Telecommunications Committee - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to Green City Council. We're here for committee meetings. I'd like to call these meetings to order. First item on our agenda is the approval of minutes. We have TMP 5407, approval of the June 9, 2026 committee meeting minutes.

Motion to approve.

Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Mr. Neugebauer?

Yes.

Mr. Noble?

Yes.

Mr. Brandenburg?

Yes.

Mr. DeVitas?

Yes.

Mr. Humphrey?

Yes.

Mr. Spate?

Yes.

Mr. Maker?

Yes.

Okay, motion carries.

Thank you, ma'am. Okay, we have the committee meetings coming up next. However, we're going to switch up our agenda a little bit, and we're actually going to start with the Rules and Personnel Committee, which I chair. Myself, Mr. Mager, and Mr. Brandenburg are all present this evening. We do have one item of legislation, which is on first reading. It's 2026 R39. A resolution accepting, rejecting the fact finder's report regarding the collective bargaining agreement between the City of Green and International Association of Firefighters, local 2964 IAFF. And the recommendations contained therein in declaring an emergency. This item is going to take us into executive session. So I just ask everybody to bear with us. We're going to meet in executive session and then come back out. In executive session, I would like to invite the mayor, the law director, finance director, the fire chief Funai, and Pam Serena with our HR manager, as well as Brad Hemphill and Jonathan Daniels. So at this time, I would make a motion to adjourn into executive session to discuss collective bargaining matters to review a collective bargaining strategy for 2026 R39, inviting once again the Mayor, Law Director, Finance Director, Chief Funne, Chief Hemphill, Ms. Serena, and Mr. Daniels.

Jonathan Downs. I'm sorry, that's my handwriting. Jonathan Downs.

Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Please call the roll.

Mr. Spate.

Yes.

Mr. Maker.

Yes.

Mr. Brandenburg.

Yes.

Mr. DeVitas. Yes. Mr. Noble.

Yes.

Mr. Humphrey.

Yes.

Mr. Neugebauer.

Yes.

Okay. Motion carries.

We will be back. Thank you.

I just thought it was a... Got it. That makes sense.

Thank you. Okay. Welcome back. And at this time, I make a motion to adjourn executive session and resume our normal committee meetings. Second. Motion and a second. Any discussion? Please call the roll.

Mr. Spate.

Yes.

Mr. Mager.

Yes.

Mr. Brandenburg. Yes. Mr. DeVitas. Yes. Mr. Noble.

Yes.

Mr. Humphrey.

Yes.

Mr. Neugebauer.

Yes.

Okay. Motion carries.

Thank you, ma'am. Okay, in Rules and Personnel Committee this evening, we do have one item of legislation. I already discussed it, and I'll read it back in here. That's 2026 R39, a resolution accepting the Fact Finders Report regarding the collective bargaining agreement between the City of Green and International Association of Firefighters, Local 2964 IAFF, and the recommendations contained therein in declaring an emergency. This is what we had our executive session over. And this is a public document that is attached to the agenda in Granicus. If anybody is curious, they are able to review that document. But at the appropriate time this evening, with committee's approval, we will make a motion to accept the fact finder's report for 2026 R39. Is there any discussion from committee about this matter? Any from council? Okay, we will adjourn the Rules and Personnel Committee at 6.05. Moving on to our next committee, we're going to jump back up to the top of the agenda. That will be the Finance Committee, chaired by Mr. Humphrey.

Thank you, Mr. President. Finance will meet this evening. We have several items of legislative business. Myself, Mr. Neugebauer, and Mr. Spate are present. We have many items on third reading, the first of which is 2026 R27. as amended. In fact, this is the second time that it has been amended. This is a resolution modifying appropriations within certain funds in order to provide sufficient funding and declaring an emergency. The new memorandum total for this piece of legislation is $529,258.99. As we discussed at our last meeting, the largest item in this is for $375,000 There was a county-issued tax assessment on a property. That tax assessment was appealed by the property owner. That appeal was granted. As a result of that, money was returned to the property owner instead of to the city when we received our payments on our tax incremental financing payments that we received from the county. And so as a result of that, this is a book transaction, so the city is not actually writing a check as a result of this. Our TIF payments were just $375,000 lower. Because of that, we have to account for that in some way. And this piece of legislation that alters the budget that we go into our fiscal year with, this will account for it on a book basis so that we have that. But also in that, we have a lot of other items that are on Exhibit A. And I'll just go to our Director Goodrich just on the new things that have been added since our last meeting.

Yes. So, um, we did have to add 45,000 for legal services for the law department. Um, obviously we just had a long conversation about our, um, fact finding hearing. Um, there were a lot of legal fees associated with going through that process. And so we do need additional budget and the law department for the legal services line to get us through, um, the end of the year and to be able to pay those bills. If you hop down to street construction, maintenance, and repair fund, we're just moving some budget between line items. So we're taking $30,000 from contracted services and moving it to parts, repairs, and tools. Because it's over the mayor's authority to transfer $10,000, that's why it's on the supplemental, but it is budget neutral. Also, we are taking $17,211.15 from road striping. You'll remember you guys recently approved the road striping bid. It did come in under budget versus what we had originally budgeted. And we do have a payment that we need to make for the Arlington widening project. We did an early acquisition of a property project. on over in that area and we do have some more relocation costs associated with the owner and a tenant in that property that Paul needed us to to make payment to have that individual move out for that property and that was not budgeted so again we're just moving budget amongst the accounts And then some utility ads were running low on electricity in the street lighting assessment fund and needed some additional funds in gas utility under the Southgate Park account. So that's all the changes.

All right. So just to let folks know, basically at the beginning of the year or at the end of the year, we come up with a budget. That budget anticipates as many of the expenses of the city that we can reasonably anticipate. But obviously, just like in a family budget, there are things that come up that you don't anticipate. You have to move something from one fund to another fund. And the city has to account for things that way. So if it wasn't part of the original budget or if it was in a different category of the budget, then this piece of legislation will move these around. And we'll deal with these throughout the year. as we have necessity to move things around for those purposes. So at this point, I'll open it up to anyone on committee have any questions or comments about this? Anyone on council? Okay, so this is the third reading, so at the appropriate time, I'll make motions on 2026, R27 as amended. The second piece of legislation we have in committee this evening is a third reading of 2026-11, This is an ordinance authorizing the issuance of bonds in a maximum aggregate principal amount of $1,500,000 for the purposes of retiring notes issued to pay the cost of Phase 1 of the Southwood Drive Extension Project and declaring an emergency. In anticipation of the Arlington Road or the Southwood Extension Project, we issued bond anticipation notes, so those are notes that will finance a specific project in anticipation of bonds being issued. We did that last year in the amount of $1.35 million. Now bonds will be issued. You have to pay off those notes. There's transaction costs involved. And so the total amount here is $1,500,000. And again, this is for the phase one of the Southwood Extension Project that we've talked about for our last four or five meetings. on the project that is currently underway. So this is a third reading, and I'll open it up to committee if any questions or comments on this. Anyone from council? Okay, so at the appropriate time during our meeting, I'll make motions on 2026-11. The next piece of legislation we have on third reading is 2026-12. This is an ordinance authorizing the issuance of bonds in a maximum aggregate principal amount of $3,900,000 for the purpose of paying or reimbursing the city for costs of various street improvements and declaring an emergency. This, of course, deals with our Arlington-Bettler Road project, which is going to total around $3.9 million. The city is responsible for 20%. Of the expenses of this project, federal funding is taking care of 80% of this project, but we have to issue bonds for the 20% for the expenses that the city is incurring for this project. The amount that is paid by the federal government will be paid through ODOT, and so we don't have to appropriate those monies. We don't have to issue bonds for those monies. This is simply to pay the city's amount for these projects for Bettler and Arlington Road. Again, this is $3.9 million of bonds that will be issued. And this is third reading. And committee, any questions or comments on this? Council? All right, so at the appropriate time, I'll make motions on 2026-12. The next piece of legislation on third reading is 202613. This is an ordinance authorizing the issuance of bonds in a maximum aggregate principal amount of $1,400,000 for the purpose of paying or reimbursing the city for costs of Phase 2 of the Southwood Drive Extension Project and declaring an emergency. Again, this is... Part of the overall project in this area, Southwood Drive, is being extended. In order to pay for that project, we're issuing bonds. The bonds are going to be in the amount of $1.4 million, including all of the transaction costs that are involved with issuing those. I'll open it up to committee. Any questions or comments on it? Council? Again, we talked about these quite extensively at our last meeting, so At the appropriate time, I'll make motions on 2026-13. The next piece of legislation we have on third reading is a third reading of 2026-14. This is an ordinance authorizing the issuance of bonds in a maximum aggregate principal amount of $12,865,000 for the purpose of refunding all or a portion of the outstanding maturity of the city's general obligation bonds issued in 2016 and in 2020 and declaring an emergency. And at first blush, you might hear like the city is taking out $12.865 million in additional debt. That is not what is happening with this piece of legislation. We have taken out debt in the past in the form of issuing bonds We hold that debt and are paying the bondholders back as the schedule requires, but there are certain times when the interest rates become favorable so that we can call back some of those bonds that were issued at a higher rate than the current market amount, and so we can save money. Essentially, it's refinancing that debt to save the city money in transaction costs. And what this piece of legislation allows but does not require is if we, through our bond council, have an opportunity to refinance anything within that debt that was issued in 2016 and in 2020, that we can then refund those bonds that were issued and issue additional bonds. Obviously, we would only do it if we're paying a lower interest rate to save the city money. And so, These are for general obligation debt issued in 2020-16 and 2020. And then I think it's just helpful at this point to, just on a global basis, the new debt that we are voting on tonight on these items in third reading totals around $6,450,000. This piece of legislation, 2026-14, does not add to that. It's just part of the overall city debt. So at this point in time, I would open it up to committee. Any questions or comments? Council, anyone have any questions or comments? Okay, so at the appropriate time, I'll make a motion on 2026-14. The next piece of legislation and the final piece of legislation in finance this evening is a second reading of 2026-15. This is an ordinance authorizing the mayor to enter into a contract with the Regional Income Commission tax agency, REDA, a regional council of governments organized pursuant to Chapter 167 of Ohio Revised Code for the administration, collection, and enforcement of the municipal income tax of the City of Greene, Ohio, and declaring an emergency. And for this piece of legislation, we're going to be going into executive session if the council agrees. to discuss a collective bargaining matter, to review a collective bargaining strategy consistent with this piece of legislation. And so I'm going to move that we go into executive session to discuss 2026-15 and invite into the executive session to discuss collective bargaining matter to review a collective bargaining strategy. And I'm going to invite in the mayor, the law director, our finance director, Pam Serena, our HR manager, and also our clerk.

Second. All right.

That would have been my first vote that failed for want of a second, so we built some drama there. All right, so I have a motion and second to go into executive session. Is there any discussion? The clerk, please call the roll.

Mr. Humphrey.

Yes.

Mr. Spate. Yes. Mr. Brandenburg.

Yes.

Mr. DeVitas. Mr. Noble. Yes. Mr. Maker. Yes. And Mr. Neugebauer. Yes. Okay, motion carries. Thank you.

OKAY, WE'RE BACK IN COUNCIL CHAMBERS. WE ADJOURN TO GO INTO EXECUTIVE SESSION WITHIN THE FINANCE COMMITTEE. AND AT THIS TIME I'LL MAKE A MOTION TO ADJOURN FROM OUR EXECUTIVE SESSION ON 2026-15.

SECOND.

I HAVE A MOTION AND SECOND TO ADJOURN FROM EXECUTIVE SESSION. IS THERE ANY DISCUSSION? Clerk, please call the roll.

Mr. Humphrey.

Yes.

Mr. Neugebauer.

Yes.

Mr. Brandenburg.

Yes.

Mr. DeVitas.

Yes.

Mr. Noble.

Yes.

Mr. Spate. Yes. Mr. Maker.

Yes.

Okay, motion carries.

Okay, so this is the final piece of legislation in finance this evening, 2026-15. This is an ordinance authorizing the mayor to enter into a contract with the Regional Income Tax Agency, RETA, a regional council of governments organized pursuant to Chapter 167 of the Ohio Revised Code. for the administration collection and enforcement of municipal income tax of the city of Greene and declaring an emergency. And we're going to begin with a presentation by our mayor.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to take a minute to give background and explain kind of how we've got to this point, and then I want to turn it over to our finance director, Shelly Goodrich, to talk about it from her perspective as the ultimate director over our tax and finance department. And then we have some folks here representing Rita, who will present really more than you want to know about the Regional Income Tax Authority, and then open up to counsel for any questions. So how did we get here? Earlier this year, our tax administrator resigned, creating a vacancy within the income tax department. And while we began the process of recruiting and going through the normal civil service process of advertising that position, we also took the opportunity to step back and kind of take a look at our tax department and ask the question, you know, is there a better way to more efficiently, cost-effectively handle the tax department for our residents? That review led us to the Regional Income Tax Authority, also known as RETA. Why we considered RETA. As we reviewed the services of RETA, and we did a, while we had looked at filling this position, the first thing we did is let's get RETA on the phone, and we did a Teams video conference with them and asked them every question we could think of about how they work, how they're formed, the cost, all the questions. We then, because this is how I operate, I like to talk to people and cities who have used them. So I asked Director Goodrich to find cities that have recently switched to Rita so that we could ask them about their experience. And so we scheduled video conferences with the Barberton Finance Department, Bedford, Caga Falls, Canal Fulton, Grandview Heights, Talmadge, Parma Heights. Two of those, Bedford and Canal Fulton, had recently gone from their own tax department to Rita. And we had these long sort of question conversations about, tell me about everything about your experience. Anything bad. Is there anything that you would do to reverse your decision? please give us the good, the bad, and the ugly. What we heard from each city is there is no going back, that the quality, the cost, the efficiency that they experienced by turning to Rita frankly far outpaced what they could do with their own tax department. Specifically, those benefits included access to federal tax information and compliance resources that individual cities our size simply don't have access to, enhanced online filing and payment systems providing residents and businesses with more convenient self-service options, dedicated collections, audit and compliance professionals whose sole focus is municipal income tax administration, an improved ability to identify non-filers and ensure tax compliance, helping ensure that everyone pays their fair share. And it is my goal, and I think it's our city's goal, that people pay what they're owed, not a dollar more, not a dollar less. That's always been our goal. That will remain our goal. This will help us to do it more efficiently, more accurately, not so much about personnel as it is because of the tools that Rita provides. Our estimated annual savings by moving to REDA is projected to be between $300,000 and $350,000 a year, and that includes saving three positions and the money that we save through software and all the things, the infrastructure that supports our tax department. Looking forward, at the end of the day, Our responsibility is to ensure that city services are delivered efficiently, effectively, and responsibly. This recommendation is not a reflection, of course, of the quality of our work or people, but rather it's a recognition that municipal income tax administration has become increasingly specialized and complex. One of the lessons we learned in trying to fill this position of the tax administrator is It's still an employee's market. It's very hard to find people with the requisite skill who could serve in that pretty critical supervisory position who frankly want to work for cities. Partnering with RETA allows us to leverage economies of scale, modern technology, specialized expertise, and proving processes that would be difficult for our city to replicate on its own. In a nutshell, that's why we're recommending this legislation. I want to let our finance director to take a deeper dive into her analysis. Director Goodrich, if you could take it away.

Yes. Thank you so much. I don't know if you all know this, but for two and a half years earlier in my career, I served as the tax administrator for the city of Cuyahoga Falls. During that time, I also was the president of the Ohio Association of Tax Administrators. When I first entered municipal tax administration, I became very familiar with the fight against RETA. Tax administrators through Ohio were very resistant to regionalization and opposed to the concept of centralized tax collection with RETA. Over time, however, my perspective changed. Through my work in Cuyahoga Falls, I developed a strong professional relationship with Rita and its executive director, Amy Arrigge, who's here tonight. In fact, funny story, I once interviewed at Rita and she did not hire me, so much to the benefit of the city of Greene, but it all worked out for the best, but I always have to give her a hard time about that. Her loss and eventually Greene's gain Despite that disappointment in my career, my professional experiences eventually led me to the same conclusion that Amy and many others had already reached. Rita should be administering municipal income taxes for every municipality in Ohio. The reality is that Rita possesses resources and capabilities that individual municipalities simply cannot replicate. They have access to federal income tax data that allows them to identify non-filers and under-reporting taxpayers. We do not have access to that data. We cannot match what someone files on their federal tax return with what they're filing in our department. They have invested millions of dollars into a sophisticated software platform built specifically for municipal income tax administration. Our software, let me tell you, it leaves a little bit to be desired. I've been working in it recently. They employ subject matter experts who have spent decades navigating and litigating some of the most complex issues in municipal income tax law. These advantages translate directly into a more effective tax collection, greater compliance, and a fairer system for all taxpayers. When I eventually decided to leave the tax administration business, because let me tell you, it is not for the faint of heart, I was leaving Cuyahoga Falls, and I recommended that Cuyahoga Falls go to REDA at that time. It was a recommendation that I fully supported then and continue to support today. In speaking with my former boss, the finance director of Cuyahoga Falls, he has indicated that the city has no regrets about making the transition and regularly recommends it to other entities. The move has allowed the city to focus on core governmental functions while relying on experts whose sole mission is municipal tax administration. Simply put, RETA is the gold standard in tax collection. We simply do not possess the tools necessary to compete with their capabilities. Our software is not as sophisticated. We don't have access to federal tax information. We do not have a large team of specialists focused. exclusively on tax administration and compliance, continuing to operate independently requires us to invest significant resources into maintaining a system that is less effective and more expensive than the alternate. The financial case alone is compelling. Our 2025 cost of collection was approximately 2.5%. So it costs our department 2.5% of our total collections goes to running that department. By comparison, Rita's cost of collection was approximately 1.04% in 2025. That difference represents a significant opportunity for savings that can be redirected towards essential city services, infrastructure improvements, and other community priorities. Additionally, every year we spend a substantial amount of time and money on collection services with Keith Wiener and Associates. Last year alone, the city spent approximately $95,000 on court costs and collection services. Their compensation structure includes a 25% fee on all funds collected. Under the REDA model, legal services are provided at a substantially lower cost with legal assistance billed at only $35 per hour when needed. the potential savings for that area of what our department has been doing are significant and recurring. I also want to be though transparent about one important financial consideration associated with the transition because Rita collects taxes for hundreds of municipalities. I think they're up to 410, which they'll go over in their presentation. There is a timing difference between when taxes are collected and when those funds are distributed to member communities. So as a result, during the transition year, which will be in 2027, we will experience a temporary reduction in cash receipts. Specifically in 2027, we will only recognize 11 months of cash collections. For example, taxes collected by RHNA in January are generally reconciled and distributed in February. This is similar to starting a new job and not receiving your first paycheck until several weeks later, until payroll is processed. The revenue is not lost. It is simply received on a different timeline. While this timing shift will temporarily reduce our cash balances and reserve funds during 2027, it is important to understand that this is a one-time accounting and cash flow issue associated with the transition. If the city were to ever leave Rita and return to self-collection, the reverse would occur, and we would effectively receive 13 months of collection in a single year for the final time we were with them. Although this may be a difficult adjustment initially, I believe the long-term benefits substantially outweigh the short-term impact. Increased collection effectiveness, improved compliance, reduced operating costs and enhanced customer service will provide ongoing benefits for years to come. Council should also be aware of another fee structure situation, which again, Amy and Matt can speak to. While RETA's actual cost of collections have historically remained at just over 1%, they withhold a 3% retainer from collections throughout the year. Once the tax year is closed and audited in the following spring, RETA determines its actual cost of collections and allocates those costs across all member communities. So any amount withheld above the actual cost will then be refunded to us. And like I said, Amy and Matt are here this evening with us and can answer more questions regarding that distribution process, the timing of collections, or the fee structure. Beyond the direct financial benefits, Transitioner Rita would improve customer service for our residents and businesses. Taxpayers will gain access to a larger support staff, expanded online filing capabilities, enhanced payment options. For example, you can go on and set up a payment plan directly through Rita's website. Right now, you have to call and do everything on the... paper through our department. So they can offer additional items and enhanced customer service resources. Businesses operating in multiple RETA communities would benefit from a streamlined and familiar filing process, reducing administrative burdens and compliance costs. The transition will reduce operational risk for the city. Municipal tax administration has become increasingly complex due to legislative changes, court decisions, remote work issues, and evolving tax regulations. Maintaining compliance requires continuous training, technology upgrades, and legal expertise. Rita spreads these costs across the hundreds of municipalities that they serve, allowing each municipality to benefit from economies of scale that no individual city could achieve on its own. The staffing realities facing municipal tax administration further support this recommendation. Obviously, the mayor touched on it. Our tax administrator left in February. We posted the position and obviously we were not able to identify a candidate with the experience, credentials, and expertise necessary to come in and lead that department. Municipal tax administration is a highly specialized field with a shrinking pool of qualified professionals, and like I said, it's not the funnest job in the world. As more municipalities transition to RETA and regionalized collection models exist, fewer individuals are entering this field. We are competing with a limited talent pool and it's becoming difficult and expensive for municipalities to find the right people to fill these roles. This challenge is not unique to our city. This is something that municipalities across Ohio have been facing. When I first started in this field, probably it was 2015, I think at that time we'd only had 200 some municipalities and now there are over 400. As people are retiring from these departments, moving on, cities are increasingly moving to this model. The city gains access to an entire organization of tax professionals, auditors, specialist attorneys, and representatives whose sole focus is municipal tax administration. Most importantly, this decision is about fairness. Every dollar that goes uncollected from a taxpayer who owes tax to the City of Green must ultimately be made up by everyone else through reduced services or increased financial pressure on compliant taxpayers. RETA's tools, data access, and compliance programs help ensure that everyone is paying their fair share. That creates a more equitable tax system and strengthens the city's long-term financial stability. This recommendation is based on my own personal experience and obviously all the research that the mayor and my department did in the last couple months. I've worked as a municipal tax administrator. I've witnessed the challenges faced by local tax departments. I've worked alongside communities that have transitioned to RETA. I have seen the results. I also recognize that joining REDA represents a significant change for the city. Change is often uncomfortable, particularly when we successfully manage tax collection in-house for many years. The question is whether continuing to operate an increasingly complex tax collection system on our own is the best use of taxpayer resources going forward. Based on my experience and the information before us, I do not believe that it is. For the city, our taxpayers and the long-term financial health of our community, I firmly believe that joining Rita is the right decision. And with that, I will turn it over to Amy Origi. She's the executive director of the Regional Income Tax Agency and Matt Mao, who is, Matt, what's your title? Government liaison. So, and they are going to give you some background on the agency and then we will take questions.

While they're approaching, one thing that was also impressive to me was that Rita is actually a council of governments. It's like the cog that we have with NEW FRANKLIN FOR DISPATCH. IT'S A STATUTORY CREATURE THAT IS MADE UP OF A CONGLAMERATION OF CITIES WHO BASICALLY ARE ON THE BOARD AND GOVERN THE ORGANIZATION. SO ALL THE CITIES WHO ARE MEMBERS HAVE REPRESENTATION ON THE BOARD. THEY SET THE AGENDA. THEY SET COST. THERE IS DIRECT CONTROL. IT ISN'T AN ENTITY THAT'S COMPLETELY DIVORCED AND SET APART FROM THE CITIES THAT IT SERVES. THANK YOU.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, members of council, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, and the administration. Thank you for having us this evening. As Shelly mentioned, my name is Matthew Mao. I'm a government liaison in the Member Services Department at the Regional Income Tax Agency. Also here with me to my right is Amy Arigie. executive director i've been with the agency for over 12 years the first two years i worked in our business compliance department and the last 10 years i've been in our member services department the member services department is a direct point of contact for our member municipalities council members and their administration we appreciate the city allowing us to attend this evening and talk about rita and the benefits of a partnership with regional income tax agency You may be asking yourself a couple of these questions here on the board. If you're interested in simplifying your filing and payment process with your residents and businesses, looking to maximize municipal tax collections and support local services and amenities in your community, maybe looking for an effective and economical operation, concerned about the constant rising budget costs for everything that we're paying for these days, are interested in having a voice and having your interests represented in the state and federal legislation. As Shelly also mentioned, the Regional Income Tax Agency, we are considered a full-service tax collection agency from A to Z. We do have various departments that work all year round in those departments, so we're not shifting employees. We have individual tax department, we have customer service, we have business compliance, we have our own legal finance department, IT staff, again, the member services department where I'm in. So we have a multitude of different departments to assist us in the collection process throughout the year. Our mission statement here on the board here is to provide municipalities such as yourself with a high quality, cost effective municipal tax collection services. And we've been doing this for over 55 years now. Why partner with RETA? Most municipalities see these three factors when they transfer or transition to the Regional Income Tax Agency. Reduce costs utilizing those shared resources of economy of scale to maximize your costs. increased service level. So we have a multitude of electronic filing and payments. As Shelly mentioned, there's also a new e-billing and payment plan that you can electronically get into versus having to call or walk into an office to set that up. We have what's called our modernized e-filing or MEF, professional tax preparer softwares. We currently this year have partnered with 16 different tax software providers. So when taxpayers or your residents are using a tax preparer to have their return completed, they're using a software. When they're filling out the federal and state information and also at the click of a button, they can complete the local municipal return and send that in a secure method over to us so that it can get processed immediately and they don't have to worry about mailing or filling out a separate return to do so. We offer My Account so taxpayers do have the ability to log in using a user ID and password and inside that My Account you can update your estimates, you can see your estimated payments, you can make estimated payments, you can see your filing history, you can check your refund status. You can send secure messages to the agency so that you can correspond back and forth without having to call in and talk to a live representative. We also offer a 24-7 IVR service or an interactive voice service. So your taxpayers and residents can call at 24 hours a day. Some people obviously work different shifts. Maybe that's a third shift and they're not available to make those phone calls while we're open. They can check on their payments, make estimated payments, check a refund status by doing that 24 IVR system. Municipalities also historically will see an increase in collections through the variety of services that we provide and offer throughout the year. Some of those, to give examples, are through our collection process, our legal department, a non-filing subpoena program, and accessing that IRS data through our FDI department. So when you're partnering with the Regional Income Tax Agency, again, you have access to real-time taxpayer data and reports through Rita's tax software. So what we do is we actually have a software, it's called Tax Authority Portal. We'll put that software on Shelly and the appropriate people's finance department employees. so that they have access to generate reports, they'll get a reader email so they can secure and appropriately communicate back and forth with me regarding taxpayer confidential information, as well as have access to the tax software system itself where we scan and image all the documents of the returns that taxpayers are remitting so they can view those returns as well at any time. The municipality does retain its right to administer and enforce its own income tax laws that are concurrent with the Regional Income Tax Agency and retain local Board of Review here at the City of Green. You have a landing page that we'll put on our website that will host your tax rate structure, your income tax ordinance, and any special notes that are particular to the City of Green that taxpayers can then toggle back and forth as well to your municipality website on that landing page. All municipalities that enter into an agreement with the Regional Council of Governments also have one vote on all our COG matters. So the City of Green has a voice and one vote on all of those matters at our annual meetings. And you do have the ability to run for a board position if so desired. This next slide here, just a representation of the counties throughout the state of Ohio. We currently administer for 83 of the 88 counties in the state, which is over 400 municipalities, currently 411 cities and villages. We just voted in at the last meeting an additional municipality, and 64 GED, GED-Zs, and enterprises as well. So some of those large municipalities include municipalities such as Youngstown, Mentor, Euclid, Medina, Springfield, Hamilton, just to name a couple of examples. Last year, we processed over $2.5 billion in annual tax collections and provided service to over 1 million taxpayers. So some of these next couple slides here are just representing the regional tax agency as well as the RCOG that you'll be joining if you were to move forward. Again, we serve over 50% of the municipalities throughout the state of Ohio. that make up the 411 municipalities that we're currently administering for. Collections last year, again, exceeded $2.5 billion in annual collections, and we provided full-service departments from registration all the way through litigation. If the municipality decides to move forward again, what you're doing is you're entering into an agreement with the Regional Council of Governments, which is the governing body of Rita. We would then be administering at Rita the the income tax ordinance as it's written, and you can see again we have a that nine member board of trustees that serve that are cardboard and there are three year staggered terms. So you do have the ability again to to run for one of those open positions. This slide here represents the cost of the agency from 2025 in a pie chart format. As you guys probably know and experience here at the municipal level, the most expenses are for personnel, which also includes not only their salary, but the benefits that are provided to them as well, which is insurance as well as retirement plans and things like that. This next slide here is representative of the shared costs. If through shared costs and continued membership and increasing collections year after year, you can see that the average annual costs to our member municipalities has decreased over the last several years. So the last two years have come in at 1.04% on average. side here just representing on the left side the number of communities in the surrounding area that we currently administer for that our neighboring communities you may be working in or passing through or have family members that that currently live there and to the right of that just representing the year that they joined the agency So again, the agency, we provide a full service tax collection. So we have taxpayer registration. We add accounts that are not currently on file by scrubbing that against not only state information from people who are filing state returns, but also through the IRS data exchange that we have through them. Municipality has to have a population of over 250,000 in order to obtain that information. through Ohio code we're allowed to obtain that information based on our total population exceeding that amount so we leverage that information and scrub against our tax system adding new accounts and making sure that your taxpayers and residents are filing and reporting all their taxable income to you We do W-2 matching against individual accounts as well. So because we have so many municipalities that we're administering for, we have a very, very large number of businesses that are filing electronic returns to us. So they're remitting on their annual reconciliation electronic W-2s. We're using that information to scrub against the accounts, making sure that those accounts exist, creating accounts, and also attaching an electronic copy of the W-2 to the account. So when they're filing their return, we can see that they've remitted the appropriate amounts on their return. Again, as you can see, there's some bullet points in here that discuss the different topics from the individual business compliance department, 24-7 IVR system. We have the live agents, records management. Again, we're using a bunch of different departments. that we have employees in throughout the whole year to leverage the information and the most notable topic on there again is the federal tax information that we're using to go after non-filers and under reporters for our member municipalities IN THE MEMBER SERVICES DEPARTMENT, THAT'S THE DEPARTMENT THAT I COME FROM. WHAT WE OFFER A LOT OF SERVICES TO OUR MEMBER MUNICIPALITIES NOT ONLY AS A DIRECT POINT OF CONTACT FOR THE FINANCE DEPARTMENT AND COUNCIL IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS, YOU CAN CONTACT ME AS WELL. WE'RE PROVIDING ALSO ANALYSIS AND PROJECTIONS ON the following year's projections of income tax revenue, but we also put together analysis of the income tax receivable estimates, or GASB 33, and provide that to the municipality, and we represent all of our member municipalities through various organizations as well as at the Ohio State House. It's a couple of bullet points there that I'll skip over. You can see some information on our IT department. We also have in-house help desk support for the tax authority portal that can assist with the member municipalities. And we use some outside services that are also included in the cost to our member municipalities. Through the IRS data exchange, again, touching base on this, we have access to this information that we would be scrubbing against making sure that your residents and taxpayers are filing appropriately and going after those people who are not filing at all. Again, this is a department, our FTI department, that works all year round at no additional cost to the municipality. This next slide here just representing the new member municipalities that joined in 2025 as well as 2026 thus far. As you can see, they're scattered throughout the state. And then this next point here, I just want to point out the increase in services that most municipalities Obtain from joining the regional income tax agency. We have a multitude of electronic filing options I've gone over some of these we still offer paper returns if taxpayers do want to use paper return and print off and The returns on our website are fillable PDFs, so you can type in as opposed to just printing off and having to handwrite those returns. We do also offer what we've rolled out, Fast File, Fast Pay, and a Quick Tax Calc. I'll briefly go over those. Fast File allows a taxpayer to file a tax return without having to log into their account, their My Account, using a user ID and password. Most of the people who are utilizing this is just a basic return, so maybe you just have a W-2 return, but it does work for other taxpayers as well. So you can quickly do the same thing through fast pay where taxpayers can make a payment quickly without having to log into their account as well. The tax calc allows taxpayers to update and provide information on if they need to update their estimate. Not everybody is making a steady income throughout the year, so some people have, you know, maybe 1099 income or They're working on commissions, so their income fluctuates from year to year. You can go online and use this tax calc tool to type in your information. Based on your tax rate structure, where you're working and where you're living and the tax rates, it'll tell you what you should update your estimate to, which then you could call and have that updated or enter that information through your My Account electronically at any time of the day as well. Again, just want to touch base before we move on that we do have recently rolled out the payment plan option electronically, which I think is very cool. They don't have to call in and talk to someone. They can just go online, log into their My Account, type in some information as far as what they want their payment plan to be, and as long as it's meeting a certain criteria. Obviously, taxpayers can't pay a dollar per month, so they'll be able to do that without having to speak to anybody. So continued resources here for your residents and taxpayers as well. We do have 800 number as well as a local number that taxpayers and residents can call and speak with customer service representatives during normal business hours. We do offer also extended business hours during the business season as well as on Saturdays. And again, the IVR that's offered 24 seven that allows taxpayers to check on statuses, refunds, estimates, make payments and see what their balance dues are. All of the calls that do come in, they are recorded for quality and training purposes. So our managers do review that and use that information to see if we need to make any adjustments for particular employees. Every caller is also offered to complete a survey at the end of our calls. With that being said, I just want to let everybody know this next slide here, these are some examples of the feedback that we've gotten from the 2025 surveys. So of the, I believe it was 12,000 plus completed surveys, you can see 94.2% satisfaction, 94.1% satisfaction, 94.4% satisfaction on these particular questions that we're getting feedback from. Tax is obviously not the most exciting thing or understandable for everyone that's a resident, so having that positive feedback and understanding that their questions are being answered and we're explaining it to them in a manner that they can understand. The next couple of slides here are just touching base on the protection of privacy. As I mentioned previously, we do consider this a very top priority at the Regional Income Tax Agency. We do consider all taxpayer information that's reported and sent to us as taxpayer confidential under 718.13 of the ORC. All RETA employees also receive annual security awareness and IT role-based training. And taxpayers, again, that information is constantly being backed up so that we have that information backed up in our system. The customer service representatives that do receive phone calls, they do. um confirm that they're speaking with the appropriate taxpayer themselves or the authorized tax preparer based on what the information that they put on the return taxpayer can check a box and then that would allow us to talk with the tax preparer if we have any questions or they call in on behalf of that taxpayer We do also use multifactor identification throughout the system, again, asking appropriate questions to make sure that the person is who they are saying that they are. We do also, at no additional cost, have an external audit firm that comes in and does SOC 1 report and review for controls purposes. We do also have the annual report from the IRS that safeguards our security report and information and conducts on-site audits every three years as well. We do have a disaster recovery plan. During the pandemic, we were able to utilize what we already had in place so that we did not have to shut the agency down. We continued to process and provide our member municipalities with the money that they were due. So there was not a delay in any of the money being transferred to our member municipalities throughout the pandemic. this slide here just representing uh some of the recognition that we receive on an annual basis the first one there we've received over 40 years of recognition from the gfoa regarding our financial reporting and at the bottom there reader receiving the auditor state award as it says on there that's 2024 they're still in the process of reviewing the 2025 information so that's why that slide is indicating 2024. So the next slide here representing the estimated cost of collections, as Shelly mentioned before, we do collect and retain at 3% of the dollars that we collect on. That allows us to operate throughout the year. After year end, we close our books We would calculate what the actual cost is to the member municipalities based on your transactions divided by the total transactions for the agency, as well as your dollars collected divided by the total dollar collected for the agency. Those two percentages added together divided by two is the percentage then that comes into play when calculating the actual cost. So based on the information that we received from the municipality and historical data that we have and we've projected the cost of collecting for the municipality to be $322,000 to $356,000 roughly at a percentage of 1.11% to 1.23%, which means the municipality will receive the difference of the 3% and that appropriate percentage of the total cost of collections. Again, that's based on the information that was previously provided to us. And then without further ado, I just want to leave my contact information there, Amy's contact information. Also in your packet that was provided to you, there is my business card and a copy of the slides. If you guys have any questions at this time, we'd be more than happy to answer those, Mr. Chairman.

All right. Thank you. I appreciate your presentation and for all the work the administration has done on this. And I would just... I hear somebody say something. Okay. I would just point out that our finance director has been wearing two hats as finance director and also running the income tax. And so I know we've recognized that before, but it's been Quite a heavy load to carry for carrying out all of these responsibilities. I guess I'll start out with a few questions. One of the things that you indicated was the tie-in that you have with the IRS and the data that they collect for individual returns. How is that different than the current system when you submit a city of green tax return? you give a page or two pages of the federal return. What additional information does Rita collect over and above that? And just explain how that's a benefit.

Matt, if you don't mind. For what we're receiving from the IRS is a complete data set of taxpayers that have filed a return with the IRS. And so while a City of Green taxpayer may be compliant, file their return with you and attach a copy of their 1040 or their W-2s. If there is a taxpayer that is not filing with you, but should be, we're receiving that data as well because we're receiving a complete data set from the Internal Revenue Service. And so we are matching In our system, IRS says this taxpayer had W-2 data, Schedule C rental income. We don't have a return in our system. We verify the address, the location, and then we reach out to that taxpayer to nudge them to file the return.

Okay, excellent. All right. And then I just want to understand, so the 1%, The the one month of collections that we wouldn't receive in the first year if we were to approve this Ultimately we get that back in collections Ultimately, it's simply a timing Thing but the three percent Explain how that works because I'm just trying to understand from a cash flow perspective how that affects the city. I

Yeah, so thank you Mr. Chairman that the 3% is what we retain at throughout the year and then after year end we calculate what the actual cost is based on your total transactions and the total dollars collected and how that compares to the agency as a whole to come up with your percentage because it's shared costs throughout all of the shared services you're receiving with all of our member municipalities that cost can fluctuate based on the total collections and your total transactions. So we retain at the 3% and then give you a refund, or we call it a retainer refund, which historically the last couple years has been in the month of May that you would receive that additional deposit of that difference.

If I could add so what the city will experience is As Shelly mentioned dollars that we collect for you in January. We will distribute to you in February Minus 3% so we'll withhold that from each distribution and the 3% are the funds that we use to operate And then when we reconcile we refund the difference for communities whose costs came in less than 3% Okay

And just for our director of finance, so just trying to think through the numbers with the 3%, with the cost savings that we would experience, the 3% really isn't a negative hit to the city finances. as the year goes out, or am I thinking about that incorrectly?

Yeah. I mean, the big thing is going to be the first year, the 11 months of collections. Luckily, we are a city that has a healthy reserve. There are other cities that have done this transition that are in a much more tenuous position, where having to only have 11 months of cash collections would be very difficult for them. that is something we know going in i still think based off of the increased ability for collections that rita has um and you know the savings that we are still it's still a positive move for our city but it is going to reduce our general fund balance in 2027 um you know because we are only going to have 11 months of cash coming in so quantify that roughly what well this year we're um i mean luckily january is not the highest month obviously so it the month that we you know when we're we would trans one ideally want to transition january 1 2027 to rita if council approves this um currently we are um estimating 30.6 million dollars in income tax revenue um this year if we just divide that by 12 that's 2.5 million A month. Mind you, we have higher and lower months. January is not, people are still getting their W-2s, they're really not filing yet. Our high months tend to obviously be February, March, April, and then in the fall filing season, we have another peak when businesses tend to file when they're on extension. So, you know, that is something that we're going to, you know, if council decides to move forward with this, we are going to have to bake into obviously our budget presentation next year. And but I want to be fully transparent that, you know, we are going to have to draw down, you know, on our general fund balance to make up that difference.

But essentially that part of it is just a cash flow issue for one year. Correct. And then the following year it's kind of baked in.

Yes. And if we were to ever leave Rita, we would have, you know, and go back to self-collecting, we would have 13 months in that year. It's really a timing thing because right now we're self-collecting. We're getting the money as it comes in. You know, they have to have time to reconcile and distribute the money. So anything, you know, they collect in January, we don't see until February.

Okay, from a practical perspective, does the City of Green or your member cities, do they get dedicated individuals dedicated to that particular city? Or does the way your system works is that they're serviced across the board based on calling and interacting through the phone or other means?

okay so uh so that's a great question so we don't have designated employees that will process particular municipalities or business unlike maybe a cpa firm that they're assigned a particular client what are our auditors processing what they do is they're receiving batched information that's at a random so it is possible that you have someone that's you know processing returns in your municipality that might be the same ones year after year but it would be it's random So it's based on the time that we're receiving that at the bank. They're just being batched in that daily process and then assigned to one of the auditors that's available to grab a new batch and start processing those so they can get processed more frequently as opposed to waiting for a particular employee. Okay.

Can I also add one thing that Rita offers that I think is very useful? Can you talk, Amy, about obviously the business return audit process? Right now, we get a business return, a federal return, and we get a business return, and we have to manually go through and look at certain things to make sure that the return that they filed with our city is accurate. That has all been automated more through Rita's system, right? And there's employee error when you have anyone that's all day looking at a tax return and going through line by line and making sure, you know, right, like they put this number over here, does it make sense, right? So can you kind of touch on that ability of your system to go through the markers and catch where there could be essentially discrepancies. Sure.

So we have something built into our tax system that we call a six-point check. And basically when a business files its own income tax return and it's saying where it had wages and where they had equipment located, we're matching that up with other data in our system. We're matching it up against the employer withholding that they remitted to us. So our system is looking for these six factors to make sure that the returns are, that they make sense. If something doesn't look right, it's kicked out for an auditor to manually review or potentially reach out to the taxpayer to get an explanation of the discrepancy on the net profit return.

Okay.

And then you spoke about the tax software that professionals use that interact with the RITA system. Excuse me. Is there something similar for individual taxpayers, for example, TurboTax or other tax preparation softwares that individuals use? Does that system interact with those popular systems, or is it just filling out the return online through the RETA system?

Do you mind if I? So right now those partnerships are with the professional tax preparer softwares. It's embarrassing how badly we grovel sometimes to Intuit to partner with us on TurboTax because I think it would be such a great advantage for taxpayers because we do see taxpayers who think that they filed with us because they use TurboTax. TurboTax will present to them the reader return to complete and they're not understanding that TurboTax is not taking that next step. We do partner with Intuit on professional software packages, but that would be your taxpayer. If they had a CPA or an enrolled agent that does their return for them each year, they could go in, as Matt said, THAT PROFESSIONAL WILL USE THAT SOFTWARE, COMPLETE THE FEDERAL, THE STATE, AND THE RETURN WILL BE PREPARED, NOT ONLY PREPARED BY THAT SOFTWARE, BUT WHEN THE PREPARER HITS THE BUTTON TO FILE, IT COMES DIRECTLY TO US. BUT TURBO TAXES, I THINK ONCE WE GET THAT, I'LL RETIRE. We've been working on that for quite some time to get them to partner with us.

Okay. But if I understand it, then TurboTax will allow individuals to prepare the form, but then they have to take an additional step to submit it through the RITA system?

That's correct.

Okay. All right. I'll open it up to committee for questions. Mr. Humphrey. Mr. Nijabower.

Just a few things the first thing comes to mind and why didn't I think of this years ago? Because this division has been painful for years I think just knowing the software that we've used is Is not not very updated is not the best I know they said it's a struggles been a struggle for us even taxpayer data is the data that we are most in fear of getting jeopardized if there's a breach. And we spend a lot of money on protecting the data we have in the city. And so that is the number one thing that we worry about. And so that transfer of that information to your system would alleviate a little bit of that. uh... something that we struggle with uh... even though i think series that a great job and and dealing with that uh... so i'm very supportive of this initiative in the council government that makes a lot of sense uh... there's just a couple things uh... first of all i think i think what we'd lose in our first year's december not january january's delayed get in february but you're gonna get november december so you're losing december from the fiscal year now

If we switch over January 1, we will collect December.

Through?

Correct. I mean, the employee withholding that would be coming in January would be from December. Yes.

Okay. Yes. The other thing that I just did the math, if Rita retains 3% and your estimated cost is 1.1%, it seems like 1.5% would be much more in line with where you expect to be than 3%. And just for comparison, 1.5% of our expected tax collections perhaps next year is a half a million dollars. Just the 1.5%. So you're going to be taking about a million dollars, 3%, and giving us back a half a million. And I know it's not your choice. You're directed by the board, but seems like that could be adjusted especially as your performance has has been very impressive as you bring on more communities you become more and more efficient so I would hope that that that three percent doesn't have to maintain because it's holding it's holding quite a bit of the money so we're going to have a two and a half million dollar adjustment for losing a month data and then we're going to have another half million adjustment because you're holding Well, it's more than that. If you really are 1.1%, it's going to be more like $800,000 that you're holding, too. So I'm just pointing it out. I have no reservation about moving to the sophistication that you're going to bring to that level of work that we've just lacked. And that's from my experience in the last 15 years of working in this government, that it's just It's just you can't replicate the professionalism that you guys will bring to that department, so thank you.

Thank you.

For a follow up on that, so there's a float there is happening, what happens to those dollars as they're being retained?

So as they're retained, we're using them to operate, as we said. Also, we do invest those, so we are earning interest income on those dollars. We use that interest income to reduce costs. So we use that interest income to reduce the overall costs of the agency before we allocate those costs to each community. So you are...

getting that interest income back in the form of Refund on that three percent basically, okay, all right and do all of your member entities Pay the same rate have the same withholding Is that a cost structure that's equal across the board I understand the expense may be different based upon the amount collected but I

The 3% is uniform. We do have some communities that ask us to retain at a higher amount. They're usually smaller communities, and they owe more than 3%, so they have us retain a little bit more. But other than that, it is a uniform retainer for all members.

All right. Open it up to council. Yes, C.J.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess I'm just still struggling with the cost structure. I mean, I know you're projecting 1.1 cost to the city, but it sounds like you wait until the end of the year and then you actually calculate the true cost, and that gets deducted from the 3%. Is that true cost calculation determined based on across the board all your customers, or are you just looking at green, the cost to fulfill green's obligations in the country?

So we calculate the costs for every community in the same way, which is we compare the City of Green or every community's total transactions to the agency's total transactions and compare City of Green's total collections to the agency's total collections, and we average those two percentages. AND THAT'S HOW EVERY COMMUNITY'S COSTS ARE CALCULATED. THAT'S PART OF THE COUNCIL OF GOVERNMENT'S AGREEMENT. WE DO THAT, SO WE'RE RETAINING THE 3% THROUGHOUT THE YEAR. WHEN THE YEAR CLOSES AND OUR BOOKS ARE CLOSED, WE ARE AUDITED BY THE STATE OF OHIO AUDITOR OF STATE, JUST LIKE YOU ARE AND OTHER LOCAL GOVERNMENTS. Once our audit is complete and our books are closed, then we finalize that calculation of transactions and collections for each community based on our final numbers, and we refund the difference to each community that might have a refund. So every community's costs are different. The average was 1.04%. We have some larger communities that come in at a little bit under 1% even. We have smaller communities that might come in at, TWO AND A HALF, 2.75, SO EACH COMMUNITY'S COSTS ARE CALCULATED ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS BUT IN THE SAME WAY.

SO THEORETICALLY, IF THERE WAS A BUNCH OF COMMUNITIES THAT HAVE HIGHER COSTS, COULD THAT COST BE SPREAD AND AFFECT OUR PERCENTAGE, I GUESS IS MY QUESTION. 410 COMMUNITIES PLUS ALL THE JEDS, LET'S JUST SAY HALF OF THEM HAD JUST A BAD YEAR FOR WHATEVER REASON THE COST. THERE'S NO BOGEY FOR US. THERE'S NO CAP ON WHAT OUR PERCENTAGE COULD BE.

That's true. The bigger we get, the math would almost be impossible for that to happen because it is looking at the agency as a whole. So for example, our largest community in terms of dollars collected last year, ONLY REPRESENTED ABOUT 3% OF EVERYTHING WE COLLECTED. SO THERE ISN'T ONE COMMUNITY, NO MATTER HOW MUCH MONEY WE COLLECT FOR THEM OR HOW BIG THEY ARE, THAT IS IMPACTING TOTAL COLLECTIONS OR TOTAL TRANSACTIONS IN A WAY THAT THAT MATH WOULD HAPPEN.

WOULD YOU AGREE THAT THE NEW ENTRIES INTO REDA, THE ONES THAT ARE PROBABLY THE MOST EXPENSIVE BECAUSE THERE'S THAT TRANSITION, THERE'S A LOT MORE COSTS AND PEOPLE ARE NOT COMFORTABLE WITH THIS, THERE'S A LOT MORE LETTERS GOING OUT, IS THAT A TRUE STATEMENT?

I would not necessarily agree with that. The way that we look at transactions are adjustments to liability. So when a tax return gets filed and a liability is posted, that's a transaction. If penalty and interest is calculated, that's a transaction. So a transaction isn't how many bills did we mail or how many letters. So there isn't an impact of that ramp up or that awareness that might be happening more with a newer community is not creating more transactions that impact the cost.

I mean, your history looks impressive. I guess my concern, and Shelly, your expertise is very helpful. It seems like a lot of communities are going to be going to this. And let's say you guys have a year where you add 100 municipalities. In that first year, there might be a lot more costs associated with that. It sounds like that could be spread amongst all of us if we were to enter the arena. And then the 1.1% projection could be much higher, right? I'm trying to understand it. I appreciate what you guys do. I'm trying to understand there is no cap, right? And if you guys have a monster year, a bunch of new signups, all those additional costs that historically haven't been projected because you now have 100 people joining in one year could hit us with the total cost.

If we had a big influx of communities joining, we would definitely have more transactions, more work that we're doing. We would also be collecting more money. So I think proportionally, I wouldn't expect that math to skyrocket any individual cost because we're doing more work, but we're bringing in more money. And so that's keeping things even and spread across everyone, not in a way that would accelerate that cost as a result of growth.

OK. Thank you.

What is the delay between the time that income tax revenue comes into REDA for a municipality and the time that the city would actually receive those funds?

We distribute two times a month, the first business day of the month and the tenth business day of the month.

OK. Other questions?

A couple of questions about resident interactions in particular. So the call desk, the 800 number that's here, so are those call desks manned by people in Ohio or are they manned overseas? Who are our residents going to talk to when they call in with a question?

Those phones are staffed by our agents that work or report to one of our five offices in Ohio. So we don't have overseas or outside of Ohio call center staff.

Okay. And what's the average wait time to speak to a live representative?

It depends on the time of year. That department, they strive to keep those under five minutes, which is kind of high. They're more probably two or three, depending on the time of year. If it's April 15th, they might wait 40 minutes to get their call answered on April 15th. But generally, it's definitely under five minutes.

Okay. And when they first call in, are they going to speak to a person, or do they go through like an AI or a robo-advisor asking them questions?

The first thing they'll get is a prompt, our automated system. It wants to know first, you know, what kind of taxpayer are you? So it can direct you to the appropriate department. And then it will ask the, prompt the taxpayer for their account number. And so that way when the agent picks up the phone, the taxpayer account is popped up on their screen. So we try to collect a little bit of information so that they can start the call immediately.

Okay, very, very helpful. All right, so switching gears just a little bit. So if a taxpayer is selected for audit, is that audit conducted by REDA staff, or do you use third-party contingency basis auditors, or a combination?

All taxpayer audits are conducted by our staff.

By in-house staff, okay. And what about the selection criteria? Is the City of Green involved at all, or is it an automated selection?

THE ACCOUNTS THAT ARE SELECTED FOR AUDIT ARE AUTOMATED. WE TRIED TO KEEP THAT, THE SYSTEM TELLS US, NOT TOO MUCH HUMAN INTERACTION TO DECIDE THIS ONE, THIS ONE. SO OUR SYSTEM WILL PRESENT, AS WE DISCUSSED ABOUT BUSINESS RETURNS, THINGS THAT DON'T MATCH BETWEEN THEIR BUSINESS INCOME TAX RETURN AND THEIR WITHHOLDER RETURN. Our system will also, as returns are processing, will throw an error if, for example, a taxpayer in the current year is missing rental income that they had last year, so something doesn't look right. The system is doing most of that identification and presenting those to an auditor then to follow up and look into. okay and it's the city of green involved at all when one is flagged for audit does it come to us for discussion at all or generally no we might come to the city if we have for example um this has happened if there's a large employer in town that we're doing an audit with and things are getting to a point where it may have to result in an assessment or an appeal, we would generally contact your finance director and say, hey, we have an issue with this. We're ready to go forward and just have that discussion if it seems like it's something that's large or sensitive. But generally, the city is not involved in that selection criteria. All right.

Okay, and then I noticed a paragraph about collections in the statement, collections greater than one year old. How does that work? Do you try to collect it with letters, correspondence for a year? And then where does it go? Does it go to our law department or finance?

So we have for past due balances, taxpayers that have filed a return have not paid the balance due. We have a team of in-house collection staff. They will do traditional collection work, telephone calls, letters. As Shelly and Matt both mentioned, we also offer taxpayers the ability to set up payment plans through our website so that we can get those things paid. If we're unsuccessful through our collections team to get that paid, first of all, that collection department is all included in the cost. There's no additional cost for that collection work. The city does have the option to participate in our civil litigation program. where we will file a lawsuit against the taxpayer within the three-year statute of limitations to recover that balance due. We have an in-house legal team, three lawyers and a staff of nine, maybe 10 paralegals. We try to file those cases in small claims court where those amounts are below the threshold for filing in small claims court. Because we're a government, there's a provision in the code, and I cannot remember the section offhand, but basically says if you're a government collecting income tax, you can use non-attorneys in court. And so we send our paralegal staff, so it would be Barberton Municipal Court for the city of Greene, THEY ARE NOT DOING LEGAL WORK. THIS IS MATH. THEY ARE NOT DOING LEGAL ANALYSIS OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT. THEY MEET WITH TAXPAYERS WHO SHOW UP FOR COURT. Set up payment plans. We still give taxpayers opportunity to do monthly payments to pay those balances That's an optional program that the city can join And as as matters Shelley, I can't recall now mentioned because we're using paralegals When we send them to court, it's a very low $35 an hour of time that they're out of the office Doing work only on your behalf

Okay, very helpful. All right, I just have one more question. I'm not sure if it's not really related to resident interaction, more to the agreement we'll be signing. So it says in part five of the council government document that the City of Green must adopt compatible income tax provisions and regulations for collections. So has anyone, City of Green or your staff, looked to see if we have non-compliant rules? And the one I'm thinking of in particular I have a couple kids who went through college and they got a $300 a year income tax credit. And I wasn't sure if that's compliant or if there's other rules, other deductions we're allowing that we have to get rid of. Is there any?

So one of the things that we'll do as part of the onboarding process, our in-house legal team will review your income tax ordinance to look for things that don't look right or that look good. Shelly did make us aware of the $300 credit, and so we're aware that that's out there. What we explained to Shelly is... THE TAXPAYERS THAT WILL BE USING THAT CREDIT LIKELY WON'T BE ABLE TO DO THAT THROUGH OUR ELECTRONIC FILING BECAUSE IT'S JUST NOT SET UP FOR THOSE KIND OF UNIQUE CREDIT STRUCTURES LIKE THAT. BUT WE WILL ADMINISTER YOUR ORDINANCE AS IT'S WRITTEN. WE'LL ADVISE YOU AFTER OUR REVIEW IF THERE'S ANYTHING IN THERE THAT LOOKS LIKE IT NEEDS TO BE CHANGED. WE DO ASK ALL OF OUR MEMBER MUNICIPALITIES TO ADOPT OUR RULES AND REGULATIONS, WHICH ARE THE ADMINISTRATIVE RULES THAT WE USE TO ADMINISTER ORDINANCES UNIFORMLY, COVERS THINGS LIKE HOW WE ISSUE ASSESSMENTS WHEN THAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN, HOW WE APPLY PAYMENTS, THINGS LIKE THAT. WE DO ASK THE CITY TO ADOPT THOSE RULES AND REGULATIONS.

Okay, helpful. So there's nothing that we'll see as a council before we're asked to approve the agreement?

i would expect for the city of green no we we do see ordinances from smaller communities sometimes that we just like you know maybe you need to change a few things before we can do this but i don't expect to see that here okay and just to know right now if somebody is getting that student credit they have to apply on paper through the city of green anyway so you know unfortunately that's not a system that we

That's not a credit that we're getting through e-filing currently. So, you know, that's not something we're losing, you know, that, you know, people have to provide transcripts and file manually to get that credit as it stands currently. And that would be the case with Rita.

Yeah, that was just one example that I was aware of that I made note of. But are there, I mean, have we looked, are there any business deductions that we allow now that are not standard Rita deductions?

I would not expect to see that. As Shelly mentioned, some of the challenges that legislation in Ohio has made much of that uniform. And so there really isn't much room for the city to do anything outside of what the state code allows in terms of deductions for businesses and things like that.

Okay, and that's what I would have expected, being a, I'm a tax professional myself, so that's what I expected, but wasn't sure if there were some, like the tax credit, other provisions that we had built in, so I appreciate that answer. This is all the questions I had, Mr. Humphrey.

Thank you, I just, I'm still in my head about that no cap on, let's say there's a data breach, right? You guys are insurers, any, I don't know what your coverage is, if any cost in excess of your insurance, that could go into your calculations and can raise, you know, what we pay, correct?

ANYTHING THAT THE AGENCY SPENDS IN COSTS IS ALLOCATED ACROSS ALL OF OUR MEMBERS, YES. WE DO CARRY CYBER LIABILITY INSURANCE. I THINK OUR TOTAL IS A $10 MILLION POLICY. ANYTHING OVER AND ABOVE THAT, AGAIN, ANY COST THAT THE AGENCY HAS IS DISTRIBUTED AMONG THE MEMBERS.

JUST ONLINE GOOGLING, THEY HAVEN'T HAD ONE IN TEN YEARS.

We have not had a data breach. We had an incident in 2016 where we switched from, we used to do our backups on removable media, so picture like a DVD, and we would send those offsite to Iron Mountain. When we switched to a more cloud-based backup, we recalled all of our external media from Iron Mountain, opened one of the jewel cases, and it was empty. We did an investigation. We knew what was on that DVD. It wasn't a DVD you could find on the ground and stick it in your PC and see tax returns. We felt confident that that DVD had been destroyed. but we could not concretely point to a destruction log. So we did go through the process as if we had a breach. We notified taxpayers. We knew what was on that DVD. We notified those taxpayers. We worked with our cyber liability carrier, offered credit monitoring for the taxpayers who we knew had information on that piece of removable media. We've had no report that any taxpayer had data compromised. We do feel confident that it was, THAT IT WAS DESTROYED BUT COULDN'T SAVE FOR 100% SURE SO WE DID THE RIGHT THING IT WAS SUPER HARD BUT WE GOT THROUGH IT THAT WAS PROBABLY 2014 OR 15.

OKAY AND THEN LET'S ASSUME THIS GOES INTO EFFECT JANUARY 2027 IT'S GOING TO BE THAT DAY FOUR YOU'RE NOT GOING BACK AND AUDITING PAST YEAR'S TAX RETURNS FOR THE CITY OF GREEN RESIDENCE

there's a potential that we could. So the way that that works, sorry, man, I'm just keep talking. When we bring you over on January 1st, we will convert the prior three years of tax data. So we will bring over three years of tax data for the city of green. If in those records, there is a taxpayer who has not filed a return, but should have, and we have the data from IRS, we will reach out to that taxpayer. So we will do compliance work for any years that we are converting.

But it's just for non-filers. Are you going to be auditing the actual returns themselves with respect to payments and stuff like that?

Generally, that auditing would only be happening if we're going to take one of those taxpayers to court. So anytime we take a taxpayer to court, we put that account through a thorough audit in our legal department to make sure the balances are valid, that all credits have been given, etc., etc., So at that time, we may audit a return for the purpose of taking it to court. We may have to actually reach back out to the city to see, do you have a paper copy, and just make sure that we have everything we need to move forward.

I can see residents, you know, this goes into effect, they're going to audit me for the last three years and get a bunch of P's and penalties that, you know, otherwise I wouldn't get. I mean, that's the question there.

The only instance where that would happen is if we identify that a taxpayer didn't report all their income or they still owe you dollars when those years convert over to us. So we aren't, like, we have three years of data. Let's go through here and see what we can find. But anything that looks like they owe you a filing or owe you money, we will do compliance work on those. Okay.

Thank you.

Yes, Mr. I just wanted to follow up. So I asked a question about 3% and the subsequent discussion where you articulated that some communities do have a higher percentage kind of explains why you want to cover 3%. So I appreciate you doing that clarification because it's not going to be 1.04 for everybody, but that's your average. So thank you.

Yes. And we did provide all of our transaction accounts. We pooled data for Rita, and like the one slide said, they anticipate it will be between like 1.11 to 1.23, based off of how many transactions we have, how much was collected, that kind of thing. And they said that remains pretty consistent based off of, that would be pretty consistent based off of our transaction amounts and the amount collected.

And Shelly, we're at 2.5% now?

2.54%, yeah, to self-collect. Okay, thank you.

Mr. President, did I see you?

Just a quick question. So we have a decent amount of municipal economic development grants, actually, one we're discussing tonight. Is that something you guys are pretty familiar with working with, and is there a process in place to handle that with the city?

YES, WE DO PARTNER WITH OUR COMMUNITIES IF THERE'S CERTAIN THRESHOLDS THAT BUSINESSES NEED TO MEET IN TERMS OF PAYROLL OR OTHER REVENUE THAT THEY'RE BRINGING INTO THE CITY. WE HAVE REPORTING THAT WE CAN PROVIDE TO THE CITY TO HELP YOU DETERMINE IF THEY'RE MEETING THEIR OBLIGATIONS. We also partner with our cities, something that's big right now. If you have a large project that's happening in your community, new construction, we have resources for you to help you get to us the information that we need so that we can make sure that the income tax dollars that you're expecting from those projects are coming in. So we have a business department that will track the contractors that are doing the work on those projects. So we do partner frequently with our members on economic development projects.

okay thank you any other questions from council we did have two individuals sign in three hours ago so i don't know if they're still here but i'll call their names if they want to come up and make a statement regarding rita or ask a question uh daniel deckler mr deckler are you here SITTING PATIENTLY ON THE FRONT ROW. THANK YOU, SIR. SORRY TO MAKE YOU WAIT SO LONG.

THAT'S OKAY. THANK YOU FOR TAKING MY QUESTION. I HAVE BASICALLY TWO QUESTIONS. ONE, HOW ARE THESE SAVINGS GOING TO BE REALIZED WITH A 761,000 PLUS INCOME TAX BUDGET? AND THE SECOND QUESTION IS, WHAT WILL BE DONE WITH THESE SAVINGS?

Okay. Excellent questions. Thank you. I appreciate it, Mr. Dechler. I'm going to go to our Director of Finance to walk us through that.

So the costs around the department come from personnel, which we discussed in executive discussions. Executive session, you know, how we are approaching that. And then the cost to run the department, right? There's software costs. We have secure email costs. We have postage costs. All of the costs to run the department. And I actually have the breakdown, if I can get my computer live again. It's about $400,000 on personnel, and then the rest of the costs are the costs to run the department. We have, you know, obviously all the employees have computers. They have all the equipment associated with computers. We have postage machines. We have a letter mailer, all this stuff that we're leasing and paying for. that go into running the department. One of the largest costs is the collection cost that we are paying Keith Wiener and Associates yearly to do, you know, to outsource our collections to, which again we would get at a much more reasonable cost through REDA, and then our software costs that are associated with running the department. So obviously we have to pay for an e-filing system that is not our software then we have to pay for our software all of those costs that are just inherently associated with running the department in regards to where those savings would go obviously we discussed the impact to our finances in 2027 right so i think initially we're not going to see those savings that first year because of that one year delay in timing and obviously rita holding the three percent that we will get a refund the prior year and then we will continue to work obviously the mayor and city council in future budget years to determine what the priorities are of the city right do we want to pave more roads do we want to do other things with potential cost savings but i think that will be something that's determined in future budget years you know when we're looking at the totality of what the goals of the administration and city council are

YES, PLEASE. COME TO THE MICROPHONE, IF YOU WOULD, MR. DECKLER.

OKAY. THANK YOU FOR THAT. SO DOES THAT MEAN THAT THE CITY OF GREEN WILL ACTUALLY BE ELIMINATING POSITIONS, NOT ONLY POSITIONS BUT PERSONNEL AS WELL? BECAUSE WHAT I'M CONCERNED ABOUT IS THAT MY EXPERIENCE IN DEALING WITH BUDGETS OF THE let's just leave it at that, is that there'll be some personnel, let's say in the income tax department, and those people will just, that money will just be shifted over to another budget, another department. And the net result is that there will be no net savings. And so that's my question about are we going to happen to not only just eliminate positions, but PERSONNEL OR MAYBE MOVE A PERSON OVER TO AN OPEN POSITION IN ANOTHER DEPARTMENT THAT'S ALREADY BEEN BUDGETED. I'M JUST CURIOUS ABOUT THE PERSONNEL ISSUE, SINCE PERSONNEL, AS YOU SAID, $400,000 OF THE $700,000 BUDGET.

you the exact number. So in 2026, $474,000 was budgeted for personnel. Keep in mind the tax administrator position is in that and that has been unfilled since February. And then for the additional cost for all of the things to run the department is $265,000 for a total of $740,000 in 2026.

Yeah, I don't know if you can answer my question about personnel, because I know it's a sensitive issue.

Yeah, I think the mayor can bat that one.

Thank you. I appreciate the question, and it is very much something that is on our mind and hearts. We want to be fair to current employees. And so what we've done is worked with the union. We've advised the employees of other open positions in the city or needs that we recognize. We've encouraged everyone in the tax department to apply for the open positions. there will be an interview process and then we're going to have to sort of let the chips fall there because the employee after interviewing may not want a given position or a director after interviewing an employee may find that that person is or is not appropriate for the position. So we haven't started that process yet, but that's the direction in which we intend to go.

Okay. Well, thank you for your openness on this. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I was going to tell you, Mr. Deckler, when you ask three good questions in a row, you're welcome to ask a fourth one if you wish to, but we appreciate those very good. Thank you for those really good questions. I think probably everybody has those kind of questions on their minds, so thank you very much for asking them. We also had John and Melissa Beckert who signed in, but I don't think that they're here any longer. And so hopefully maybe at our next meeting they can come back and ask the question that they had. Like I said, it was over three hours ago. So any items? This is on second reading, so obviously we'll be requesting time during council meeting if we ever get there. Any items of older new business to come before finance? Then we will adjourn at 8.10.

Thank you, Mr. Humphrey. Our next committee to meet this evening is Environment and Parks, chaired by Mr. Neugebauer.

Thank you, Mr. President. So, just for the record, Rules and Personnel had a one-hour meeting. Finance had two hours and ten minutes. I'm going to try to stay under that in Parks and Rec Committee. We have no items of legislation. Is there any old or new business to come before the committee? Seeing none, we will not meet tonight. Thank you.

Mission accomplished. Next committee is Public Safety, chaired by Mr. DeVitas.

Thank you, Mr. President. Myself, Mr. Humphrey, and Mr. Neuja Bauer are present for Public Safety. We do have a few items tonight, the first of which are two liquor license items, TMP 5409, MAPCO 2035 C1 and C2 liquor license transfer, 4900 South Main Street, Green, Ohio 44319. The second is TMP 5410 Fresh Food Deli Inc. New D1 Liquor License 5 East Kasten Road, Green, Ohio 44319. These two businesses are both located at the corner of Kasten and Main by Nemesillo over there, the first of which Mapco is buying the current business that is there, which is listed on the transfer. We're just acquiring the current licenses that that business holds. The second is a new D1 license for Fresh Food Deli, which gives them the ability to have beer sales. They currently sell wine at this time as far as in some spirits until 1 a.m. That's about it. As per usual, we submitted these to the sheriff's office and They can give us any concerns they have, any incidents they've had. No incidents were brought forward to council's knowledge in the last year at either of these locations. And so at this time, I'll ask committee if there's any issues regarding either of these liquor licenses. And if we would like to request a hearing at the state board, if there is any.

No issues. Okay.

Not on committee. Is there anybody on council who'd have any reason to request a hearing for either of these licenses? Okay. So hearing none, at our regular council meeting, we'll make a motion to not request a hearing at the State Liquor Board for TMP 5409 and TMP 5410. The next item we have is on third reading. It's 2026-R26A. A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE CITY OF GREEN TO ENTER INTO A SECOND AMENDMENT TO THE POLICING CONTRACT, FISCAL YEARS 2024-2026, WITH THE SUMMIT COUNTY SHERIFF TO INCLUDE FLOCK SAFETY CAMERAS TO ENHANCE SERVICES IN THE CITY OF GREEN AND DECLARING AN EMERGENCY. SO WE TALKED ABOUT THIS AT LENGTH AT OUR LAST COMMITTEE AND COUNCIL MEETING. BASICALLY, THIS IS A TWO-YEAR CONTRACT TO THE TUNE OF $82,000. To continue the service that FLOC provides in conjunction with the Summit County Sheriff's Office in our city. I believe there's 12 cameras in our city. These are automated license plate readers. And the Sheriff's Office uses the images, which are stored in a 30-day rolling database, to potentially affect and solve crimes within our city. There was a lot of issues brought forward at our last meeting with regards to privacy, transfer of ownership, safeguards within our sheriff's office, as well as within the actual flock database. Further request of our law director, whoever on council may have been interested in trying to acquire some changes with that contract language. we all submitted comments to our law director, and she forwarded those to the Summit County, who is currently in discussion with Flock, I believe, if they can change any of these sections of their contract. So, Mrs. Dean, is there anything you'd like to add?

Just that Mayor and I also had a video conference with the county that included the sheriff's office so that we had a dialogue with them first to see the receptiveness of the fact that we were gonna be asking for changes to the county contract. And then I did give you guys a deadline, and I think anybody who wanted to wade in, I shared those without sharing names, because I didn't want that to influence the response, but I shared those concerns. In writing to the county and just timing wise, there wasn't really much time to turn around. So I think we had the meeting pretty quickly right after our last council meeting. But then to give you guys time to put it in writing and then we had Friday was a holiday, a government holiday. So this morning I heard back from the county that they were willing to take all of those concerns seriously. to flock, they don't know what the answer's gonna be, but they just couldn't do it by tonight. I'd ask them to do it by today so you guys could have the information and make the decision. One thing I just kinda wanna throw out there procedurally is I decided just to send all concerns to them because if I come back here and let you guys argue about the concerns, whether you wanna amend, whether you agree or not that it's a concern, they may say no, so I thought, well, let's just throw it all out there and let's see what they will agree to. and then you guys can duke it out on the record. So I do want a consensus. I mean, you're either going to be voting on yay or nay on whatever it is as a whole, right? So once we get the language back, which certainly we don't meet again until the end of July, so that's certainly enough time. That's an entire month, right? then we should have that, which may be an amended piece of legislation, or not, I don't know. I don't know until we hear back. So that's kind of my game plan on that.

Thank you, Ms. Steen. I do appreciate you kind of taking the reins on that as well as the city for opening up the discussion with the county. And hopefully this turns into something more beneficial for protecting some of the privacy aspects for our residents while still providing a tool that can be used to our sheriff's office benefit. So thank you for doing that. Hopefully after five weeks we'll have something to look at or vote on. But with that, I figured we would just take time, and I will open this up to Mr. Mager for further comments.

Director Dean, can you share that email you sent to the county?

Sure.

Thank you.

Yeah, I apologize. I'm sorry. I sent it to the mayor. I didn't send it to you. I sent it to all of council. Sorry about that. Thanks, Mr. Mager.

Mr. Neuschafer.

Yeah, just to add on, you know, you mentioned to solve crimes, but the sheriff's also used it to solve other things like missing persons. That was just on the record. There's other uses as well.

Thank you. Okay. Well, before we move on, does anybody have any other further comments about FLOP? Okay. So in our regular meeting, I will ask for time on 2026-R26A. That concludes the items of business on our agenda. Is there any old or new business for safety?

Okay.

Hearing none, we're adjourned.

Thank you, Mr. DeVitas. Our next committee to meet this evening is Planning, Community, and Economic Development, chaired by Mr. Noble.

Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. DeVitas, Mr. Humphrey, and I are all present today, and we do have a number of items of legislation, so we will meet. The first item is on third reading. It is a third reading item. It's 2026-R25, a resolution approving the final plat and performance bond for Stony Creek Estates Phase 5 and declaring an emergency. Again, so this is for 27 R1 single-family lots in Stony Creek. The lot sizes vary from approximately a third to a half of an acre, and it's really the last phase of the backside of this development. PZZ did approve this with a vote of five to zero and the performance bond is for $844,590.53. So at our last meeting, Mr. Wheathey showed a picture of what this looks like out there, but there's a lot of activity already on the backside of Stony Creek right now with the previous phases being built. And so this will extend off the back of that. So anybody on committee have anything else that they want to talk about on this? Council. Anybody from the administration? Okay. So again, this is on third reading. So during our regular council meeting, I'll make a motion to adopt 2026-R25. Next, we have item 2026. This is also on third reading. 2026-10, an ordinance to amend section 157.134, subsection 5, subsection C, design and layout. Chapter 157 Planning and Development Code of the Codified Ordinances of the City of Green. So this is an amendment to our planning code associated with drive-thrus, specifically mandating creating bypass lanes and drive-thrus. There is a public hearing scheduled for Tuesday, July 28th, 2026 at 7 p.m. at Council Chambers and in light of the current time.

I think we'll withhold any discussions on this until our next... Planning Commission did recommend it for approval at their last meeting. However, they did ask us to make sure that it read that there was only a singular. We're going to look at the verbiage, make sure it's only a singular. Because we have a double... drive-through lane drive-through lanes they're not asking that we're making four lanes out of that that there's a singular bypass they just ask to make sure that that's clarified within so you may see a small amendment that's all okay you'll see that before the july 28th meeting okay thank you anybody have any discussions on this we'll go straight across to everybody

Okay, as such, I'll be asking for time on 2026-10. The next item is on second reading. It's 2026-R24, a resolution authorizing a municipal economic development grant agreement with Hoover Cation LLC and declaring an emergency. So this is an economic, I'll use the word economic development grant. That's the appropriate term, right? For a new business in the city, right? The grand total of the grant is for $12,000, and if you break it down, we're talking about bringing seven employees with a gross collection of $400,000 in, and the grant would basically be for three years at a rate of 50%. So, Mr. Wheathey, do you want to say anything else?

That's correct. It's pretty standard. We've done small and we've done large municipal economic development grants. The most recent was today's classroom, which was very similar to this very few employees, but it allowed them to come in and take over some space that was available. And hopefully grow that business and that's the whole. Background behind this is. being able to bring them in, give them some incentives, usually for some renovations maybe or something to that effect, and kind of hopefully grow. So the other important part about this is that even though it's a three-year payback where we share the income tax that's collected and it's based on income tax, it's not income tax give back, That's the calculator on this. The other side of it is there's also a monitoring period that goes through more years beyond that, that if you would happen to leave the community, we have the right to request a clawback on that. We have done that twice. They've paid the funds. So, you know, sometimes you... Businesses just decide to move, but we've been able to collect that money back. So We've been successful in that regard as well. So the idea here is just simply to help a smaller business Grow and locating grain we did start this process in March of this year. It just kind of got Behind on making it to legislation Thank You.

Mr. Wheatley Mr. Cation do you want to You were signed up to speak, so why don't you tell us about what you're planning to do within the city.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Council, for having me. And thank you for considering this legislation for us. This, yeah, started back in March. And with my personal... Councilman Mr. Meagher and he directed me to Wayne and Wayne got ahold of me that same day. So that process, just so you know, worked very well. Everyone got ahold of me at that time. We were considering other locations as well, although I'm a green resident so. Green was my preference I wasn't the sole decision maker in that for the firm and so it was nice to have that kind of reach out immediately to see you know that the City of Green is interested in bringing people in this is one of three locations for us we're also in Fairlawn and Cuyahoga Falls at the at the present time And so this is an expansion for us, too. This is a moving of our Portage Lakes location to green. And so far, so good. We are almost totally open for business, but we have had already two hires, both green residents, two new hires who will be here in green, or both green residents. So that's pretty cool. The cost of this or the funds from this will help us with some renovations to this space and with some furniture purchases, things like that. It is, you know, not a huge amount of money, and yet it is also helpful to defer some of those costs of moving to a new space. One of our options was to stay roughly in our location in the same building, but not in the same space. So it was great to feel welcome here in Green, and happy to answer any questions.

So just for the public, this is a law practice?

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah, so we have 14 attorneys as of today with three law partners, myself included, and 27 total employees. At least seven will be in green. I'm hoping more. So that's where we're at as of today.

Okay, thank you. Is there any questions from counsel? Okay, thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Okay, this item is on second reading, so at the appropriate time during a regular council meeting, I'll ask for time on 2026-24.

I did, but I apologize. I was just going to ask what's the potential in this space, how many people he could have.

So we've got five offices in there. We'll have three attorneys immediately, and then there's a big space for staff. So there's a potential up to 10 employees in the current space.

Thank you, Mr. Cajun.

Thank you, Mr. Noble.

Thank you, Ms. Dean.

She's my peripheral vision right now. Okay, so again, I'll ask for time on 2026-R25. Is there any older new business for planning, community, economic development? Okay, hearing no more, adjourn at 826.

Thank you, Mr. Noble. Our next committee to meet is Transportation, Connectivity, and Stormwater, chaired by Mr. Mager.

Thank you, Mr. President. All members of the Transportation, Connectivity, and Stormwater Committee are present, myself, Mr. Brandenburg, and Mr. Noble. However, there are no items of legislation before us. Is there any items of new or old business? There's just one thing I want to bring up to the administration. I've been contacted by a couple of residents in Green, especially on some of the major thoroughfares. There's been a lot more littering and trash accumulating. Maybe we can talk about, maybe offline, about putting together another beautiful Green campaign or something like that, get some signage out, maybe talk to the Sheriff's Department to keep an eye on some littering, probably ramp up some enforcement. I live off of Heckman, and I see quite a bit in my area, mostly the major thoroughfares. So I don't know if that's something that's been brought to the administration's attention, but I've heard at least twice since our last meeting. Anything else? New or old business?

Hearing none, we will adjourn. Thank you, Mr. Mager. Our final committee to meet this evening is Intergovernmental and Utilities, chaired by Mr. Brandenburg.

Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Noble, Mr. Mager, and I are all available to meet. However, we have no items of legislation. Any items of old or new business? Hearing none, we will not meet.

Okay, thank you everybody. That concludes our committee meetings. We will take our normal break and we will return at 8.40. We are adjourned.