City Council - Regular Meeting

Sorry, I've been doing phone calls and meetings. I don't know.

She just texted me five minutes ago saying she's going to be a couple minutes late. Okay, perfect.

Good evening everyone, it's Mr. Compton Goddard and we're going to start our budget workshop. Please join me in the pledge and the invitation. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, invisible, with liberty and justice for all. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the freedom that we have in our country, that we can work here tonight to set the budget in motion that will continue to help our community grow and be a better community. Give us wisdom, and in your name we pray.

Amen.

Okay. We don't have a big agenda. It's just workshop time, so take it away.

Okay, so you guys have a lot of items at your desk, and I handed you some items at the council meeting that's going to need to be replaced. So I just wanted you to know, like, what you have at your desk is some replacements of some different documents. So the budget and brief for this section has been replaced and it's at your desk. The water and water reserve section, or the water reserve section has also been updated for some changes since we last printed. And also there was an error that Mayor Leib found and I'm so glad he found it. So for the sewer utility reserve. Those are just some updates to your book. I just want you to make sure you have those in there as we're going through that. To get started tonight, we're gonna open with some open discussion items. So the past couple of weeks we've had a couple of things where we kept saying we'll bring this back to you at the next budget meeting and discuss. So I've got a list of items that we're going to kind of talk about. And then we'll go right into the public works equipment and vehicle requests. This is our annual schedule that we update every year. Then we'll talk about our water utility and water utility reserve fund. the Sewer Utility and Sewer Utility Reserve Fund, Stormwater, Special Parks and Recreation, and finally, we will conclude with the Rental and Promotion Fund. We're on the downhill slide of these budgets, so, you know, budget meeting three of four, and the fourth one's gonna be pretty simple. We'll probably wrap up with Capital Improvement Fund, Equipment Reserve Fund, highlight the small funds that we have that cause activity, actually, for budgeting, per se in those. And then probably just some highlights, any changes, any other discussion, and we'll proceed from that. So let's start with our open discussion items. And so the very first item that I have on our list here is our library fence. So this is kind of a topic that we stopped with last, that we talked about, I think, in our first meeting.

Okay, so we originally brought you

an estimate of $20,000, but Jason's done some work behind the scenes, meeting with the library, and go ahead, Jason, take it away.

So I met Carrie after our discussion, and her and I came to the conclusion that as long as that's library-pleasing, she's good at just about anything that we can come up with that hasn't had a minimum of six foot. She's really wanted to continue with children. She wants to make it where they can leave straight out of that soft core into this protective layer. It's a $6,000 estimate I came up with by doing some other research. Actually, I have to give Nick some credit on that because he helped me with that. We found with the vinyl and wood, the $6,000 is a little conservative. It's putting that price point a little bit higher to, you know, you have some contingencies and such in there. Um, and also we discussed probably having a C staff as well as a coordinator in the Army is interested as, as well, having the Lions Club be held with that. Um, you know, maybe having some community groups help with, with the erection of this fence. Um, you know, the main point is that, you know, just make sure it's aesthetically pleasing. Um, and with good durability. Craig did mention that, you know, maybe something along the vinyl line, maybe something a little better because that is a little more sturdy material as well. So that's kind of where we're at right now with this book.

Any of you look at the library budget? They've got $373,000 in cash and money. They got another $144,000 to spend for the second half of the year. That leaves them a little under a quarter of a million dollars in cash they're sitting on. And so I recognize that since we turned around and gave them, they're going to increase plus $6,800. And maybe they at least participate when they have a cash account for, you know, for doing some improvements on the property. That's my only comment.

So I just want to disclose, Gary actually reached out to me after our last budget meeting and just asked kind of for an overview on the general thoughts. I kind of summarized what we had talked about in the meeting here. And then I did speak with Craig as well. I think basically, and I got one of some feels, but The impression that I got is that it just maybe came across them as we were not supporting the library. I think my only thought on it is, other than the posts, she had a couple things that she said she wants to be able to see in so that kids and stuff can't. You can see what's going on, it's transparency from the road. I think there was some concern about it being torn down. and what that looked like financially if we built a new building in five years um but i think other than the post correct me if i'm not most that material we can take off and can be reused so it would just be the post that we're kind of eating their number one number two i did kind of ask for a little clarification and maybe this was just me but i was a little unsure on what it meant to like also kind of rally with the community for funding um i think her intention was to get with clubs like the Lions Club or the Women's Club or other clubs to work together to put things inside of the fence area. Not necessarily to obtain funding to do more with the fence, but to furnish the area. My personal opinion is $6,000 is not a lot to choke on. I'm okay with the $6,000. My opinion would be that if we want this to be usable, we see if this is something we can start prepping in the fall for them so that come spring, they're prepared to furnish it. I think if we wait until 2027 and we go to furnish it, or we go to build it in the spring, they're not furnishing it until the summer and they're not getting as much use out of it even next year. So that's just kind of my opinion on it. $20,000 was a lot harder to choke than six for me.

What is the $300,000 that they have, what is that purposed for?

That was my question. I was trying to find if there are budgets in here. I'd like to see it, like what...

Some of it goes back to tearing the reserve in. I know they were planning before we kind of got on board here with building a new building, so I don't think it's been money... It's probably a partial division between carry over as on their, what they received from.

I don't have the library card in here.

I was going towards just what we've been sending them every year.

We were sending them $35,000 here, plus the mill levy increase. So has that mill levy been jumping up? You know, so in the last four years, it's gone from like two, they've gone from a budget of around $220,000 to a little over $300,000. So they're spending $25,000 a month.

So they've got...

I think my one thing and this is just my thoughts and tell me your thoughts here but Craig made a comment last time that kind of stuck with me and so this is my thinking and us just approving the 6,000 now number one we want the library to feel as though

We're united. We're a team. I think that that's important. But I think when we go to build this new building, they seem pretty frugal in their funding. I mean, that's a pretty good number there. If they're spending that now, and yes, $30,000 even is not much. To me, the more they can save when this new building comes, Craig, number one, made the comment that it's a lot more comforting to know that there's cash. to help sustain that building, because it's going to cost more to run the building. But number two, I would assume that once they get into a new building, they're going to want to start furnishing different things and doing different things. And so I also, on the flip side, maybe have a little bit of hesitation that if we're having them spend that stuff now, this is not going to be there when the new building comes.

and i do think they've been very careful is that something that they're going to have to spend money on to furnish it when we get it or is that something that the city has been going to like will it be part of the building will that be part of the building process and the expenses like every other building that we are putting together it it's hard to say because we're a few years away we're kind of getting into that in between point of short and long range planning is this kind of medium range but

I'm of the opinion that they should be able to self-sustain financially in a new building without us having to increase the mill levy or change the funding formula that we created last year regarding that additional $35,000 we sent them. I mean, their ad valorem tax revenue has gone up by almost $100,000. Just between 2024 and 2027, their total revenue is a similar scenario when you look at it all together. So they're getting a lot of money and they're carrying a lot of cash. And so I would assume when you have a new building, obviously you're going to have higher heating bill, higher electric bill. commodities are going to be greater they may end up hiring one or two more staff people over time but they are carrying so much revenue building such a fund balance so quickly that i can't see why we would need to increase what we're spending because of the increased operational demands of a greater size facility green so that's kind of what why i made that comment when you and i were having that discussion um so yeah it'd be nice to allow them to continue building that balance that way when the time does come we're not having to make changes as a result of the new building coming online but I also see the other side of the coin where they are carrying so much cash like I think it would be okay for them to spend some of it when they have these smaller expenses come up that are maybe a want not a need situation so

I mean, their budget shows zero liability and $378,000 as a balance. Like right now with zero liabilities, I mean, there's things in their budget, but that's even after their budget. Of their budgeted expenses, there's like zero debt and zero, like it's just after their budget, they want $378,000.

They're going to spend this year, in the second half of the year, it's like they spend up to June 26th, $144,000. They're going to spend that same $150,000 out of that money. Out of the $378,000? Yeah, for the second half of the year.

Which will leave them still with?

$200,000.

Well, their capital improvement plan is $22,000. That's a change.

I think we're quibbling over small amounts in the grand scheme of things. My point just is, I don't think we can expect to be increasing the levy for them to be able to maintain their operations when they're in a bigger building. If we continue to do like we have been, where they're getting basically an increase of 8-10% revenue per year, the expenses aren't going up at the same pace. And when we build that building, it's going to be completely furnished as a part of the money we borrow to build it. So it's not like they're going to have to use their own money to go buy the tables and chairs. We're going to say, you get one shot at this, so you need to buy everything you think you need.

So that wasn't like, is this money that they're saving back? going to go towards the new facility or is that going to be all you know because I think that they if we've come to a conclusion of six thousand dollars it seems reasonable to me that they could do that that the library fund at this point can do that and if the labor is going to come from community groups you know that makes the most sense to me instead of adding another six thousand dollars to the taxpayer

And I think that's where the original concern comes from. They already have a lot of money saved up, so why should we have to extend another $6,000? To answer the other question, they don't have to use any of that money on the new bill. If the council says, hey, we want you to kick in some on the engagement or the design or something, that's your prerogative. But they would need to agree and comply with that. It's going to be up to them. They're in charge of the money once they have it. It's theirs to do what they want. But let's just say we're borrowing $10 million, and I'm not saying that's what it's going to be, but all the furnishings that go into that, anything they want to buy new, that's going to come from the money we borrow, not the money that's sitting in their account, unless they self-solicited to go towards the project.

Does that cover... I mean, I feel like this is a pain, so I'm just trying not to wrap my head around this. Two parts to one. Does that cover... the decorations on the bookshelves and the sands and it will cover all of that.

Yes. They'll be told when we get to the point where we're a month or two from us thinking the project's completely done, whatever you think you need, make sure you get it because you've got one shot at this. Once this temporary note closes and goes to permanent finance, you're on your own for whatever you want to put in the building.

So it might just be a lack of communication on our part of letting him know that, like, Hey, you're not going to have to save that money to furnish the library and do all the things that you want to do because we're going to, you know, that'll be part of the build. I don't know that they think that they're going to have to give that up. But that's what Amanda just said.

That's what I was trying to understand. She did not say that to me. I was trying to understand that. My next question is... When talking to her, did she think about what she was furnishing inside of this? Like what that cost for them was going to look like?

I don't know. I'm a little curious if you mentioned the Bible.

I think it lasts, but also it can wind and have it come by.

But they want to go see through this? From the road.

So you're talking about picket or something with gaps and stuff? That's what I was trying to understand.

Composite decking, is that an option?

You have to support it much more often, please. What if we ran the...

Not someone an idiot, the only one I'm talking about, the cord. The slots close enough together that you can see out of them, but kids can't. I mean, those don't really move. You know what I'm talking about?

We'll let Jason in the library. Yeah. I'm more thinking if we're going to .

Yeah.

The city's piece of allowing colored works to help do it is already missing. So for them to pay for the material. It seems like a kind of fair trade. And even to the point where, depending on what we go with, the material and the baseline, if the public works could set all the posts and do the gates and then Neighbors United, God Reminds Pub, just runs the rails and pickets, I mean, that's something I could knock out on a Saturday morning pretty easily with the right amount of people, so.

I think they wanted it for Neighbors United, because that's the other way.

Well, I mean, if this was 27 buses, it would be until next year anyway. Okay. I'm going to say what's unsaid. I feel like this is less about the money, because if it were just about the money, we'd argue about the criminals, because it's such a small amount. If you guys are okay with it, we can go back up there and say, if you guys are willing to give the material, we'll go and put it in and organize the communities to install it as a community. But if they really are held in on it, excuse my French. sitting paying for it. To me it's, we're talking about five or six thousand dollars. We're probably talking about this for a half hour too long. We're talking about tonight and our last workshop.

We've got some really big stuff.

It all adds up. My intention isn't, I mean, I served as a library treasurer for some of the years. I'm not against the library. My grandkids have taken in there all the time. My wife's sometimes paying fines for books that we forget to take back. I like to pay for the fence itself. That's kind of a joke, but I just think that if they're sitting on that size of cash balance, that they need to be sensitive to the situation we're in in terms of trying to, you know, the other things up here, you know, AV equipment. $20,000 covers, you know, 35% of that. And where they do have that money, I just think it makes sense that we ask them to maybe share. You know, they've saved it. It's revenue from past years that's been accumulated. And that's fine, but it would be nice that they would kind of help support some of that. We'll work it out.

We'll work and figure it out and move on. If it makes them feel like they're supported.

I think maybe that's just where I'm coming from. Do they feel supported? Like I know I agree with any accounts. It's such a small amount that it creates a...

But we've got other people that are always looking for money. Yeah. So anyway. Since we got that happy one out of the way, let's move on today.

Is it out of the way or do we need to vote on it or what do we need to do?

Jason and I will work it out today. She's very reasonable and collaborative.

Okay, we'll talk about it for way too long.

Alright, moving along here.

Okay, the next item is the council room. AP equipment and support. So this is something that you've heard a couple times now that we've talked about redoing the audio visual in this room and possibly hiring out the actual management of the broadcasts for our council meetings and special meetings. So our quote right now, March 2026, is 55,606, it includes the equipment and six months of support in those dollars. That includes approximately, I wanna say four meetings, four meetings a month is what they've coded for, but if we were to back into that for a six month period, it ended up being about $233.75 a meeting. So if we were to, that's gonna get us through the first six months, but I say after that initial six months, they'll probably reevaluate what we're actually using them for. So if we have additional meetings that they need to come to and be part of, I think we can expect to pay probably an additional $233 per meeting with those updated quotes in there so kind of the question is do we want to is this something we want to proceed with at all um or do we want to proceed within the 2026 budget we do have room in the budget this year to do it if we wanted to get it going um or is this something that we'd like to proceed with in 2027 and the cost at that point in time may be different and probably higher um the quote that we have is only good for 60 days and we've been told that it would probably go up so We just need some direction, yes, no, now, later. How long will it take to install the set of equipment? How long does that process take? He said that it would probably take a full week, and we kind of looked at our schedule to do this setup, and we would probably schedule it after a Tuesday council meeting. and then try to get it done that week after that. And then if we had to have them step out while something happened in the middle of that for a meeting, we could. But he says typically it would take one week to get everything installed and up and running.

My understanding is this $233.75 per meeting covers an hour of a meeting, correct?

It's about two and a half hours is actually the average because I looked at that just to make sure because we average more than an hour. Some are shorter, some are longer, but average about two and a half hours based on their quote was how that $233 worked out.

And that would just be, if we went beyond two hours, that would just be corroborated?

If we went beyond, I think for the first six months, we're locked in at that. So if we went more than that timeline, he says that's a retainer to do it. I think the following six months we'll have an adjustment probably to accommodate that change.

If we want them to come and

and be part of the broadcast outside of the regular, they just need 48 hours of notice. So if we knew we were gonna have a comp plan meeting or something that's outside of what we planned for them to be here on a regular basis, we just have to let them know. They seem really accommodating with that and they're willing to be here. I think they're training up different people in different locations. In the Derby area, they've got technicians that are doing this and so on. He's got some out in the Goddard area that will be here to do that. So they're working through the logistics of their staffing.

One of the values I think of moving with it immediately is it will help add some capacity to Danny's role because giving up two or three of your evenings on top of all the other outside normal hours work is harder because of her immense presence and some of the other things we're asking to go to. It would be really nice to be able to give her some relief.

Just one concern I have is something that's going to have a recurring cost. If they continuously increase it, what capacity do we have to negotiate? Is it a year-to-year contract for the rate after the six months?

He just quoted a six-month term. We haven't negotiated anything further than that. What I was most concerned about when I was sitting in the meetings was, you know, he was saying, you know, there'd be a switchboard back here, and when this, when you're talking, push the button, and it'll go to you, and the camera will go to you, and you've got to push the button. And I was sitting there thinking, I would never be able to accomplish this. It would be a disaster. Who's going to run it? So if by chance you don't want somebody doing that, somebody would have to be trained to do that.

is this equipment, we would own it, so if for some reason their costs increase, we could find a different operator, different reasoning. Yeah, we would own it. And we could learn how, we could get someone to run it. So, yeah, I'm just trying to make sure we're not stuck in a contractual, like,

timeshare scenario where I think that's my concern it's not really paying for the equipment itself but we've already heard you say they've said several times in 2027 this is going to go up after 60 days this is going to go up and it's like their business volume I'm sure it will go up so it's 233.75 a meeting now if we don't go over a meeting time and if we don't have more than four meetings a month but we often do and that's a hefty amount of money to spend. I think that the idea is really cool. I think we need the projector behind us. I mean, I think we need some of the things, but like the painting, the camera, I know we joke about it, but those are all like, they're just not things we have to have. So my two-part question is, number one, is this the only option? And number two, is the city within the same support that if we go for this and we approve this, but next year, we're not gonna be in the conundrum of talking about the fact that it's gone up, but you guys don't have the capacity to train somebody to do this, and we get stopped paying for it with increases. I think that would be my only hesitation, is I wanna make sure that we're on the same page, but if this goes up too high, we will have to train somebody to do this, right? Like this is, at some point we owe it to the kids. I think that would be the fiscally responsible thing to do, I mean, in terms of being able to man the equipment

that we own.

The increases are going to be on the equipment material. I don't think that we're going to see a lot of inflation on the cost of the guy that's back there working out, pushing buttons and moving the cameras around. If you guys want to move forward with it, whether it's this year or next, we would program the dollars to operate it. I feel pretty strongly that we need to get our staff first. I agree. Whether it's this or something else, we think this is the best. We've given you guys, I think, four examples of peer communities that are utilizing it. I think we are hearing from the citizens some pretty significant concerns about the quality of our transparency as it relates to this issue specifically. So what's it worth to you from $1.00 to alleviate those concerns from the community? I think it's worth it.

Well, it's worth the price of payment. Just worry about it. It would be worth it if you paid for it.

Is there a, is this a year, like the per meeting person, is this a year-by-year contract with them or a six-month-by-six-month contract with them?

I think right now it's six months. That's all they've quoted us for.

For the next six months. But I'm saying going forward, will we enter into them like a contract yearly?

Would you guys like us to ask if they'll do a longer term at the same price for the labor of the meeting, running the meetings?

Well, I just want to know what we're going to be doing with them contractually to run the equipment year over year.

Am I making sense?

No, you are.

And in six months into a budget, it changes, then we didn't properly budget.

Well, I don't necessarily want to enter into a six-month agreement anyway. There's probably a good reason why they put it that way, because that's what's left of the year. But let us go back and ask a few more questions. We'll have another one of these fun workshops, and we'll answer some of these things.

I do have another question to you, Mike. In a non-profit that I was at, they had a system and it was new a year or two ago, I think it was two years ago, and it had kind of the same thing where it would move with the person that was talking, but it was done automatically by voice. And so like when the microphone would gauge, it automatically went to that person and they didn't need a person to sit and do it. So I guess my question is, did we explore any other options of what might be able, like, because you said that and it kind of triggered my mind, of like, did we only get one option?

and that's all we did we've been looking at options for the last three years because this system has been such a conundrum and when ryan started looking into this for what we were requesting this was the only firm in the area that could meet that request and that's why you see the other cities are all using the same one so if you know of another company that we didn't find we'd be glad to inquire with them i think that Having them here to manually run it is from a troubleshooting perspective as well. I do think that their system can do what you're talking about, but having them here gives the option for it to be ran manually in case that's not programmed or working correctly. but we'd be we'd be glad to that i'm recording this and i'll get all your questions we'd be glad to approach the firm and bring you back some more with the next council meeting if you're not comfortable with it where it's at right now that's not a problem at all i think it'd be nice if we would be better shaped and spend six months 18 months okay on the meetings that'll give us a year and a half at a fixed cost and

because it is it's not the upfront cost it's just that sure but I think but if we can eliminate the issues with we start the meeting and then it actually goes live streaming when we're into the agenda or you know approving the agenda set there's there's just there's gaps it's never always the same I was going to say with the price increase that we're being told, the equipment is probably the most likely to go up in 2027.

So I mean if we went ahead and got the equipment, ordered and, you know, put in place, then we can always negotiate maybe that second piece later, too.

I mean, we can get it, but... Yeah, I want to try to lock it down for at least 18, maybe not 24 months. Once you're 60 days out? It won't be too long. Maybe another three or four weeks.

I know there's a lot of technological advances with regard to, like, letting, you know, computers do the work, but I also really like the idea of having a person here that, you know, in case of troubleshooting, that kind of somebody who's a human being that can... really know how to operate it because I, you know, I do use, you know, some technology, but I really prefer talking to a person. So, I mean, I still think that's valuable. So, if someone can remedy their penis capacity, I just think if we can kind of lock down contractually what the expectation is over the next 18 to 24 months. You know, what that looks like for us.

I think my only two part is just, one, I know we talked about this, they have people, but we've been picking up a lot more cities, it sounds like, can they confirm, like, if somebody falls in sick, like, they will have somebody here to do that. If not, we're going to have someone trained as a backup, I would assume, right?

I don't, I'm not going to spend time training any staff on how to do this at Berkeley. paying those fees, they're going to figure out a way to get some of that money.

Okay, because my next question is, if they don't show up, I just want to make sure that it's written here. If they don't, that's credited to us for another meeting or that's, you know, whatever that looks like.

Just little things. They also, like, different cities meet at different times. Some groups are meeting on Tuesdays. Some are during the day, so... We'll work that out. As far as the meeting count, I felt like Brooke was conservative. While these last two months felt like we met a lot, usually we only meet three times. So she's got us in for like 4.3 or something meetings a month. So maybe a couple times we have to pay extra, but it's really not much.

I mean, I'm okay with it. I just want to know that we can lock in No, it'll probably go up in January if we're looking at $15. We're okay with no, because I think this year.

We'll bring it back as an item of, how about we use the unfinished business section? We'll try to get a contract of at least 18 months. It will be 24, we'll do that. And bring some of the other answers back.

I was just going to say, can we go ahead and authorize you to do that? Right now? Or do we have to make it another unfinished business?

If you could say it too big, I mean, that's me, if you could say it too big or less, like, and you figure it out, I mean, we trust the fact that you know the budget, so.

Well, how are you deriving the permitting cost? Does it break up the equipment from six months of support on the bidder?

Yeah.

Okay, so you break out equipment?

Yeah, yeah.

If I can't get them to be at least 18 months on the running of these, then we'll bring it back to something else.

Okay, that would be interesting. We'll go without that. Yeah.

I'll listen to you, Sam. Hi. We're all on the record of agreeing, so it's not a formal problem. Okay, we're rolling.

Alright, next exciting idea we have to talk about is our governing body salaries.

We're putting all the hard stuff on the table.

These are things we needed to bring back and discuss. During this week, you all have received some comparisons on different council pay with their respective cities around us. I put together just a little bit of a summary, some recommendations. These are just recommendations that you all get to make the final decision on this step. So kind of what I did was I kind of put all of the information together, kind of did some thinking about our current processes. And so we did a comparison amongst our comparable communities for Andover, Bel Air, Derby, Hayesville, Mays, Park City, and Valley Center. And one of the things that was kind of interesting was the majority of them are not attendance-based. It's... What? I saw that. Yeah. Attendance is not required. Right. So, I mean, it's just a basic stipend. There's a few. Sorry, keep going. Sorry.

It's going to be a long night.

Are you laughing at me? No, I'm laughing at you. I'm just amazed. Oh yeah, me too. Well, yeah.

It doesn't mean attendance is not required. It means regardless of how many events you attend. It's paid by the meeting. It's paid by the meeting.

No, that means like... If I call in sick to this meeting, I'm still getting paid for it.

Well, true, but... You still take the time to prepare for it and do the gender review. Or if you come to five extra meetings a month and you're there... That's right, yeah. Regardless of how many you attend.

It's less budget, too, knowing a flat amount. Because sometimes we have extra meetings.

Okay.

Probably not. So I did...

I tried to come up with what I could envision a yearly amount of... the yearly amount of potential meetings that we have. And my back sheet on the back shop side shows monthly meetings, we have three, so that would be 36. Average special meetings, I added five in there for, you never know if there's a school board, tri-county, tri-gov meeting, you know, those types of things. Budget workshops, this year we're having four. Annual retreat and orientation, that usually takes a couple of days. So, and I put in an other in there for Bopper, because, you know, you just never, you know me, I always throw contingency in there, just to be on the safe side. So that averages out about 4.33 meetings per month. Okay. So, With that being said, if we start going over into the second page of this, I kind of tried to pick not the highest Andover, and I tried to see the cities that were paying more than us and not the ones that were paying less than us. I kind of tried to figure that out. Andover's kind of a, you know, they're a different city. They've got a different population. I think Craig said they've got nine council members. I mean, they kind of got, they're way up there. They're just way different than us, I kind of felt like. Mays was closer to us and they were, their mayor gets paid more but the council gets paid less. So trying to put kind of, kind of bring it together and kind of come in between some of those numbers. Then I kind of came up with a dollar amount that I kind of felt comfortable in the budget, and I had originally kind of planned, well, after we talk, I'm just going to increase it by $5,000, see where we land, and we can adjust it from that. So as I run these numbers, if we were to increase the monthly compensation, and keep in mind, I've chosen this to be, not attendance-based. So you would get this monthly as a stipend. It doesn't matter how many meetings you have. It would be per meeting. This would be per month for compensation. So the mayor's compensation would go up from 633 on average to about $900 a month, making the annual compensation $10,800. We have to factor in our payroll taxes, so the annual cost for the mayor's compensation could be 11,626. That's an increase of about $3,400 a year. Council member compensation, not going up quite as much, but we have to remember there's more of you, so we have to try to average it all out. So going up from 633 on average per month up to $700. Annual compensation about $8,400. So if we were to put that all together, that's an additional, about another $3,400 for council pay going up as well. So if we added that together, the total budget impact would be about almost $7,000, which I'm comfortable with, I was just trying to come up with something different. So this would propose an additional approximately 16.8% increase over last year's budget on average number. So again, this is a stab at it. You all get to decide what you would like to see compensation to be. I just, like I said, we've looked at the comps, we've Tried to kind of come in between. We kind of picked a dollar amount that seemed reasonable for our budget and kind of worked back into the numbers. So I'll turn it over to you guys for discussion and direction.

I mean, I have a question before I have a follow-up. Technically the $633.33 isn't what we're getting each month if we're only doing our three meetings though, right? Isn't it a $200 base right now and then it's $100 a meeting?

Yes, but there's other times that you're going to make more. Well, like this month we have, I don't even know all the extra money. Right, so this is an average. This isn't, I mean, you can't say this is what I was doing.

That's what I just want to make sure I'm understanding. Okay. I are kind of seeing an increase. A little more it feels like than this because we're usually leveling it out.

Instead of it going like this, it's like this. It'll be related to payroll too because it's tough to contract.

Is it kind of like schools? you know, like, teacher salaries are spread out through the entire year, and if they're this summer, like, they're gonna still receive a paycheck through the summers because they're paid monthly, right?

Is that what it is? It is every month, that's what you get. So, instead of, Sarah happened to determine who came to which meetings, and you get $200 and you get $300, Every month, we get the same thing. Same amount every time.

Yeah, that's like...

It's kind of like a full day, like some people set up for their utility billing.

So we're essentially per person day. Thank you.

Not like a person. No, it is. Every person, every council member would get $800. Right.

I would suggest that the recommended increase for the council members be set to 15. That was going to be my next one I was going to do. Which would make that an increase of a little over $117, $120. That would total an additional $2,400. I just think for the time that we all have put in, that that's, I mean, it's not a gigantic increase to ask that council members get an extra $100 a month when you're only getting $630 a year. I don't think any of us have done this for the money, and I know we have had a few members of our community say that we should probably compensate it a little more reasonably. I don't think this is something that we'll do every year, but it's probably been a while since this has been adjusted a little bit.

Yeah, I don't have the history on that. I don't know.

It's been a while. Obviously not since the recent three years. But I'll say you guys do a lot more probably than your peers. And a lot of that's because of me. You get a lot of emails and phone calls and ask to go to meetings. I mean... We're ambitious. We want to work. So we're dragging you into our mess. And I also think it's because of us.

Because we live here. We work here. We care about here. And yes, we have a driver, if you will, an administrator that is ambitious and wants our community to grow. So I just think... Yeah, I really don't think any of us is doing this for the money.

And I didn't mean to sound self-serving. I'm just saying I ask a lot of you guys as far as coming to meetings and being on the phone and those things.

I think it's that, like, awkward elephant in the room, right? Like, nobody wants to ask for it. I mean, I appreciate that you did. I think I just on record want to note, like, there are a lot of meetings that I think people don't see that we do attend and a lot of time that we do put into this that is unpaid. Again, I don't think we're... doing it for the money but um i appreciate the fact that it's valued and it's a conversation to be compensated for it do you think this is enough for the mayor you do a ton

What am I going to do anyway? I can still get those golf grounds in. No, I think it's reasonable. I mean, I do a couple extra meetings in a month.

Can I vote? Sure. Does that make you feel better?

You're here at every meeting, so you get a vote?

I really think you all deserve it because I see how much you care about Goddard and how well you work with the staff. So yes, give yourself a raise.

Thank you. Aw, thanks. No, we really appreciate hearing that.

I think I like the flat rate approach, too, just because, I mean, like you said, it's a lot for you to just pay well to keep up, but how many meetings were there? How did we ask for this? Does this qualify as an extra meeting? Were they there? Yeah. So there's a lot of overhead.

Well, I think that was, I think it's just easy to not have to ask those questions I asked the other day, you know. Some of, like, the cities say workshops or meeting, and ours doesn't sound like, are we getting paid for these budget workshops, or are we, you know, just questions like that. I think if you make it just a, this is what you're getting paid, it, you know.

I mentioned this the other night, but it attracts qualified people that are going to be meeting in our community if there is, like, a compensation for it.

You said that you were going to go up to 750 for the council members. Would you have a higher number for the mayor? And I am asking specifically because he is in a lot of places doing a lot of things. And while this might be fine for him, I know where he goes and what. He does.

Well, I didn't run the numbers for $750, but in my mind, I kind of thought, because I was trying to get you guys just a little bit more of a bump, because he did get that bump, too. And I just thought, well, I'm just going to leave it where it is. But I think $750 would be reasonable as well. So, I mean, if that's... No, his is $900. No, his, yeah, his is $900. Right, right. So that's what I'm asking for him. How many meetings do you attend in a month or a week? I know you don't want to answer that. I really want to know. I didn't. Because it kind of... It bumped it up. Okay.

I don't know. I just... I don't know how to answer it.

Regular meetings. He's currently making the same amount of money.

He's currently making the same amount of money. Three to four meetings that he's not getting paid for and solely based off his effort.

I think he's setting a standard for what's expected on there.

Yes. Yeah, he is setting a standard.

This is not just our pay. This is who's coming next, right? Right.

But that's why we want to make sure it's fair. Whenever you decide you're done, we want whoever is next in the seat to be showing up at these meetings.

I want you to show up to these meetings and get more real funding. I don't want these things coming back. 100% so I want to make sure that that's in favor. Maybe it's 950.

Are you guys okay with that? I'm good with 950 because

We re-elect the mayor every year, right? So the mayor is not holding up, the future mayor is not holding up his... We change it. Yeah, we vote somebody else. We vote somebody else.

750, 950, 1250, 1250, 950 and 750 is what we're settled at.

I just know that there's a lot of places you go. And we don't know all of them, but there are a lot. And I think that we're in a better position in the city because of the relationships that you have been able to build alongside Craig and, you know, in other areas of our community surrounding Wichita, Topeka, just the connections that you've made. I think that has helped our city.

In fact, there's your garden all over the place all the time.

So I've been told. And you build a garden for me. I do have a garden, too. Sometimes the royal gardens. Drive that Prius, I'm getting good gas.

All right. Next item, and these things are easy. Pool filter system. This was something that got omitted last time around when I didn't have it in the general fund, so we needed to bring that to you, and I think Craig sent an email out just letting you know that this is coming. I added this to the capital improvement fund budget, and I didn't include it in the transfers from the general fund out, so I didn't want to We've got money sitting in the capital improvement fund to cover that. So you'll see that when we present that at the next budget meeting. So just letting you know where that is.

Are we pretty close to the 60? Is it 60? That's what I've been told by Alan. Alan's got the page for that. Okay.

I went ahead and added in the high school scholarship fund, the thousand dollars to the general fund budget, Added in some city pool chairs for $5,000 to the budget. I saw a comment, several of them, not that we've, not that we're on Facebook or anything, but I said we can buy some pool chairs, don't you think?

What was the pool chairs?

That was chairs, the guard chairs though. Oh, okay. This is actual chairs for the citizens.

I was just going to ask if that was a legitimate number.

And the only reason I'm asking is because I think there's some new rules to the poll this year. So not to add to this, but if there's anything left over, if we are not allowing citizens anymore to bring in their food and stuff, can we provide some more things? If there's anything left.

Cool noodles? Yes.

You can go buy some.

I just, when you try to come in, they tell you you can't have them anymore, but, you know. You can't bring your own, but they... That's what somebody was told recently.

Hold that picture.

This is why I tell them to take them again.

What do they consider a noodle?

I'll bring one and I'll show you. Next meeting. I've always got ten of them. The only ones we haven't used yet this year because they're not completely up, so... From here, I can get a good shot at it.

Mayor, I might have packed it out of my lane a little bit. No, you're fine. We were talking about the library discussion. That's something that you guys will vote on. That's your prerogative. I didn't mean to push us along.

We're just at the 25-minute mark.

I think we're good at $6,000. We're going to leave $6,000 in there? No, you guys handle it. You guys handle it. Okay, moving on to public works. Public works equipment and vehicle requests.

So, in your packet here, you will see, first up, we will talk about our equipment needs. So, just so you know, we, Jason does a lot of work with his staff, and then he gets his name, and we talk about the schedule, and we update it, and move things around, take things off, and kind of reestablish needs every year, kind of like the 10-year CIP. We've reviewed options for leasing versus purchasing, and if we have the option to lease, in my opinion, for a cheaper cost to have newer equipment with less breaking down, it really helps the cash flow. So our staff can have the equipment they need that isn't breaking down, and we can fund these things through the leasing options. So you'll see leasing options on here. if there's reason just to purchase it you know a smaller smaller dollar item obviously we would look into purchasing those this is a living document it changes all the time i think even today in our staff meeting jason was like i think i'm going to change we might look at some different options on this so please chime in when you want to um just when you start talking about the trucks i believe with we've already got some different ideas than my spreadsheet says and i said I already have it ready for tonight. That's how fast everything changes and why you have new documents in here. We have some leases already in progress right now. The mini excavator, the skid steer, the wheel loader, we entered into lease agreements last year in 2025 for those. So this is basically the schedule for those and the lease option purchase at the end of that term. Probably I'm guessing at the end of those terms we either buy it or continually seeing we make that decision in 2030 or so. In 2026 we have already purchased a duck truck which was on our schedule so you can see that happening and we don't really have any more planned purchases in 2026. In 2027 we are looking at doing a lease for a hydro combination truck and purchasing a plow attachment. So those are the two items that we kind of looked at. And Jason, do you want to talk about this hydro combination truck, just to kind of let them know what that is?

Yeah, so the combination truck, I'm sure, is the sewer truck, essentially. So we'll be able to do hydro activation as well as in our most moments. There is, I don't know, I wouldn't name that, but we'll get to that. So if we had this, we could have actually just cleaned it up ourselves and just been done with it. That's what happened Saturday, so we had to make sure. There's no issues. It's a huge benefit to us because we can also make sure seamless costs are made within our lines and use it across those contracts where as our staff grows, we're able to start making some changes in that. having a full weather schedule, and then, like I said, as much as the situation is unliable, we can give them a few questions.

We can safely pop away from these tubes. Like, you got to call before you dig. If you have one of these, the water pressure will blow all the ground without harming the utility. So you can see the gas line, the communication power, all of that, allowing us to get to work right away. You can locate all of them and direct the work. They can get signs of them. They can pressure wash stuff. They can do so many different things. Clean out storm sewer. You can put a head on the thing that will go in and chop up all the things inside the storm water system.

So saving that, does it replace the liability of not getting... A locate in first? Like you can do your own locates and lock everything?

No, you still call for locates. It's just a lot of this keeps the work faster. Okay. Like if there's an emergency. Yeah, if there's an emergency, and there's a locate, you still have to wait at least two hours, and that's the minimum. And that's used to it. So there's an emergency situation.

Which we see happen all the time.

Well, even if the fire locates in, we still want to visually see the utility to make sure it's actually under the flag and the paint's in the right place. So we'll go blow that little plate-sized hole in there and put a stake and some orange fence around. So we know for sure that's where that gas line is, not just relying on the yellow. paint the flag especially when you have big water leaks this can replace or supplement your big trash can size pumps that are sucking out thousands of gallons out of a hole this will this will do that as well so It's a huge tool to have, and most departments really want one. What you're doing on our side of the grain now, we have one in Little Sterling.

Just a general comment.

Previous to this group kind of being on the council, this type of documentation and forward-looking wasn't part of the process. I think everybody kind of had it in their minds, but for us to be able to have it documented and to be able to discuss it, it allows for, you know, flexibility if things change next year in Topeka, then we can we know what we've got planned and we can we can adjust it and i just think this whole process just another check mark in terms of the detail that we're receiving is really really good so i just want to thank you guys for all the effort because it takes time to do this

We can look at 2028 but again those kind of these kind of shift around based on needs and these are just some high level ideas going past next year so I'm not going to spend too much time on those because that's likely to change at this point. Moving on to the Public Works Vehicles Replacement Plan. One of the things I'm gonna skip ahead and then come back to this. We went ahead and increased the 2027 trucks up to $50,000. When you all saw the budget for the special streets and highway fund, that fund takes a component of that, and I have 40 there, so that will affect the special highway and street budget, and I went in to make sure that the fund balance reserve still was okay, and with that change, and they're divided three ways, it wasn't that big a deal. So that was a change that happened. to something that we've already seen. But moving forward here in 2026, purchasing a half-ton truck, and we're looking at probably increasing that.

It's been a struggle to get something for $40,000. So $40,000, that's why we decided in 2027 to increase that to $50,000. We knew it would be worth it, and we would get a price of $45,000 used for looking at $42,000. That usually has like 20,000 miles on it. So I encourage, once you start getting that, to look at one of those trucks.

so we increase those a little bit and like jason says we may have to spend a little bit more money in 26 but i'm not concerned with that we have enough leeway in our budgets to to sort that cost um they're all gone they're all gone they're the last one okay can i ask a question are you working with a fleet rep somewhere do you have fleet pricing

So there's a couple things with that.

fleet is not like it was for pickups not like it is for heavy machinery they don't do it like they used to in government pricing is out the window they got rid of that right at the turn of code there are there is a company enterprise that everyone knows that will do a lease program similar to what we're doing with our heavy equipment But the math doesn't work for us with where we're at in our current program.

I don't think I'm asking about leasing. And I think government's different. It sounds like they don't do government pricing. We have a, like we use Ford. We have a dedicated sales rep at Ford dealership. We buy all of our trucks to him. So as an example, Chad's new truck, we pay like an XL pricing. But because we ordered it the other time we got it built, we got all of the specs we needed on it for the same price. So I just wondered, like, if you work with a sales rep, can you, number one, customize that in ways that may benefit you better, especially with, like, the F-350, or... get a better deal, lower interest, something.

When we check into it, all the reps that we've been doing, they can call it back to Greg Bench and Mark Mason and talk to them who used to work them with us in government and even made, he gave me as many discounts as he could knowing that's from this project. And it was still, it was a 2025 with 20,000 miles on it, that was still, we'll be doing that soon.

But these are all base. We get, like, you're rolling up your window with a wheel, and we just put a headache rack and a toolbox in and we go. Except for the one truck.

We're getting the cheapest entry-level package. But since you brought it up, that's something that we're looking at. We're trying to decide if we really need it. We're thinking about moving that down to a 250 and doing a great tilting bed. That's the sewer truck currently, and it has a crane on it. And we are working our way from that crane on the truck because it is such a hard... item for the truck to have to deal with. You may have to upsize the springs on that side of the truck, things of that nature. And just so happens the truck, which actually we have a Ford F-350, it's the shim that we're going to replace because the GM's are going to have some problems. As it is, everybody's down at that right now. It's just sitting on a lot at the moment. So we're going to be opening that down to a three-quarter ton. The trucks that don't say replace, those are ads to the fleet.

So we haven't been adding trucks as we've been adding employees. So we're starting to see three guys. We have two trucks on commission right now. So it's really . So we do a lot of carpooling, but we got that first one this year is in Mathew, and then two of the next years are in Mathew. We don't need a truck per guy. It's not like police, but also we can't have two or three people tracking them all over town either. Perceptions? We'll put them in. They can drive. It's some of the heavy equipment and dump truck and stuff they can drive, but we don't want to necessarily... Those things we're leasing, you pay a penalty when you go over the hours at the end of the lease. We don't want to necessarily be driving those all over town too. Okay.

Okay, so in summary, if we put these together, in 2026, our total program costs are about $141,000. We divide this three ways to the water fund, sewer fund, and street fund, and that's how it computes out. So in 2027, our total program cost is about $315,000, allocated about $105,000 per fund. Again, like I said, the cash flow-wise, the leasing really helps that out with that larger equipment purchase. 2028, it's going to go up quite a bit, but then in 2029, I mean, if we're staying true to our schedule, it goes back down. So, you know, our five-year total is about $1.5 million worth of equipment. Any questions on that? Alright, so Water Utility Fund, make sure you switch out your slides. Yours have been switched, Craig. I did yours already. We're going to the Water Utility Fund. This is our little shining star. You know, the Water Fund was struggling for so long, right? When I came on board, there was a lot of issues with its fund balance, and it's revenues, and I think you guys had a water rate increase, I think, right? I don't know if you guys remember that or not, but we did, right? A lot of controversy over all that stuff, but we're starting to see the future of our labor now that we're about a year and a half, almost two years into that fix, and we're starting to see some real turnaround. Our reserves are looking a lot better. being able to transfer more into our water reserve fund because we know we've got some big water costs coming so a lot of things are looking a lot better if we start looking at all the different revenue lines that we have here i'm not going to go into the sales tax collective because that just gets paid right back out this fund earns its interest based on its fund balance and since the fund balance is growing it continuously gets a little bit more of our interest interest income Our connection fees, I want to talk about connection fees, water sales inside and outside. Those are computed at a 5% growth. So as you recall, every July our water rates increase by 2%. That's our 2% rider. So we have revenue coming in from that in addition to our 3% to 5% growth that we have just with utility customers and cabs. Tax fees, that is one that's dragging us down a bit. Just those costs or those revenues are down just due to building permits being lower. So I had to budget really conservatively with this one. Mr. Mayor, did you figure out where you're at? I didn't want you to get lost. I gave you so many papers. So, like I said, the tap fees, I have to budget really conservatively, just hopefully they come in better than that. I mean, last year they came in better, but, you know, just kind of estimating, I think right now we're sitting at about $75,000 at six months, and I can't just pretend that I hope that it's going to be there at the end of the year, so I work really conservatively there. So when you see just a 3.91% increase in our revenue and not a 5% like you would expect, that's because the tap fees drug us down from that. Next year, in 2027, I budgeted for a 5% growth. Again, tap fees conservatively and just a little bit more interest to get us closer to 4.78% per revenue. So if we start talking about our expense categories, salary, we have these categories. We have our personnel, our water distribution operations, our water collection and transmission operations, and our water treatment and processing operations. I do want to mention as we're recreating our chart of accounts in Tyler Tech, this is going to look a lot different in the future. This situation requires a lot of coding on our staff's behalf. It could be like a $5 tool purchase and it has to be divided like seven different ways based on just, I'm not kidding you, it's ridiculous. So we're gonna, you're gonna see some different presentations when we get our Tyler implemented, but I won't go off onto that right now. So our personnel, our personnel includes an allocation of one new employee, like we mentioned that we're hiring, and it also has just a reallocation and truing up of different salaries and positions. Water distribution, this grouping houses our legal costs, which have been going up just a bit because all of our water rights are legal fees that we've actually been paying for those out of pocket, not really putting them towards the temp node, which we may at some point do that. A reallocation of insurance, As well, like I mentioned in the general fund, we reallocated everything based on number of employees and GFOA best practices. So there's a reallocation of that. Also the software and this water distribution operation includes that $105,000 of capital equipment allocation as well that we just talked about. So those are the things that kind of encompass that one. Water collection and transmission and operations. This houses basically our utilities, which I estimated a 5% increase in all of those items. Well maintenance contracts for $25,000. Water tower maintenance contracts for $25,000. And a $50,000 emergency line item. So those are some of the bigger ticket items there. Water treatment and processing. operations. This increased just a bit for chemicals that staff said probably need to be increased up from I think about 15 to about $20,000 in 2027. One of the things that's really cool, in my opinion, is the transfers this year. This is something that I predicted last year and was hoping that it works out. We are increasing our transfers this year to the water reserve from 125,000 up to 300,000. So we are truly making headway and having enough room in our operations to get it out of there and get it into reserves to cover large capital costs of the water utility. So like I mentioned, when we start building up these fund balances from our revenue growth, our rating increases that continuously help with that rider that we have to cover these costs, we're able to accumulate that cash. That cash is gonna come in really handy when we get ready to either pay off debt, some of our temp notes, we have options there. or do other projects that we have on our 10-year CIP. Also, I should also mention other transfers that we have, and we'll talk about this again in another slide. We transferred to the Bonded Interest Fund about $200,000. Transferred $25,000 to the Equipment Reserve. Again, like I said, $300,000 to the Water Reserve Fund. So that's why that is ticked up so high, the transfers, because we're transferring out of operations into reserves. I don't think we've been able to do that, really. I mean, we would do that 125, and boy, that would be right on the wire. And we've kind of projected, slowly but surely, we would get there. We're getting there, and I'm hoping, and you'll see in some slides, next year I can do more, is what I'm hoping for. Water utility performance. Everything's looking really good. These negative numbers down here in the budget column, the operating margin, I'm not concerned about that because that incorporates our large transfer. So we're starting to transfer dollars out of there, which brings that down. So starting with the top line, our total revenue that we got projected for 2027, $2 million. Total expenses, $2 million. $2,081,000 leaves us about $53,600. So if we were to add back the $300,000 that we were transferring out of the fund, you would have a positive net income there. So we're just shifting dollars around and moving that out of there. When I'm choosing the amount of transfers out of there, I'm always looking at that 25%. Where are we landing in our reserve fund? We're way above that yet. Next year I'll probably try to bring it down just a little bit more and transfer more over there.

Slowly but surely before I feel I don't want to do it all in one year.

Revenue growth, like I said earlier, we've got it projected at about 4.78%. I wanna mention too, you guys will see the second quarter financial report at the next council meeting. We are like right on the line of 50% on everything. It's like we couldn't have predicted this any better. The revenues are like 50% almost on every single line that we would expect it to be on, especially in the utilities and expenses, 50%. Makes it kind of easy. Take your time, too, and we'll see where we're at at the end of the year.

At one point, when I was playing baseball, I was out in the outfield, and a gentleman was hitting fly balls and throwing the home plate one off. First time, I was up first baseline. Second time, I was up third baseline. And on the third one, I just hit it right on the nose, like you're talking about these numbers. And the gentleman took the ball and threw it up and hit it to me and said, do it again. yeah you said you said a good and even the projection for next year is where I thought it would be last year I'm not really seeing any I haven't seen any surprises yet expense growth

2026 we're operating really pretty lean we had chosen to have a lean budget in 26 just to kind of get us back on track Jason's doing great keeping that right where it needs to be so that's not surprising and then our 40.61 expense growth is hugely related to the transfers so everything everything's looking good right now with water utility performance So our major expense drivers, some of these I've already mentioned in the Water Fund. We're going to transfer $300,000 to the Water Reserve. We're going to transfer $200,000 to the Bond and Interest Fund to cover our projects. And that's a reminder, we have a water storage tank debt out there and some other water utility infrastructure debt that we have that we talked about in the debt service meeting. So meter part inventory, we bumped this up a little bit just to make sure we've got enough to operate and we had enough dollars in there. I think Nick used to always come to me, do we have any money left? Do we have any money left? I'm like no, we don't have any money left. We're gone. We tried to give Nick what he needed to do his business, so we bumped that up a little bit. Our capital equipment allocation, that's what we talked about, right? When we got started with our equipment, so that's this department's allocation. Water line replacements, $100,000. That's the continued support of our water line five and five. So if we don't use it for water line five and five, say we don't need it for something, we will find other water line projects to do. Or we have the dollars to do that if we need to. Our McGuire maintenance contract for 75,000. That's our annual maintenance and inspection service on water towers and water storage infrastructure. My emergency infrastructure allocation fund of 50. Added $30,000 for meter setters. Again, this was staff recommendation, things that they need to do their job. $20,000 available for hydrant replacement program. And then ARC GIS mapping implementation. That is a $20,000 cost that's being divided between water and sewer. So that's the mapping, some new software that's needed to do some additional work. Any questions with those projects? So our transfers and reserve contributions, we've already talked about this, I won't talk too long. Wanted interest gets some, equipment reserves gonna get $25,000. That's kind of to assist with computer purchases and just things overall with the city that equipment reserves kind of a catch-all. It gets some dollars and we use it for different equipment that needs purchase. The water reserve fund, I highlighted again, 2024, we only put $25,000 over there. We were able to do 125 in 25 and then the same this year and then again bumping that up to 300 next year. Nothing in the capital improvement fund. What's nice is our water reserve fund can do the projects. Our capital improvement doesn't need to assist it. We use those dollars for other things. I'm not lying. I'm lying to you right now. No. We are going to do one project out there. We'll talk about that in a second. Utility fund balance compliance. So this is where I said I kind of look at our transfers to see where we land on our reserve percentage and our ending fund balance and just kind of trying to figure out where we're gonna be. So in the end of 2026, I project it will probably be about 1.7 million. That's 117% of our reserves. So anything over 25% is good. In 2027, that's when I increased those transfers, brought down our fund balance just a bit, down to 81%, but yet we're still sitting with the expenses that we have in here at 1.6 million. So, I mean, I'm feeling pretty good about that and starting to look more like the sewer utility fund. Which is really a nice fund as well. So probably in 2028, transfers out, I just capped it right now at $500,000 because I don't know what the world's going to bring us. But I'm going to adjust that probably just a tad bit more if I can to bring that down maybe closer to the 50% reserve there. So I'm just kind of trending it down that way. This is kind of, I've kind of got it in my back pocket. We've kind of mentioned it a couple of times, being able to pay off the SCADA project and not have to bond it. You know, it's out for tent note right now. It's about a $1.2 million project. I have a feeling that maybe we could take a piece of this balance, a piece of the capital reserve balance, and a piece of the sewer, and just pay it off. And we wouldn't have to finance it and roll it out for 20 years. We'll cross that bridge when we get there. I think November is the first call date. So we're going to talk to everybody, us staff, and kind of visit probably October and see if that's something we really want to do. If not, we've got another year or two on the debt note, so we can make that decision then.

What did we say we could save? Was it $100,000 or $200,000 in interest? $100,000. Yeah, if we pay it off. Yeah.

Do you have to pay off in full or do you pay in chunks? I asked that. It's probably better to do it all at once. Okay.

There was a complicated way you could do that, but the savings wasn't worth the extra work. Yeah. We're going to have to round up against the Beverly Trails projects. We're about to spend some cash on that, which you guys will see soon tonight and then again on the next council meeting and then maybe the day of my work if you want to look at that.

Any questions on reserves and fund balance? Danny's waving her hand. You got a question, Danny? Do you want us to bring you another cookie? Oh, no. Thank you. Okay, so our water reserve fund, let's talk about it quickly. Interest income, it has revenue sources, it gets a piece of the interest too, so we get projected to get about $7,500. It also receives some equity fees, and again, those are down, trending down, so I have to budget conservatively for that.

It's the extra page.

No, that's your... That's your... Did I just need to take the back page of the other one?

No, we don't have this one. Well, you have it in your pocket here.

Oh, right here. Yeah, sorry. I'm so sorry. I don't think you're a mess, but you're pretty good at it. Sorry, keep going. Okay, you're good? Okay. So the other revenue obviously was our transfers that we talked about here. Water Utility Reserve Projects. I added this one in when Craig, you know, when we met this wasn't here. I added this in because it was kind of confusing what we were doing in 26 and what we planned to do in 2027. So right now in 2026 we have these projects happening or have been completed. We've done the Everly Trails well testing and drilling for $26,972. I have an emergency allocation in this fund for $75,000. Ebony trails trans... transmission line for 90 000 you haven't seen that yet but it's something that's coming um a future council meeting but i went ahead and budgeted for it just in case it gets approved so yeah we're going to bring that at the next council meeting so a week from monday and then it comes with another 140 000 which is for the preliminary engineering as well so that's 153 that's going to be in the council improvement fund so that's the other piece that i said I've got this all mixed up right now.

So it would be about $240,000 for Everly Trails and typically you know you've got a bit of runway so we say let's budget for that in 2027 but time is of the essence because of our purchase options with the HOA Association so because of how healthy our funds are we can But it's to basically hire Burns and Mack for the preliminary engineering for both the well itself and then the transmission line because we're going to have to put in a couple miles worth of 18-inch transmission line from the well to our existing transmission line in US-64. We've got to move into that quickly. I also just want to, while this seems like a lot of money, it is, but it's relative. We acquire those water rights for about 13% of what they are worth, so we should be very pleased with that.

and you'll see the the fund balance roll forward where we land with spending these dollars and you know i feel like we're comfortable where we want to be with this um so yeah the transition line and the everly trails land purchase is special so we've already paid for the 122 so really We have some emergency dollars left here in the transmission line that if we end up doing in 26, it's approved. Those are the things coming out in 26.

And that's for 135 million gallons of water in here.

That's 20 acre feet. That's a lot. I mean, that secures a lot of future.

Really cool deal. Last year we used $225 million. Our trend line actually looks like it might be a blip up, but it's been going down every year for three years. But then we had the huge rain, because our latest data was only through May. So we'll see what happens. It is really exciting.

2027 project requests. We have a chlorine building feed pump replacement that needs to take place for $5,000. The Everly Trails second lot purchased for $60,000. Oh, that's okay.

Where is this Everly Trails?

It's here at 135th and Central, I think. 13.

Yeah, so it's just some land we bought there with water rights on it. Yeah.

It's Vigilante, I think, farms 21st. Our emergency allocation for 75. So we have a ground storage tank repair for $100,000. That's something that probably has to be done. It's kind of, in fact, yeah, you want to talk about that?

Yeah, so actually currently the ground storage tank has a very small leak. It's kind of a, it's kind of slowing reaching out. I've been for several years, I guess. So I've got an extra thing to do with this. What caused the leak?

They had not been investigated yet, that's part of the cause.

They had a drink there, right? Yeah, it's the hot drink. Can't do that in the middle of the summer. It's something to do with, like I said, they haven't had a full investigation on it yet to actually see what the cause is. Or whatever the cause is. No, it's not remarkable. Yeah, but I don't know what the cause of this leak might be. It's probably something, it's dual lines, so it could very easily be like a bolt or something's not lapsed together right at C or D or something like that in nature. But you know, there's no indication that it's possibly going to do pretty positive water quality.

And how long has it been leaking?

It's probably years from now or so. It's not a big thing. No, it's like a grass cream root. And you'll see some moss around it for a while. Like just an inch to the limit. Yeah. We would take care of it as soon as we're done. How expensive is it to have it in the stadium over there?

Okay, okay.

That's with the investigation, I'm sorry. How does that, sorry to get in the traffic here, but how does that work if you're paying 75 grand a year?

So the ground storage tank is actually separate from that road tower. It's like buying insurance at this point.

one of the things we had to do is we had to write to kbhe right yeah we wrote a letter to state because they wanted to know that it was going to be fixed and we said that it was in our budget um for 2027 and if need be we felt comfortable that council would probably authorize it in 26 if something happened so they have documentation that it was here they may want to follow up Did they say alright, or did they say no, just to make sure that it's on our plan to do it? How did they know? Did they come out?

They must have seen it. They had a inspection. It was last year, they could not get a full inspection on the Washington.

Okay. If it got worse, which it hasn't, as soon as we got out of summer heat, we had to take care of it.

Is there any chance that, with it being so small, that it does need a replacement of some sort? The whole tank?

No, I mean, okay. Like, what's the case scenario? From the description of the water, I don't know. Okay.

All right, final item on the list is the water tower booster for $150,000.

I remember when we grew to the point where we had to add one in.

They oversized it so there was an extra port for a new one. Any questions on projects?

Any concerns? Anything you think we need to add, take away? Are we okay with these? All right, so how do all those revenues and expenses affect our utility, our utility reserve fund? And at the end of 26, we're going to be setting in about $166,000, which the reserve percentage at 52. So that's okay, anything over 25%. In 2020, let's see, 2027, we'll be sitting at about 159,000. That's due to that $300,000 revenue, revenue from the transfers coming in. And then I added going forward, hoping the revenues would increase by $25,000 a year, because surely we'll have more than that with at least transfers and maybe equity fees and those things start picking up a little bit. And then I just increased our expenses going forward about 5% just to have a baseline to kind of see where we were. And that keeps us at about 30%, which is above our 25% requirement. I think we're going to be able to put more over here from operations, and you'll probably be seeing closer to 50% when I project from the back of my mind, just kind of thinking how that's going to work out. But conservatively, we're where we need to be doing the project that we need to do. I don't think any of these are really fluffy. These are pretty much critical.

You know?

And the structure. Alright, so that pretty much wraps up water. Any questions, comments on water? Alright.

Do you like the picture for summer?

Next year, next year.

It would have been if you were early.

Yeah, right. Who knows? There's one more budget. Or is it? One more budget. You need to come. There should be a turtle. But it's not over here. There's one stone on the building.

reserve policy learning 25% the actual dollar one what is that is that 25% of the ending fund balance yes

But it's not like in 28, because it's 102, which is more than 25%.

You're talking about this one?

Any of them. Like that line, yeah. But as you go to the right, it's not 25% of the line above it.

He's saying $102,375 is not 25%. Yeah, that's an example. It's much more than 25% of 157.

It's at this one. You take 25% of the expenses.

25% is your reserve percentage, so you take 25% of your operating expenses to get your reserve percentage that you need, and then you compare it to your ending fund balance, wherever, to show the excess over that 25%.

Okay, that's the line. That's what line you were getting, 25%. Yeah.

I have to think about how that's calculated but yeah the reserve percentage is based on 25% of your expenses then you take that number over and beyond what your balance is in your fund to make sure you've got you can cover six plus months of expenses yeah that last row there that's the amount above the reserve yes

Alright, CERA Utility Fund, our revenue summary.

This fund has quite a bit more in it, so it's interesting in terms of it's a little bit more. It's going to earn around $53,000, $55,000 in projected revenue. The mayor had asked me some questions on revenue and our interest and kind of how I project it. It's really kind of hard to project interest, so I kind of look at what we got this year, kind of look at where our balances are, hoping interest rates kind of stay the same, and then knowing that we're eating up a lot of that cash. I mean, we got $40 million of cash in the bank for projects, but that's being used up, so obviously our cash balances go down. So kind of look at what we did last year, make sure it makes sense, look at it as a whole. I'm estimating we're gonna get about $2 million this year in interest revenue. We're setting it right. one million right now for six months a little over six one million so I'm projecting another million for the second half I think next year total interest for all funds and all departments that you see I've only budgeted 1.3 so that's conservative I bet we're a little bit higher than that but you know if we start blowing through all our cash because we're doing all our projects and those dollars will drop down. So kind of got to take that into consideration. So if you're kind of wondering the method to my madness.

If it works.

Tap fees, again, those are down.

So again, budgeting conservatively. Zero charges, I've increased those for about 5% growth, which is kind of what we're seeing, just kind of a trend there. So that's basically it. Revenues projected down negative 5.14%. That's due again to the tap fees, you know, that kind of drug us down. Last year we had 208. Right now, you just never know, so we're gonna...

Hopefully it does pick up. I keep saying I think Q4 of this year, Q1 of 27, taffies are going to be really ascending quickly. Probably, hopefully like they were in 24 because we have like seven projects that are one aspect of the public infrastructure we're away from being show already for new houses. Most of them just need paving or for like 167 23rd just needs sanitary sewer lift station. the bills project. So a lot of these are like 90 to 120 days from being shovel ready. Then all the tap fees are going to come in all at once because they're going to be pulling building permits. So the weather and the pace of the engineering and stuff like that can really affect how those perform. But you always catch up eventually. It's all the lots that have been approved are eventually going to come online. And you're going to get those tap fees. It's just a matter of when, not if.

All right, census personnel, again, it has the same increases as you saw on the other. It's a portion of one new employee plus just, you know, the growth and reallocation of some other people to this department. Actually, I should mention, I totally forgot, Tina's position used to be in the general fund, so it's coming over to public work. Her position's coming into public work, so she's really getting two new positions. I just thought that would be, it's not just one, it's two as well. So that was a reallocation of salaries there. Sewer administration, this houses our software insurance, our capital equipment allocation that we've mentioned, sewer collection, this takes care of our manhole repairs, contracts with mayor, and generator contracts for maintenance for that. Sewer treatment and processing, I didn't write down what happens in that apartment, but probably the sort of items in the store. Sewer treatment and processing go there. Thank you, Cory.

Transfers went up significantly.

We're building up quite a fund balance in the sewer operation fund, moving a bunch out.

We're going to move about $750,000 out of this fund into reserves. Part of the $1.1 million, $380,000 of that is bonded interest fund to pay for our debt, $50,000 to our equipment reserve fund, and then $750,000 to... sewer reserve fund. So this is where I got a little aggressive for once. I jumped this up in, and you'll see it in another slide, but this year we're only transferring $200,000 to the reserve fund. I'm like, let's start dragging this down just a bit and try to get some money over it so we have plenty for our capital projects or it'll help pay for that data if we decide to do that. Our metrics. Again, in 2027, the operating margins look scary, but that's because we're bringing $750,000 into our reserve fund and another $50,000 into our equipment reserve fund. So our total revenue comes in at 1.9, total expenses including transfers is 2.6, leaving us with a deficit of $729,000. Again, not concerned about that because our reserve percentage right now is really high. And again, I'd like to try to move that stuff out of there so we can do large projects, not in the operations, but handle those items in the reserve where they belong. Some of our major expense drivers in 2027 is our sewer reserve fund transfer of 750. Bonded interest fund transfer of 380. We're gonna dedicate $150,000 to manhole rehabilitation program. 105,000 for our capital equipment allocation. 71,000 for our mayor maintenance contract. $30,000 for our sledge hauling contract and that's just, I would like you to remember that this was something that Jason found this huge savings for us and we were typically paying between $70,000 and $80,000 for this and this is something.

What's the mayor saying? Just don't worry about who gets the credit, we can get a lot of great things done.

Well, between you two, you worked it out. So that's significant. And then the sewers portion of the ArcGIS mapping that we mentioned in the water.

I'll just back up real quick. We've got, under expense drivers on the water side, we've got water hydrant replacements at 20. Is that enough?

How can we replace it in-house is about $35,000 for the whole site. Well, that's fine. I just signed, you know, of course, we don't include anybody in that. So, yeah, $20,000 should be involved to replace or repair. You know, we do find a lot of just repairs that need to be done instead of actually all the placements. Sure. No, that's fine. And that's something that clearly has been, of course, we've had to deal with that experience, and he's been trained to do that, so I'm not doing that. That's good. It's just something that we're doing now.

I could be out of line when I say this, so please correct me, but even in the water looping money, there's a bunch of hydrant work being done as well, so.

Okay, so our transfers, as I've already mentioned, 380 to the bond and interest fund, 50,000 to our equipment reserve fund, 750,000 to our sewer reserve fund. Like I said, that's significant increase from prior year, and nothing to the capital improvement fund. So we're looking at about 1.18 million in transfers to basically cover projects into the future. So how does that look for fund balance compliance? And 20, this is a new slide, so if you have this paper, I gave you enough for this one. Thank you, original one. that I sent out. I'm talking to you. Copy and paste from your spreadsheet to this table format it. Messed me up. I didn't get them all lined up correctly, so I apologize for that.

No, I think, I think you just need to check and see if you have corrections.

They're looking at the steps. Just a little faster.

Well, I'm glad you did. If I would have seen it here, I would have been like, great.

It wasn't on mute.

I'll go home. Okay.

I already switched it. I was really quick.

No, this is the old one.

Oh, our old one matches this, not our new one. Because our new one says 500% deserves.

Yeah, I just took out the old one a little.

This one's right. This one should work. So one of the versions you have, we'll take them both.

Oh, you were missing a million all over the beginning. All right.

At the end of 2026, I project based on our revenues and expenses, we'll be sending about 1.7 million. This is 103% of our required reserve. You know, we're looking pretty good there. In 2027, even after our $1.1 million in transfers, we're still setting at over a million dollars in this fund, leaving us at a 38% balance there. So, again, I'm kind of aiming for 50%, 38% I'm okay with. because it's way over the 25% and it's actually just transferring dollars from one sewer place to another. Moving forward, we'll probably juggle that transfers out just a little bit just to keep us at the level we want based on our revenues in and our expenses out. So again, very healthy, nothing to really be concerned about. We've got a lot of money over here to do the projects we need to do. Sewer Reserve Fund. Again, this operates like the water reserve fund. It has revenues too, so we have a little bit of interest income over here on our equity fees. Again, we'll wait for those to pick back up, and then we receive our transfers in from our water fund. I should say sewer fund.

When folks say the developer is willing to pay their share, that's not equity. We intend to pull a permit. They pay $1,000 for water and $1,000 for sewer.

So at the end, our total revenue is about $855,000, up 182% due to the $750,000 transfer. Our 2026 projects, I think I just got one right before we came in here for about $16,000. Yeah, so I'm going to have to add one to this list here.

That was the emergency repair for the sewer main relining that we mentioned to you guys. It's under our expenditure authority, which is why you didn't get an email. So it's getting fixed.

So our 2026 projects, we're going to be plant compressors purchasing for $9,500. Mixer repairs, I think we've already spent $13,195. Our catwalk, we've already paid for $14,500. TSS probes, the $15,000. Basin pump, I don't know if we've done this yet or not. Yes, we have $22,559, or I wouldn't have such a specific dollar amount there. A sludge mixer repair, $31,320. Some GIS mapping that we allocated at the beginning of the year. It's one of our unbudgeted items I think we talked about. That's $47,000. Sewer cleaning and relining, $68,194. And our sewer 5 and 5, we've got $100,000 there. So maybe some of that stuff. that popping up could even be used there if we're not using it for the 0505. That re-lining could be papered out there.

We need to find some others. That way we don't have... We're trying to catch it before they become... Right. Yeah.

2027, this is what we see on the horizon, not much right now, but we plan to do that sewer master plan study for $150,000. Thank you all.

Yeah, I've been talking about that a bit. So I wanted to mention this three or four slides ago, we were seeing the fund balance building, but... We've talked about this before, but we've got some pretty serious debt that matures. We may be able to pay it off early. It's on pace to be paid off in 2034, but maybe we can do a year or two early and issue additional debt to build the water treatment slash reuse facility. And so basically, Jason and I are working with firms, Burns and Mack and Garver, and we'll probably have PDC submit a proposal too, But next year, they're going to come in and go through our plan with a fine-tooth comb, kind of put together like a 10-year arch replacement list for us because everything's coming up at the end of its useful life because the plant's about 20 years old. Your gaskets and plumbing and... and stuff that just starts to wear out and you've got to replace it. So they're going to help us figure out where to most strategically place those dollars in replacing things to extend its useful life, but also not to do any redundancies if we're going to be expanding the plant and converting it to a potable reuse treatment plant that will convert our waste water to potable water that can go back to the community and also be softened, of course. So that's what that $150,000 is for. It's kind of that first phase of getting into that and they'll break it up to like give us the next three years, the next six years, the next ten years and then that big pot when it's time to build. the new plant on our current one. So we're really, we're actually starting down that path. It seems like it's forever away, but you gotta start now. You're probably gonna spend 15 to $20 million. It's likely what something like that will cost. So there is a future in Goddard, not so far away where we will have soft water and where we won't have to really worry so much about our wells because we'll just be reusing the water that we right now just send down the creek. So, which is our waste.

It's currently still, they say it's drinkable.

I haven't seen Jason drink yet, but yeah. And I read a quote today from City Wichita's public works director. It's not the toilet to tap, it's toilet to treatment to treatment to treatment to treatment to tap.

Maybe we just leave the toilet part out and we don't emphasize on it.

And we were part of that original group in the state of Kansas that has been working to get the regulations put in place for this to happen.

We're part of the original group to support that. When you talk about reusing water, finding extra water, the things we've done in the last two and a half years in connection with Rural Water District number four, I think people will look back at this time and the things we're doing right now and really be thankful because I think as time continues to march on, water is going to become an ever more precious resource. And we're fortunate where we can have a month where we can have 20 inches of rain, but that's not every month. But I think we're moving in a great direction and we will control our own destiny in terms of our community and our control over that process.

As opposed to the time in Wichita, which seems to be and has been rejected by the community at several different times from Wichita's name.

Overtures to us, it's been several years now, but they didn't want to one time purchase our fluid water for the Gulf Force out there.

Water independence is extremely vital to our quality of life. Residential growth is of no consequence whatsoever to our water. So if you hear that in public, please correct it. And these steps that we've taken, what it really allows to do is welcome industry that utilizes water that can bring hundreds of jobs to our community, which will perpetuate our quality of life, which is obviously very important. So it's an exciting time. 500 million gallons plus is what we have rights to pump out, and we're not even at 50% of that. And when you have that as a factor in the rain, it's at that point, we just can't even see the end of the trend line. So we're in a stark different place than we were two years ago, three years ago, three years ago.

This is your option. Yeah, that's why we were confused.

You were here to come up.

This is the problem.

Alright, Serial Utility Reserve Fund Plan Balance Compliance Rejection. So, you can see our revenues coming in from 855. So back at the sewer utility fund, we were sitting at about one point something million. So, I mean, we, you're looking at over $2 million sitting, you know, together in the sewer utility funds. Again, we'll probably have plenty of money to maybe tackle some debt. Again, we're way above the 25% here, so we're going to be able to pay off debt and get those dollars to work on projects that we want to do. Any questions on sewer? On stormwater, it's pretty quick. As a reminder, stormwater utility only got started December of 2024, so it doesn't have a whole lot of history and not a whole lot of action that's happened here just yet. We're just kind of building up a fund balance and just deciding when we see a need, we'll put it on the schedule and use dollars from this to handle it. So our stormwater revenues are projected, This slide's silly. I don't know why I picked this one. It doesn't match any of the other stuff, but we'll use it anyway.

I was going to point that out, but I'm glad you didn't.