City Council - Regular Meeting

Well, it used to be one.

Welcome to our meeting. The date is August 18, 2026. The time is 6 PM. This is an open meeting of the Grand Island City Council. The City of Grand Island abides by the Open Meetings Act in conducting business. A copy of the Open Meetings Act is displayed in the back of this room as required by state law. Now I ask you to join us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for Under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

The clerk will now perform roll call.

Councilmember Sheard.

Present.

Councilmember Stelk.

Present.

Councilmember Conley.

Present.

Councilmember Nickerson.

Present.

Councilmember Brown.

Present.

Councilmember Haase.

Present.

Councilmember Mendoza. Present. Council President O'Neill.

Present.

Councilmember Pollack will be absent. Councilmember Lanphier.

Present.

And Mayor Steele.

Present. Also present are Jill Grenier, the City Clerk, Patrick Brown, the City Administrator, Chelsea Steinke, the Finance Director, Carrie Fisk, the City Attorney, and Keith Kurtz, the Public Works Director. A sign-up sheet was available in the lobby for individuals wishing to provide input on any of tonight's agenda items. If you did not sign up to speak on an agenda item, please come forward state your name and the agenda topic on which you will be speaking. No one has come forward, so we shall continue. Mr. Sheard has to make a few comments before we start our items for discussion. Please proceed, Mr. Sheard. Thank you, Mayor.

I was out of town today for business and wasn't checking the news until about 45 minutes ago, so this is a little fresh for me, but I saw that Ray O'Connor passed away today. In the next few days, we're all gonna hear a lot about how much he developed and the resume of things he added to our landscape in Grand Island. You're gonna hear a lot about just his dedication to our community and the nonprofits and the activism and the support he gave. And you're probably gonna hear a lot about the impact he made on people. including those like me, I can't add to the resume talk any more than what's going to be told. I can't speak on behalf of everyone, but I'll speak on behalf of myself and just say how grateful I am for the impact he did make on Grand Island and the support that he always offered and advice he always offered me. He was such a cheerleader for this town and an innovative thinker for this community. His name is on some things and his legacy will last a long time. But I just wanted to use this microphone tonight just to say how thankful I was to know him and thankful for his impact. And I hope his family knows that we're all thinking of him and grateful for all he's done for Grand Island.

Well said, and thank you, Mr. Sheard. We will continue with our agenda. 5A. fiscal year 2027 parks and recreation budget proposal. Good evening.

Good evening, Mayor.

Mr. McCoy, please proceed.

Thank you. Okay. Okay. So just a quick background. So the Parks and Recreation Department is comprised of five divisions. We have the Parks Division, the Recreation Division, the Cemetery Division, the Golf Division, and the Shooting Park Division. The Parks and Recreation Department, or the Parks Division, operates ball fields, uh... courts of course playgrounds trails trees et cetera about fifteen full-time employees currently uh... and we try to hire about twenty two seasons the recreation division uh... of course includes Island Oasis Water Park, the Field House, Lincoln Pool, the Stolle Train, the Children's Summer Programs, and there's three full-time staff members.

And we'll end up hiring about 150 seasonals in the Recreation Division each year.

We do have... The Cemetery Division has five full-time staff and one part-time staff and about six seasonals each year. And we do... hire operators. We have contracts with operators for Jackrabbit Run Golf Course and Heartland Public Shooting Park. So tonight we have everybody here. We have all the superintendents here. We have representatives from Landscapes Unlimited and from Hornaday. So if you have any questions about some of the projects that were already mentioned in some of the presentations or tonight's projects or budgets, we have the experts here to answer those questions. So just a quick, I guess, update for everybody. We've been busy again this year, lots of park projects. You'll see the The Beechler Park playground, there's an image there towards the top. That was a new playground we put in Beechler Park this year. The Grace Abbott Park pickleball courts were actually the old tennis courts were renovated to become pickleball courts. So there's four pickleball courts there now at Grace Abbott Park. The cemetery put a new columbarium in. The cemetery and Sucks Lake both did some asphalt upgrades this year. Of course, the Rider Park baseball field, I think council's heard quite a bit about. We're working on the Stolle train area right now, currently. There's some greenhouse renovations coming up, and there's a George Park picnic shelter going in. Also, of course, there's Island Oasis has a major renovation going on right now. Okay, just to go through some of the projects, we have $30,000 included this year to replace the roof and the office roof at the roof, I'm sorry, the shop and the office roofs at the cemetery. And feel free to stop me if there's a project you'd like to talk more about as we go through these slides. Athletic field light upgrades. We did put $300,000 in this line item. That's something that you're probably going to see probably at least next year again where that's something we really are focusing on is upgrading our lights. We're going to start putting LEDs into our ball fields. A lot of our lighting system on our athletic fields and courts are pretty aged. The Grace Abbott Bandstand, this has been on our radar for a while. We'd like to replace the bandstand at Grace Abbott Park for $175,000. Island Oasis Renovation, this is just a carryover item. It's just to remind councils about a $13 million project, and so we're going to carry over about 9.2 to help us through this next fiscal. We're going to replace the roof on the shelter at Ellie Ray, $22,000. Park water systems upgrade placeholder. This is something that's kind of actually coming from utilities. We, believe it or not, back in the day, a lot of our water systems didn't have meters. And so the utilities department would like to have an understanding where their water's going. So there's a requirement to upgrade those meters. So we are having to do that. Okay. Asphalt, this is kind of just a placeholder again. We're probably going to do Ashley Park. We are probably going to do Ashley Park this year. That's the one we're focusing on this year. But we are trying to do park roads and parking lot upgrades each year. Another picnic shelter, this is probably going to go at George Park as well. We'd like to have two picnic shelters there, so $75,000 for a new picnic shelter next year. Peer Lake Improvement Placeholder. We're still, Council might remember, we added this item to study Pier Park Lake, the trail around the lake and the water quality. And that's ongoing. They're still doing some testing of the water, still generating the reports. So what we did, we put a placeholder, it's probably going to be for the engineering of a project. So we really don't know what that project looks like or that amount just yet. But we thought we'd put $100,000 just to kind of have something there. Parks contingency, that's just a fund that we've been using whenever we have, we might have just unforeseen items. We may have a grant that comes up that we didn't foresee. There might be a change order for a project. There might be some overruns for another project. This helps us to basically stay within our budget or our spending authority. Racket Center improvements. This is something that I've been working with the tennis folks here lately. In previous years, the tennis association made most of the upgrades to the facility. Their funding is not what it used to be. And there's just some things where it needs some upgrades. The parking lot is in very poor condition. The tennis court is in poor condition. So those will probably be the first two items we'll address.

So this is a placeholder at this point.

Carry over again for the Stolle train area. This was a, I want to say, $2.7 million project. This is $1.5 million just to carry this over. This project will be done in the spring. So they're working on it now. A lot of infrastructure has been put in. They're starting to do some above work ground. So it's getting exciting now. But it'll be done in the spring. A tennis court renovation at George Park, $40,000. And this is just a resurfacing that tennis court. The West Connector Trail. You might remember this has been a couple years ago. We actually received a federal grant to construct this trail. It was an 80-20 grant. I think it's about a $1.5 million trail segment. Our portion of it this year of the construction is going to be $300,000. So it is going to bid this, well, the end of this year and should be constructed next year. So this will be three hundred thousand dollars will be the city's contribution to that i want to say it's like a 1.5 mile trail okay so that's that was park projects um equipment it's a pretty short list of equipment actually this year the parks department is requesting a pickup with a utility box parks department also is requesting a utility vehicle with an edger and leaf blower attachment The cemetery is requesting two utility vehicles with a loading bed. The cemetery is requesting three 60-inch cut mowers. And the big item on here is the refurbishing of the Salt Lake train. As we've progressed through the project, the Salt Lake train still runs. It's a 1985 train. We actually just had a representative from the train supplier here yesterday looking at the train. um he said we've done a great job taking care of it but it's a 1985 train so the motor that engine in the engine in the engine is uh is original um so we are still putting a plan together but if what we're doing there at stelly park we think we need to invest in the future with the train so that's why we have this item in there this page is just a summary of all these projects of all the capital projects i just spoke about So budget, operating budget. So here's what we're recommending. If you look, let's just jump to operating first of all. You'll see it's actually a 0.7% decrease. Probably don't see that very often. Probably the biggest item there is that we've reduced quite a bit of island oasis expenses because We have this Island Oasis renovation. So for the next few years, we feel like there'll be a lot of warranty. There won't be a lot of expenses that we've been incurring because of the age of the facility. So there's a reduction there. And so then on the personnel side, It reflects a 5.2% increase. We are recommending, we have the same recommendation that we gave during the February council retreat, you might recall, is adding two full-time maintenance workers, three seasonal workers, May through August. If you think about the Parks and Recreation Department over the last few years, we've added miles of trails, the Veterans Complex, Sterling Park, the splash pads, some of the playgrounds. expansion of soccer, and we currently today have one more, a little over one FTE more than we did back in 2010. So we really haven't grown our staff, but our park system has grown. We think the expectations have grown. We just completed a Parks and Recreation Master Plan where they had recommended additional staffing, and so this reflects that. the recommendations in the master plan and we can talk about any details with that as well. We really feel like we're going to be more proactive with additional staff, meet some of the expectations and yeah. So again, I don't think I'm going to rehash what we talked about during the February retreat unless council wants to dive into it a little more. And if council does not want to add the additional staff, we can do a status quo budget. It actually is just a half of a percent increase in our total budget. So that is my presentation.

Thank you. Any questions for Mr. McCoy? Mr. Conley.

Yeah, Todd, I just wanted to, how close is the putt-putt golf? Is that looking like next spring or sometime this fall?

It'll be spring. It's going to be spring. Yeah, they did get a little delayed. We were actually hoping to have it open this year, and there was a point where we had to make a decision, and we decided to open in the spring just to, honestly, so we could offer a good product to the customers. We didn't really want to take people through a construction site, honestly. So it's 95% done. Okay.

Just wondered. I had people ask me about it. So thank you.

Mr. Lanphier.

Before I saw buried in your budget $4 million for a potential trail down to Camp Augustine, is that still in your budget? Because I hope it isn't. That gives you the power to make the decision instead of the city council. I want it gone if it is.

That project is not in this budget today. No. Very good. I don't know if it's in another budget, but Patrick has his lights on, I'm not sure.

I hope it isn't. Because that is something that should be brought to the council and that gives the potential for other people other than the council to make the final decision. I want it gone out of any budget.

So earlier in the year, excuse me, Public Works presented their budget and their projects, and that trail was in that presentation. Since then, I have taken it out of the budget and waiting until the sale of the land is completed, and then we can bring it back in front of council and decisions can be made. Thank you. Yep.

Mr. Nickerson.

Well, Todd, you do a great job with the parks. And of course, I'm a big proponent of the pickleball courts there at Grace Abbott. And I remember over the last 10 years, I live about a block and a half away from there. And as tennis courts, maybe over 10 years, I saw 10 people playing. Since the pickleball courts have been in there, I see dozens of people playing. And so when you take a look at the importance and the popularity of it it's paying off for itself there I think it's very nice and they were nicely done and I appreciate that I was hoping for a hybrid tennis court you know slash pickleball and you guys went above and beyond and got the four pickleball which fits perfectly and everybody that plays out there really enjoys it one of the gems that we have in this town and I bring it up every year is our Stolle Park Garden that has been renovated and is one of the most gorgeous things that this city has to offer right now As people come to visit Grand Island, that's one of the places I take them, and I never hear anything but oohs and aahs from there. My concern is keeping that up and making it stay as beautiful as it is today in the next two years, five years, ten years. Right now we're counting on volunteers to make that happen. When I was out there that particular morning showing some folks from Missouri the beauty of it, there was a handful of volunteers there. And I talked to one of the guys who was there just picking his brain about how often do you have to be here? How long does it take? I don't remember if he told me how long it took to go through all of that. But he did tell me that it was about a once a week trip that they tried to make. And I don't know if it's an all day thing. I'm assuming it's probably a few hours because there's usually three or four people, five people maybe. And they obviously know what they're doing. I'm wondering what is the plan for the long term to make sure that that happens because we're looking at probably, is it March or April when things start coming into bloom? Then maybe October when the freezes start coming or when it gets close to where things aren't going to be beautiful anymore. How do we ensure that's taken care of without counting on volunteers who are getting older and may or may not be able to keep that up over the years?

I don't know if I have a great answer. My answer here today is adding the two full-time and the three seasonal workers to this year's budget. That gives us more ability to do those type of things. We already have a great partnership with the Friends of the Park group. Our staff is down there working elbow to elbow with that group. I have encouraged the Friends of the Parks to think about an endowment as a fund to, you know, to take care of future maintenance. As you know, I mean, when I say it's not a great answer is because, as you know, we are subject every year to a new budget to city council, right? I've been through, been here a long time. We've cut staff before. We've almost cut the entire greenhouse department. And I honestly, there's, I mean, that's something that we just go through. That's a process that we have. So I think your support to the Parks and Recreation Department is the only way to really do that, honestly.

One of the suggestions from the people that were here, I thought it was a brilliant idea. I don't even know if it's the city policy that we can do it or not. But they were saying, you know, what if you had a landscape company take care of this for you? And as part of that agreement, you advertise for them. And you have that ability to where these folks are dedicating. I'm going to bet. They need one person one day a week to maintain that. That's just my guess based on what I was hearing from the group that was working there. It's probably maybe March, April, May, June, July, August, September, maybe October, maybe eight months that we need somebody. And I don't know if that's something that's worth pursuing. I don't know if you'd do an RFQ at that point, because we kind of know what's required. But what would it cost for us to pay you to do that? And if we are able to advertise for them, what might that offset be, that benefit for them as well, to where they get some exposure for the great job they're doing? And also, I can't imagine it's going to be a dollar-for-dollar match. I think they're going to need some money out of the deal. It would be my guess, again, not knowing. But something like that seemed like a pretty good idea to help make sure that that place is kept up and it's beautiful all the time. Just curious about your thoughts. I'm just bouncing them off of you right now.

Yeah, like I said, we really value our relationship with Friends of the Parks, and we really value what they've done there. And I know it's a priority to us to continue. As long as we have the resources, we are going to put our resources into that. I'll tell you, it's a high priority for us.

And I think you could even look at a hybrid approach where I don't want to tell our volunteers who love that and have made it what it is that, oh, no, you're not needed anymore. That's not the case. But we still need somebody that we know that we can count on if somebody's sick or somebody to help oversee that. I'm going to let you think through that over the coming weeks here and see what you think. It's just a way that we want to make sure. I don't know that we can support. I mean, I don't know if I can support the full request that you're asking for tonight, because we've got a lot of needs. And when we look at the whole budget, all of this costs money, not just this year, but in years two, three, four, and five, and how we make sure that that's sustainable, that'll be a discussion we'll be having later tonight. But I just think that park is just, we've got to make sure that it looks good all the time. And it is looking great right now. But it's, what is the plan when the friends of the park aren't able to maintain it like what they want to do? The other thing you touched on, the greenhouse. Just kind of curious. I'm going to assume that Brad is going to be looking at retirement probably in coming years. What do you think comes of that if Brad decides to retire? What do you, do you have, is that something you see as being sustainable as well in the future?

For now? Yes, yes, absolutely. We would, I mean, as you know, we've had a lot of growth again with the Stolle garden. and our flower beds and just some of our beautification efforts. And we want to continue that. So yeah, I would think that's something we want to continue for sure.

And is that something where you'd bring somebody in from the park department to continue that? Or is that something you'd probably have to look outside to have somebody fill a position like that?

I mean, time will tell, I guess. Sometimes we do have somebody that might just step right in. But if we have to do a search, we will.

OK. Well, the parks are looking great. Of course, the rain doesn't hurt. Everything looks nice and green and beautiful. And that park out there is just gorgeous. So we want to do everything we can to make sure that that stays looking great. Thank you.

Mr. O'Neill. I appreciate the presentation. A couple of questions, a couple of comments. So in the last year, we really bit off a lot of parks projects in the last year. And it's probably going to take a little while to digest that. We're going to take on a whole lot more. Over at Rider Park, I just want to kind of follow up on some of the finalizations. I went to several games this summer. Field looks amazing. The parking lot's super nice. But it looks like there's still a few things left to be done there. I think with the concessions in the restroom, were those things on the city side? And then I thought the baseball team was doing some as well.

So the concession and restroom building, the construction has started, but that's a private effort. If you might recall, this was a partnership. And so that building is under construction now. And I think they're just, honestly, they were pretty busy with the baseball season. The intent was, they talked about a video board, the baseball team. Yes, and the agreement that we have with the baseball team, which is the Diamond League baseball, Crane's baseball, is they agreed to pledge $250,000 towards the project.

Do you expect the private improvements to be done by next season? Yes. okay um and then with the uh question on the train so i understand it's a very old train who what person actually maintains that train engine at stalley park uh most of it we went through the well we have our own staff um who do the daily maintenance of it but then it goes to the city shop okay that's what i thought as a shop employee shop has been the ones that have taken care of it and then does that basically have maintenance hours done for so many hours of operation or i don't know what type of schedule it usually has

Yes, yes, there's a maintenance schedule for it.

And I would assume a new train would have a lesser schedule, perhaps, or should have less maintenance needed, maybe?

Yeah, that's what we're weighing. Actually, one of the options is an electric train. So that's one of the things that is pretty popular now. So no emissions, but you have to have the infrastructure, which we are going through a project right now, so we could probably add some of the infrastructure if that's the route that we decide. But we're still trying to weigh that. I'm just curious what the lifetime might be of a new train as well. Yeah, and that's some of the things we're weighing right now. But yeah, I mean, this train was 1985. So hopefully I'll be gone by the time we have another one.

Well, thank you. I look forward to seeing all the improvements. And we expect all that to be open for next summer, it sounds like. OK, thank you, Todd. Mr. Lanphier.

Even after what I said before, I want you to know I'm really impressed with your work. I've been in this city a very long time, maybe even before you were born. I've seen the Stolle Park evolve. It's great. There are other things in this town. My question is, you talked about eliminating these little bitty parks with playground equipment. Are you still looking to do that?

We... So that's a pretty slow process. Some of the old playgrounds have come out, if it's not something that's safe. But, yeah, so some of the old equipment has come out, but we are trying to always try to put something in the area new so that there's always a new playground. Like the Beechler Park playground was a great example. We took some old playground out there. It's a small park. And it's amazing. We didn't know there were so many kids in that neighborhood. They came out and, you know.

I will agree. There are places in town they could go. I mean, there's just not the residents around. But there's one up there by us. When we had our little grandson in the summer, we used to ride bikes over there. He played. There were other kids playing. There's a lot of kids there. Some are good. Some probably could be eliminated. But I hope you don't know.

eliminate all of them yeah no that's a good point we're we definitely want to make sure there's places for kids to play and if we're we're eliminating something you know let's try to put something back or at least in the area thank you mr mccoy tom bush did you want to speak on this item or just if there's questions okay

Council, to make our agenda flow a little better, we're going to take up 5E, review FTE request, and then Mr. Brown's budget overview will be the last thing on our agenda. Please proceed.

Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, Council. Let me pull up our fee schedule that we're proposing. Hopefully, this was in the packet. It was in the amended packet. So I hope you had time to review the fee schedule. The changes are in red. I'll just kind of go through here. Please stop me if you want to talk about a certain fee. I want to say thank you to all the directors that showed up tonight. They all have fees. They all have projects. Most of them have FTE requests. So they're here for your questions as well. The only change in the animal control services was just the changing of the label. The fee is the same. Here's some new fees. This is under the fire department. This is also including mobile food unit inspections. That is still coming to you folks. for adoption. We did talk about that earlier in the year, and so that is coming back to you folks.

Mr. Haase.

Thank you, Mayor. Pat, if I could just back up a second. On the animal control, the changing of the title. So what it was titled is deemed potentially dangerous fee, and it was $100. It's still $100, but now it's called an annual kennel inspection fee, which are two completely different things to me. So what is the difference between an annual kennel inspection fee? Is that per location or per kennel or what is that? And then compared to the potentially dangerous fee, because I thought that one was attached to a dangerous animal would be out there. And then if we had a dangerous animal, the owner would be assessed a fee. Right. So I think it's going from an owner assessed fee to a, looks like a facility assessed fee, and I didn't really quite catch the nuance between the two.

I can answer that, Council Member Haase. When an animal is deemed dangerous, every year, annually, these owners, these animal owners, have to have an in-home kennel inspection, and that's what that fee went for before. but it's actually a kennel fee for the deemed dangerous dogs.

So it's a combination of both those wordings?

Well, there's not really a fee for being the deemed dog. It's maintaining the security of that deemed dog that costs them $100 annually.

So this is still an owner-assessed fee of a dangerous animal? Yes. Okay. As long as we understand that, then it makes sense. Thank you very much for the clarity.

Mr. Nickerson. And just to touch on that, we just had a situation today in animal advisory. So just to build on what she says, when a dog is deemed dangerous, part of those requirements are you have to have an escape-proof kennel of some sort. And part of that is... The police officers have to go out now or animal control goes out to ensure that whatever it is, it might even be your house if you're able, you know, but it's got to be proven that it's escape proof and there will be a fee assessed and that $100 fee covers that cost and it's annual every year. So once your animal is deemed dangerous, that's something you have to do every year. It's $100 just to make sure that everything is being followed. My question is for the inspection at the State Fair. I mean, can you scroll back to where that was? Just want to confirm again, I think I had sticker shock last time. We thought it was $2,000 per unit. But it's for the entire state fair inspection, isn't that correct?

I believe so. Corey, is that correct?

Yeah, that's right. That's for prior to this.

Yeah, because I think there was some additional stuff you guys needed to add or did add.

There was. Prior to us changing this from 1,600, which it was before, to 2,000, it didn't include the mobile food units. So that additional 400 is just to cover the 60-something plus mobile food vendors that are part of State Fair. We feel it's very reasonable, but most of the vendors at the state fair travel from fair to fair. They're very organized, and we figure we can do those inspections very quickly.

Right. But you assess that to the state fair. Do they get that money back from the vendors in some fee of sort, probably?

We did meet with the state fair, told them how we were going to handle it. They were good with that. I would assume they're going to pass that expense along to the individual vendors. vendors but i really can't say for sure but that's what i've been led to believe okay very good just want to confirm that just while i'm up here pat mentioned a lot of these fees are new they're really not at least on the inspection part of it before and i erased it by accident forgot to tell pat it said refer to the fire department graduated scale and we were charging these same fees But that scale should have been in the fee schedule, not referring to a different document. So these fees listed are the same as they were before. They're just included in the fee schedule.

And just looking at that list, what is an institutional occupation and an educational occupation fee?

Institutional occupation is typically like a hospital or health care facility. And the educational is going to be a school or preschool type occupancy. And those fees are all based on typically the type of business being done there or type of work. And then also the size of building. And then generally speaking, We're going to inspect buildings that are target hazards, which a target hazard is a business or building that if a fire would occur would cause a large loss of dollars or the potential for a large loss of life. So we inspect those a little bit more often and at times those are larger buildings, there's a higher associated fee because our time on task is longer.

Okay, very good, thank you.

I might want to plug here that the fire department is soon to burn down a house. That will come out to council for announcement if you want to come out and see some training. So I encourage you to do that. Let's see. So we had some changes on some more standby fees, just raising those up. This had to do, I think, with state fair as well. And whenever an entity asks the fire department to have standby, these costs are tied to what it costs us to have those folks out there. Ambulance, they had a couple of increases here. Paramedic, the combo pad, $70, up $20. So that's it for fire and ambulance. So for library, overdue charges in library, this is free. It was just a change in labeling. I don't think there's big changes here. There were none really in the library. Cemetery, we have a change in open and closed graves. We have a change in adult. And adult again for Saturday open and closed burial. A couple other increases in the cemetery.

Mr. Rossi.

Thank you, Mayor. Pat, on the cemetery, I'm assuming that on the lot, on the burial spaces, it's just trying to keep up with the competition because our cost hasn't gone up. I mean, we have owned the cemetery land for a long time, and so we're continuing to increase our rates. So I'm assuming we're just trying to stay even with what the market is doing. But the one thing, there's a baby land rate that's going from 300 to 350, and I would wish that we would keep it at 300. It's one of those, of all of the trying to keep up with the fees, that's the one I would probably suggest we leave alone. Just because of the condition or what happens when that space is being used, I would rather not see the extra $50. And I don't think it's not a big financial issue for the city. And so if they would agree, I would like to try to keep that one at 300.

I might add, I know Todd and I had a conversation, I'm not sure where we are in this process, but I believe the cemetery is also contacting folks that have cemetery lots that they know they won't use. We're thinking about can we do a buyback or something like that, just increasing spaces and stuff like that. So I know he's working on that, and we could have an update on that during the 27th fiscal year. So now Parks and Rec, so some of the fees on the picnic shelter, the renting of the half days, a couple dollar increases, a $5 increase, a $3, striking some fees off and adding new fees. The Rider Legion field, I would imagine that is for renting the field for a half a day. And then all day it would be $80. So I believe that's what that's for.

Mr. Nickerson. Well, we're talking about shelters. Todd, how often do those get rented? I guess I don't realize. And how do people know about renting them?

Yes. So we reserve select picnic shelters. Some of the larger ones in Grand Island, like the ones at Stolle Park, Ashley Park, are reservable. We're actually going to start reserving some at George Park eventually here. And then the other ones are first come, first serve. But you can do that online. You can just go to the city's website under reservations and folks can make a reservation.

You cannot use a reservable

shelter yes you if there's nobody there it's we put a sign on it it's the smith family reunion today so then it's reserved then it's not available but if there's no um sign then it's first come first serve right and are they very popular i guess does it happen very often very popular they're pretty much reserved every weekend okay excellent

Continuing with there's a little. Grammatical air. Online reservations were still in the parks. Change in the water. We're taking some water park fees off. Looks like and then we have daily fees increasing a little bit. 50 cents $1.50. Those kind of increases.

Mr Nickerson. Yeah, when we got to the water park, I wanted to be sure and ask this question, because when you take a look at the prices that went up, let me see if I can find the lines again. Some of them go up $0.50, but all of a sudden you raise one group considerably more if you're comparing the two. I think it was $1.50. The other is $9, goes up $0.50. $9.50 goes to $11. Why are you raising the 19 to 54 age group by $1.50 and everybody else gets a 50% increase?

Yeah, I mean, honestly, we, I mean. Think that's a typo or is that real? Oh, it's correct. It's just the, just, I think when we did our study, I think we were pretty close on the price of the adults versus the children. And it's pretty normal to price the adults a little higher, right? And over the years, I mean, I think what's happened is we always were just a dollar, a dollar, a dollar. So we always just, so the gap has increased. has gotten closer if that makes sense um so anyway we uh we felt like this would be a good time with our new facility um and our all of our new amenities um to increase the fees a bit so that that was that was the the thinking behind it but again these are just recommendations so it just seems odd that you were doing that group more i don't know what the percentage of that age group is versus all the others you know under

Under 19 versus those over 54 just seemed odd that stood out a buck and a half because I'm that age range I have to pay a buck and a half more so it seems very unusual to me So that is the water park

Island Oasis, some more fees, going up a quarter, going up a buck and a quarter, another quarter, and $2. So now we're to golfing. requesting a fee increase here for the golf. You might ask why it's such an odd amount. It's because when you add sales tax and it comes out to an even number. So it's a lot easier for the people at the golf course to deal with a $30 or $35 fee instead of a $24, $55. So it's just making math a little easier at the golf course. I believe these fees, I think Sedona went through these on her presentation. Just going to the annual passes. Here's the changes in those. Then we have some couple of changes in the golf range. Cart rental. And then Heartland Shoe Park. Obviously we do not do these. That's under control of the park that manages our Heartland Shooting Park. Stallie Park Train, we have some fee increases for next year for those train rides and punch cards and items like that. Planning, there was a couple of changes. Zoning map amendment, Grand Island, $1,100, $100 increase. Ordinance amendment, $100 increase. That's just because of our increase in costs. Preliminary plat, again, it's just an increase in our costs, what we're reflecting here. Police department, a little bit of changing the label of records reports. Increase in the impound fee for towed vehicles from 40 to 45. Otherwise, pretty flat. Public works license agreement. Commencement of work prior to agreement execution, $125. Sanitary sewer connection application fee, $190, a $5 increase. Again, this just reflects costs of doing business. Failure to schedule. Mr. Hossie.

Yep. Sorry. Those are the ones. So one of the things that the failure to, right where you're at there. Okay. Failure to schedule. One of the things that I always want the fees to be cost recovery that is costing us X number of dollars that we should try to recover our cost. So I'm okay with fees that do that. The fees that just try to penalize somebody, these next three right there that are highlighted on the top of your page are all three call it penalty fees that if you don't do this or you don't do that we're going to penalize you and even the one on the prior page i'm not a fan of penalty fees this is one like if you want an invoice it's going to cost you five bucks i don't know how big a deal it is how many people actually need an invoice for something uh is it really costing us five dollars or you're just penalizing because they're old and they don't want to do things electronically and so That's my take on it. And those were the three or four that I saw that I'm just not a fan of fees that try to penalize somebody for not doing something. I think we already have in our fee schedule, you have to pay double the fee if you don't do certain things. But I'm like, these are just outright fees that are scheduled for failure to do something. And I'm not a fan of those.

OK. Any other opinions about these fees? Mitch.

I'm assuming those dollars arrived from somewhere. So whoever came up with the dollars or the fee, do they have an explanation for how they arrived at the dollars?

Doug is correct. Quite honestly, these are in the hopes that people comply with the permit. If there's no fine, why do it kind of thing, I think is the goal. The cost, we try to look at what the other fees are and make sense of what the fine might be. With all the electronic stuff now, we have invested in a permit system. Pretty much everybody we bill directly out of that. You have one or two maybe that want a paper copy that we have to manually go in and do. Does this reflect the total cost? I believe this is probably lower than the total cost quite honestly. for a lot of these things that we're not recovering our dollars on time spent, but we're trying to encourage the use of the systems that pretty much everybody are taking advantage of. So kind of a balance between those things.

When urgent inspection requests, less than 12 business hours, put somebody in a bind has to change their schedule. So I can understand where some dollars could be impacted there. I'm not sure about the paper invoice fee. It's just a matter we want it on paper versus we got to pay for the printer, the ink, the person to do it. Exactly, we're not recovering our costs. So $5 doesn't sound unreasonable for that. Somebody's got to deal with all that stuff.

Just like on my cell phone bill, if I automatically pay it out of my bank account, I get a discount. Similar type thing, only in reverse.

OK. And I guess as long as you feel comfortable and can justify that, I have no reason thinking that they shouldn't be in there. That's my personal feeling. So now you've got one and one and eight others in between. So I don't know where it lands. But as long as it's legitimate and it makes sense to me that there is a cost incurred, I mean, I think you need to have that in there more than likely. Mr. Hossie.

Thank you, Mayor. You mentioned the word fine, and I would point out is that most of the fines, if not all of the fines that we get as a city, go to the school district. So we don't get to recoup fines. I misspoke. We have fines, but we don't get to keep the money. They actually go to the school district.

I shouldn't use the word fine. Okay. Thank you.

Streets division, a couple of changes there. Sewer service, wastewater treatment, I believe this was gone over with Matt's presentation for wastewater and in the rate study that they did. So the schedule reflects those changes. Solid waste. There is a landfill site fee increase. Again, these are adopted or recommended by our rate studies. Jeff presented that as well. Transfer station, a couple of changes. Compost site, a couple of changes. Utility service fees, the all-hours turn-on fee, electric, not pertaining to new connections, transfer of service. It looks like his wording was changed. That might have happened last year. So that's the only change there. Temporary commercial electric service increase of $20. That would reflect cost of labor to do that. Temporary water meter on fire hydrant, again, labor increase, so cost increase actually. And then these are some of the fees that again were in the rate studies. That we do, and we're recommended. So these are those changes. And that is it for all the fees.

Mr. Nickerson. So the fees that are not in there are those that will be assessed when people decide to play on this new miniature golf course that I can't wait till it's built. How do we account for those when it's, you know, now we're talking about springtime will be in this fiscal year. They're not on there, I don't think. How do we do that? How do we make that all proper that we'll be able to assess fees?

The quick answer is once we've cost out those fees and what it should be or what we think we should offer, we'll do an amended fee schedule to council.

Any idea, Todd, it's so preliminary, but any idea what you think a round of that miniature golf would be? And I'm assuming this is obviously full 18 holes all the time. You don't get to play nine on this one.

Actually, Patrick and I haven't had a chance to talk about it yet, but they're in here. So our plan is to If you go to the water park, you pay a fee. What you do today, if you're not a swimmer, you pay the same admission fee. So the admission fee that you see today is you'll be able to putt-putt golf. But also... And we're calling it an off-season. You'll see these fees here. These are the new fees. So the water park, the wave pool will actually be probably likely be closed in the off-season. The slides will be closed. But the splash pad will be open. The playground will be open. And the mini golf will be open. And there will be a reduced fee for that admission.

You're going to have a one fee for the water park and the golf course? Yep, one fee. You can do it all. Really?

That's our plan.

Seems like a bargain.

It is.

It is. Better start upping these prices already then, buddy. Because I was anticipating the golf course to bring in a great amount of revenue, I mean, equal to the water park. But if you're just lumping it together, I don't think we see much up. upside on that except when the water park closed. That's the only time you start to see anything.

Well, we think people will come to the water park probably not just to swim. They will probably come to the water park to putt-putt golf and they'll pay that summer fee.

So why wouldn't you have just a small additional fee to help cover some of the costs of the golf course? Because you've got staffing for your Island Oasis group, but you're also going to have staffing here to distribute the clubs and all of that stuff. It seems to me like it makes sense that there would be an expectation to get an upcharge as well. If I'm going to get to do more, I should probably pay more. And I don't mean $18, but maybe if it's $9, now it's $11 if I want to play miniature golf, or maybe it's $12. But now you've got two sets of staff here that you have to keep paid, and they're all coming out of just one entry fee. It seems like it's too good of a bargain, probably.

Yeah, again, but we feel like people are going to come to the water park. So we'll have more admission, if that makes sense, this next summer because of the putt-putt golf. So we'll have, let's say we had 40,000 swimmers this summer, so we may have 60,000 swimmers because they're coming to play putt-putt golf. So we are going to bring in more revenue. From an operational standpoint... If we just have somebody pay to swim, then, well, at my point, I should back up, pay to putt-putt golf, how do we stop them from swimming is our issue. Because it's kind of an open concept a bit. And if we just put a wristband on them, then they're actually out in the water. I'm sorry, they're out in the water. And it's going to be hard to... It's going to be hard to manage. It's going to be hard to track. So yeah, that was our plan. Again, this is just recommendations, open to feedback. And if council would like to see something else, we can sure go back and look at it again.

I'm only looking at it as a way of getting a return on the investment of this miniature golf course, which I think needs to be more than just one entry fee does all. That's my opinion. We can see what happens in the course of a year. You can assess the numbers next year and see if it was a good decision or not. And fees can always be adjusted. But that seems like just too good of a bargain for me. To get all of that for that price seems very, very, very reasonable. Mr. Sheard. Thank you.

On that topic, Todd, I guess, Mitch, I disagree. I'm not going to swim, but I'll come out there and putt-putt. And I think that's a pretty good price, $11, because I'm in that $19 to $54 range as well. $11.22 for my wife to swim. pretend that she can golf better than me for the night, I think that's a pretty cool price. And I like that it's going to simplify the process for you. So I think that's pretty slick. You think that's going to open in the spring ahead of?

Probably not. I think we're probably going to just to do it right and make it a big event. I think we're just going to open everything together. I like that.

I like that. Thank you. Pat, when I look at all of these fees, the fact that they're not all going up 3% to 5% because a lot of them take our time as staff, the city staff. Not all of them, but a lot of them do. And our staffing cost is going up and up and up. The fact that we're not raising all of these I think it's a good thing for our community to see that we're not just nickeling and diming and passing every cost on to them.

Absolutely.

But I would ask you, why aren't they? I'm not for that, but why were some of these raised and not others? What was that process?

So the process is, and this is the way, I hate saying this, this is the way we've always done this, is the department directors are responsible for their departments. they should understand what it costs to run that sort of feature, that kind of fee. And if the cost of business is to raise those fees, to raise them. But to also understand that we're providing the service to our residents, our citizens, because they pay property tax, right? So it's kind of a, we're kind of leaving it to department directors because they're the expert in that area. uh per se so this can definitely i mean we we could do that this year i don't recommend that i would recommend maybe looking at it next year of because well further on into the evening we'll have that discussion is this part of that discussion yeah as i look into the future and i've seen the packet that's one of the reasons i ask is we're going to see some things where

the costs we have as a city are going up and our revenues might not all be matching that. So I like that this doesn't nickel and dime everybody, but thanks for that explanation about why some do and some don't. Go up, not nickel and dime.

Mr. Stilk. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I have a question on electrical disconnect fees. What does that charge, does that entail? a person from the electric department going to the house or business, or does it entail a switch at the Phelps control plan or the city utilities? How do you come up with that fee, and what's the work process on that?

So there's an after hour and an on-hour fee. So the on-hour fee is a lot of those are automated through our AMI system. So that's from an office, someone can turn that on and off. Now that's single phase only. So all three phase customers, like your commercial industrials, you have to go remote and open those meters. So that would be like a non-pay situation. disconnect and then sometimes if people are turned off for non-pay and they want power after hours we have to bring people in on overtime to roll a truck and that's what that other fee is for so usually what we'll do is if they want power after hours and they've been turned off for non-pay we give them the option we say hey we can come out after hours at this fee or you can wait till tomorrow morning during business hours so

With the work you were doing on all the meters in town then, you know how the capability of just doing that remotely from your station?

Yes, you can do that on all residential. Three-phase AMI meters have the same functionality as residential single-phase meters as far as the feedback we get off them, the way the customer can see their usage. The difference is because you have three phases, the meter can't be opened up remotely. They still have to go pull the meter directly if it's a three-phase customer.

Is the price the same since the labor issue is almost out of it?

Well, the labor issue is in it on the three phase. So on a single phase customer, it'd be the $50. So the amount of time a person has to go into the system and turn them on. So that's actually an on and off because it's a double action. You turn them off and then you got to turn them back on. So that's what the $50, and that's been the same for a long time. What we didn't have is an after-hours option. That got taken off the books a few years ago. There used to be one. And so that's the cost to go and roll a truck on overtime hours to go turn on electric.

I was just asking for an explanation. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah, no problem.

Mr. O'Neill. I always like to see the rationale of why we increase the fee and what the reasoning is. And we're not just increasing them to increase them. So thank you. I think you guys had a lot of good explanations in some of those. Going back, I just thought I'd comment on the miniature golf as well. So on that, I think it's kind of nice to have the same fee structure for the water park and the golf. Obviously, you're going to be having golf through a longer season than what the water park will be as well. And that rate would still be the same in the off season too, right, Todd?

No, the off-season goes down to $8.

Okay, did I maybe miss that part in there? There's a lower rate. Okay, I just wanted to make sure that was fair because it wouldn't make sense otherwise. And then with that, so if they get the pass to do it, I assume you still have a way you can track of how many are playing golf or just swimming as well. We don't really have any. It'll take a year to get some stats in there, but...

Yeah, we have our point of sale system, which will track all the admissions.

What they do when they're out there. Yes. Yeah, and then I think it'd be good just to look at the year one data that later and just kind of reevaluate, make sure it's doing what you think it does. But really optimistic for it. Thank you.

Any other questions?

Okay. And we'll move on to projects. So we'll go through some of these projects. I will get this. We'll just start off with building inspection. Their request was a car. They do this every year for an inspection car. 35,000. Cemetery, some of the things that Todd had just talked about earlier, a mower, a roof replacement, and utility vehicles. Electric utility, quite a few things. What Ryan does with the utilities is, since it's ran like a business, it's an enterprise fund, it's ran like a business, were able to take depreciation. Well, depreciation is a non-monetary expense, and so we substitute that non-monetary expense for actually keeping our power station, all the equipment up to date. So that's how he does his equipment purchases or upgrades. He also includes the bond payment that we refinanced in 2021. Just a reminder on that, in 2021, we saved $6 million on that refinance. We have underground materials. We have all the items that Ryan had presented on before several weeks ago. Nothing was added, nothing was subtracted from his presentation. Again, this is actually on our website that I'm going through, so you can cruise through this at any time you like. emergency management, the console stations, not desks, console stations, outdoor warning sirens, battery replacement, and spare repeater. The warning sirens and the spare repeater are every single year. We upkeep, make sure that equipment is current. Yes, sir?

You said not desks? The console stations?

Well, they're console. Well, the conversation turned to desks from consoles, but they're a console.

This is the thing we talked about, the Taj Mahal of desks. Yes, yes. Okay, all right. Thank you.

Finance, now this was added. So our current accounting system is approximately 20 years old, okay? We have a lot of different pieces that have been added to our accounting system. And we also have a purchasing software that's in utilities, which is different from the purchasing software that we have for the rest of the city. So what we want to do, what we would like to do, is get one full ERP system, so it's an enterprise system, where all departments are using this, they're able to use this. In replacing the ERP system, it is very complicated and it takes so much labor, so much time. This request is getting a consultant to look at our system. Do we stay with the Munis product and upgrade that, make some changes? Or is there a different product out there that they can Well, what they would do is actually build a RFP for us, all the specifications that we need, all of the different practices that we use that we can improve, that we can create some efficiencies. So they're looking, they currently look at our system and then they'll build the RFP. More than likely, the Tyler product would come back with a bid. And so this cost is just for a consultant to help us through that process. It is not buying the software. It gets us up to that point. So again, this is a very complicated system. And we know that we don't have the resources to do what needs to be done. fire an ambulance. Corey presented on that. There was no additions, no subtractions. There's a carryover for an ambulance. It's taken two to three years to get an ambulance these days. So what we do is we appropriate money in the first year, and we just keep carrying it over. So it's not an additional cost every year. So it's a carryover. Again, to remind council, the wildland brush truck, that only occurs if we get the grant. So our full cost would not, I don't believe is that, it might be so, but if that is our cost, obviously the wildland brush truck would be a lot more. So again, there's no additions and subtractions. The Heartland Public Chute Park, this is from their presentation. Showerhouse 296740, camper pad expansion, and Trapinski field improvements. Again, no additions, no subtractions. Jackrabbit Run, also from their presentation, no additions, no subtractions. The only little, the change, In the golf course, in the way we used to operate, what we did when we first started with landscapes, we actually did equipment lease. That equipment lease is up on the mowers. And they have asked us to purchase the mowers instead of leasing from them. I get it. It puts, you know... City is paying for the mowers, and they're lowering their operating expense. And so, you know, hopefully it helps them to move into the green instead of asking for $100,000. So a little switch there. Deck improvements. The deck out there, it really does need improvement. Driving range, golf course tree removal. That is an ongoing project. And a golf blower. And again, no additions, no subtractions from that. Library is carpet. And the adult services in the back areas. I didn't know if you all realize that the library has more square footage than City Hall.

One of those tidbits of information.

Parks operations, again, Todd just went over that. Irrigation truck with a utility box, $65,000. Parks and Rec. These are the bigger projects. So it's finishing Island Oasis, the 9 million, West Connector Trail, Stolley Park. These are all the things that Todd just went over. So if there's any questions on that. Their capital equipment, no change there. It's the car with the edger and leaf blower. Police capital equipment, no addition, no subtraction. You have the vehicle request, auto impound upgrades, and the car computer replacements.

Mr. Sheard. Thank you. Back up on the parks issue. You had said earlier on one of these that, like on the fire department, the Windland brush truck, there's $260,000 listed here, but if we were to buy the whole thing, it would be much more than that?

Yes, the grant would take care of the other portion of that.

But on the West Connector Trail development, Todd said our part is $300,000, but you have $1.5 million here?

That is for budget authority. Gotcha. Thank you. Good catch though. Police capital equipment. Just went through that. Public works capital projects. Keith went through that earlier. Like I had mentioned earlier, we did take out the South Locust Trail to Camp Augustine, and we'll bring that back to Council once that sale is completed, and you'll have a decision to make there. Otherwise, that was the only subtraction. There was no addition. Solid waste, no addition, no subtraction. This is finishing out the projects that are currently going on. Transfer station, this is equipment that Jeff changes out. When he does, he's got it delayed. He's doing a great job in financing these things. So again, no additions, no subtraction. Wastewater utility. No addition, no subtraction. This is what Matt had presented to you all. Actually, Keith did on replacement and the upkeep of our wastewater system. Water utility, again, no addition, no subtraction. And Ryan also uses the same approach. Whatever depreciation there is, that's the money that he uses for upgrading equipment and such. So that is all of our capital requests for this year. It totals up to $71 million.

Mr. Nickerson.

That's a lot of millions of dollars. So from a budgeting standpoint, we are at that point where we are running very close to making the final decisions that we need to make for this year. How comfortable are you with all of the funding sources for all of the projects that you just presented to us? Do you feel very good about us being able to afford all of them?

Yes. I feel great about it. They're all in the budget. They're all accounted for. So, yes, to answer your question.

That's the short answer. Good. Thanks.

No other questions. We will move on to actually the budget review. So the budget review will also include the FTE requests and we'll have it at that time. Usually I do like questions while I present. However, tonight I just want to kind of change it up a little bit and do my full presentation and then have questions and comments and hopefully a very good debate about the budget and going forward. So here's a review of the budget process. We've all sat through all the presentations starting in April, May, and culminating till today. Whatever suggestions that you make this evening, we have time to make those changes. to the budget. Our date for adopting the budget is September 8th. That's a pretty well locked in date that we need to use because I need to get a state budget form into the state by the end of the month. And everything has a timeline, has publications. So again, any changes I would prefer to know tonight and we can move forward. So with that said, The financial challenge before us. What we have going on is we have increasing expenses and we have slower revenues. And so when this is happening, we are incurring more expense, we're using more funds or we could be using excess cash or we could be cutting some sort of services or what have you. At the same time, We've got to provide municipal service to our citizens. These are increasing. It's labor, it's health insurance, it's equipment, construction, supplies, fuel, and other operating costs, which have been increased significantly. It has been a little bit of a challenge with the yin and yang of our economy. Unfortunately, it is what it is, and we have to live with that. So the result is it's a widening gap between revenue growth and expenditure growth. So the current budget that is being proposed, the general fund projection, so make sure that everybody realizes the general fund is the fund that runs the government services. This is our operating account. This is our business account. So our projection for general fund revenues is $54 million. I will tell you that last year's budget projection for revenues was $11,000 difference. You're not seeing the increase. in revenues, and we'll get to that. Personal services are 44.05 million, operating 10, almost 11 million. Transfers out, those go to other funds to pay up for other things. For example, it is the economic development at $950,000 that comes out of the general fund. It has to come out of the general fund. That is the way the program was written. And it goes to an EDC fund. They pay some of their administrative costs out of that, and they pay for other economic development. So the projected operating gap is $3.7 million. Here is a chart which we will get back to later after the presentation. But just briefly on this chart here, On the 27 proposed, again, total revenue of $54,091,000, you can see that it's actually a little less than the 26 budget, but the 26 budget, I'm projecting 323,000 or more revenues than we budgeted. That's pretty darn close. So I don't like that kind of slim margin, but it is what it is. On personnel services on 27, we have the 44 million in personnel, the 10 million, 10.8 for operating, transfers, those equal 57.7 million. Our starting cash is 26 million and that would leave our ending cash at 22.6 million. Our cash reserves policy, our fiscal policy calls for a reserve from 20 to 30%. So in this scenario, I just picked 25. And so we could go down to 20 or we can go up to 30, that is a council call. So out of the 22 million, we need at least 14.4 million for reserves to pay for expenses, okay? The 8.2 million, is actually excess reserves. And that could be used for whatever council deems. Now, if we go to 28, our starting cash is $22.6 million. I factored in. Again, we'll go through this in more detail later. Those factors can change. But the revenues were, again, those projections, I'll pull that spreadsheet up later. And I just wanted to show a little bit of history on general fund expenses by department. So in 2016, our public safety, and this is the way all communities are, they have public safety, it is the most expensive. It's just the way it is. So police was at 26%, fire and ambulance 19%, parks 8% and on down, okay? The next chart is 2025. you'll see how the percentage has grown more. You have police at 33%. We have fire and ambulance at 27%. So it's all gone up. And so what I'm illustrating here is how the expenses have grown. And we've got to make sure that we hold our expenses to match our revenue growth. And again, that's the message tonight. Our revenue growth is not as much as we are anticipating, and it's a time to look at this down the road. Again, here's the rest of the departments, but it's just an illustration of how much expenses have grown on us. These are salaries. Again, this is not picking on anyone. Every community has this issue. You know, public safety, it costs money. It really does. And so you can see how increasing in salaries in this, and this also includes overtime. So it is an expense that we need to watch closely. Revenue growth is slow, like I have said. Sales taxes is the major portion. I got ahead of myself here. So earlier projections we utilized were 3% revenue growth, 3% operating expense, and 5% personnel growth. The most recent projection we're considering more conservative, 1.5% revenue growth, 2% operating, and 4% growth. So back again, the revenue environment has changed. We should base our budget on the revenue environment we are experiencing and not the revenue growth that we hope to occur. Sales tax is an important indicator. Sales tax is actually 35% to 36% of our general fund. This is a volatile revenue source. The economy goes down, that revenue goes down. Economy gets better, we get more funds, right? So currently, this graph is just a little different. I updated numbers. So in here I show we're at a 1.8% growth over last year for sales tax. We are actually at 2%, and I will show that later. Again, you know, some months, and you'll see in the following graphs, are experiencing positive growth and some are not. Some are flat and declining. I'm not sure on, we don't get actual granular detail from the Department of Revenue, so we don't know where that, you know, the positive and the negative happens. We just don't know. So here's the sales tax that I just talked about. Again, this is the one that was in your packet. The one I'll show later has an updated number for August, and it shows a 2%. Now, I want you to realize, so on a general fund, the $15 million, or this right here, the $15 million, that is what is going to the general fund. Our current local option sales tax is 2%. However, we have a 2004 sales tax and a 2018 sales tax. Those are half cent sales tax. Those are restricted. Those are restricted to street projects, facilities, and also public safety equipment. So on the 2018 sales tax that was passed by voters in 2018, I believe we started that collection process in April of 2019. Now, depending on what school of thought that you are in, this 2018 sales tax had a sunset. That sunset would be 2028. Or it could be 2030, depending on your view. And I'll explain. 2028 is actually the 10-year mark for the tax. 2030 is when those bonds will be paid off. All of those funds went to old potash. Well, some went to also public safety. But when that bond is paid off, then that tax would sunset there. So that is a legal question that will be sorted out. However, I just want to bring up to council that if we need to go back to the vote of the folks, to see if they would like to continue the 2018, the half-cent sales tax that they passed in 2018. Otherwise, if citizens say no, no thanks. We're going to have to make up, not really make up $6 million, but we're going to have to cut projects. We're really going to have to look at our budget. What is important? What does council want to do? What are its priorities? So this needs to be part of this conversation as well. The cost of providing services has changed. The city's not buying the same services at the same price it did several years ago. That includes labor. Our labor has gone up. Material supplies, capital, infrastructure, all these costs need to be recognized, especially with the slowing revenue in our current environment. The 2027 proposed budget compensation increases. Our bargaining unit employees, we had put in some contracts that on July 1, what is the CPI for a certain category for the Midwest? This year, that was 5.2. We put a ceiling on it in the contracts. In the contracts, it says 3% to 5%. So we topped out at 5%. Non-union employees, we put at 4%. Reason we did that is the CPI obviously has come down since that July 1 date. So at 4%, we're The non-union employees are taking less, but yet keeping up and making sure there's that incremental difference between supervisor, employee, and making sure that those stay consistent in our system. So again, total cost for personnel is $44 million. And I know, Council, but I also want to remind you when these costs increase incrementally every year. So not only do we have inflation, we have step increases. So from step one to we have nine steps. Some have a little different bargaining units. the practice has always been a 3% difference between step one, step two, step three. So I will show you some calculations later, including what steps do, what inflation does. So the structural problem is when you have revenue growth of 1.5% to 2.5%, and you have personal cost growth going up 4% to 5%, operating costs 2%, you have a gap. How are we going to pay for that gap? So it's either you start looking at budgets, you start making some cuts, or you use your reserves. These aren't sustainable. We've got to come to a sustainable budget. It's not going to happen over one year. It's going to happen over several years. But we need to move in that area. property tax. One thing I do want to show you, so there's a lot of talk on city and the property taxes. It's way too much property tax the city gets. Here's a picture of a property tax distribution. So our portion is this. So this actually was my house a couple years ago, $228,000 valuation. The portion that I paid on property tax, $627 of it, went to the city of Grand Island. Hall County, mine was $878, went to there. $2,685 went to the school, school district. And then there's some other little ones here. Airport Authority, $71. CRA 41, NRD $57. So it is, you know, the city, I just want to illustrate that the city is not the big tax, property tax gobbler in our property tax bills. I also want to show, I believe on, I actually attend my presentation here, so I'll go back to that. So the city hasn't increased its property task ask since 2019. So a little history. I was hired in 2018. The practice then, it was actually under Mayor Jensen, the practice then was keeping the mill levy the same. And I believe the message at the time, hey, we're not increasing this mill levy, staying the same. The problem with that is the valuation goes up. When the valuation goes up and it's the same mill levy, you got a tax increase, okay? And so we made a decision in 2019, actually mayor's directive, hey, let's keep this tax ask the same and let's not have a tax increase to our citizens. So we kept the tax ask the same our mill levy has gone down. So let's see here. So this is a 10 year projection on our property tax. So the orange is actually the valuation of the city going up. And the blue line is the mill levy, which is going down. So this is our current mill levy as of this year for the city. The other illustration here, this shows the green line is the property tax ask. That has stayed the same, but the valuation has gone up. That's what causes our mill levy to go down. So in this budget, I had put in a 2.5% property tax increase, 2.5%. My thought on this was capturing the growth of the property tax. So when we get our valuation from the county, which will be in two days, they provide a growth percentage. What this growth percentage is, is new construction and redevelopment. Billing permits or it is improvements to real property. So that is your growth your little section of growth, okay? We haven't taken that through the nine years or eight years that that we have been here and so if the city is growing and and we're providing services, are we capturing the revenue to match those services that are needed to match that growth?

I said that right.

So I'm not recommending a tax rate increase just to generate additional revenue beyond the growth of the tax base. This two and a half is just the growth. I just want to make sure that that is the message being brought forward to you. Property tax, what it does, it's actually very predictable revenue, different from sales tax, okay? Property tax, you know what you're gonna get, you ask for it, you get it, you know, as long as everybody pays their taxes, right? But you do eventually get it. And so it helps matching recurring revenues with recurring expenses. The recurring expenses are what? It's labor. So it's just a different revenue stream. This also reduces dependence on reserves. We haven't been dependent on reserves, and that's not the messaging. This year, I am depending on reserves. But I also want to look forward in making sure what we do is sustainable and not use reserves. OK? When you reduce that dependency on reserves, you are preserving your financial flexibility, right? So I will say in the last eight years, and this will come later, sorry. So what happens if we don't act? Okay, again, reduce services, reduce staffing. We don't wanna do, or what happened in 2017, That was a crunch. There was a reduction of workforce. There was position freezes. We don't want council in that position. We don't want to put anybody in that position. That is the worst position to be in. So reduced hours, service levels, delayed maintenance, fewer programs, slower response times, deferred equipment replacement. As you will know, Perfect example, if you defer equipment maintenance or reserve, we're gonna pay for it later, right? And it's gonna be a lot more. So these are things that we don't wanna get to. How can we increase revenues? Well, there's fees, charges for services, sales tax. Again, that conversation is, that is important. It is very important for the city in its operations and in keeping streets and other assets good. Again, using reserves, it's not sustainable. The concern is not whether we can balance for 27, We can. It's 28, it's 29, it's 30, it's 31 that we really have to be concerned with. So, FTE request. This kind of demonstrates the pressure that it is putting on the general fund. So, these slides are what has been requested. So, public safety, we have a police lieutenant, two police officers, a police office manager reclass, Police administrative support. Oh, that was actually my typo wrong. We have an administrative assistant and a reclass of an office manager. That is what that is. Firefighter EMT. Parks and recreation maintenance workers. Library. Moving library assistant one to a two. Adding a library assistant one. which actually would be two part-time folks. Again, these will show up in another illustration that I have for council. The city attorney was a legal intern. We also have FTE requests for the utility funds. Again, those funds are ran like a business. They are put into the rate studies to make sure that our rates are matching our costs and we're being covered. So the folks that are running our enterprise funds do an exceptional job in keeping not only you know, when they have an FTE request, they also want to make sure that our rates are the lowest in the state, or one of the lowest, and they have done that. So recommended response, capturing a 2.5% property tax growth, controlling the expenditure growth, This is carefully evaluating FTE requests, prioritizing essential services, review vacant positions, identify efficiencies. Improving our purchasing and procurement. That goes hand in hand in looking at our ERP system. We can't give you data. I mean, it's not granular. It's just all over the place. And we need to, we as in finance, need to make sure that we can provide the data and suggestions to departments to make sure that we're getting discounts or different ways that we can get discounts. We'll have to continue our departmental budget accountability. These directors are responsible for their budgets. Everything should be to protect our city reserves. Again, the same recommendation to increasing the property tax, capturing the growth. So what we want is not reactive budgeting, but strategic financial management. We've done that through the years. How do you say that we have done that? We have saved, in our general fund in the last eight years, we have used $20 million of cash that we built up for projects, for parks projects, new fire station. So I commend council for that prudent budgeting as we were able to use cash to pay for those. So again, stable revenue, disciplined expenditure growth, adequate reserves, long-term financial planning, that is a sustainable general fund. These are recommendations that I am making to city council. It is obviously council's decision what to do, okay? But these are my recommendations as going forward. You know, our responsibility is just not typically to balance one budget, but it's our responsibility to make sure that we're financially strong going forward. Thank you, and that is my presentation. I do want to go and bring up my spreadsheet that we have used since the spreadsheet actually was developed in Mayor Jensen's term. He used it, we have kept it, and we have made it better. So this is the sheet that was in your packet. And I won't go through this again, but here are the parameters I was using. 1.5% revenue growth, a 2% operating growth, and a 4% personnel. So when you're projecting, It's, lack of a better word, it's a crapshoot. You read a lot of economic news, no one knows the future, but what's worst case scenario? To me, you go worst case scenario, and it ends up better than what it is, and it's a good thing, okay? Down here, I just want to go over this before we move on to the other spreadsheet. But here's our sales tax, and this is the updated one. We have a 2% growth. We're at 16.7 for the general fund sales tax. Last year, we captured 17.9. We will be ahead of, well, if we come in about the same as last September, July sales, we should come in about the same. I mean with a 2% growth. Again, down here is the 2004 sales tax, which we use for street projects and city facilities, and a 2018 sales tax for street projects and public safety equipment. So that's roughly $9, $10 million. you could say that we have grown just about every well we have in the last five to six years we have with the sales taxes gone up now what i did for this spreadsheet a little bigger for everyone this is the the same spreadsheet that was in your packet however What I made an adjustment is all the FTE requests. What does this do to our budget? So the budget I presented to you was no FTEs. That is what I recommend. I recommend a pause for a year. Let's look at this next year. What does our revenue look like next year? What are our expenses looking like next year? So with that being said, Here is, on these lines here, are the asks for, from the department, okay? So, in 2027 here, these are all at step one. So a firefighter EMT, this includes benefits, is 104-666, legal intern 10-7, The library assistant, too, part-time, two people, a $64,000 cost. Maintenance worker parks, $118,000, that's two people. Maintenance worker seasonals is $25,109. Police lieutenant is actually step eight. That's the only one that's different. At 208010, I believe the reason why it is at step eight is if more than likely it would be a sergeant going into a lieutenant position, that sergeant is probably already at step eight, nine, whatever it may be. When they go to a different step or a change, a promotion of some sort, Either it's step one or 3%. Reclass Office Manager Support Services. This is with benefits, okay? And in this, this line here is a subtraction of the office manager position. So this nets out, okay? This is two additional police officers and administrative assistant PD. Okay. So these are all except for one at step one. What I did for in 2028, you'll see I have a step increase of 3% and inflation of 3%. Okay. That's probably more in line of what it's been and hopefully what it is going forward. Okay. So in year 28, this 110,946, that math includes a step increase and inflation. So then it's projected out through 29, 30, and 31. So at 104,666, four years later, at 132, it's an increase, obviously. This flows through on all of these positions. Now, just a scary number in my opinion. If I just highlight this area right here, if we add all these folks and over a five-year period, it's going to cost $4.8 million. Where are we going to find the revenue? That's the question. That's what scares me. So what do we do? And that's why in my recommendation, I'm asking for a pause for a year. I think it makes sense. I think we can look for efficiencies in our departments. We can look at doing things differently. I don't know if we've really done that. But it needs to be done. So. And in adding FTEs, we come down to, and here's the money that we have spent out of our general fund for these projects, for the prudent budget that we have been doing. So it is roughly $20.5 million. That's just great. You don't see... cities, municipalities, with general funds doing this. So kudos to council for that. So with the ending cash, including all the FTE requests, at the end of 27 is 21.8 million. Our cash reserves, if we use 25%, is 14 million. We have access to 7.1. We're pretty good there. I will tell you, if the question I'm sure you have this question, because I would if I was sitting up there. You know, what about vacancy savings? You have vacancy savings every year, okay? Well, in the budget world, you don't count on vacancy savings. Is the probability that you're gonna have every single FTE filled for 365 days of the year? No. But who knows that, you know, what's the probability and we don't know, okay? So, will we use, if we did this, what I'm saying is, will we use the 4.5 million or, yeah, the difference in our gap, will that 4.5 million leave the reserves? No, because we will have vacancy savings, we'll have operating expense savings, okay? So we won't use all of it, but we don't know how to predict what we're going to use. So in this chart here, as you can see, this is 27. And I'll go down to the cache. OK. We still have 7.1 excess in excess reserves at the end of 27. At 28, it's gone down to 1.6 in excess reserves. OK. Now I'm getting a little worried. In 29, I am crazy worried about this position because our cash is ending at 10.2 million. Sorry, I used my finger. The reserve policy, if we keep it 25%, is 15 million. We're short. We're short. So, you know, we have to look at this at the future and making sure that, you know, for generations ahead that they have money to operate with. You know, obviously we don't want to get here, okay? Negative cash and bank. But in, if this, if the trend continues, in 29 and 30 would have to be drastic, drastic decisions made by council. And I don't wish that on council whatsoever. Again, this is the sales tax. With that, that's the conclusion of my presentation. Again, my recommendation is let's pause the FTEs for one year. Let's capture the property tax growth. What I don't think I did add, I put in a 2.5%, but it could be 3%, it could be 3.5%, it could be 1.5%.

I don't know until a couple of days what the county tells me what my growth rate is.

Thank you.

Chair Greg Musil Thank you, Mr. Brown. I have discussed the budget overview matter at length with Mr. Brown. As he has shown, the reduction in our general fund revenue is caused by a slowdown in sales tax collections. we are dealing with significant increases in operating expenses. We are not alone in dealing with a drop-off in revenues. The state has been dealing with declining revenues for several months, which has left it in a financial hole. It is reported in the media today that Governor Pillen is contemplating hiring freezes and cutting the budgets of state departments. Our general fund is funded mostly by sales tax. As Mr. Brown has pointed out, these revenues have recently become volatile and inconsistent and are trending down. In my opinion, the slowdown in sales tax receipts is caused by factors that we have no control over, such as on-again, off-again tariffs and energy shock caused by the war with Iran, our citizens feeling the pinch of higher prices, and private sector wages not keeping up with inflation. We went through a similar uncertain period when COVID-19 hit, and we got through that by budgeting very conservatively. We need to do the same thing now. Be very conservative. In the private sector, where I come from, when there is a drop off in revenue, You do not do any hiring. I believe that the proposed hires in the general fund, whether new or reclassifications, should not be done this year. New hires lodged in the city's enterprise funds are a different matter because enterprise funds like electrical, sewer, and water have their own source of revenue. Our enterprise funds truly can run like a business. Personnel costs are the largest component of our general fund operating expenditures. Personnel costs are increasing faster than our revenues. I think the prudent thing to do is wait a year and see what happens with our sales tax receipts. and to think strategically about keeping the general fund with a healthy balance of revenues over expenses. Mr. Brown stated we really have not done nor had time to do a thorough review of our expenses to see where savings can be made. As for this year, we can deliver a balanced budget But at a time when the economy is slowing down, which I believe it is, it is not time to hire more people. We have done an excellent job funding our departments. There is not one department under our general fund that is in dire need of additional staffing. Not one. And you council members deserve the credit for that. While the proposed new hires can be justified, there is no reason why they have to be done immediately given what we're facing. The truth is our general fund departments have the best staffing that they have had in several years. All of our general fund departments can wait a year to see how our local economy reacts. Again, in the private sector, no one would expect to do additional hiring if the revenue was not available to pay for it. Given the situation we are in right now, it is my opinion There should be no new hires in the general fund this year. With no new hires in the general fund this year, we can wait on the decision to capture additional monies. And waiting also is prudent because it gives the city administration additional time to work with the council for long-term solutions. as opposed to knee-jerk reactions. Look at what we're facing. If we do additional hires this year, then we have between now, August 18, and September 8 to try to figure out the solution. That is not feasible. I think not adding additional employees for a year buys us some time to give all of this a deep think rather than making monumental decisions between now and September 8. Mr. Brown, thank you for your presentation. Mr. Sheard. Thank you.

Pat, thank you for sharing all of this. I've had a number of conversations with you over the last couple months looking at some of these numbers, trying to figure out how they would work, looking at the five-year plan. I know that we oftentimes call it the Mitch spreadsheet, so lovingly to look at this and look at these expenses. When I look at this spreadsheet today, this one here especially, if you scroll down just a little bit, what worries me just as much, and I'll add the worry things in before I talk about the other side of it, but there's nothing in those excess reserve uses And I know we have things that we're going to want to spend. We've talked about another firehouse. We've talked about a few other projects. This would say that we're not going to have that luxury to pay cash on any of those for the next five years.

Is that accurate? That is accurate.

That stinks. Because this council, well before my time evidently, has done a great job of being conservative and having that ability, which gave us pretty good luxury the last couple years. I was one who said I don't want to I don't want to not spend cash if we have it. I don't want to put this on credit. I don't want to pay more for it over the long term. Did you purposely leave those empty for the future projects? Or are there just none that we can even consider?

The honest answer, I didn't think about putting them in. Because if I put them in, it's going to even make it worse. So to your point, yeah, Fire Station 2, we have an opportunity, actually, to actually buy some land around Fire Station 2 and have that conversation. But to your point, we need to think about that.

So have you considered the putt-putt being $12? And how much, forget that question. The real question is how much would the 2.5% growth, I think when I asked you about this earlier, you thought it would be $650,000 to $700,000 a year in property tax if we just took growth.

So the 2.5% would equal approximately $325,000. So we currently get, taking round numbers, right under $13 million. So take that times 2.5, and it's 3.25. So that's keeping the levy the same. Yeah, if you went up to 5%, if that growth was 5%, it is in the $600,000 range.

Maybe that's where I was looking at, 5% growth. Okay. So being conservative and saying 2.5%, That's $325,000? $325,000. This year. And then on top of that, you get that next year plus 2.5% on top of that if we continue that. So you're looking at $300,000 this year, $600,000 the following year, which puts us at a total of almost $1 million at that point. Correct. The next year you would have almost $2 million difference at that point. And it would continue to grow because you're taking the 2.5% on top of it. That's still not enough to erase those red numbers, which is worrisome. When we look at, Mayor, you're right, private sector, stop hiring people. The other thing that a lot of people do wrong, and maybe it's just this is my business, they stop marketing. They stop doing the things to sell themselves. And it worries me a little bit because one of the things that we've done so well is in public safety. We've reduced crime rate. I think we've made those investments in the fire. I was with some friends from out of town, town north of here over the weekend talking. And I was surprised because I was bragging about Grand Island. And they said, yeah, I wouldn't let my kids walk around in Grand Island by themselves. And I was really offended. But that's the kind of thinking that happens from years of not telling our story, and not telling the story about how Chief Denny, since he's been here, has reduced crime 24.6%, roughly. Is that close, Chief? 25%? Just over 20. Just over 20. All right, I inflated that a little bit. Sorry to my friends this weekend. But if we continue to make those investments, I think that's our version of marketing to keep people coming here and to keep people coming to town. So I'm a little torn on that for that reason. I think public safety does make such a big impact and it is our version of marketing. I worry about some of the other positions. I know with the library position, That was to service the bookmobile that we're getting. Have we talked to the library about what it would mean to not have that position and what that impact would be on a bookmobile?

Well, honestly, no. I'm taking an overall organizational view of this and not a department by department. I don't think that's fair for me to do that, but.

That's why I want to take the look at each of them because we've made investments or our investments have been made. And if that's going to be detrimental to those investments by not taking this step, then I think we look a little foolish as well. And I don't know if we want, I know the mayor really was pushing for that bookmobile. I don't want it to sit idle because we we have the situation, but that might be another thing that holds a year in the situation.

Correct. So we also have to look at is our solution to hire, or is our solution, hey, let's figure this out, maybe I could do this more efficient. Maybe I could do this with, you know, I have so many people on the floor, maybe I reduce this one area, and maybe this one area, if this is a specialized area, I'm just picking on the library, oops, sorry. Let's just say genealogy or something. Well, you'll have to make an appointment. We're not available all day, but if you make an appointment, then a person can actually do the bookmobile. So those conversations I don't think have been had, but they're conversations that should be. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I agree. I think we've talked about some things in these last few weeks. I know Chuck's brought it up a number of times, the idea of the centralized place for all the cars. What do we call that? Fleet. Thank you, Chuck. That's not a flip of the switch, let's change that tomorrow kind of thing. But looking at some of those different solutions, I agree. you know, I don't have the solution right now. I know I'm also worried about the Humane Society contract. I'm worried about some of these other things that aren't, you know, we're looking at it in isolation. It worries me a little bit. So this is a long-winded way to say I think it stinks. I think your presentation is eye-opening and probably in that situation where it is a freeze for a year. But I just wanted to say that I don't like it. Is that fair?

All right. Mr. Haase.

Thank you, Mayor. I want to start off by thanking Pat and Chelsea and the Mayor for delivering this message that nobody wants to hear. I've been around this place a long time, and this message has been brought a few times. And as we talked about in 2017, we had to do 55 people layoff. We have had fiscal policies for a long time and the message that was delivered tonight is because that's what the council's fiscal policies are. And I just want to read a couple of sentences out of the fiscal policies to show you why this message is the same from the staff. On page two of the fiscal policies, budgetary solvency is the ability to balance the budget. Well, today our budget is a minus 3.7 million out. On page three, It really talks about where the finance director and the city administrator, the two of them control every budgetary line expense that there is, even after we pass the budget. So it really talks about we hold, as the council, we hold two people responsible. Who's ever the city administrator sitting in this chair and who's ever the finance director in that chair. Those two people are responsible to the council. they're responsible to the public on how do we get wherever we're at and to come up with this plan. And hopefully it's been a good plan. Under page five, under stability, it says ongoing operating costs should be supported by ongoing stable revenue sources. So our fiscal policies are really kind of outlined. Our direction to the staff is to how we get here. I think we have been blessed During COVID, the blessing was this council and the administration, the staff, they all did the right conservative things. And we came out of COVID better than most. And I think between our conservative budgeting and the ARPA funds that came from the federal, the American Rescue Plan money, we have been in the best financial shape in a long time post COVID to do capital projects. And you have seen, we have loaded up Todd with so many parks projects over the last five or six years. So, and you've seen a lot of projects in the police department, other places. So we have been supportive of a lot of projects post COVID, and we still have a lot going on this year. If you saw the $71 million in projects that will be in this year's budget, but the challenge becomes the sustainability part. We have been down this road several times. I've actually been in this room when the general fund balance was less than zero. So we haven't taken it down to where the tank is empty yet, but we actually have time to move. You have time to breathe. You have time to actually plan and do things. We had benchmarks. This isn't the first time we've been at this position. We have benchmarked in the past when we look at a dollar of general fund expenses and we look around, we're not the only city around, so we look at all these cities and we put together a plan. One of the things that came out of the benchmarking efforts in the past is that when we spend a dollar, our best spend is 70 cents for people power, because they are 70% of how we get everything done. But they have to have tools and equipment, and that 20% has to pay for all the operating expenses, for all the tools for the worker. And then the last 10% really is they've got to have a truck to drive. So now you talk about the capital side. So when we look at what's the right blend to have a $1 in the general fund, that was the right blend at that time. $0.70, $0.50. for personnel, 20% for operating and 10% for capital. Today, when I look at what is in front of us, our personnel cost without any new additions is 80%. So what happens over time, and you saw it, our personnel costs are going up and our operating costs are like negligible or going down. Well, you can only do that for a while. You can't do that forever either. And so you can pinch your operating costs for a while because you're trying to make up for the extra money in the personnel side. But it's not a good organization. It's not a healthy organization. And that's why these messages that were delivered tonight, although nobody wants to hear them, we don't need to kick the can down the road. I've heard prior mayors talking about we can't kick the can down the road. This is one of those we want to take a pause, as the mayor suggested, and I think that's a great thing to do to try to figure out what do we do with the can. I mean, how do we do it? We're not laying off 55 people like we did in 2017. And most of those were through attrition, so they weren't real, we just didn't fill in open positions. The issue is we have time to make decisions, and this is the best thing to do to try to get time under our belt to see what happens to the sales tax revenue, see what happens to the casino revenue. Because we've had good revenue lifts historically, and the casino tax was a blessing for the last couple of years. It's kind of held the glue up here. But it only lasts so long, and it gets to be stable as well. So with the 80% personnel costs, it's almost at an unaffordable part. You know, the 5% union COLA, it's higher than what I hoped it would have been. Erin and I have had some conversations around that number, but that's what the number is. You know, the 5% union things, that's what the CPI Midwest B slash C is May over May. You know, and so... We have already agreed to those contracts, and we're going to stick with those contracts. But unfortunately, we're at a point now that this is, I think, where we need to be, and I appreciate the mayor and Patrick and Chelsea for bringing this message to no matter how hard it is to deliver. Mr. Brown.

I appreciate you telling us the facts, Patrick. I mean, really laid it out. I agree with the mayor and I agree with Chuck that it's not easy to say to take a pause. I mean, but I think we need to take a pause. We need to be conservative. We need to get the money back in the bank and look at it next year, see how we can save costs. And I think we're doing the right thing with the mayor.

Mr. O'Neill.

Thank you. I appreciate the presentation, Pat. So if expenses are compounding faster than our revenues, the revenues are not a long-term solution. They're just going to delay the consequences, and hope alone is not a valid solution for this or a valid financial strategy. You know, like a business, I agree, and I've faced a lot of challenges in private business in the last six years, and if it were a business, you know, businesses have to cut expenses, whatever they are, to make impactful change to survive. Now, we are not a business. We're a city government, and we have essential services that we have to provide. That's the difference. But we do have to still budget by our priority, and I'd say that the emergency services are still the top priority. Police and fire are critical services that we have to provide. But we have to be very careful. And I do think it makes a lot of sense to put a freeze on it. I agree with what the mayor and Chuck and Doug have said too. We can study this. I do think we also need to get all department directors to get very creative. Just like how a business can adapt, I still think a city can adapt a little bit as well. Just an example, this doesn't relate directly, but in the transportation industry, when fuel prices surge high, transportation companies find ways to cut costs. Trucks drive slower, they find other efficiencies. We have a lot of departments here. We have to do everything we can to find whatever we can to help make an impact in that. I think we can get a little bit creative I do think that we should have a target date for ending the reliance on reserve usage. As we've said, we cannot wait forever. There does have to be a date where, if it does not approve, we have to make other changes. We would like to avoid a layoff. That's one of the worst things we'd ever have to do. I don't want to see it come to that either. But I think we have to maintain, study, see where it is, and see if we can find some other

efficiencies over the next year too we're going to work really hard this is a really really big priority so i just want to echo that thank you to add just another thing that that and to what the mayor said you have the you have the state at a deficient where are they going to find their money they're going to find some money that they actually give to your local government For example, one of the things they could do, so when they collect our local option sales tax, they charge a 3% administrative fee. What happens if it goes up to 5%? We're getting less money again. We, as a governmental unit, need to watch what the legislature is doing. That is so vital. One of the One of the revenue crunches, I will tell you, I've mentioned it before, was municipal equalization fund. In the last two years, it has decreased 1.2 million. That sure would have been nice to have in this budget, but we don't have it, and that's the things that we have to watch for. There are other things that are being brought up. There's a firefighter cancer fund that they're going to bring to the legislature this coming year. That could cost the city a lot of money in actuary costs, okay? And so we have to be mindful of what are they doing in Lincoln affects us. So we are keeping that on our radar as well.

Mr. Nickerson.

Speaking to our city attorney a few times, she told me, the job of an attorney is to tell us what you need to hear, not necessarily what you want to hear. And I think in the role of a CFO and a finance director and a city administrator and maybe a mayor, It applies there as well. Sometimes you need to hear what you need to hear, not what you really want to hear. And that's why I appreciated your presentation tonight. Not just the presentation, but the format, the detail, the graphs. I mean, this was a full blown, excellent presentation that got down into the nitty gritty, which is what we needed. We needed that. And I really liked the format because it told the story and there are no punches pulled. We talk about our city staff, our city departments, and always looking for more people. And I understand that part. It can make our job easier. It can allow us to do new and better things. But I will tell you what I've said many times. I pride Grand Island department directors for being efficient. and not comparing themselves to their peers that say, well, you know, they've got three more people in their department than we do. And they're the same size. I say, well, good for you because you found a way to do it more efficiently. And you have. And you do. And that's exactly the success that's made Grand Island what we are today. We look at all the economic indicators. that are out there. Some are very obvious and some are not. We just talked about the state being short quite often here on their tax receipts and to a point where now I'm hearing that they could be a billion short over a two-year period. That's a heck of a lot of money to have to find. We're not in that shape and we don't want to ever get in that shape. We'll never play with those kind of numbers anyway. Relatively speaking, we could still be in a very difficult situation. But we've got to make sure that the decisions we make today are impacting those numbers four and five years from now. The reality is, in a few months, there's going to be new faces up here. And they may or may not understand the budget process. They may not understand everything that a lot of us do. And it's the worst thing we could do is to hand them a budget that's going to put them in a position where they can't succeed. We need to give every new mayor, every new council member the tools they need to assess it at their level and that they will get a chance to make those decisions going forward. We do not want them to fail. The other thing that I've noticed, we talked about the roller coaster sales tax receipts. And it surprises me when I look at the sales tax information you had, just how off it is. One month it's 13% positive. The next year it's 6% negative. So I did ask Patrick today when I was here for another meeting that, you know, how comfortable are we with those numbers? And you told me basically that the comfort level is what we've always had. You trust those numbers.

Yes. And part of this conversation, it has to also do with Good Life District. So we actually get... actually not we, it's I, get a report from the Department of Revenue on who's remitting Good Life District tax. That's never happened before with the state of Nebraska, but that's how the program has evolved. The inconsistencies in the Department of Revenue are wild. It's scary. My answer is, because on these sales tax receipts that we get for our general fund, we have no detail. I can't tell you if a certain portion of the city is doing better than another portion, or I can't tell you if a certain sector is doing better than another sector. We just don't have that information. So when you see a 10% decrease in one month, Or did somebody not file? We don't know. Or was it actually that retail sales went down? We don't know.

Well, when we look at that in particular, I know when Target came, we were all hoping for the Target bump. And when you look at that in October, you see that sales tax receipts rose about 14%. Interestingly enough, though, the next two months, they were down by a little over 10%. So you start trying to think through that. If this is accurate information, what happened? So we're thinking maybe people went and started doing more Christmas shopping in October. I don't know. But the reality is we did not see a Christmas tax bump because of Target, because of what it appears is they just kind of redistributed those dollars. It's not that we brought in a lot of new sales, but they just, instead of going to Walmart and Sam's Club and wherever, they went to Target or vice versa. So we didn't really see a net gain much out of all that. That's my perception as I look through this, anyway, my interpretation. So we can't count on things like that. And the reality is we're at about a 2% increase for the year, which is not a heck of a lot when you're looking at what the city needs. The other subtle economic indicator, and I don't see Chad here tonight. I was going to ask him, but it seems to me that he told us in our last CRA meeting that some of those groups that were planning to build apartment buildings are starting to back out. They're starting to back out for a reason, because they see that the need isn't there. I also, like many of you that drive the streets, you start seeing for rent signs up in front of homes that aren't there for a week anymore. They're there for a month or two. Those are all subtle economic signs that things are changing within this city. We have hundreds of apartments that are in the books ready to be built, but they're not building them. And there's a reason for that. So that's a subtle sign that we need to be aware of that this is a good time to take a look at our needs going forward and the decisions we can make today. I also... don't see that you don't have your graph there right now, but when we look at the support for the police department and for the fire department, if you've got that handy, I think that was very eye-opening because it showed the impact, the one that's got the little wavy line showing the The trend line. That one, the trend line, okay. So when I look at that, that is a very telling graph. And if someone here says you're not supporting your police department, you're not supporting your fire department, I just say look at this graph right here. Look where it was at 2021 with $8 million. And at 2027, we're over $12 million of support now. We're supporting with $12 million. 50% increase over that period of time. And a great job's been done. But there comes a time where I think we have to reach a plateau, which we're talking about tonight, to where now we need to just hold that. We've seen great improvement in the overall police department as a whole. They've got more people. And they've got the equipment they need. They've got a lot of things that's helped them be successful. And we definitely need to now just reach that plateau and stay for a little bit. And so I, I think everything that was said tonight is spot on and things we need to do. And what I really appreciate through all this and really surprised me was the mayor's status on this because it wasn't that many months ago. He was in favor of supporting all of these positions and I really expected to see a little bit of a fight tonight over it. And, and he, uh, realizes the facts because we didn't know the facts several months ago. We didn't have this information. But his intention and good intentions was let's staff everybody to what they're requesting. And tonight he says, you know what? That doesn't make a lot of sense right now. And that, to me, is a big win for everybody here because people can fall on their swords for all kinds of reasons. I don't see the mayor wanting to fall on his sword for something like that. Now, having said all of that, there are still some things, though, that I would at least question that we might want to consider. And I don't know the right way to get the answers for this tonight. But I do want to go back to the library question. And I think Celine is here. I kind of see her back there. And we can ask the department director's questions, I'm assuming, tonight, since we're talking about budgets.

Sure. That's why they're here.

They're here. Celine, come on up. Because I was hoping Jack would bring you up here. But I'm just going to hit you with the question that he already asked. Because it seems to me like in your presentation earlier this year, you were saying we can kind of move things around to still make this bookmobile successful if we don't get additional people. Is that a fair statement, or am I blowing smoke here tonight?

Well, we need to bump up the library assistant one to library assistant two for that outreach position to drive the bookmobile and to do the higher level technical stuff with the bookmobile. But I think we're going to work with what we have for staff and do the best we can.

But we would have to make that change in order for it to be successful. So what does that entail?

That was a $6,000 increase. changing that position from that to the other one. We'd also lose a person inside the library. So that would be our dilemma, would be to cover desks and services with less.

Right. But that could be manageable for a year while it's being reassessed.

I can drive the bookmobile. I've done it before.

Well, there you go. So tonight the action would be, and I don't know if it's tonight, Patrick or the mayor, whoever, wherever we need to make that decision, it seems like a reasonable request, a $6,000 increase in a reclassification there of that particular job to make this all work. And so I personally would not be opposed to that. I don't know what the rest of the council feels about that. But in order to make this bookmobile successful, it seems like a small request to me. I don't know. How do we, Patrick, how do we even come to that point where we decide what we may or may not want to do on that?

Well, I think it's a conversation because those are not the numbers that I come up with. So we have a library assistant, too. Two part-time people is going to cost you $64,000. I think there was also a reclass in there.

She's only asking for the one change, though. Just that's all she wants to do. That's all she'd be looking at, not the part-timers.

I don't know the number because it's not in here.

That sounds like that's the missing piece that can make the bookmobile successful. Classification is important for being able to drive the bookmobile?

To drive the bookmobile and to also be able to help with the technical. We're going to be providing internet out there, so it's got to be someone that's got higher level technical skills.

Okay. I mean, I think it's something worth pursuing and let Patrick, in the final presentation, are you going to shoot it down right now or what do we want to do?

No, I'm not shooting it down. I have a lot of questions. What hours is Bookmobile going to be used? How much is it going to be used? Those are the questions that I don't know. I don't know if Celine knows. Maybe she knows. But I think it's something that we need to figure out.

Okay. Can it be figured out before the final budget and decisions made?

Give it a try. Okay.

Well, we'll leave that up to you. The other thing I think we need to reconsider or at least consider is something we talked about during Corey's presentation when the chief was up here talking about the additional need. And I saw that your proposal was one firefighter EMT. For some reason, I was thinking he was looking at three. And so when I saw the one, that seemed... Like a surprise. Was he actually looking for three at one point? He was.

So after that presentation, after the conversation with the council at the retreat, I thought it was a retreat. No, actually it was after his presentation to council on his budget. He came back into my office a couple days later, said, hey, you know, it's hard for, and it's really hard for me as well, to say, hey, let's hire three people and I'll cut overtime. In my experience, that doesn't happen. Okay, it just doesn't happen. So he came back and said, hey, let's try one. And I think if I can reduce my overtime by this one, then here's the data for council to consider the following years. So, do you want to take the chance of, here's the issue, so we could try the one firefighter EMT and hopefully it doesn't cost us extra and our overtime goes down, or you know, overtime stays the same and it's just another cost, okay? And we've now absorbed another person. So it's a council call on that one. I will honestly, I have flip-flopped on the firefighter EMT and that's the only one I've flip-flopped on, quite honestly, is thinking outside the box, here's how I can use this person at a potentially no cost.

Well, the other option is what I recommended during the presentation was that we just allow him to overhire by one to keep the pipeline full like we've been doing with the police department. And that way those reserve vacancy savings or whatever kind of helps cover that. So your thoughts on that?

Yeah, we could do that. I mean, we could. We could authorize him to hire one more and not budget that person.

And monitor the numbers within a year and see how it all looks.

Yeah, so you're actually, in this situation, you're creating an FTE, but you're not putting a price to it.

Which we have done with the police department now for many, many years.

Yeah, the police department has three over-hire right now.

Right, and seems to have been helping keep things moving within that department. Okay, so Corey, your thoughts on that? And I guess an update on, you had a record number of applicants on your last round. How's that going? And how did this all fit? We did.

We're actually going to have a class of eight start next month, hopefully. So we're very excited about that. As far as the change, I think Pat summed it up pretty well. I originally asked for three. And I went through my presentation, talked about the relief factor and how those employees would be used. But I also heard your comments and thought, how do I bring forward the data to show what I'm talking about will actually pan out as far as saving overtime costs and easing the overtime burden on the employee? That's where that one request or one firefighter EMT change came from. Because we can track that and bring forward data showing here's how much overtime it saved. You had mentioned overhire, and Pat and I also talked about that. The issue with overhire is it doesn't help that relief factor. You obviously have to have the funding to pay for that if all your positions are full. You can't overhire when you're full and have the money to pay for that person, right?

It would just be a... you'd have a variance that's over, but you've still got an entire budget to work with.

Really, my thoughts and my intent with the additional one at this point is we're often faced with long-term vacancies, whether it's due to on-the-job injuries, military deployment, things that happen throughout the year where we have employees on the payroll, but they're not available to work. And the way the fire department fills it compared to a lot of other city departments is we have a minimum staffing, so we make sure we meet that minimum staffing through the use of overtime. So even though we might be full of employees, because of some circumstance, we're having to pay overtime to maintain minimum staffing. So in that sense, with an overhire, Our expenses are still there as far as regular salaries, but we're also paying more in overtime to ensure we have the minimum staffing on a day-to-day basis. If we were allowed to hire one additional, and I have three shifts, A, B, and C shift. Each shift is 48 hours, and then it's followed by 96 hours off. If we have a long-term vacancy on A shift, and I had one additional employee that was funded, I can move a person to that shift that's short and prevent overtime from occurring, and I can also track that and bring forward the data saying we stopped 100 overtime shifts in the past year at a cost of this and bring that data forward. Well, with an overhire, we're just going to be over budget because there's no savings there. Okay, so you're really not in favor of that approach, it sounds like. It sounds great, but I don't think it's going to get us to where we need to be with minimum staffing.

OK, fair enough. I appreciate you sharing. All right, so we may not get that one that way then. OK, I'm going to do the easy one next here. And that's the intern for the attorney's office. And I saw that the dollars were $10,000, basically. What is the intent? Because the attorney's office has expanded here last year. We got us a new attorney through here now. And that wasn't in favor of that, as you know. But you've got one. And he seems to be doing OK. But what's the purpose of an intern? What's that going to do for you? And is that for one year? Or you think it's got to be forever and ever?

Right now, we have one intern spot that offers about the equivalent of 12 weeks worth of internship hours over the course of the year. This proposal was to let us do two. Very obviously, in the scheme of things, compared to firefighters and police officers, it's a want, not a need. But that's what it was intended to do, is to give us the chance to give two students an opportunity to return back.

Okay, so you already have one that you're able to do that's budgeted already. Okay, so that was just an extra that you were looking for. I didn't understand that. And then last but not least, for consideration, and I'm going to open a can of worms here only because I don't understand all the details, but we talked about the reclassification in the police department. And I don't know all the nuances about that. I see we have Erin here tonight, though, when we're talking about how do we determine a salary range and all this stuff. And we never have talked through that as a group. And I just need to know, where are we at on that? Is it a debt issue? Is it something that's still possible for reclassification? I don't know the answer. I don't know that any of us know that answer, so I'm looking for some kind of closure on that this evening, too. And I don't know who needs to speak to it, but I think we need to speak to it.

Yeah, I think there's been enough discussion on it over a course of quite a bit of time. Maybe it's just best that I recap kind of where we started, where we're at.

I think where we're at is important.

So if we look at, I think there's really two separate questions with the position. The first is organizational. Does the police department need a senior civilian administrator to oversee its non-sworn support and business functions? The second is the compensation question. If that position is created, would salary range fairly reflect its responsibilities? The questions are related, but they're not the same. So a shortage of Wage comparables doesn't really answer if the work's needed. And the work part is what I'll let Chief talk about. This started at the fiscal year 26 budget. The concept was to create a senior non-sworn administrator who would report directly to the police chief, serve on the police executive team, and oversee multiple support and business functions. The proposed responsibilities extend well beyond the traditional office management. They include records administration, property and evidence, victims assistance, payroll, purchasing grants, budget support, special funds, employee records, towing and impoundment, policy administration, and other department business functions. The organizational concept was to place a position at approximately a police lieutenant level. That doesn't mean that they're identical. It means that the proposed administrator would carry a comparable level of responsibility and organizational accountability while leading civilian support operations rather than a sworn law enforcement officer. The initial market review found similar civilian police administrator positions. We saw those in Lincoln, some states outside of our array like Idaho, California. Those helped establish that the organizational model did exist. But the salaries outside of our array, larger metro areas, they're going to be higher wages to go with that. Council wasn't comfortable proceeding at that point, so we put it on hold, let the budget go through, and then a separate committee appointed by the mayor was formed to research it further. They did use a consultant during their analysis, and the consultant evaluated both the existing record supervisor, did not include the office manager in the report, and the support services administrator, and it looked at market wages and the level of oversight reflected in the work. The consultant identified two positions in the report. The first being City of Ames, which has a police support services manager. And the second was Rapid City, which has a police technology and records manager. The consultant recognized the underlying market problem. that civilian positions combining this many police support, compliance, business record, and evidence functions are uncommon in the market. And many departments, some of this work is assigned to sworn personnel command. However, the consultant recognizes that using a civilian administrator preserves a sworn position for law enforcement duties. It also means the market contains fewer civilian comparisons. So it's worth noting a limited number of comparable positions does not necessarily mean the proposed work lacks value or organizational need. Rather, it indicates that other array cities assign these responsibilities across different positions or organizational structures. And Grand Island's proposal to use a non-sworn may be a bit of an emerging market where we may be more of a front runner in that concept. So that report was given to me on June 10th, and I was directed to complete a human resources portion review of the city's reclassification justification request. And I had a few conclusions in that. That was in that packet that Chief Denny presented at his budget presentation. So I noted the classification reflects broader leadership, compliance, financial, and administrative responsibilities more than the office manager classification. I noted the position should be exempt. Doing so would eliminate overtime in the office manager classification. I recommend some revisions to the job description to more clearly distinguish civilian support services and leadership from sworn operational command. I noted that AIMS and Rapid City are the most useful comparisons available in our array, in our cities. And I proposed a salary range of $90,251 to $128,107. My recommendation was to approve for further review. That's intentional. HR determines whether comparable work exists, evaluates the duties, and recommends the appropriate range. It's up to the police department to explain the operational need. And it's up to council to decide if that structure and costs are justified. There was some discussion about job matching. So when we look at the array or outside the array, however, you don't necessarily go by title alone. You look at what the position actually does, the amount of time devoted to those duties, and the level of authority, reporting relationships, supervisor responsibility, decision making, financial accountability, and other working conditions. The Nebraska State Statute 48-818 has the method the CIR uses when resolving public sector industrial disputes. It works well as a benchmark for our analysis, but we're not really talking about a CIR case at this point. The statute does not prohibit the city from creating a classification or adopting a salary range through its normal processes. So for a direct CIR style match, you have to have a 70% composite match of duties and time spent on those duties. It also requires three qualifying job matches for the classification before the commission would call that a direct market calculation. So if we look at the two cities within our array, Ames and Rapid City, I'll start with Ames. The consultant report didn't have a match, but I'd like to put a number to it. I'd actually put it at a 78% match because both Grand Island and Ames are positions of senior non-sworn police administrators, both report to the police chief. participate in department leadership, supervise support functions, and carry substantial responsibility for records, budgeting, grants, contracts, policies, and program administration. But they're not identical. AIMS has a broader responsibility for emergency communications, information systems, large events, external coalitions, and supervision of supervisors. Grand Island is more operationally detailed in records, property and evidence, victim assistance, payroll, purchasing, grants, special funds, and internal business administration. In my opinion, because it exceeds 70%, I would treat that particular one as a qualifying match. When we look at Rapid City, again, there wasn't a match in the consultant's report. In my analysis, I'd put it at a 61% match. I think it's a useful comparison because, again, both positions are exempt civilian police leaders. They participate in executive and command level discussions. They supervise records personnel, administer confidential law enforcement information, and ensure compliance with records requirements. The difference between Rapid City and Grand Island, I think, is the breadth and the focus of the positions. Rapid City is principally a technology and records position with advanced responsibility for networks, system implementation, disaster recovery, cyber security, and around the clock technical support. Grand Island's proposed position is broader across support services and business administration. So Rapid City therefore provides meaningful supplemental market evidence that at 61%, it's not a qualifying CIR match. There was some discussion about benchmarking. So back to CIR, ideally you want a minimum of three qualifying matches So here we've got, in my opinion, one that qualifies and one that's more of a supplemental comparison. Averaging the two salaries together doesn't create a third match. And I'm not suggesting that. But when we have fewer than three matches, again, the statute directs the commission to use the subjects Positions historical wage relationship. You can call it benchmarking. I call it anchoring. And what that does is it's if you have two positions that historically you've had data year after year after year. And then all of a sudden, one of those positions you can't find matches for anymore. You can do a wage anchor. So for example, if we compare mayor and council, we've got years of wages from council, we've got years of wages from mayor. So if council makes $60,000 a year making this up, and the mayor makes $80,000 a year, The difference between the two is 133.33%. And you go the next year, year two, and now you make $65,000 and you make 82.50. That's 126.92% difference. Year three, you're at 70, you're at 88,000, we're at 125.71% difference. So if all of a sudden the mayor position wouldn't exist, AI comes in and takes over your position, we don't need mayors anymore. So now we don't have that wage data available. Say you're at $75,000 for this fiscal year. You take those three different percentages, average them together, and take the $75,000 times In this case, it would be 128.65% that gives the mayor rate 94,688. So that's the anchoring method to get to a wage amount. But in this case, we don't have, we've only got two matches, right? Or one good match, one comparison. So we can examine the historical relationship. And we could look at an office manager, for example, and relate that to the other internal classifications. But what do we do when we don't have that third amount? So we've got a couple options. We can broaden our search, but that would go outside of our array. We've kind of been down that road so far and decided we're not quite comfortable with those wages. Option two is to stop the proposal because the market does not contain three qualifying matches. So we can just say not enough evidence out there, can't do it. That stops everything then at that point. Or option three would be to make a documented city compensation determination. So under this approach, we'd use the available information for the purpose of each piece of legitimacy that we can prove. So if we take Ames, so Ames is a little bit higher than what we're proposing, a little more responsibility, a little higher wage. If we take Rapid City, not a match, but a supplement comparison, little less responsibility than what we're proposing, little less wages. If we would take those two and average those two together, we could use those wages, the 90,000 on the bottom end, the 128 on the top end. That could be the justification. to say this is the city decided wage that we want to propose. And then obviously we can continue to watch the market. Maybe some new cities do bring in some new, take on our style of a non-sworn officer taking that position. Time would have to tell on that. But we could come up with a logic to say this is why we believe that this pay range is appropriate. So that's kind of where I came up with that. I know that was a little bit long-winded, but I wanted to, there's been a lot of discussion. I'd just kind of like to walk through with a lot.

Sure. So again, in your opinion, the position can be created, and you do have an established pay range, and it's Do you feel it's defendable if anybody wanted to challenge that? I guess that's the other part of it, based on everything you just told us.

Yeah, I mean, if it was, we're going to CIR and, you know, that's a whole set of rules. You have to have the three matches. We're not in that situation. We've got two. AIMS seems a little bit higher than what we were looking for as far as responsibility and wages. We look at Rapid City. That's a little bit lower responsibility wages. we're kind of in the middle so my recommendation would be why don't we take those two data points put them together that puts us in the middle i think organizationally it lines up well it puts you if you want to look at department specific it's kind of in between that sergeant lieutenant level as far as wages so That's what I'm recommending. It's not perfect, but I think it's a good starting point. And I think since it's new, you know, it'll be refined over the years. If other cities adopt the same idea, we'll have more data points that we can measure from. But you've got to come up with something, right? And this is what I'm suggesting. Thank you.

OK, before the chief speaks, Patrick, what you have up here on your graph, it's showing that you have a positive and then you have a negative of 122,726. You're basically saying the difference between changing this reclassification from that current position is only about a $5,000 difference overall? For year one. For year one. $5,000, though. $5,000, not $127,000, $5,000. Less than $5,000.

Yeah, and over a five-year period, it's about $48,000.

About what?

$48,000 over a five-year period.

How can $5,000 turn into $48,000 in five years?

Well, actually, it's $64,000. So when you reclassify, and in this matrix, what I did is it would be step one, because that is the number I used. It was the minimum, 91, right? And I took that. So there would be a step increase of approximately 3% and then also inflation. So it's a 6% every year, depending on inflation. And that's why it balloons to 64,000 in four, five years.

You're only talking $5,000 difference. Right. But if I don't understand this math in year two, The $134,000 minus $126,000, that's only $8,000. $142,000 minus $130,000 is $12,000. Okay, and then so then you've got $17,000. Okay, so we're not up to the signature. The bottom line is the reclassification right now, and yeah, it's going to compound by that 5,000 plus 3% or 6%. But the overall net result is not the $127,000. It's pretty small. No, we're not saying that. That's not saying that. No, and that's what we need to understand, that we're only talking about even year one or year two or whatever. We're talking about a job that's That sounds like it's needed. And we can.

Everyone is needed. But look at the overall picture is my message tonight.

Sure.

So if we go one by one, everyone can justify these. There is no doubt about it. But let's look at the overall picture is the message.

I'm not doubting that. But I'm not saying that everything has to be off the table necessarily either, you know, at the end of the night. So I just wanted to make sure we get some closure on this because there's been a lot of discussion, and the chief's got something to weigh in on too, it sounds like here. Thank you.

This has become kind of a somber evening. It shouldn't be. We should be celebrating all the success we've had the last few years. I'm a momentum police chief. I'm also a glass half full kind of guy. And I don't think momentum, you can't stabilize momentum. You can't just coast. So you're either climbing or you're declining with momentum. And it really depends on the angle that you want to take. And we've been increasing very fast the last few years in the police department. And that's a great thing because we have essentially replaced about half of the police department and added about 20 officers over the last three and a half years. and that's that's a really good thing and that's definitely a success for us my thing is momentum i don't want to lose momentum can we lower the angle absolutely and we're doing that over the next couple years in the police department regardless of what happens i just don't want to flatline or lose momentum and start to decline because then there's there's a dip of not just a year, there's a dip of a couple years probably. And we've seen that. You all have seen that probably here where we've lost momentum, we got to full staffing, and then it took a few years to kind of recover from that. And so the last time I talked about FTEs and reclass was the last time I was in front of you all. So I'm kind of catching up here to what we're proposing. However, when I was in front of you all before, I did say that prioritizing my asks were the support services administrator position and the reclass and the lieutenant reclass as well. And the officer FTEs and the administrative assistant FTE, that can wait. But I don't want to lose momentum. And I hope I'm being very clear that that takes me on a journey. shallower increase, but it's still a slight increase in the police department, which doesn't put us in the hole over the next couple years when it comes to marketing, when it comes to talking about the successes that we've had and the crime reduction that we've had. If you look at what we are doing, we are looking for efficiencies every day, every month in the police department. This is an example of one of those efficiencies where we are not plugging in unnecessary positions, sworn positions, to oversee non-sworn positions. The sworn position that's over this reclass about the support service administrator is me. And that's pretty efficient when you look at it. If you look at other police departments in our array, you have a lieutenant or a captain or assistant chief that's over these positions. Those assistant chiefs or captains, they don't know anything more about what those positions do necessarily than I do, but we're cutting out layers and we're making it more efficient. So if you look at one of the departments in our array, 58,000 population, Dubuque, it has an assistant chief, seven captains, and 13 lieutenants. That's not very efficient in my mind, but it may work for them. It wouldn't work here in Grand Island. I'm asking for a seventh lieutenant, I'm asking for a sports service administrator, and I'm asking to keep my two division chiefs status quo. That's pretty flat. That's pretty efficient. We haven't increased the layers in the police department since I've been here. And I think that it is being very responsible with resources and the money that you guys have given us. And I really do appreciate that. And I mean it from the heart. However, the last time I was in front of y'all, I said, we need a little momentum still. We need to increase just slightly the increase based on where the city's at possibly and where we're going.

We just don't need to fall back.

We don't need to go back because that doesn't mean just one year in a reduction. That means maybe a couple years in reduction and trying to pull back out of that. So I think I've been fairly clear on what that looks like. It is an efficiency when it comes to personnel and resource management. It is also a very flat structure, flatter than most police departments that you would probably look at. So that's really what I wanted to add on top of what I said previously a month or so ago.

And again, I will just say the same thing I've said. Sustainability is the important part. And the worst thing we can do is increase head count in the police department, and in three years have to figure out how do you reduce by two or three or four, because that's what the numbers are going to show. I don't want that. Neither would any other council member here. So when it comes to adding additional people, that's one thing. But the reclassification, you also stated was very important to you this year. And I just wanted to at least get it out here to say, Do we want to do that or do we not want to do that? I'm not proposing adding additional people. I am proposing at least just considering the reclassification. And that's really the only thing I'm looking at. Because by the time if we do that, and this is a council decision, The impact to me is relatively minor in the big picture over the next five years. In the library, we're talking about maybe changing the title of one person from library one to two or whatever it is, which turns out to be small also in the big picture, but allows us to do a bookmobile program more efficiently. Those are the only questions I've had. The total of that is probably $10,000, $15,000 for a year, and yet we will still help you get what you want. We can help Celine with the bookmobile project, and we have not padded these labor costs at all to speak of. So I just wanted at least touch on that because I had no idea what the thorough analysis you have to do on something like this. It's a lot of work to go through and just want to know. I know Chuck's very, feels very strongly one way. I just want it openly discussed to know for sure where we want to go as a council for the reclassification that you're after. That's really what I'd be after here.

Thank you.

Okay, the only thing I'd say in decisions like this are very difficult and Councils that are courageous make the tough decisions because that's really what we need to do, and that's what our responsibility is. And again, I really want to thank the mayor for reconsidering what he was wanting to do many, many months ago, looking at the facts and realizing that this is the position that we're in, and we need to make prudent decisions today to show what we can do in four or five years from now. So, again, appreciate your presentation because it was right on the money, everything that we needed to hear. We may not want to hear it, but we needed to hear it. Mr. Stell.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Patrick, I would like to thank you for your good presentation, very detail-oriented. Between your talk and the mayor's talk, you kind of flipped us on a 180-degree turn. And I'm a conservative person, and I really like your approach, and I'd like to see it work and go through. The one thing that I really want to keep is I want the good life project going, but I want to be careful when we get started into it. If we're going to take on a $50 million project and we're in uncertain times, I just want to make sure we do it right. And I appreciate that. And I just want to keep the good things going for Grand Island because Grand Island is a great city and it is my home. Thank you.

You're absolutely welcome. Since you kind of opened the door for me, I'd like to give you a good life district update. We had an in-person meeting today with Drew, Mitch, and Kent and our team. We made fabulous progress. It's, you know, to everybody's point, when you sit down and you're actually at a table, what is, and it happened today, is here's a point that, you know, hey, I have a problem with this. Oh, that's what you meant. Certainly, we can do that. And so we had a lot of those issues. Epiphanies today, and we're meeting again tomorrow. I'm not sure about Thursday, but we're making really good progress. I'm excited about that progress. I'm real excited about the progress that we're making with the Aquatic Center. It's a little bit different path, but we're making good headway there. Overall, We're moving forward. We hope to have this development agreement to council on the 25th. And that's our goal. And our goal is not to have sticking points. So it would be fabulous for Woodsonia and the city to say, hey, we have nothing to talk about. Let's move forward. So that's what we're trying to do. And hopefully we get there.

That is great news. Keep up the good work. Thank you. We're proud of you.

It's the team.

No further comments. Excellent meeting. We've completed our agenda. Good night, everybody.