City Council - Regular Meeting

All right. Good afternoon. I'd like to call the February 9th, 2026 workshop of the Grim City Council to order. I'm Mayor PJ Connie. Be presiding over today's workshop. First, I'd like to call Honor City Clerk for the roll call. Yes, sir. Mayor Connelly here. Mayor Tim Corbin here. Council member Jones here. Council member Hardy here. Council member Scully here. Council member Robinson here. Council member Willis here. All right. Mayor Connley have a quorum. Thank you very much. We'll move on to the approval of the agenda. Mr. Manager, any recommend changes? I have no changes here. All right. We got a motion to approve. Motion approve. Second. All right. Motion been made by Council Member Robinson. Second by Mayor Pro Tim Foreman. All those in favor say I. Oppos say nay. Motion passes 6. Move on to new business. Item number one.

All right. Thank you, Mayor. Item number one, fire rescue staffing and operations update. I will call forward our Greenville Fire Rescue Chief Jeremy Anderson for the presentation and thank everyone from Fire Rescue for being here tonight. Yes. Thank you for being here representing.

All right.

Well, good afternoon. Um happy to be here with you all. So, uh, this is my first presentation to council as the fire chief. So, I'm excited about it. Appreciate you letting me be here this afternoon and talk to you a little bit about something I'm very passionate about. But I also want to point out, um, the great work that not only the fire rescue did, but the city as a whole did in the winter storm situation. Um, just everybody worked together flawlessly. It was something very, very cool to see from the inside and I hope it played well on the outside and we kept in constant communication with the council and let everybody know what was going on. But I think it went just about as well as it could go. Just want to highlight that before I get started. I think y'all need a hand.

Thank you. Good job.

All right, so let's get into this. Just a little bit of just some reminders about the fire department. Maybe some things you didn't know. Greenville Fire Rescue is the 11th largest fire department in North Carolina. However, we have the eighth highest call volume statewide at all fire departments. Um we're only one of 300 ISO class one and accredited fire departments in the world. Not in the state, not in the nation, in the world. That means we have achieved outside accreditation. And we also have an insurance services rating which al which matters you it lowers u t um insurance rates. So that is directly tied to business and residential insurance rates. So it's very important that we maintain that and we just got that uh last year. So that's something that we're going to work hard to maintain. that are specific requirements, which is kind of some of the stuff I'm gonna talk about a little later. Um, we are the only firebased EMS system in the state at of this size. So, we we do fire and EMS. It's almost like we're two departments merged into one. Other fire departments, especially in the large metros, do not do this. So, we are completely different than everybody else. So, in station uh we have station 7 in 2023, improving response times to the the fire tower road corridor of the city. Um, station 8, which is on your consent agenda for tonight's meeting, is currently in design phase, and I hope we can get that awarded tonight. Um, we also, something big is huge for us, and it's making waves across the state and the nation is we're going to a 2472 staffing model. So, currently we work 24 on, 48 off. That's what our shifts work. U, we're adding a extra day off because just the amount of work load and work life balance is just not good for our employees and it showed up in our retention. So, what we're trying to do is extend that. Basically, we're adding extra shifts. So, instead of three shifts, we're going to have four shifts. So, we're just h we're happy council supported that move and we're trying to do that model and get it implemented. So, we'll do that on March the 7th is going to be our transition date and we're really excited about that. Everybody in the department's excited about it and people across the the state and the nation are looking at us to see how we're going to accomplish it and how quickly we can get it done because there's a lot of people out there that just don't think we can do it. So, I I I

really like that challenge. So, I'm ready to get that done and make sure we No pressure.

No pressure. That's right. And we uh like I said, we're committed to this staffing model has to align with our accreditation and our ISO class one. Um there's all kinds of uh rules and stipulations that go along with that. So if we're going to maintain our accreditation and maintain our our highest class one rating, uh we've got to do some make sure we follow that up with our staffing model. So our department, just looking at it right now, we have 176 one positions and five administrative positions. Um, like I said, we're ranked eighth in North Carolina for total call volume. Right this moment, uh, we've done a, this 2472 transition has been great for us. It's been a game changer. Um, we had many, many open positions. I don't know how many u, the manager may be able to tell you, but at one time we were severely understaffed. Uh, right now with those 14 open positions, we have 10 in the lateral hire process, which means we really only have, if all that plays out like it should over the next month or so, we're going to have four open positions. Um, so that's great. We also have a new hire process for the upcoming fiscal year for our uh projected um positions we're going to get in the new fiscal budget. And uh we have 70 new hire applicants that are going to be under review this coming up month. So we had 140 apply and 70 made it to the the interview process.

And I will say I've been see 11 years and I have never seen us to where we are with our our vacancies. This is this is insanely awesome. This is us, everyone noticing just how awesome of a department that we have. With the new applicant, new hire applicants, are those just a mixture of like people that are just gone through the academy or are they people that are coming from different departments that may have some other skills? So, the new hire applicants will be people that are not trained at all.

So, the 14 of the 10 lateral hires are people that come from other departments. Several of them were with our department previously and are coming back, which we really like. We like to see that because we've already trained them. So that significantly reduces our cost of training. Obviously, we have to train these new people. Takes six months. I I'm pretty sure it wasn't me. That was something. You're wrong.

Um here's some uh here's some statistics. Uh for 2025, 22,000 calls for service. That is a tremendous amount of calls for service that these these folks are doing every day. Um about 300 fires. um you know 18,000 EMS calls. I do want to highlight that. Again, that's something different that we do that nobody else does and it increases the demand on our system. So, we've got to make sure in our staffing model we're allowing for that because while the 2472 model is great, we can't overwork continue to overwork the staff day over day. The the staffing model really doesn't fix the how much work is done in a day's time. So, we got to work towards that. Some additional things you can see calls by district. Um station one obviously is the the downtown um university community. Station two is the hospital district. So we'd expect most of those calls are inflated because of the amount of EMS calls from doctor's offices, nursing homes, and things like that that are immediately adjacent to the hospital. And you can just see as we go through um through the stations down there, we are we are busy every day. Now, this graph really jumped out to me when I started doing research about this. These are the top 10 fire departments in North Carolina by call volume. And you can see, you know, you'd expect Charlotte, Raleigh, larger towns. You see Charlotte has 43 stations. When you get down to Greenville Fire Rescue, and I put EMS in parenthesis because again, we're the only one on this list that does transport EMS service. We're significantly behind on our stations. Um, we have to have new stations to meet the call volume, to meet the demands, to meet the growth, so we can maintain uh the service level that we're currently providing to the citizens. Um, I like to compare us to Asheville because you see here at population, we're about the same. Asheville and Greenville. They have five more stations than we do. They don't do transport EMS. They also have about 290 employees. We're doing it with 180. So, you can see our people are doing tremendous work just to meet the call volume demands that are going on now. And we don't want to lose that momentum. So, that's why we got to make

sure we're fully staffing not only the 2472 transition, but also uh station 8, which is upcoming. And Jim, I'd like to also add that's based off of today's population. We are getting ready to see significant growth in certain portions of our um of our community. Specifically, when we start talking about station 8 in that area where station 8 will be popping up, we could have more of a thousand homes in that location in the next 5 to seven years. So remember, this is just as we stand today. That doesn't even include the Mills Road, the Highway 43, all these areas of growth that we're going to see absolutely explode in the next few years. And that comes with increased tax base as well. So remember that as we go through this pro this process.

Yeah. And this and this uh census number does not include any any ECU students that are on campus housing or off campus. Um so you're looking at I think there's roughly 5 to 6,000 students that live on campus and you know obviously all the students that live immediately around campus. So, um, they're not they're not included in our census numbers. So, we're well over 100,000 on a day-to-day basis. And so, all this being said, what are we getting for this? Um, you know, our response times right are anywhere from 5 to 7 minutes based off call type. Um, but EMS wise, our Ross rate, which is a I want to make sure I explain this correctly, return of spontaneous circulation. That means if you go into cardiac arrest in this town, you have a 35 to 40% chance of us getting your heart started back and you getting a blood pressure and us transporting you to the hospital. That is well far and above the national average. It's because we have so many trained people that can get right on top of the call. That is key in chain of survival, getting people there early to do early interventions and we do it I think we do it better than anybody and I'm not biased but I do think we do it better than anybody. Um, last year we had 18 people who were in cardiac arrest in this town that ended up walking out of the hospital. That's that's well far and above any national averages going on. It's just impressive um what we can do on the EMS side. We're not just a fire department. We we do more things. Yes, sir.

Chief, do I still understand that on every EMS call is a a paramedic. Is that still correct?

That is true. There's a paramedic that does an assessment on every patient that's transported or, you know, refuses transport. Any anybody that calls for a medical reason, a paramedic, they get a paramedic assessment is correct. So, just a reminder, there were two staffing studies that were done um over the last 5 years and um they recommended three additional stations. The rule of thumb out there in the in the fire department industry is for every 10,000 citizens, you should have a fire station. Um and you see we're at 100,000. So that would be roughly 10 stations. So we're a few behind. Uh station seven open and we're fully operational now. Station eight, we're planning on the 43 north around the GU complex area. I'll talk about a little bit more about that in a minute. And in future stations 9 and 10 are recommended for growth areas. That was all done of a study that was done a couple years ago. So the important thing to remember about this, we're going to talk about a lot of numbers in a minute. These are two things that are happening simultaneously. The 2472 schedule change is affecting us right this moment. We're trying to fix that and add a fourth shift with our seven stations. Also, we have station 8 coming up. So, we need to plan ahead for how we can't just wait till station 8 opens and say, "Hey, I got to have 40 40 people at one time." That's not a good way to manage the budget or plan like that. So, we need to need to let you know what is coming up so you can better prepare um when you make your decisions. So, the 2472 staff model, we've already talked a little bit about that. that was approved last year and we're really happy about that. Um full implementation. Uh we're expecting by 2028 we should have that fourth shift completely in intact. What we're doing now is um we're making the transition to four shifts, but some of our employees will have to work a couple extra days to make up the difference until we can get people hired on. Um you also and and we we definitely appreciate this. $450,000 was allocated for PPE uniforms and equipment. This is another thing I want to point out. If we're adding people, we got to add uh money in our discretionary budgets also so we can outfit those firefighters and turnout gear and things

like that. Anything with fire department information or fire department on it period is expensive and I know that and I understand that and we try do our best to manage it, but we do have to provide uh PPE and things like that so we can um we can make sure they're well equipped. So station 8 uh again capital project that was approved in 2025 as an additional station. Um, this the reason we're going into 43 north area. Obviously, I showed you station two was our busiest area. This will be a sister to the station two district. So, it'll take a little bit of the call pressure off. It'll also allow for when station two units are out, you can get units into, uh, that area quicker. Um, also, uh, anticipate we'll complete that by 2028 and we've allocated $600,000 for design fees, which again is on the consent agenda tonight. Um, what will station 8 do for us? So there um the span of control on anything uh optimally is five. That's what one person can control whether it's uh fire stations or projects or whatever. About five is is the general um where you want to be. You know, seven is the most. So we're at seven stations. We have a battalion chief now that's in charge of the entire city. All seven stations. Once we get station eight, we're going to have to divide it up into two battalions. Similar how the police does in their zones, how they divide up into different zones. we have to do the same thing for a couple reasons. One, one person can't be asked to manage 50 to 60 people. That's just that's not not reality. And two, um, on on safety sensitive issues when we go to structure fires and things like that, we have to have that supervision there to make sure things are being done safely. So, we'll divide it the city up into two battalions, which will add another battalion chief working each day. So, for one battalion chief, we'll have to have two. So, opening station eight, we will we'll need a few more positions than we will for stations nine and 10. All right. So, our proposed staffing plan, and this is this where we get into the numbers, we need 36 positions to

stabilize a 2472 transition, and we'll need 40 positions to staff station 8. So, that's going to put us at 76 positions. Um, this will be a phase to align with budgets and for the construction timeline. Everything works out on time. So, here's what it looks like uh to me. 27, we're going to need 12 positions. 28, we're going to need 22. 29 will need 22 to continue for that station 8 buildout. In 2030, we fully implemented the 2472 transition. And in 2030,31 and 32, we'll add 10 positions to finalize station 8 staffing for when it goes online. So,

and that'll be absorbed through the budget, through the growth in the tax base from adding all these additional houses that we have throughout the community. And also, we've been continuing to phase in over the last two years for 2472. who've already already built in at least 10 positions a year into the normal operations of the budget. So again, the staff and growth by year and I just really want to make make it clear that these are two different projects. This is a 2472 and the station 8 are just happening at the same time. So you know 22 positions in 28 29 then we'll drop back to 10 for 2030 and through 31. Um, this ensures long-term service stability uh for our department. So, here here's the here's the do something or do nothing. If we don't do anything, it's going to increase our overtime cost because whatever we do, the hours have to be covered. So, if we don't add positions, we'll just have to cover with our current staff with overtime. Um, that's not something our our people really want to do, and it's not really um physically responsible because we'll be paying overtime, and we know we have hours that need to be covered. um response times will grow. We're going to get higher injury burnout and turnover risk. And I can tell you from experience, we've already been to decreased staffing levels and that does increase turnover. Um that's kind of got us in the spot we were in before. Um increased liability and exposure to litigation because we're late, you know, being on, you know, we're not where we're supposed to be. We don't have enough vehicles and stations to cover the calls that are coming in. And we would most definitely take a hit on our ISO class one our credit nation. um if we if we fund a plan or we or we fund something similar, um we can predict those staffing costs cuz they'll be aligned with the growth in the city. As Michael was just saying, as we annex property, build houses, build new complexes, and things like that, um that'll kind of cover some of the costs with the property taxes. Maintain or improve response time citywide. Again, I told you 5 to seven minutes. If you call 911 this city, somebody and it's a fire

EMS emergency, somebody's going to be there is going to show up. We we do that 90% of the time. um that is well above um the NFPA guidelines. It improve our firefighter wellness and retention. We can already see how that's happening now. Um it reduces our legal risk and sustains our elite service ratings such as our class one and our accreditation models. So why does this matter to you? Uh if we do it correctly, the phase staffing is going to prevent the future spikes and allows for planned and manageable growth. We're not going to build station 8 and I'm going to come here and tell you I need 40 people. that's that's not the city budget can't handle that. But if we do it and space it out over time because we know these two things are happening, we'll be able to make sure that that doesn't occur. Um liability reduction, it's going to reduce response delays, firefighter fatigue. When firefighters are fatigued, they get hurt, they make mistakes, and that opens us up to municipal risk. Growth readiness, our staffing keeps pace with annexations, population growth, and new development. Like we just talked about if we space it out over time as a city grows and we grow with it. We just have to make sure the fire department is growing as the city does. The accreditation protection, we definitely don't want to lose one. If we lose that and we go back to even a class two, it really is going to affect the businesses here in time. They're going to see their um the reductions in the insurance ratings and the insurance premiums they're paying now are going to go back up and we definitely have a impact on our accreditation and service reliability. It ensures consistent EMS and fire response levels that the community expects. right this minute, five to seven minutes, they see a firet truck or ambulance pull up when they call. That stretches out to 10 minutes, outcomes change, such as those ros rates and CPR. When we pull up on a call right this minute, if somebody's in cardiac arrest, we expect to get them back. I think people, we almost take it personally if we don't. And we know we don't sometimes play a part in that outcome, but I mean, we expect to get people back and have positive outcomes. If we if we extend those response times

out, uh I can't promise you that's still going to be the case. So that kind of concludes the presentation. Is there any questions that I can answer for you? Yes, sir. If we were to go to a lose our ISO1 and go to two, can you tell me how much that can affect the insurance for fire and casualty here in Pit County?

I can't tell you the exact number, but I can tell you the percentage will increase. Um I don't normally once after you. So it's class 1 to 10 is how it works. Um 10 is unincorporated, no fire protection. One is the best you can get. We're in Greenville's a class one. Residential homes get affected up until about a class four and then the rest of it is pretty much on businesses. So it'll hit businesses first. A residential homeowner might not see a lot of difference, but the businesses will definitely see an impact and would increased premiums. Okay. Thank you.

I would like to also make a comment for Jeremy. Thank you, Jeremy. It's a great job. I think that uh I could give numerous examples numerous examples of how we have followed the same model over the last 10 years to have a plan of action. This is a five-year plan doesn't happen overnight. It's a methodical plan that grows as the city grows. And this will put us in an outstanding position if all we do stick to the plan. We got to stick to the plan. This is going to put us exactly where we need to be. And we're already shooting seeing the the fruits of this are our fire rescue, the staffing, people who want to come here. Same thing with our police department. Our public safety all the way around, both fire rescue and police is just knocking it out of the park. We just need to stay the course and stick to the plan.

What's Thank you very much, Chief. What's the timeline on 9 and 10? Um we have already um have property right now for station 9 and 10. So as soon as we get through the process we got to get down probably about two more years. Two two more years. Then we'll start looking at the design of the next two. We got to get this next one under our belt too. So we've already got the property. We've already land banked that and then we'll start as we get about halfway into this process start moving toward forward the next one. What's the timeline for eight? Four uh three years. Okay, good. That's what I said today. Well, you were right then. Okay, that's good. Only been doing this 11 years.

Better you than to me. But it's a 5year phasing in plan. But I'll say though, like in the 11 years, we've only opened up one station in 11 years. So that I mean that goes back to your point about making sure that you stick to the plan and be aggressive because we've seen the amount of people that have moved into Greenville and North Carolina in general. And you know, people get here and they pay their taxes, they're going to expect a good quality service. And sounds like we're doing an outstanding job right now. We are where we are today and there's nothing we can do about the past,

but as the city has grown, the level of service that these individuals are dealing with has grown substantially and we have not done a adequate job of keeping up with the growth of the of our services. What we're trying to do is correct that path and we've got a plan. We just again got to stick to the plan. Certainly a good plan because I think today we heard at lunch that we're one of the fastest growing states in the country. Um and it doesn't seem to be an end to that and it seems it's only going to grow. So I know we're going to grow. So it's good to have a plan like this and be looking forward instead of having to come to us and say we need 40 positions now. So it's great planning

and we have not uh tried to beat around the bush. Public safety is my number one priority. It is plain and simple. That's our job as a city is to protect our people. Is it uh and I think you had said I guess our busiest our busiest station is is it two? Was that correct? Is that the station that is currently handling where station 8 will go.

So that will take some of the pressure off station 8. So they station two responds right this minute. If there was a call, they was to out to all the way out to Ironwood. um with all the other stuff they got going on right there around the hospital, excuse me, around the hospital area, you know, they still have to respond out to Ironwood. Um the similar situation is going to happen down on the Mills Road area. So, we got to be be aware of that. We're looking at that and trying to make sure we cover, but yes, it will take some of the pressure off station two.

I had one question from somebody today. Um so the in the event that there is so like let's say when when 8 is built um let's say that there's a fire that takes place in Rock Springs which is going to be right down the street from there. Their rural fire department takes that call. Right. And we have an agreement that we assist with that. Is that right?

That's correct. Matter of fact, last week we met with our automatic aid partners and it's a lot of our volunteer agencies and including the town of Winterville who's not a volunteer agency in or adjacent to Greenville and we try to we're trying to repair some of those relationships that may have been strained at some time. We're also trying to enhance them. So we'll be helping them. They're going to come and help us which will also take some of the pressure while we're trying to trying to grow. So yes, we're definitely working on that. Okay.

And not to steal Don Optic and Thunder tonight and we we keep talking about station 8. You're thinking, well, where the heck is that going to go? We are uh in negotiations right now with GUC for a donated piece of property, three acres adj adjacent to their operation center off of 43. So that's on the perfect location. It's kind of off to the side of where all the residential is going to be. So right there, right beside their operation center point for consideration just in listening to everything that's been said, you know, nobody um second guesses that we support public safety by by any means and we're going to support our um fire department and our police station. One of the things that I remembered hearing was that, you know, if we stick to the plan and annexations and um approving developments and so I know that we have over the past few years um had some differences of views on how we approve annexations and how we approve developments. And so I think I bear that in mind when that's a part of the plan and if that's the way that we're going to fund it when we're talking about tax base then to me it takes away a bit of our discretion. Now, not to say that it's not warranted and that's, you know, that's the direction that we want to go down and that's part of the plan, but I am cognizant of the fact that that's a part of the plan.

That's why that's why we're presenting this to you so that we can have that as a priority moving forward. So, you know, that as we're going down this road that you know, if if our if our community is going to continue to grow, you got to be able to serve it from a from a public safety perspective. So, I mean that's that's part of the the strategic planning process. Uh, yes. And quite frankly, I would say that's what we should have been doing 15 years ago, you know.

Yeah. And not to say that we've not taken into consideration, you know, how our community is growing and serving the public, but you know, there are other things that we've considered as far as location and infrastructure and all the things, but just wanted to notate that that, you know, that would be in the back of my mind, but knowing it's a part of the plan and it's a part of how we're going to make all this happen. So, yeah. Anything else? And

mayor, to your point, clear, uh, I have my 20-y year anniversary date coming up the end of this month that I've been with the city, and we have built one fire station in the time that I've worked here. Um, and our call volume has gone up by 12,000. So, um, that's just some just some food some food for thought to add on to that. And at that time when I started, our shifts had 35 people working every day. Today, our shift minimum staff is 38. So, just that's a lot more work. It's being spread over very few people. You got to admit that was a really nice fire station we built. It was a nice It was worth the wait. Not discounting. We don't need more of them, but that was a really nice one. It was I don't know if you're going to see another one that night.

I saw I saw I saw the projected amount of $4.5 million. I said, "Oo, that's a far cry from when we spent this dude. We're going to make it functional but practical." How about the We'll save that for another day. There's a good story there.

Well, and thank you, Chief, and everybody here um for the work that you're doing because it's obvious that you've been understaffed um and under supported for a long time. Uh we're two or three stations behind. We're a lot of staffing behind. Um so, just thank you. I'm sure we'll we would all agree uh to give you our heartfelt thanks for the work that you're doing. um without the full support for the past while, however long, um to be able to have a class one department, uh and and provide the level of service that you do is just incredible. Um so, thank you um from the bottom of my heart and keep up the good work and we will do our best to be aggressive um to try to support you better and get these things built.

I appreciate that. and our people our people feel the support that this council and this city management team has given them. So that they 100% feel that and they're they're doing their best and they're they're willing to be flexible and work with you. But they just that's why I had some here. I need them to see the path that we're going down just for transparency. That's something I want to be big about. That's why I thought those are we don't need to take 20 more years to fix what the problem is. Let's try not to do that. I don't think that'll be a good outcome. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. All right.

All right. All right, moving on. Item number two, fiscal year 202526 midyear budget update. I'll now call forward our chief financial officer, Jacob Joiner, for an awesome presentation. All right, we're going to go over the midyear update for uh fiscal year 26. Um kind of where we stand today. Uh started with a budgeted revenues of 117 uh.6 million. Um not really changed much on the budget side so far to date. Um as far as what we actually collected, we're at 68 just over 68 million as of uh December 31st. And that's in line. Property taxes usually come in front load at the beginning of the year. So, our revenues will start to kind of slow down as we move to the end of the year. Um, in expenses, uh, we are currently budgeted at $124.8 million in expenses. Uh, we have spent, uh, 56.8 today, uh, to date.

68 million. How much of that is property tax revenue? About 40 so far to date. Um, sales tax, we don't record our first sales tax um, revenue until September. So, we'll still have 8 months at this point. And that's our other large source of revenue. I think if we were right from looking at the financials this morning, I think was it 45 million for property tax roughly that we get collect on annual basis. That's right. So, about 5 million still outstanding. That's right. Yeah. And uh you know if you look at it by the end of the year we'll probably we'll probably collect almost everything but about$1 $150,000 of that.

The receivable at the end of the year will be about $150,000 which is an insane collection rate. I mean that's like 99.7 or something like that. I mean it's just taxes you lose your house. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's not Martin. Got a little got a little leverage. So, uh, Martin County. Well, strange. Oh, boy.

For, uh, this year's budget, we have appropriated $7.2 million of fund balance. Um, if everything works out as budget goes, that would be planned spending out of our reserves. Um, but doesn't always work out that way. We think we're going to come out about break even this year. Um, go a little bit more detail about the revenues. Um, as I said, to date, we have uh $68.3 million collected. Property tax is far and away the largest amount of that at uh just over 38 million, sales tax at 11 million. Uh followed by the money received from GC at 4.5 and utilities franchise tax at 3.7 million. Um of these amounts, uh they're kind of right in line where we were um project the year to end up. We're um anticipating any about $120 million. Uh that's largely driven by sales tax coming in much higher than expected and I'll kind of get into that in a little bit. But most of the growth that we're seeing is coming from sales tax this year. Um but those four revenue sources I listed, they make up 80% of our city revenues. When we look at how we're doing and where we're at, those are the ones that drive almost all of our decision- making and where we're at as a city. Um, uh, historically tax rates for the city of Greenville. Uh, this is going back to, uh, 2002. I think I'm going have to start trimming the chart a little bit. Got many years showing there, but you can see over time the city's tax rate has generally fallen as a city has grown. Um, and we're currently at a 39.54 uh, tax rate. Uh, where that kind of puts us is in Pit County. Uh, puts us well below all the other cities. Um, every other city has to pay I think it's 5 uh five 5.95 cents um for EMS service. City of Greenville

provides our own so our citizens don't have to pay that one. Um regionally uh city is uh once again one of the lower ones just above Newburn but below Kinston, Rocky, Mount Wilson and Washington. Um, and then, uh, against our peers, we are lower than everybody other than Wilmington, who just dropped theirs to 28.25 cents, but we are lower than Asheville, Concord, uh, High Point, Gastonia, and Jacksonville. And there is just a comparison to all those, we are down at the bottom of just above Wilmington. uh revenues uh tend to stay stable year-over-year. In property taxes, we see a modest growth of about 2% per year um outside of revaluation years. So, we would anticipate revenues come in slightly higher than they did last year. Um and to kind of talk about property tax, uh what there is kind of going on in Raleigh right now with the state legislature is they're taking a look at property taxes in the city uh or in pretty much all cities of the state. I think across the board in state, we've seen huge spike in property values. Um Greenville, I think we saw about 40 40 45% increase in real property. Other places are seeing 60 to 70%. And um legislator on Raleigh are starting to take a look at it. So they're establishing a task force to look at some possible reforms. Not much has really come out yet. This is brand new task force. Um, but they're going to really focus on how to enhance property tax relief for low-income, elderly, or disabled citizens and veterans and try to reduce the tax burden while also not harming local government's ability to

pay their bills as well. Um, and during the 2026 session is when they anticipate uh reporting on their findings. So, that's something we'll be keeping an eye on uh over the next year. um sales tax. Uh everybody knows North Carolina has a 7% sales tax. Of that 4.75% stays with the state. Uh the county gets a quarter of a percent and the remaining 2% is distributed to the county and the municipalities within the county. Uh and Pit County does that on a per capita basis. So if Greenville's population grows um faster than the uh other places in Pit County, we'll get a larger share of that pie. But

it's usually running about 50%. Wouldn't you say? So you can just say one of those two%'s usually the cities.

Um here we uh uh last year about this time we were real concerned about sales tax. It had been stagnant for about two years at that point and a lot of places in North Carolina were seeing um negative growth actually and we were kind of feeling fortunate that we were only treading water. Um however, this year we've seen a huge spike in sales tax. We're up city of Greenville's up 10% year-over-year. Um it's been consistent every month that we're seeing that growth. So we feel pretty confident at this point that that will continue through the end of the year. Um and that growth actually started probably about May of last year. Um so it's been going on for a little while now. We're seeing these increased revenues. Um,

and if you could go back to that for a second, and

if you look at what where we were last year in the state and then the ARPA funding had been approved by the feds back in like what 2021 and all these projects started to pop up across all governmental units across the country and the state and and way this works is the city of Greenville, Pit County, we pay the taxes, but then we have to get a refund back on them. So the the the thought is is last year we saw all those tax refunds. I mean you can you can mark it down. You can go back to four months last year where we saw a significant reduction in our sales tax receipts and you can correlate that back to the the nonprofit and the governmental units sales tax refunds on that. So if it had not been for those onetime monies, we actually probably would have seen even more growth last year. Now we don't have those refunds. So now you're seeing that pick back up to what a normal growth rate would be.

If that makes sense. It does.

Um and with that growth, we're um anticipating sales tax to come in about 335 million uh for this year. Um one of the other uh major revenue sources would be the uh transfer we received from GU. Uh we call it the GC turnover. Um this is the formula of how they calculate that. It's based on their audited financial statements, but it's just their um capital assets minus the long-term debt uh multiplied by 6% and they'll distribute that um monthly throughout the year. Um and this is uh five-year trend of that. Um we usually see the step up when they build um a lot of their capital assets when they issue their debt and go build these um long distribution systems. Um but it usually stays fairly stable outside of that.

And about probably about 8 years ago, we changed the formula between the city and the GU to to use a an averaging method. So we didn't see any various swings. If you go back to pro the to the 2020 not no not not go back if before 2022 we saw that number going up and down like this every single year. So make the change to the formula and now we've seen a bit of consistency. Now there's still the possibility for ups and downs but not to the levels we were seeing back in 2015 16 14 15 16 where it was just every year it was up and down up and down. And my personal opinion going back to the property tax discussion that should be part of the discussion is the stabilizing of it because it can go it can be completely cyclical. We saw what took place after 07 and08

where you saw just an absolute nose dive and then you've got local governments that are struggling to be able to find ways to be able to provide services to the community. But then you see the flip side of that off of our last revaluation where you saw people with 100% increases in property values and all of a sudden their taxes go skyrocketing and hopefully they'll use that and keep that in mind that you know those large fluctuations hurt not only the homeowners but also hurts the local governments that have to provide the services. So there's a there's a fine balance that they need to make sure that they stay within because it can hurt both entities. And you know, I understand the whole idea of making sure that it's consistent, you know, so people can go ahead and budget it because it's tough to go ahead and budget and say that when you're on a fixed income, all of a sudden your property taxes are going up $1,200 a year. What do you do?

Well, and you know, and the the I have my thoughts on the on the committee up there in Raleigh. I won't share those right now. Which one? But the the tax, but uh a part of that could be probably corrected if the counties and the general assembly would look at how often the revals happen because when you do it every four years or every eight years, you're going to create drastic changes no matter what. If you did it every two years and that probably would minimize the the the major fluctuation,

but you still don't leave that we could fall into a recession. That's right. And next thing you know, I mean, everything could tank and then the cities are going, what do we do? And then you're going in, you have to pay, you have to increase your property taxes significantly to make up for the the fluctuation in the valuation. So I think also the numbers on U re utilities last several years, they've been consistently making capital improvements. I think they're doing it again this year, too.

Well, that's the that's the um that's why the formula is like it is. It it creates an investment for the city for GUC to invest in their infrastructure. So that's constantly improving and that has a a return back to us. That aged a lot of local governments around this eastern North Carolina are dealing this right now. They have aged infrastructures to the point where they can't even uh support their water systems, sewer systems. And that's the the beauty of what GU has done is, you know, it's been constantly reinvesting their uh their dollars back into their infrastructure so that we don't have that issue. You you compared us to Wilmington or Wilmington lower their tax rate. Are you able to tell us that their revenues cut more from sales property taxes or excuse me, sales taxes or property taxes or they exploded in both to be able to lower their tax rate like that?

Um, I got I keep an eye on that generally. I got a few charts on my computer where I look at that. Greenville actually probably has one of the more even mixes between property tax and sales tax compared to most our peers. U most other governments are more weighted towards property tax. Um that I think there's a couple reasons for that. One of those I think is um like uh Chief Anderson was talking about when you look at Greenbull population, we have bring a lot of people into the city on a daily basis and they're spending their money here um but they don't live here. So we actually on a per capita basis actually do really well on sales tax. Um on the flip side, our property values compared to on a per capita basis, especially compared to our peers tend to be on the lower side. Uh Wilmington, for example, um I want to say Greenville is sitting about I think uh just under 12 billion of assessed value on our property. Wilmington's well over 20. Um probably getting close to 30 at this point. Um and they have a lot more corporation or um businesses within their city limits where most of ours are in the county and in ETJ. So those large uh manufacturing buildings aren't paying city taxes. So but we're Wilmington that's part of especially with the port is part of their tax base. So they u but like on a per capita basis we actually perform very well on sales tax and

two of our employers are tax exempts. Yeah. Being ECU and ECU

which is a significant amount of tax revenue that we don't receive. I would go so far as to say um that you we are on the high side of that proportion. I would say anywhere between 40 45% of our tax revenues are coming from sales tax and you don't usually see it that high. And not to get too far in the weeds here because I mean it starts to get philosophical but that does put that does put the city at a lot of risk because let's just face it as of right now. As of right now, you have control of your property tax, but you don't necessarily have control of your sales tax. That's all come from the general assembly. So, if the general assembly came out tomorrow and said, "We want to reallocate the way that sales taxes is being flowing out to each of the different cities and the counties, we would have to fill the brunt of that without no without any control.

So, you got to be real careful of of putting all your eggs in the basket of of either one, property tax or sales tax. We we have a pretty good distribution between the two but it does not help also that our two largest um industries here businesses don't don't support the sales tax the same the same that too it's important to have diversification in the workforce right so that's why we want to continue to recruit new businesses to our area in the event that there's a change in healthcare change in higher education we're prepared for it we're not going to see a huge decrease in in jobs in our community so It's important for us to private sector jobs.

And there's no doubt that if Atlanta industry lands here with a thousand jobs, we're going to get an economic benefit from that. And it comes through those sales tax dollars. Y property tax little bit. They're going to buy houses. They got to live somewhere. That's right. That's why we're seeing our our uh tax base grow on the fringes.

Yep. Um the other major revenue source that would be our utility franchise tax. Um this is pretty much a sales type tax on um electricity and natural gas use in state of North Carolina. Um it's usually stays pretty consistent year-over-year. Uh we're anticipating, you know, very modest increase year-over-year on utilities franchise tax. Um, taking a quick look at the expenses. Um, this is where we so far the year, like I said, we're at a 56.8 million uh spent. Uh, we will project that out to be about 122.4 million by the end of the year. Um, a lot of that will be uh personnel spending as well as uh paying for some of the transfers that have been approved through two things such as the library um and variety of projects in the city as well as debt service. Um that'll bring us uh at $2.5 million uh under budget on the uh expense side. Looking at personnel expenses, uh this is one of the larger areas of concern. um for really most places, most governments right now especially. Um since 2022, the city has seen tremendous growth in the uh personnel costs. Part of that is driven by a major reduction in vacancies. Um we have dropped from uh high two-digit vacancies uh and our vacancy rate right now I think is around five or 6%. It's extremely low. Um and that's been kind of like a two to threeyear process that we've seen. So that's been part of the rise in personnel expenses. Um but also uh what we've seen coming out of COVID especially was labor cost across the

board have gone up um just as property values has. So cost to hire people um continues to go up and that just uh drives our personnel costs and that is like I was talking about earlier with public safety. A lot of that reduction has come into personal safety where we've seen uh we have saw significant uh vacancies several years ago and we we have done a great job of filling those positions. I would venture out to say that probably the vast majority of our vacancies are in in our public safety departments. Yes. I mean you got to think about it just like I mean let's be honest about back in three years ago we had like 45 vacancies just in police

and another 25 to 30 in fire rescue. Mhm. And those have just been eliminated.

Um kind of what's driving as I talk about wage inflation. Um since 2021, uh cumulative wage inflation as reported by the uh Federal Reserve has about 19%. Um so that's where we're seeing a lot of this driving cost plus the uh reduction in vacancies. um vacancy rate falling from 10% to 6%, uh 4% doesn't sound a lot, but that's half of the uh savings that we pretty much had during that time period that we're seeing. Um the other thing that really does have an impact is the state pension um that we're members of uh for all of employees. Uh our employees pay 6%. The city pays what the state tells us to pay. Um when I started with the city uh 8 years ago that was a little over 7%. Uh that rate is up to 14.35% now. Um so every dollar that we're spending we have to pay into the state pension seven uh system 14%. Um and they're insisting rates to go up again next year for another percent. Um and we've also added a uh number of fire rescue and police positions um in the past budget cycle. The police positions are uh grant funded for the first three year or partially grant funded for the first three years. Um and then also the fire rescue positions to assist with their uh move for uh the 2472 process. Um operating expenses um grown modestly over the past few years. Uh we expect uh another modest growth next year about 10%. Um up to uh just shy of $31 million for this year. Um once again uh this is another heavily impacted by that inflation number that

we talked about 20% uh since uh 2022. Um, and we're also seeing kind of um in what we consider our fixed cost, which are the costs that you have to pay off the top before you even consider any kind of operational expenses. Um, whether that's fleet maintenance uh for vehicles um that's increased 22% since 2022 and a lot of that comes down to um having an aging fleet outside of our public safety vehicles. Um, as well as IT software, a lot of software companies are moving to subscriptionbased cloud-based support. Um, which means where we used to have a lot more variable costs year-to-year where we go buy a product and implement it and then not think about it for a few years, now we have smaller but more consistent charges. Um, and also the software companies, you know, um, have a little bit more control about the cost increases um, there. So, um, but all told, we're looking about 10% increase year-over-year from last year. Um, all told, uh, when you put it all together, we're looking at a budget variance of $6.2 million. Um when you consider the um appropriated fund balance, we would anticipate coming in anywhere from a uh million dollar reduction to a million dollar u savings on the budget. Uh somewhere in that brand, which $120 million budget, that is pretty much on the nose. That's less than a percent uh difference right there. Um, so moving on with all this information, what we're starting to do is look at next year's budget. Um, about this time, uh, citywide, we had our, uh, budget

kickoff, uh, last week. Um so finance staff and departments are going to be working hand inand over the next few months to um identify budget trends where we can save money where we need to potentially look to spend a little bit more money and what we can do and we'll put all that together and on May 11th we'll present that proposed budget to uh city council uh followed by the uh other entities budget which is GC Shepard Memorial torial and the convention visitor uh authority. And on June 8th, we'll have the public hearing and um adoption of the budget. Um with a potential holdover date, uh I think on Thursday if there need to be any revisions. Um what we're looking at uh sales tax growth, we anticipate that to remain strong. Um 10% right now year-over-year. Uh I would never predict that high for the next year, but um we are looking at potentially having like a three to 5% over what we collect this year um as part of budget and that's where we're going to see a lot of our new revenue coming from next year. Um property tax growth uh historically it's 2% outside of reval years. We're going to maintain that uh consistency with our approach. Um, and where we really do see kind of like the one major reduction in revenue is in investment revenues. Um, about 3 years ago, four years when Michael talked about the uh, federal money we got. We got $25 million up front and they said I the interest could be pretty much spent on whatever the city wanted to be spent on. So um, we targeted a number of major projects to use this money for and that takes time to get going. So the money kind of sat in accounts and uh, earned interest and interest rates were really high. So, it was like great time. Um, we've known we were going to be spending the money. Um, we knew interest rates were going to

fall. What we've done in our finance office is we moved a lot of our investments from short-term to longerterm investments um to kind of lock in higher rates while we could. But at this point, we're looking at we have spent almost all the ARPA money. I think out 25 million we have uh I'm say around 4 to $500,000 left to spend at this point. Uh we have till the end of the year to spend that. were on target. Um but it's all gone at this point. Um and interest rates continue to fall. So um the rates fallen from a high of 5.5% down to 3.75. Uh most forecasts have the rate continue to fall down to three by the end of the year. So we don't really look at investment income at this point being a major source of revenue for the city anymore. Bob.

Yeah. I mean, like I said, we try to hedge the the longer term rates knowing that they were high, but you know, that's only going to save you for a little while until you start have to realizing the the reduction in in the short-term rates. So, we're doing our best to to manage that. But as those rates continue to fall, you will see revenues across the the country and and locally go down. Um and on the expenditure side, personnel is always going to be biggest challenge for the budget. Um it makes up approximately 70% of our uh general fund operating budget. So whether uh whenever we're going to have issues, it's going to be in personnel. It's just the biggest part. Um what we're looking at and and what we're going to be uh aiming to do is supporting the 2472 initiative change for fire rescue, which will include additional positions for them. Um we're there's a projected 1% increase in the uh pension contribution rate. Um that's about another $500,000 um that we have to spend that we don't have any say what over. But that's about what a percent equals um with the elders rate. Um there's a uh previously approved 1% increase to the uh 401k contribution for city staff. That'll bring that up to 5%. Um, and the biggest uh cause of concern right now is looking at healthcare claims. Uh, the city of Greenville self-insured, uh, which means we pay the majority of our own uh, cost through money we uh, receive from employees for their um, premiums and the money that we as a city pay into our health insurance fund to pay out the claims. Those claims are up 40% year-over-year, which is a increase uh we've never really kind of seen here before. It appears to be largely driven by large claims, not an

overall rise in the base cost, but rather a few individuals um driving that. And um mystery trail is going to speak about that a little bit more uh after I'm done in a little bit more detail as well. Um the other thing we have the uh class and compensation study um that is un uh underway right now. We anticipate um implementing that in next year's budget. Um and Mr. Tro will also speak about that as well. Um and then uh any kind of potential merit market increase uh for city staff. Um, right now just kind of looking at what other entities are seeing, it seems to be somewhere in 3 and a half to 4%. Which is slightly lower than what we've seen in past years, but still um up there. Um, we also uh what our goals are is a continued implementation of the 5-year plan to increase funding of lowincome housing to a million dollars annually. Um, the million dollars is part of the five-year plan. So, we aim to take that. Uh, we're currently doing $200,000 a year. We're aiming for uh $400,000 in next year. Um, same with the ADA sidewalk programs. Um, bringing that to a million dollars annually. Um, I believe those are at 400,000 right now. They'll go to 600 in the next year. So, a year ahead. Um the Pick Green Rainbow Airport Authority uh will be making a request for operational shortfall. Um so

we have a joint meeting coming up with the county commissioners on March 23rd. So stay tuned. Good time have all but we've been in close contact with them uh trying to find a solution to their problems. Got pants from the airport. I do. They give him a new hat every time he goes over.

Um we also have a request from the library for an additional four to 5% additional funding. Um like the city, they see increased cost every year and the city of Greenville is their largest uh um benefactor. They receive money from the county and other municipalities, but Greenville provides about half of their funding. Um and with that, um I ask, uh Mr. who kind of uh talk about healthcare and class and comp a little bit. Well, first of all, any questions to Jacob before we get going?

I had one um as it relates to um the of course we know the the highest percent of the budget is on staffing. What's the breakdown of FTEES like FTEES and part-time? We have via 800 total number eight. 850 that's total FTE total FTEES and then what percentage of that is like part-time or um of that only uh probably seven or eight part time. Okay. And I was just asking that because I was in my mind calculating the benefits piece and

yeah.

Okay. Good afternoon everyone. Um I'll just spend a few minutes talking about some health cost trends for 2026. Um as um Jacob indicated um that is driving some costs. So we will spend just a little bit talking about it. Just a quick overview, the city offers a self-insured which is self-funded um which means the city pays every dollar um of claims up to the stop loss and currently the stop loss is $300,000 per individual per year. So that's a lot lot of dollars. Um the city contracts with Sigma to serve as its uh third party administrator. So they process claims, issue payments to providers, um provide administrative support, etc. Okay. Um I thought it would be helpful if we kind of did a look back um going back to 2020 um which was obviously impactful because of COVID and that significantly shifted the healthc care landscape. Um for us the first part of that period the first three years 2020 2021 and 2022 um claims were were very good but why do you think they were? Do you remember people weren't going to the doctor as much, right? So, because utilization was low, we didn't have to have any premium increases for employees and their dependence for a three-year period, which was awesome. Uh, beginning in plan year 2023, we saw an uptick in premiums with the most significant increase occurring this current plan year 2026. So to counter um uh uh impact that there was a 9.4% increase in medical for 2026. Um that although high was still low compared to the national average increase of nearly 11%. And then there was a 3.6% increase in dental for 2026.

So you may be asking well what's driving um the cost the uptick? And there are several things um and I've tried to list those here. Um higher demand and utilization of services including behavioral health services and this has been particularly true since um co um that period of time. There's also chronic condition prevalence. Um, one thing we know is that we have um some claims that are that are very expensive because there are things that unfortunately may not be impactful from preventative care. Well, it can be, but it's not always things like cancer and that type of thing. And so when um individuals have chronic conditions, we know that they're going to be long-term typically and often times they're multiple chronic conditions, not just one thing. So that plays into the into the cost drive uh increase. There's been an increase in the number of high dollar claims. That little um additional note that national data indicate that 1% of members account for nearly one-third of all plan costs. for plan year 2025 that just ended. We had the city of Greenville um combined with the the GU season since the joint plan we had a total of eight members who exceeded the stop loss of 300,000 and that's a lot when you consider that the year before 2024 we only had one member who exceeded the $300,000 stop loss. That's the trend we've seen uh without getting into the the medical issues of those eight, but we've seen a dramatic increase this year and just how these eight cases that have driven and that shouldn't be indicative of the future, but it's still something we need to keep our eyes on.

That's right. And it's the highest that's we've that we have recorded since probably in the last 15 16 years. Okay. Um if you watch TV, listen to the radio or anything, you know that prescription trend is um is going up. That's driven by specialty drugs, GLP1s that we hear a lot about, autoimmune disorders, cancer, and other therapies. And um healthcare inflation just in general is outpacing um general inflation. Um this chart is a little bit busy but what it's trying to show is that in 2025 the total health benefit cost per employee employee rose 6%. And then for 2026 projection projecting 6.7% increase which is the highest in 15 years. And you can see um the blue line illustrates um healthcare inflation the green line overall inflation general inflation. And you can see that the um health care has uh outpaced general inflation every year in this uh chart with the exception of 2022 and I think you all remember 2022 there was a huge spike in just overall general inflation. Um so but overall the early part of this of the years they're it's pretty close but you can see an uptake uptick in the blue line which is the illustrates the healthcare and then the purple illustrates the cost change for the city and you can see this huge spike in 2023 which was um caused due to increased utilization when members started going back to the doctor they started using their healthcare benefits. Um so again uh quite a quite a change and one again one of the drivers um is

prescription drug uh prescription drugs with cost jumping 9.4% in 2025. Um and so you can see again looking at the chart 2025 um reflects a pretty significant increase compared to some of the other years. Uh, one of the things we also know is the type of business affects the average uh, per employee health benefit cost. Of course, city of Greenville, we're local government, so we're in that government bucket there. Cost uh, per year per employee in 2025 was just over close to 17,000. 16703 compared to um, 17863. And this is for large employers. large employers are considered um having 500 or more employees. Okay, so again still under um here which is a good thing. The average share of the total premium cost paid by employees across all plans and coverage tiers again for large employers. You can see that um for plan years 24 and 25 um 21% of the cost was paid by employees on average on average nationally. the city um is less uh less than that is 16%. Which means the city has a very robust very generous plan that we provide to employees and obviously we want to continue that um with employees paying on average less than other um uh employees with other employers would be paying. And that's an important graph to to to hone in on because ultimately, you know, our our employees are contributing a whole lot less than what you typically see in the market. Like if you had the state health plan, I mean, you you you that would be insanely a good percentage as compared to other health plans. So,

you know, if if we can see continue to see these higher costs as a trend, it's going to plant the seed. We would have to take a look at how our plan designs are are um I say if they're comparable to the market. Are you able to give an estimate say from that 16% to 20% a dollar amount that you know an employee might Yeah, we we could we could u we don't have that information for that. That's a that's a really good that's a really good question and that's something that we can work on getting into.

That's a good question. Okay. So, with with the trending um cost, more employers are expecting to shift some of that cost to their employees. So, from 45% for 2025 now uh for 2026, more than half of employers are saying they're going to shift the cost to their employees. So looking ahead, the city we're going to continue to monitor uh because the health care landscape is ever changing. We're going to continue to uh encourage utilization of our employee health clinic. Um the utilization of the clinic continues to increase. Um actually 2025 we saw the highest utilization since the city uh the clinic's inception in 2017 excluding 21 and 22 because that's when employees were going to the clinic for COVID tests and things like that. Um so that's outstanding. So we know our employees are using the clinic. Um we've expanded behavioral health services at our clinic. Um more hours there and we know that's a cost driver as well from a pri you know and I shared that with you on a prior slide. Um, we're we're going to continue to encourage and incentivize employee participation in wellness programs. You probably see a lot of that coming from HR. So, we're going to continue to do that. And as Michael mentioned, um, if necessary, we're going to have to evaluate whether there are some, uh, plan design changes are needed um, or shifting the cost to employees is necessary. So,

and and I think that's that's kind of in tune with how we how we roll. We don't like surprises. So, you know, this can be looked at as we're planting a seed just to say, "Hey, look, this is something that we need to keep an eye on." When you go from having on average like one or two uh cases that meet the stop loss to having eight, I'm not we're not staff is not ready to say that's a trend, but uh it could just be an outlier that we've just had really bad luck this year, you know, with and with our some of our employees independents. But it's clearly something that we uh we got to keep an eye on as we move forward and look and see if that would necessitate any type of design changes in the future

because we're not we're not saying the sky is falling. Okay. We're just we're cognizant of some some some things we're seeing and we're trying to get ahead of those things. That's right. Quick question. Can you attribute the increase in 2025 to any kind of marketing efforts or whatnot? I know every once in a while I'll see an email from Carol that says, you know, we got open appointments at the clinic today if anybody, you know, needs to come through. I'm just wondering what can we attribute that to. You want you want you want to start?

I would say no. Just from the standpoint of the type of cases that we have seen that are catastrophic. And quite frankly, it's just things you just can't plan on. I mean it's you know if you someone dependent gets cancer and it's I'm sorry my question was the clinic in the clinic and having the best year to date like have we marketed the clinic or is it just the employees learning more about the the clinic and what it has to offer or

Yeah I think it's a combination of things I think it's mark more marketing I think it's employees themselves talking to each other about you know I I went to the clinic I didn't have to pay anything um I didn't have to wait long, you know, those types of things. So, I I think that word of mouth marketing is a big deal, too. Um, and you know, we've expanded uh some services like with prescriptions at the clinic, things like that. Um, and so I just think it's it's a combination of things. Um, and and plus too, um, if you can go to the clinic and not have to pay a co-pay versus going to your own provider and having to pay a copay, most employees choose the the non-cay option. It was much quicker. Yeah. Much quicker.

Yeah. And I think too the incentives like you talked about the biometric screenings and all that stuff. Um and then you know like I said incentives for that um to me it's a no-brainer. So the more that people are aware of it and can take advantage of it then I think it be continue to be utilized. Yeah. Okay. Any questions before we move on to the class? I had one um as it relates to the um the severe cases.

Uh have we I talk about P5s a lot with the fire department. Has has there been any follow-up studies or anything like that, but what percentage of those might be impacted by their exposure? And yeah, when you mention the cancers and things of that sort, I can say for those eight that are above the stop loss, um 75% of them are dependent. They're not our employees. They're not. Okay, that's good. They're they're either the spouse or a child. Okay, that's good to know. Yeah. Well, no. Well, I'm thinking P5. So, I'm thinking P5. So, that's

I understand. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'll move ahead to the classification and compensation study that we're currently underway. Um, council, you all approved funding in this current year's budget. So, thank you for that. Um, just a quick overview about the study. We have traditionally done that in done the study in 10-year intervals and we do that for two reasons. We want to make sure our employees are in the correct classification for the kind of work they're performing and that our pay plan is competitive as compared to the external market. So internal equity reasons, external equity reasons. Prior joint studies, the the last full comprehensive study, believe it or not, was done in fiscal year 2009 2010. We attempted to do a a study um staying uh true to that 10-year interval in fiscal year 19 and 20, but it was canceled due to uh CO 19 and market uncertainty. Um so not wanting to veer too off too far from our um ensuring we're at market we did conduct a true up market study in 2022 to align the U pay plan to the market. So we're hopeful that because the of the 22 um market study that we don't see this huge um cost impact as a result of this study. Um that remains to be seen because we're still getting data, but that's that's where we are and that's we're hopeful. We've uh conducted the study um uh within a six-month timeline. It kicked off in August of last year. Since August, we've been heavily involved in the classification analysis um salary market assessment and um uh working with the consultant seagull um with uh with regard to recommendations. And this month, February, we are awaiting final recommendations um from

the consultant so that we can then share that information with with council. So our next steps um already mentioned the February 2026 um March and April of 2026 we will present uh the findings to the joint pay and benefits committee um also that same time frame um we'll be meeting uh in small groups with council to um discuss the findings and then in April uh findings and recommendations will be presented to the joint council and GC uh GU board of commissioners for approval. approval. So, it'll be part of the upcoming budget. And again, the primary outcome of the study, of course, we want uh the ability to recruit and retain high performing employees. Um, and this aligns with city council goal number six of building a high performing and diverse organization. Any questions? No. Okay.

Great job. Thank you. Okay. Item number three, uh, affordable housing update. I would like to call forward our director of community and development services, Tiana Barman, and would also like to recognize her. She has just been selected as by ECU with alumni association. That's right. Been one of the 40 over 40 uh members. congratulations. He did that on purpose.

All right. So, um, thank you, Michael. I am presenting an affordable housing update. Um, so just to get us kicked off with a little bit of background, the city began focused re revitalization efforts in West Greenville in the early 2000s. Um and we've sustained those efforts largely with CDBG and um home allocations from the federal government. Pressure intensified around 2020 with COVID. Um and we saw a need for affordable housing that was exacerbated not just in Greenville but across the across the nation. Um so in response in 2025, city council supported the 50 and 10 affordable housing initiative. Wrong button. Sorry. Uh, essentially this is an ongoing investment in affordable housing that allows us to leverage additional resources and partnerships and expedites progress toward reaching and expanding our housing goals. Um, it's also a dedicated resource for West Greenville that started as $200,000 and snowballs each year until reaching $1 million and maintaining that for 5 years. So, that's what this snowball looks like. Um, we started uh this fiscal year with the 200,000. We are looking forward to that $400,000 uh in July and we will accumulate over the next over a decade a total of $8 million that will continue to be reinvested in affordable housing. So, uh, phase one, PIC, um, it we began in August of, uh, 2025 with the groundbreaking, um, for the housing projects in partnership with Pit Community College along Fifth Street. Um, many of you were in attendance. Michael is just behind that white bar there. I just want to throw that out. He was there. Um so we had we celebrated with a number of public and private uh financial

partners as a demonstration of the community's um the community impact and benefit. So we are really excited about that in response to or uh specific to the the PCC partnership. It helps us to preserve financial resources, allows for proceeds to be reinvested into ongoing community development activities um and supports workforce development because we are or they are utilizing construction trade students to um construct the homes. So we initially started off with the anticipation of having three. We council approved two additional homes in the fall for a total of five homes for our first phase. Um, we are also, this is hot off the press, uh, we are strengthening that pipeline, uh, strengthening that partnership with the pipeline for, um, high school students to, um, through the upcoming construction careers summer boot camp program that will launch in July. We look forward to registration going live in March. So, there will be a notes to council coming out about that very soon. But, um, you heard it here first. All right. to ongoing development. Our next phase includes seeking to incorporate broader private sector partnership. Uh an RFP was issued for development um for the available lots in January and the homes constructed will be available for families up to 120% of the area median income um with no fewer than 60% of those being sold to families at or below 80% of the area median income. Um so we recognize the benefit of having some mixed income uh families in the community and we don't want to uh create um situation where we are isolating low-income families. Um we want to uh broaden this benefit as much as possible. So that's why we're looking to go up to 120% of AMI.

Uh for the buyers, we anticipate the sales prices for new construction will not incl ex exceed the HUD limits. They do change each year around some somewhere between March and May. Um but generally it's about 200 260 to 275 um uh is kind of where we're landing. Subsidies are available because I recognize that there's a technical term affordable housing and then there's the reality of of the individual's budget. So, there are subsidies that are available to improve opportunities for low and moderate income families uh and first-time buyers. So, the city offers up to $40,000 as a down payment um um subsidy uh for a forgivable loan, but there are other programs available. We typically partner with the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency. They have two programs, one for um 15,000, the other for 55,000. So along with city support um these programs can be layered up to $15,000 per transaction. So that significantly reduces the cost um that that burden for the families. Um then also realtors will be educated or are being educated and will continue to be educated on resources um and city processes to better serve the buyers. As it relates to community engagement, we have a series of um information sessions that are being held for realtors, as I mentioned, and also prospective buyers, lenders, and builders. We do have a pre-bid meeting scheduled for this Wednesday to talk with builders um who are interested about the upcoming opportunity to um partner with us to develop some homes. And then we're also looking to incorporate in our development agreements um opportunities to integrate our adult construction training program as uh to increase the section 3 job opportunity. So working with people from the community, from the neighborhood to

um to build the homes and really looking to um uh ex extend expand our revitalization efforts um from within. All right. So, next steps, the construction careers summer boot camp will begin registration on March 1st. Uh, we'll have relocation of the units um sometime around spring of 2020 of this year, we're expecting. And then we look forward to um breaking ground with private contractors um this summer. Okay. Any questions? I have one. Um I noted that you mentioned uh for 50 and 10 um taking it up to potentially 120% AMI.

Yes.

Um I'm concerned about that. When we initially spearheaded the conversation about that project, it was to target um um people that needed affordable housing. And um you know I I would beg to differ with the sentiment of um not wanting to isolate um folks that are low income because they're already isolated. The challenge was that um they're not only isolated but they're being pushed out of the community because of lack of affordable options and rent. And then also there were pretty much no options to be able to purchase anything. And so a foundation of that concept um has been to be able to sell those homes to people from the community so that they would have an opport um option to stay in their community. So I wanted to highlight that.

Thank you. And I will mention um that ratio is not to exceed um not to exceed 60%. So there are there there is certainly the opportunity for us to stay well below 60% for for every um you know uh every six out of every 10 homes would be for 80% and below as a as a minimum. We could certainly go up um and we have the full authority to to modify this plan. It is something that the you know this the city is is taking full ownership of. I think a lot of the the initial thought was because the area is currently an NRSA uh neighborhood revitalization strategy area is a designation from the federal government. We've been able to support families up to 120 up to 120% of AMI through our rehab program. Um, so looking to continue to support this the the same makeup of families that we we are already able to to help. Um, however, we can certainly modify. Um, so that's something that we can we can talk more about.

Okay.

I definitely will continue that conversation. Okay. Um, because we've got 25% of our population that, you know, is making $25,000 or less. And so when we're talking about um economic development and workforce development, one of the things is to push that population to give them options to be able to get employment that's making a liveable wage. So that's number one on that end. Um but also um for the ones that are working that it's been part of the gentrification process that they've been being pushed out and not having options neither for rent nor purchase. And so if we start modifying the foundational thought process of these plans, then we may assist in um you know continuing to reduce those options for the people that it was actually developed for.

Sure. Um absolutely. I hope that makes sense.

No, it does. It does. And that that has certainly been something that staff has been discussing, wanting to ensure that with the construction of these new homes, we're able to support those who have been pushed out of the market. Um, a lot so far the past the 10 homes that we recently um constructed in um in um Lincoln Park, they were all 80% and below. We had a lot of folks that were right on the cusp, but but could not, you know, for a $100 over, they they couldn't qualify. $100 is not going to help them in the broader market. So that's why we wanted to present a little bit of cushion to help those who um who would not qualify with that strict 80%. It gives us a little bit of flexibility. Um finding those who are 80% and below and are and and have the capacity to u and the readiness for home ownership. Um it's a it's a unique group of folks.

It is and it takes some prepared. It takes some some preparation. It takes um sometimes some coaching and training. And I don't want to take up this meeting talking about all that, but I do want to continue that discussion. Absolutely. Thank you. Look forward to it.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you for all your efforts. We appreciate it. Absolutely. All right. Is that it? Good. All right. Have a motion to adjourn. Motion. Second. All right. Motion made by Councelor Robinson, second by Council Member Skully. All those in favor say I. I. Say nay. will have to be clear.