lot of great things in terms of the three things that you have to do to run an operation. Control expenses, which we've done. We've increased fees, which increases revenue, and we've experienced growth. I mean, so... We're really in a good situation because all those things are working together and there are a lot of communities in the state of Kansas that would be very envious of the revenue growth that we're experiencing because of where we are and the growth. I think that that was a big jump. I don't think we could do that again today. I think that the political Temperature, people are just kind of at that end. We've seen a decrease in inflation. Revenue for wages is up, but it's kind of like I said this before, but we're kind of in a 1980s interest rate scenario. And hopefully in the next three or four years as the economy recovers and real wage growth exceeds inflation, people will be relieved of some of the pressure. But I think we're fortunate to have found savings. We've been brave enough to increase fees. the builders are paying to tie into the systems. And a lot of people complain, well, you're adding all this stuff. What are they paying? And then when you tell them, they kind of go, hmm, OK. We're in good shape with this and as long as inflation doesn't take off or they blow up the Middle East, which I said before, we're in good shape, so I'll be quiet.

I think it's also important to note how much planning we've done and we follow the plan. So when we start early in the year with revising, we built the 10-year CIP last year and then we revise it annually and we're getting ready to bring it in and revise it again. just with additions and changes and better cost estimates. So we follow our plan. That's been our guiding light as we prepared our budget and knowing those things helps us stay transparent and it helps the community know that the tax dollars that we're bringing in are paying for what we've said. We can show it with the building you guys are building, the north park that's being built. These things, they're happening. So, okay.

turning up in the streets today.

City tax revenue breakdown. We don't only bring in tax revenue from property taxes and ad valorem taxes, but we have other good sources of tax revenue, such as our franchise taxes, our sales tax. our alcohol tax and our comp use tax, which are growing as well. So you can see from the bottom numbers at the bottom of all of our tax revenue that's come in, you know, we're bringing in about an additional $500,000 a year in just those components alone, the property tax combination, the sales tax, the franchise taxes, our alcohol tax that we did has started to go up as well. Overall, it kind of averages, you know, $27,000 2030, it's kind of a seven and a half percent growth there. That's probably conservative. I also want to mention none of the numbers from 2027 to 2030 take into consideration any star bond revenue that could possibly be coming online in 2028, 2029. And it doesn't take into any consideration the growth that we're gonna get from the Compuse Tax, which is in the Starbond District, but the Goddard Apartments and the new development, the Overland Park Property Group and all of that stuff. So I mean, this is honestly worst case scenario, in my opinion, because I think it's gonna be better than projected come 2028, 2029 and 30, because those revenues are really gonna kick up and get in there. Franchise, I kinda wanna look at this. Yeah, our franchise fees are doing well, and since tax this year is down just a tad bit, but our comp use is up, so I know people are shopping online more than in stores or what, but that's just midway through the year. Starbucks. so any questions on our tax revenue one quick question what is watercraft how's that um watercraft that is something we get from the county from from the county for our property taxes it's like motor vehicle or commercial vehicle honestly when they give me my projections they give me zero that's what they give us and these are kind of actual numbers that actually come in so Kind of funny, on the state budget form, they want you to put in a number, but I get zero there from the county, and they won't let me put anything in that doesn't match what the county says, so it's usually nothing.

It's usually votes and... Well, but, maybe I'm wrong, but didn't they ask the property tax on recreational vehicles now?

no it may not have come into effect yet but i think i saw some changes on that but rb10 recreational vehicle tax is separate from watercraft so i wasn't sure when i i think i think i want to check into this too but i think rv tax is actually like a motor home camper, whereas recreationally, you're referring to ATVs, golf carts.

But I thought it included watercraft as well, but maybe to a certain size, I don't know.

We'll have a look, and it may, it may pass and this isn't affected in the next budget cycle. Okay. But yeah, when Brooke gets her state forms, everything from watercraft up to having to learn taxes is, The number changes based on the mill levy that's set and the formula that the state puts into that state form. So our other mill levy supported department, which is the library, it's the same thing. They actually get a portion of that too. There used to be one called oil tax on there. They don't do that anymore, but it's kind of, they change it every once in a while.

It's usually for anything, you know?

Yeah, as much as the number. Small amount. Yeah.

Yeah.

But we'll look at that.

So if they take it away, we'll be like, all right.

The motor vehicle tax is one that is consequential. We want to make sure. Right, yeah. And that's what you pay the comp, right? Yeah. All right.

Continuing through our general fund revenue. So in addition to our property taxes, sales tax, franchise and other taxes, we generate revenue through other sources as well. We obviously bring in revenue from our licenses and building permits. fines, forfeitures and penalties, charges for services. I'm going to talk about some of these things in a second. Intergovernmental is either grants or just in between funds and it's kind of a catch-all. And then we have interest earnings. So licenses and permits, it's trending down just a little bit right now from projections and so I've kind of budgeted for this to be pretty conservative. It may get better with building permits maybe picking up and the developments picking up a little bit due to the weather and last year's lag. Fines, forfeitures, and penalties, I'm kind of seeing a little bit of an uptick in revenue for a court. I don't know if it's just our new processes, our new court clerk being on top of things, I don't know. Maybe we're processing more things, but our revenue's picking up just a little bit. I'm kind of seeing some sort of a trend there. I still budgeted conservatively, though, for only $50,000. Charges for services, this is where I have booked our project administration fees. So this is a big deal. This is why we are up about 15% over last year. So as you recall, when we do new developments in the city and we manage the projects and we go out for tent note financing, the city gets to take advantage of a 5% project administration fee on those developments. When they go to permanent finance, we get 5% of the true construction engineering project costs. Not interest, not reporting fees, AG costs, cost of issuance, but just the true project costs. In 2026, we have two projects going to permanent finance. So we're going to get our fee on those. And then next year, in 2027, we have one, two, three, four, five, six, six different projects that are going to permanent finance, which allows us to really recoup a large number in our project administration fees. This year I have it estimated at being around 170,000. Next year it's gonna be 864,000. So those are big deals that we get to recoup and utilize from managing these projects and having that administration fee. Also...

Sorry, you might have made mention because I could feel wheels turning in my head. That's a great amount of money. Where might we be able to spend that or reduce other areas? And we've got a couple of projects that we've kind of tied that to with some design engineering and architectural work. I'm going to mention those.

Yeah, so all of the money that we generate within the general fund including this large amount of money, helps us make our transfers to our large capital projects in our CIP. So you're going to see where we're asking for dollars to do the engineering and design of our police station. We've got that budgeted at $600, $750,000. So that's a good, if you want to try to line up That would be a component right there.

$300,000 for engineering design of US 54 and 199. This allows us to get those projects in an engineering design utilizing cash. And then when we go to permanent finance, we will have the option, and we'll work with council on making this decision, on either paying ourselves back for what we paid for in cash, or just having a smaller amount of debt, saving costs of issuance and the interest payments. The $943,000 really offers some flexibility and will give us some long-term cost savings when we're borrowing money and will help us get into engineering design more quickly on projects like architectural for the police station and engineering design intersection improvements at 5400. It's a value that we get out of being in a growing community. If you're not growing, you're not issuing this debt for these developments. You don't have this.

For our projection purposes too, the revenue out past 2027 does not take into consideration project administration fees. I've backed those out. So I don't want to count on those until we know they're going to permanent finance and I know what those dollars are going to be for those projects. Those development projects are changing every month. I mean, you see those in the agenda report or my monthly financial reports and stuff. You know, those change so much that it's just kind of hard to determine. I don't want to count on something or make projections when those numbers change so quickly. Income, I went real conservative here. I think we probably are gonna see closer to 148,000 again or right around that number for revenue, for interest, but I always budget conservatively. Our cash, we have a lot of cash right now. We're getting ready to issue more temp notes. I don't know what more temp notes we're gonna issue. Those help us. accumulate that interest income but we're also paying for projects pretty rapidly right now um you know the north park all all of the projects that we're working on in construction you know reduce our cash so that's just kind of an estimate i have a feeling we'll have good cash balances to generate enough revenue i just i did that pretty conservatively there so like i said year over year um i project um in 2027 we'll be up about 15 percent but again mainly that's for charges for services there any questions on that just to highlight real quickly this is just a little chart kind of showing you where our all of our tax revenue all of our revenues kind of come in in this graph but Just a reminder, our evaluation growth was at 8.34%, down just a little bit, then reduced to 8% going forward. So next year we'll update that, redo kind of a projection to see what's happening with our evaluation, if it went up, down, but right now, projected out, when you see the fund balance projections in the bid, it's all taken into consideration with 8% when we're talking about revenues there. Sales tax, compensating use tax, and franchise revenues were based on historical trends, and just kind of what I'm seeing. I do an average, and an average, and an average, and it just keeps going, just kind of making sure that it's pretty much conservative, but I'm seeing an upward tick on those. As a reminder, our star bond sales tax revenue has not been included in anything. I haven't put a dollar of star bond revenue in here at all. So when that section opens up, we're going to have another another line item that hopefully looks pretty good. And also charges for services increased driven by about $850,000, $860,000 that we're going to see from project revenue.

For the transition out of revenue, I think it's producer responsibility for us to make sure councils are aware of headwinds. There's been a couple macroeconomic headwinds that have been mentioned, but one of the reasons is the sensitivity of not absorbing the new revenue growth by seeing the revenue to rate is that we're going to have a new governor next year. In the previous two legislative sessions, the governor has vetoed a tax policy that completely changes the rules on us and our ability to generate additional revenue above the revenue that we're creating in the current budget year or so. If they pass some version of some of the tax policy that we've seen in the past handful of legislative sessions, we could be having very different conversations about the money we have available and how things look. So we're in a different position than most cities because of our growth, but if we're not able to take advantage of our growth because the legislators cap us or something which hasn't been discussed, it's a different conversation, right? And then the second thing is, that's property taxes primarily, but There's some legislation that is continuing to bounce around up there that's being promoted by a couple of the counties that would reduce the amount of county white sales tax that we get. There's really no such thing as a tax cut. I hate to say that, but you're really just shifting. If you're cutting there, the lineal foot cost of a pipe or the cost of paving a land model road does not get any cheaper. You're just going to have to make it up somewhere else. But those are things that we need to be aware of. There are headwinds. pretty confident that next year, maybe the year after at the latest, we're going to be dealing with a whole new policy for how we do our annual budgets because you'll have conservative majority in the Senate, the House, and the governorship. So there won't be a lot of detailing going on by the governor at that point. So these are things we want to think about as we make decisions this year and next. It might be a whole different scenario for the future year.

Our next section, this might be the last section we get to, I don't know. We've got 15 minutes. Citywide personnel and staffing, people behind city services. We spent a lot of time, a lot of time talking to personnel this year just because, you know, we're growing. Everybody's plate is full. I mean, everybody's plate is full around here. You know, a lot of us work late, long hours. We're busy here. You guys know what's going on. As you recall back last year, we did a study with McGrath and they gave us recommendations, lots of changes to our personnel, policies, procedures, job descriptions. And then I believe they did a study that kind of guided us into, you know, our needs into the future. So, you know, we took those recommendations. I looked up GFOA best practices, kind of determining, you know, if we're going to add people, what's the justification of this? You know, if we're going to add so many people, how does this look? You know, I just wanted to see if we're right in the ballpark. And so basically the policy states, if you're going to add people, There needs to be a reason. It needs to tie to your studies, it needs to tie to your capital improvement plan, all of the services that you're offering, just to make sure that you've got enough people to cover all of the things in your growth. Also, it said if you're going to budget for positions, you should budget at least 10% higher than what you expect your actuals to be. So you will always see in my budgets what I think it's going to come in at, but here's our budget. Because we always have to budget for the full the full cost of an employee, and most of the time, I think I tweaked it almost, just fine-tuned it almost to the day some of the positions apply or came online, but you've got to count for a full year of health insurance for an employee that may not even need health insurance when they come on. So you've got all of these factors, and trying to come up with the cost for these is very, very difficult. As we do these, you know, we talk about our work on our personnel and staffing, you know, all the costs that are associated with an employee. You know, you've got health insurance, you've got capers, you've got KP and F. You've got workman's comp. You've got unemployment taxes. You've got bonuses. So there's all these different components that go into this. When I talked to Hadley at Freedom Claims early, I don't know, about two months ago, maybe less, he had projected that our rates, I should probably factor in for health insurance increases to be probably close to 12 to 15%. As you recall, we entered into contracts with Freedom Claims where we put money into a reserve account and then things that are not covered by our high deductible Blue Cross Blue Shield get paid out of this. And over time, gets built up or if we're using it a lot, obviously it would get depleted. Well, we have built this up. We've built it up actually past the point of FDIC secured at this bank that they think has put it in. So I actually draw money back and put it back into our other account just to keep it. We're doing very well there. And so Hadley said, you know, traditionally budget for 10 to 12, 10 to 15%. I budgeted 10% thinking that when the actual claims come in, we'll just use some of that reserve fund to kind of carry the cost of any increase to the city. Last week, Hadley called and said, you can't wait to meet with me. He's gonna meet with us on Monday. He doesn't think there's an increase at all. So these factor in 10% increase in health insurance costs, but he thinks we've done so well that there's no increase at all. Maybe he's tricking me, I don't know, but that's what he told me, and so I can't wait to see him, because a lot of cities see double-digit increases in health insurance, and he says that ours is doing very well.

Our employee demographics change quite a bit, too. I've never seen one lower than 8 or 9%.

Yeah, he said it's pretty much flat, just what he said. So I wanted to share that with you guys, that these budget numbers are just a little high, but that doesn't mean we should go reduce it. I think having that excess in there just kind of helps us make sure if we're not counting for that. So with that being said, I want to move on to... So our position additions... for our employee counts. This is kind of, this is what we've come up with kind of from 2024 to 2027. This is kind of where we landed for full-time and part-time. And I have, what's the other name, Bonnie? Yeah, that's it. It doesn't look like that here. I'm just saying, it looks silly there. It definitely doesn't look like that.

No, no way.

So we have increased our total employee count from 2024 from 56 to 67 in the best case scenario. So in 2026, we've hired a director of human resources. That position has been hired. Our building inspector has been hired. We budgeted for an assistant to the city manager. That position is currently still open. Full-time senior center director. We did not actually budget for a full-time, so that one came from a part-time up to a full-time, and that one has just been filled. So that's one of those situations where it kind of jumps from one to the other, and I'm like, that's where you put it. So I just wanted to highlight that that's where we landed. We budgeted for two police officers in 26 and two public work staff, and in both, the public Well, let's talk about police. Those positions have been hired, but we still have positions open for some turnover that we have. So same situation in public works. We've hired, but we have open positions. So that's kind of a trend. We budget for these, but we always seem to have open positions along the way. Jason was fully staffed last year, but we've had a little turnover this year. So, I mean, you know, just the season of how things work.

So, right now, you're on one and you're based on one. Yeah. Really good compared to the last year.

Regular patrol officer.

So... When we hired the director of HR and our building inspector, we factored in some cost savings with that, with some operational expenses that kind of came in the other way. When we hired our director of HR, our cost savings really will start being absorbed from our legal costs that we always happen to reach out to contracts for legal and also our independent contractors like our McGrath and our HR consultants that we have so now that we have that in house that those types of things and those costs will will go down our building inspector um we no longer oh we will have a reduced cost to our county inspection fees that we pay out so every time that we have a building inspector a building inspected they get half of the permanent fees right ryan yes and so we won't have to give those fees to them and also i think i've heard through discussion, that there's a possibility that we can revise our fee structure that would be more in line with, we don't have to rely on the county's fee structure that goes along with the inspection. So we can change some different costs associated with that that would make more sense, that would generate more revenue with that. So those are some aspects that help offset the costs of those positions, some additional revenue, less expenses that you know help quantify the need for those decisions.

How much will the county get with us having a building in the sector until we make changes?

How much are they getting right now?

I want to say they get probably close to a hundred thousand a year.

So most of what we're doing is residential so we should be able to save a vast majority of that. by doing all of the residential inspections in-house instead of having an ACP.

So they get half of the building permit right now?

In comparison, sorry. Yeah, for just like, let's just do a new build, single-family house. What is that?

That permit's $4,000, correct?

So this is a little complicated, but single family is traditionally going to be about $1,200 on just the permit side. That doesn't include TAPs, equity fees, or anything like that. So let's just say $1,200 for a single family detached. So they're going to get $600. We would get $600 just from the permit fee. For a duplex, it's closer on the permit side. It could be closer to $1,500. So we're getting about $750.

And they won't get any of that now?

It just depends. So right now, let's say come July 1st, that our building inspector is handling 100% of it, then we would keep 100% of the permit fees.

So you can't keep up and you have to pull and it'll just depend. So it fluctuates depending on how you have to use them.

Right, and as Brooke was saying, we're beholden to MABCD's fee structure because of our interlocal service agreement. As we move forward come July 1st, we have that ability to amend that fee structure to reflect something that's more beneficial to us if we want.

So next year to break even on the salary, approximately how many houses slash duplexes in the percentage that we're doing now?

And would it just be houses, though? We're talking about standalone electrical permits?

I'm just saying if you look at the duplexes and the houses with the 650 and the 750, about how many houses and duplexes will it take us to break even?

Okay, but also, I mean, we also have to take into account electrical permits, mechanical permits, plumbing permits, fence permits, things like that. I understand, but... Collectively. But I... Oh, I don't know.

Well, could you maybe give us a report soon to show us kind of what the break-even is?

Let me give you some real numbers. I love real numbers. Yeah, I don't want to make up numbers. Okay, that's good.

I just kind of want to see what the break-even is.

Yeah, let me get some real numbers. There was a time we ran numbers that just don't... Keep it on the top part. We'll get it to you.

Maybe just what it'll look like if you do... A lot of numbers floating out there.

I've got the numbers floating in my head too. Sorry to interrupt.

All right, so in 2027, we're going to propose we hire a city planner, two more police officers, and one public work staff. Those have been factored into our scenario here. And as for reference, I just want to let you know, I should have put this on the slide, but I have the numbers just kind of comparing the other cities around. Valley Center currently has 48 full-time employees. Mays has 53. Park City has 58. Hayesville has 95 and Bel Air has 47. So, you know, with us adding in full, this is just full time, not total, you know, we're, with these additions, we're really right, right where everybody else is.

Is your assistant just a manager? Is that posted?

So, we're interviewing someone this afternoon about that, actually. We haven't quite opened it up to people at this point, but I don't know that I will. Real quick, I wanted to just share about the city planner, because maybe this is the first you've heard of that, and you may be wondering what it is. One of the primary things that they'll do is assist with our planning and zoning stuff, as you guys know. see some of the recent media attention that our wonderful communities receive, but part of my good job is right now in the development, that's recruitment, and those types of things, along with all the planning and zoning, which if you've ever looked at our zoning rights, can be pretty detoriated with the number of applications we have for zoning amendments and plats and site plans and those kinds of things. It's a lot for him to do along with the rest of his work and the things we want him to do for our community. And so the city planner will assist with a lot of the planning and zoning stuff, but also implementing the comprehensive plan. When that comprehensive plan is done, and I've heard it before, we don't want it to sit on the shelf. We totally agree. I'm trying to figure out which one of us will have to do anything with it once it's complete. So a big part of the city planning job will be to be actionizing the comprehensive plan once it's done. Any updates to the zoning and some of the directing will be made as a result of it. Any initiatives, any programs you guys want to do? Those types of things. There's all kinds of planners. Transportation planning, I assume some of those types of people apply. Mayor's pretty involved at WAMPO. There's probably three city planners that work there. They're transportation planners. We hope to find someone who kind of has a more broad education experience, because while transportation is important here, we also have other planning needs as well. So, yeah.

I can back up and give you some better numbers just for the county inspection fees. In 2024, they were around $123,000. 2025, they're $118,000. I have them projected high this year at $100,000. I think they're going to go down substantially based on what Andrew is going to be able to do. And then I budgeted $75,000 next year just to put something there because I think there's something commercial and industrial right now so I mean those will still be some costs that we have in there but you know I put dollars there just to make sure I'm not sure that we'll use them but we got to put them there just to make sure to cover us in that and he has all those commercial licenses so if he literally one more test he's got that then it just is a matter of

So we've talked before, maybe in 2028, depending on how much year and a half goes, we may look at another part-time inspector or another full-time. It just depends on how the math looks and what the workload is and if it's going to recover at all.

So the cost summaries into the various categories from 2024 through 2027, you'll see what we have here, our salaries, health insurance, payroll taxes, KPIRS, KP&F, and our workman's comp. As you see personnel later, it's going to encompass a few other things like our wellness program and just some little ancillary items. So if those numbers don't line up, that's why. From 2026 to 2027, putting in these new positions, putting in some increases. Give me a minute. Hang on a minute. Okay, I got more time. Two-minute warning. Two-minute warning? Okay.

We can go on here if you guys want to.

Somebody's still at the work. I don't have to sit here all day. If we could just get through personnel.

We've got a few more. How's that? Is that okay? That's fine with me. So we're showing about a 13.86% increase. And I'm going to show you some scenarios in a minute on how we got to this number and some of the things that we decided to not do as well. This personnel is allocated based on our funds and our departments too. So I know that today we're only talking about general fund, but obviously all personnel for the city goes into different pockets. So you're going to see how these kind of range from the general fund to our water, sewer, special highway, and tourism and promotion fund. So all of these different funds, departments, and funds they'll take a portion of this salary cost. And you'll see that as we start getting through all of the different departments and components and funds. I also wanted to mention, the police department is obviously our largest allocation of personnel, followed by, I'd like to lump these three together, and you're about at 33% our utilities, and then our administration at 14%. So that's kind of where everything ranks. Everything else is just several positions, or one position or half a position here or there. So as we were trying to determine how to come up with our our salary scenarios and how to make things reasonable and make our budget work. We did some several things. So kind of historically prior to 2024 and me coming on in 2019, whenever COVID happened, that seemed like a million years ago, inflation obviously went up. the the cola and merit i think was starting out at like eight percent i think they had to catch up with inflation and that's kind of what we were seeing and so we started kind of bringing it back down just to kind of be closer in line with inflation last year we did a five percent merit cola um so we ran some scenarios our first scenario we took a five percent cola like we had last year with our merit um all staffing requests so we actually put in some additional police officer, an additional public works employee, and ran those scenarios to kind of see where we landed. That projected cost was about six million overall. Our second one was, well, let's drop the COLA down to something closer to inflation. We know some of the other areas around, they're a little bit lower. So we did a 30% with all staffing requests, and it showed up to be about 5.9 million. Scenario three is what you actually see in our budget. We averaged, we did a 4% COLA merit adjustment with the reduction of a police officer and a reduction of a public work staff, which ended up costing, with the savings, about $181,660 there. So, kind of tried to make some compromises here, trying to get back down into normal inflationary you know, kind of, we didn't put in all the positions we wanted and, you know, we kind of, you know, we reduced those out. So that's how we kind of came up with our scenarios there. And that's it for personnel.

So, that's your question? Yeah, it's more for you two. Just for looking at this and the difference of less than 200,000, which I know is a big number. I'm not saying it's not. But we're talking more about public works doing a lot more of their own work. And we kind of have the conversation about how sometimes officer ratios down at certain times of the day. Is it realistic to cut those two, one in each for you guys next year? Is that realistic?

what we're taking on the growth that goddard's seeing like very candidly is that realistic i think one of the reasons we thought it would probably be okay by not including an additional police officer was because we always have somebody that's on me we don't completely fill it you know we don't have a staff that's completely full um in the police department and sometimes in public work so budgeting for a position that we may not feel takes budget authority away from us. Another thing, when we hire policemen, we have to get a car. And we have to get, you know, there's a lot more cost with that. So I believe, Chief, we thought that when we met, when we narrowed it down, it was okay, we could get by and feel pretty good with trying to get fully staffed with the two that we say we're going to get.

You know what I mean? Well, I think it's important that we keep stair-stepping up. So we don't go three years and not add staff when we're growing. And so if we can match the growth of our staff with the growth of our finances and keep those ratios in line, that's kind of a good place to be. And we're not... So really, we're kind of committing to this year. Why don't we keep growing and keep adding in both places? And... And I think financially, that's the safe place to be. The other thing we haven't talked about I think that there needs to be some consideration given to increasing the pay of the council. I know that we are assigned meetings outside of here. I think we should probably, if I'm assigned to go to Wampa once a month, I should probably be paid to do that. If Krista's assigned to go to SCAC once a quarter, she should be paid for that hour that she's there. And then I think that You know, the time we put in, in terms of preparation, you know, not that we need a gigantic increase, but I think probably what we did, Paige, may have some type of step to it, too. So think about that. And it's the last thing, you know, so that'll probably get us not elected because we raised our own salaries, but I think...

I think it's the, it's Alvin in the room, and let's just call it what it is. I think we're probably one of the lowest paid councils, but nobody wants to come up and talk about their own pay. So, I mean, I think that's a...

Yeah, no, I just think, and that's if there was some type of step in place over time that- It helps future council as well.

It gets more high quality people to run for it. I mean, no one does it for the money, but also your time away from family is worth something. And we want high quality people running for these positions, and some of them maybe aren't gonna think it's worth it to them if they're not leaving. compensated to some degree. If you guys want us to do some of them out, just tell us. Well, maybe we could get, maybe do some surveying. Okay, yeah. We do, we believe that comes up every few years, so it's been a while since we've been on council. That's easier to find, too, because it's almost always in the city code book. Hold on.

Turn recording back on now.

They didn't want to say something since the question was directed at them.

Yeah, I just, I don't want to put you on the spot. I think in my head, like, financially I see that, but I also just, like, being in the community, listening to you guys talk, I want to be very careful of treading that line that I know it's hard to be fully staffed, but I don't want that to then be the standard that we've opened up these positions for you because you can't be fully staffed. We're not worried about continuing to grow because obviously the goal to do this responsibly or comfortably was these full staffed positions. And so I just kind of want to tread that line.

And a lot of it comes down to... the pay compensation that someone can get here versus other locations and then you look back historically we may have been short one or two of that fully staffed level for the last 10 years but each year that's a growing number so basically yeah exactly

I like the idea of stair-stepping though, then it won't be like all of a sudden two years later we're having to...

If you waited three years just a stagnant where we're at and waited three years to hire five logistically and logically and training wise that just is unprecedented and it would be very hard to do in a professional setting to onboard that many people to stand up that type of increase would be

really hard without a well I would assume yeah financially that's hard but also I would assume if we're struggling to get one or two people waiting and waiting and waiting and then trying to get five and really be like hurting and one or two kids

over five years, your family dynamics aren't changing that much, but if you go and all of a sudden adopt 12 kids, then you're going to have a big difference.

One to two years is a really good place for public works and police. Admin staff's a little trickier. Our admin staff has not really grown at all throughout any of this in the last 15 or 20 years. We've created new departments, so we've taken some things away from civic groups around doing in-house, like the chamber doing the events, now we have the senior senator. So I don't really include those when I say admin. When I mean admin, I mean the utility billing people, the CFO, the community, those types of positions. So it's been a great relief that you guys have been willing to support us adding some admin staff this year and next because Goddard has changed a lot. We're growing really, really fast, and we're still kind of, even though this office is shrinking, because we're adding more people to some of these new programs and stuff, administratively, we really haven't grown. And our burden, believe it or not, is growing a little bit, too, just like police and public works is. So on behalf of the admin people, I appreciate that. You guys are supporting that.

Okay, see manager report, would you like to say 20 things? No, sir.

No, sir. We'll do it all again tomorrow.

If everybody comments, we'll start down at the end of the table. Yeah, so it's a long way down there. And the dress code of the day was blue. I just wondered what the dress code of tomorrow was going to be. I'm sorry, I missed the email. I guessed green. Green, okay. Roger.

Very disappointed if you guys are in green.

All right.

So I do just want to say thank you for putting this together.

We really appreciate having all that well laid out, tabbed and all. So thank you for that. I wanted to bring up something, just food for thought for now, because Naomi is probably going to speak more to it, but she's here tomorrow night, I'm not sure. But in the Lions Club, we had sponsored a girl from one of the high schools to go to what is called sunflower girl state it's a summer camp like a week-long camp where they learn about government they learn about the judicial system election system all those things that kind of a mock week of what it's like to be in government and from learning from her goddard schools don't typically send anybody to this So me and Naomi thought it might be something we would want to look at doing as a grant or scholarship thing that maybe the city could provide and work with the schools to identify. They actually have it for a boys camp and a girls camp. Maybe something we could budget for next year and come up with a way to work with the schools. maybe they could identify a kid from each that we could sponsor but it's a relatively low cost it's a $425 fee for the week and then 20 an additional 25 paid by the person actually attending so most people go to this get some type of scholarship or grant to go but they have to pay 25 or 50 dollars of their own money as well to go to this so just something I wanted to bring up there's some more information here I think

No, that's a great idea. This came up last week, and years ago my wife went. I think she took a Conestoga wagon from McPherson to the P-10. And then they actually stayed in Lawrence instead of staying at the P-10. But yeah, she had a good time. That was eye-opening for her.

She took a what?

Why are you trying?

I hope she's watching this right now. Oh, she is.

I'll get text here in a minute. I can provide you with that.

I've got it. Councilman reached out to me yesterday. We've got a part in the budget for donations and stuff. If you have a thousand bucks or whatever, let us maybe tell us what you want that amount to be. She said the mayor's grant.

tomorrow we'll be talking about our community donations department and so there's some things that we donate to like the Lions Club and the Women's Club we can add that in if you'd like I'll make a note we can discuss that tomorrow when we're doing that so I'll send you guys an email thank you sir that's all I got

Well, I want to echo, thank you for putting this together, and all the work that all of you put in, because we know that this takes quite a bit of time. You guys work really hard. It's hurting to throw it on everyone. Also, thank you to Jim and Gary for coming in and sharing their concerns. I definitely would like to see follow-up on that and just what we can do there. I know there's a few things I know may or may not be the last time I mentioned the fire hydrants. Also curious about maybe some of the potholes and things that we've talked about that we're going to get fixed in the spring that I think there's a few still left to do. So I just kind of want to see where we're at on those.

We sent you guys all the info on the hydrants already, so check your email on that. And Jason and I meet tomorrow to go over his plan of action. Perfect. So we're going to begin addressing those. Some of that work's already started. Perfect. They did get the pothole filled at USP 4199, so we'll make sure they're getting the other ones done too.

Perfect. No, I really appreciate that idea. Never ending, so...

I wish we don't need a pothole hotline like they have to do in Wichita. We have one of those. It's a big one too, yeah. Okay, next slide.

Yeah, thank you for bringing this together, Brooke. I want to also thank the Public Works Department. I had a citizen reach out to me about some vandalism in one of our culverts as she's walking her dog. She noticed this and it was taken care of quickly, so thank you for taking care of that. Yeah, other than that, I think we do need to get our fire agents taken care of soon, and yeah. Are we beginning here tomorrow? We'll be on this page. Okay. That's six, not seven, correct? That's six. Six o'clock, yeah.

Six o'clock.

Three things real quickly. I know I think last month we had an extra meeting. I think we generally, when we have those extra meetings, we get paid a little bit extra, so we didn't get that last month. And then we've got a couple extra meetings this month, so I'll get that on there. Do you want insurance? No. We'll get you taken care of. My wife's just trying to do a grocery store. Spent $100, so I'm getting my hole deeper. Last night, did a little... moonlight driving down Main Street from 4th Street to the highway. On the west side, there's three lights out, which are the only three lights. And then the three lights at the intersection of 54 and Main, all three of those lights are out. So it gets a little dark when you go past 4th Street going out, and it is really hard at night for an old guy to see. What was the second stretch, Mayor? Sorry. Just from 4th Street north. I got that. And then he said the intersection. The intersection.

The three lights on that intersection are on that too. We're having a really difficult time getting everything to act on our request, but we'll keep pushing forward.

I understand, but I just just keep asking. Uh... Number two, I know on that list, it looked like there were two hydrants that were listed on Stewart, and I'm thinking maybe those should be Brazos. on the list of hydrants that are, if not, there's two more hydrants. My guess is that Stewart's such a small street.

I don't even think we have to.

Yeah, no, I don't think you do either. So I think those should be on Brazos. I just wanted to make sure that we're on that.

Just to mention on the fire hydrants, Jason and I have budgeted, which you'll see in the water fund, a lot of dollars for hydrant replacement next year. Not that we don't have the money this year, but it's actively on our list.

No, I understand. I just thought it was good that we actually got a list to see. I guess the other thing maybe on that list would be to put a column on the date that those were actually reported. As repaired? Yeah, as repaired, but also when they went on the list that started.

And then of all those hydrants as well, what we're going to do is we're listing up the numbers that are actually assessments of these.

I know you said budgeting for next year, but we are planning on doing some of these this year, correct? Okay, just wanted to clarify that.

And this isn't a reflection on any of the current staff. No, not at all. I think it's a lot of years of... Well, the previous...

staff person, someplace on the line. Things weren't communicated up to the office like they should have been.

But I just appreciate the attention to it.

You know, you just, it is important. You know, the basic block and tackling and things we all take for granted, there can be nothing worse than to have something happen and then all of a sudden There was a delay and there was a severe fire instead of something we had done. We don't want to be the palisade in Kansas. But anyway, that's why I'm here. apples and oranges yeah a little bit but it's just it's just if you're if you're ultimately responsible for that I mean it's just a heart sinking feeling you don't feel something can I make a request with that and maybe this is a little unattainable maybe something we want to do but

I think the fire hydrants have been a pretty big concern within the community. There's been a lot of people coming in saying, hey, these are having fixed. We kind of talk about the transparency. When you guys kind of get that game playing together and you know exactly what you're doing, can you kind of put that information out there? That way people are kind of tracking, like they know, hey, mine's going to get fixed around this date or... maybe just a little more of a, or maybe just a little more transparency as we're doing it so people are made aware that they see us actively working to fix these things.

We'll do some sort of communication. I'm going to be careful with exactly how we illustrate that. Half of them are going to be replaced by NDI as a part of the water looping project. And as Jason said, some of these are really minor repairs. The county, which understandably so, is pretty aggressive. If it doesn't crack open right away when it's time, they bag that thing. So maybe really simple quick fixes that we can... That's endemic throughout all of those powers. Our counterparts are always a little more... And it makes it worse then. Well, they want to make sure it's working perfectly right when they're there, obviously, so you get it. Yes, it is at the top of the priority list. We will communicate to the public in some regard as we get knocked out.

Thank you for the award. I love the green. I don't care what everyone else says. And I will put on my green TV red shirt tomorrow and wear it. So I'll be supporting the green. With that, I'll make a motion to adjourn. Do I have a second? Second. So all those in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you all.

See you tomorrow night at 6. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Alright.