City Council - Regular Meeting

stuff you saw last couple meetings all condensed down. This is just our little basic on the back

there. What I want you all to do tonight is write five names down while we're here. Take it home right now. Write some names down. I can call Bill.

Yes, sir. We'll be starting to do some things on your social media pages. have Facebook just bullet points that we put out [snorts] to uh uh how do we make a like saying a contribution to the cause for the signs and stuff

we wanted here we are on I put some money in bank account the only thing really that we could spend money on think we should then Let's put together. We need probably $800,000. Just you want me check out to sales tax campaign, get it to me and we'll get it done. About a week or so, get it done. We need to put them out two or three weeks out. Once we get this next election gone, a lot of the signs are going to be gone. [clears throat] Y'all want to do that? And I think it's a good idea. We're going to do some opeds that sort of check out the sales tax.

Sounds good. Thoughts, questions, suggestions? This is great. [clears throat] Great. Appreciate it. Came from, you know, everybody. [clears throat] We got a whole bunch more facts putting out a little bit today. So, [snorts] we're going to just kind of start a contin behind you probably. Thank you. Why are you going to sneeze? Why is he going to sneeze? I think he's got a cold. He's allergic to you.

Oh, okay. Or I was thinking maybe he's allergic to pizza. Oh, he's allergic. He's allergic to you. Okay, fine.

All right. I think we've got uh Rod's in route. I think Tim's going to be late, right? Maybe. So, it's 5:16. We'll go ahead and get started. I'll call this meeting to order officially, I guess. Uh it's a study session of city council. Wednesday, January 21st, 2026 at 5:16 PM. We have [clears throat] one item uh that will turn into a lot of items, but we've got one item on the agenda that's the 2026 proposed operating budget. So, Tom, if you'd like to proceed in whatever order you'd like, get us kicked off here. Help yourself to food as we talk. It is a non- voting meeting casual kind of sort of we'll try to keep as good order as we can

ready.

Okay. First thing I want to do is you guys were tasking me to at my suggestion, not that you demanded this, that I go back and take a a deeper dive into the budgets, look at it for the five-year historical spendings and the five-year historical revenue streams, and look at the items from a let's let's reduce the ones that needed to be reduced and let's increase the uh ones that needed to be increased based on what the department initially put down versus what historical averages tend to trend. However, those can actually if there's a justifiable reason to bring them down such as utilities that maybe there's a conservation effort that's going on that I didn't know. But what I did is I took that deep dive into it to see if we could make an impact on that 11 a little over 11% uh disparity [clears throat] between the what we're considering to be a reasonable and a contingency fund amount that we don't want to drop below as far as the general unrestricted fund is concerned and where we were headed as far as the budget was concerned. And the first thing I want to say is that I do see that there are department heads here from the water and sewer departments. Water sewer is not an issue for me. I don't know if it's an issue for you. It is not going to be part of the subject that I'm going to be talking about this evening because their budget has been reviewed by their commission. You have also reviewed that their budget. It is a sound budget. They do have a revenue stream that's ample to cover their expenditures. Now there is a potential that down the road and they know it as well as the commission that there will be possibly some uh period of time that they'll be looking at for their betterments and improvements some sort of debt structure that is maybe a year to two years down the road. They're

trying to operate within their means now. They have monies that are right now they've amassed about a million dollars that we're going to be disclosing to them from the year end of 2025 as far as their profitability is concerned. So unless you have any concerns or questions that you want to ask them and unless they want to stay um I don't have anything that I'm going to be presenting related to water sewer. This is going to be more about the general unrestricted fund departments that are operations and street. So, u you it's up to you as to whether you might have questions that would be related to the budget, but it's not part of my presentation today. So, I didn't know if they were able to on that note leave or stay if they want. It's up [clears throat] to you. Sounds good, Tom.

Yeah, I'm fine.

Best bringing that chili. [laughter] We got a chili cook off tomorrow. All right, I just saw them there. Anybody else want me to argue to get you out, too? [laughter] No. Wait a minute, Tanya. Have you met everybody? Oh, please. I don't must be an inside joke. I don't know. Okay. Um, with that said, create threads, too.

I wanted to kind of bring you back up to speed on the city of Greenwood and where we are as far as um revenue streams are concerned from a taxable sales perspective for city sales and use tax. Um, I know we had a lot of statistics at the end of the city council for December of 2025, but when you you can look at it from the perspective of we had rebates that impacted our our percentage decrease that we had in city sales and use tax. Yes, we did. We also had audit adjustments that were done primarily due to what we know is the the road uh purchases and sales for the road and as far as that rebate is concerned and various other large purchases from vendors that come under that category. However, when you when you adjust back for the rebate as though the rebate never happened and you put those dollars back into taxable sales, you make it uh painfully obvious that in 2025, we had a $5 million shortfall compared to 2024 in taxable sales within the city of Greenwood from sales of services, sales of uh fast foods and sales of product uh compared to what we had in 2024. It could also be a decrease in the actual online sales. I don't know. The bottom line is taxable sales that contributed to a potential distribution to the city of Greenwood dropped $5 million in the sales. That's $2.28% decline. That has nothing to do with the audit adjustments or the rebates. We we drop more than that when you add the rebate in. So, that's a trend that we want to try to stem the tide on and see what we can do to keep shoppers inside the city of Greenwood in order to generate and maintain that level of sales volume. So,

bottom line is if we didn't have any audit adjustments next year, yes, we would see an increase, but it would only be to the point of how much decrease in the [clears throat] taxable sales occurred. You would only get to a certain point. you wouldn't actually jump over that unless the sales volume increased. So, I wanted you to see that and that's a battle that we're fighting right now in the city sales and use tax and justifies the need for why the tax is very important to us because uh you're looking at several million dollars that are being utilized and Bob pointed out throughout the city uh departments that have that uh tax as far as given to them. Moving on, I wanted to share with you what the original budgets in 2026 that you you reviewed all of these departments that fall under the general. Then this is the revenue stream for 2026's budget. It's $4.7 million. That's the one that you've reviewed. Back in 2018, we had 3 million3 3 million35 that we've increased our revenue between 2018 in 2026's budget and we'll come within a few percentage points of that. We've increased it 20 well this goes actually through 25 from 25 to 2018 we've increased it 25.94%. That's actual. Our budget this year is 4.7. That's how that works. I took out all the additional columns. When you look at the 2026 expenditures, we're budgeting 5 million2 for these operating departments. This has nothing to do with the restricted monies that go to them. This is only money that's mostly supported by uh county sales tax, which defraase their cost of operations. [clears throat] So when you look at that, we've

increased our expenditures from 2018 to [clears throat] 2025 by 36.86%. Far over what our revenue streams are. So that means invariably you're having to dip into your unrestricted general fund in order to support that. And that's what's been happening. Uh we did start the uh 2018 when I first came here we were our daily deficit spend was 5 $5.61 per day over what our revenue stream was. Now that's just a s silly average but bottom line is we ended up with a deficit in 2018 of $248. Our deficit budgeted originally that you looked at and had me go back to the drawing board on was just under a half a million dollars. That [clears throat] brought us down to well below uh a half a million dollars in our reserve. It was more like right at 400,000. So when I went back and looked at it, I first I want to look at each department and what their deficits have been uh andor surpluses. And the surplus deficit line is where the dollar sign is. Anything above that line is a surplus for that year. Anything below the line is a deficit for the year. And you see animal services. We know what happened right here. There's a there's a reason for that. We had some issues with some uh animals that were housed rather long time and the animal service costs were very high. And uh that's been rebounded. Came back up and uh we that's not a good number. We [clears throat] should have made that circular. But uh 2026 they the original budget submitted was $16.65 65 cents per day or a deficit spend on the animal services. This is what was originally submitted. Then in general department, the general

department had um a budgeted surplus. You see where we were, but you see the trend line here for how we've been trending over the past few uh years. Even though there are mostly by and large above the um zero or surplus line as I like to call it 14712 was what we ended the year on a daily loss or a daily deficit uh in the general fund itself not the general unrestricted fund that's the general department general and uh administrative this uh 2026 budget they came in at $855.70 per day as far as a surplus is concerned and I'll show you those numbers. As far as what they mean dollar-wise, you take that number, multiply by 365. The daily surplus or deficit spend for parks, the trend line is negative. There was a huge deficit drop between 23 and 24, mostly due to u operating expenses related to certain uh big projects that they had going on. uh that shifted some of the cost over to the operating to cover it and when it should have been out of their city sales and use tax. We have since as you know moved what could be paid under the city sales and use tax to the city sales and use tax to relieve the general funds unrestricted balance. So you're at nine you saw an original budget at $9.68 surplus in the budget for 2026. That was original. That's they were a surplus department. Um when you look at the planning department, they also were a surplus department budget for 2026 at $6.30 per day surplus. Mostly they were up and there obviously there was some major activity going on permitting wise in 2022 and 23. You do realize that when

you see these numbers 20 21 and 22 waned off in 23 was the COVID years. Just wanted you to know that. But there was also area 51 and some major construction work that had been done within the city at that time. And then when you look at the Yeah, it seems like just yesterday, doesn't it? But it it has been a while. And then the daily surplus for the fire department, they are um historically just the first year in 2018, they were down, but historically they have been a surplus department. Their trend, however, even though they have a positive trend over the years 18 through 26, and these are actual numbers, this is the only one that's a budget number, has been negative over the last few years. And we actually did this to them this year by forcing the same mentality of things that are stipulated strictly to be covered by the city sales and use tax that were in the general fund. we moved them over just like we did for every department that has city sales and use tax. So that lowered their actual surplus amount in the uh general fund side because it's shifted it uh it it it was shifting. That's what was going on here. They were shifting it back and we moved it off. So bottom line is they're not they're not generating as much this year, but their what their operations is supporting is truly their operations. It's still a surplus. It's still a very healthy budget. It's still on a positive trend line. As far as the police department, that historically has been a um declining negative uh uh deficit budget all throughout the years 2018 to 2026 with the initial year being about $1,249 per day down now to 2418 per day. That's for their operations. Now, there's a lot of things

we could discuss about that. We'll save that for later as far as a discussion on the police department, but that was their original budget that they submitted. Um, that means that they're asking for the general fund unrestricted to support that amount of money as far as a deficit is concerned. Historically, it was supported with franchise taxes, which equates to about on average about $550,000 a year in franchise fees, franchise taxes to the city. And those monies we were not using to collateralize against any bonds. We had that option and it's been pitched to us several times, but we knew that that money was kind of blocked off to accommodate the deficits that were being incurred by the police department. uh this year alone the I I'll get to those numbers as far as the general and administrative count is but this year alone they have only a surplus of 338,000 I think it is as a surplus number the general does in their current budget that is about a quarter of a million dollars short of what the franchise taxes would be able to support so they're not able to offset as much the police department's deficit. This is the general unrestricted fund that was submitted as a budget that caused [clears throat] the alarm that even though this is tracking now budget-wise in the right direction, it is a hugely negative uh trend line. You know what happened in 2021 and 22? I told you that was the COVID years and that what was going on in the general unrestricted funds was there was a lot more increase in the sales and use tax because there was a lot of handouts that were given by the government. There was a lot of federal money that came in flowed in. There was a lot of people that were buying obviously online. You do realize the online impact started at

the end of 2019 with the passage of the law that claimed those taxes on retail sales outside the state. and um generated some income largely to the city and we saw that and we spend it a lot [clears throat] and so there's deficit spending occurring in 23 24 25 and we're rebounding we're going in the right direction but that number is not sustainable so when we go to what I reviewed and I'll get to that this is the revised budget after I took a look at it now the numbers between 2018 And these statistics are the same because they're actual. But this budget now shows I I even tweaked some of the revenue numbers up and down based on history and historical. Um 4.7 4.75 million in the revenue side is the budget. It's an average of 1316, but the expenditures dropped to 5,38, which is now an average of 13803 per [snorts] day deficit. So, we are in a deficit spend now instead of $1300 a day, $787 a day. So, I pretty much dropped that deficit that we had of just under a half a million dollars to just over a quarter of a million dollars. from where we were to demonstrate what that is. These are the department breakouts. What you see in this column is the original budget and each of the department surpluses or deficits and police and animal services were the deficits. So when you net that, it's one it's 1,36381 per day or $497,789 in the budget that would be removed from the unrestricted general fund. The revised budget shows an increase of 6455

per day for the general and admin. Uh$1519 for the parks department. They're now at a surplus of 2487 per day. These are daily amounts. 3856. This 2039 deficit is an actual increase of about $400 a day. Uh 22 cent positive for the animal services virtually break even. um 26724 per day or a 6778 uh change bringing you to 787 or the actual deficit now drops from 497 to 287 we save $210,373 just by taking a harder look at a more realistic look at some things within their budget. Now not all of that is due to expenses being cut. A lot of that uh increase that you see there came from a decision that I've made and looked at as far as revenues were concerned as well. One of the things that we immediately changed based on your direction was the $51,000 that came out of um the county sales tax that was being predistributed to the Boys and Girls Club went solely over to the general and admin department and the rest of the departments, which is one of the reasons why these numbers picked up significantly was that number was redistributed to all those departments based on your allocation percentages you've assigned. behind. So their county sales tax which is used for their on andm actually went up. It didn't lay flat because of that now released distribution to them. I hope that makes sense. But so that's one of the things. The other thing I looked at was some of the department uh finance departments controlled expenditures and took a little more aggressive look at some of the um items. one being insurance. In

the insurance line, where we historically have been budgeting about a 15% increase in your premiums for insurance, I went ahead and made a decision to drop that initially to 10%. [clears throat] And uh see what the impact was that was for. And the reason I did that is because last year we only had about 3% overall increase. It wasn't anywhere near the 15%. And I and I'm not necessarily saying that it won't jump up to 15% in the industry. I'm hoping it settled down a little bit, but um I went ahead and dropped it to 10 and and I think I went just recently again to get it down a little bit more. I dropped it to 7 and a half% increase. Still, it's more than what we had last year realized, but it is also an increase that I I think might be more in the ballpark. I'm looking for between a five and a seven and a half percent. If that doesn't happen, at least we won't know um we won't have to deal with that at least until July and August is our premium date. So, when we know the numbers that come in through the July month, we'll also have a half a year trend on where our sales and use tax revenue streams going and we'll know whether we need to go back to the drawing board. Maybe we can when it gets down to it, if it is a 10% increase, we can look at maybe adjusting some of the coverages, some of the deductibles. We can look at some creative things within the actual uh re-uping of the policies or even bid it out at same. But there's things we can do once we know some of the facts of where our revenue streams are and what our reaction to that's going to be. So, that's one of the reasons why I tweaked that line. The other one I took a look at was the um seven and a half% distribution for the amount that we

booked in [clears throat] the budget for the retirement program. Our retirement program to non-uniformed uh employees was 7 and a half%. how the formulary was calculating it when I took a deep dive into it. It was taking the current budgeted in amount of money, the current budgeted uh salaries and taking seven and a half% of that and that was on everybody no matter when they were hired. However, you have to be here a year before you get that distribution. So the people that were hired this year, Tanya being one, uh there's not a distribution for her this year because she came in April I think it was. So she hadn't been here a year. Her year is up in April. So she'll be on the next year's distribution amount. So I tweaked those off. That caused a little bit of a reduction in certain departments uh way of calculation. And then I went and changed the formula to go back and use the endofear's salary. What did they earn? And that's the amount that is sent to Allery in our U where they manage our account for us. And just today I received back the actual numbers that I can now plug back into the budget. And it should be a little bit less. So, I'm anticipating a little bit of a pickup there because this afternoon she finally gave us to review the actual check that we're going to cut by department what that distribution would be and we're going to book that because there won't be another one until 27 which will be in January of 27. So, the real numbers will be budgeted, not a guess. And so, that's good. There's one other thing that um that came to my attention today and has to do with chat GPT um and the U AI

policy that was adopted. There's uh 11 users that um have indicated an an interest in uh software that's uh what's that called Charlotte

Pope C-Pilot. Where are you? Oh, there you are. I can't see you. There you are. Okay. It was co-pilot and it has chat GPT in it and it there was 11 people that expressed the interest in having that added on and the total cost will be broke down [clears throat] by department but it's $2,922 that is not in the budget but it will be added to this budget. It's minimal as far as that's concerned. However, I do want to sum all this up and show you where we are after I took the deep dive and we can talk about some of the things that we want to do. Uh let's look at the this is what would happen to the unrestricted fund as a result of how I looked at the budgets and you'll see that it went up to $787 as far as uh where it was at 1385. So it's better that that is uh that's a good news that it is going in the right direction. But I think what has to happen is that's got to be followed up by some sort of um some sort of ordinance for contingency funds and some sort of policies that support that ordinance that have trigger points in them. And I would say that if if we have a vision going forward of how to build that contingency fund up and back in future years, we can probably work around what we currently have now in the budget after I did this review. And I'll talk about some other things in a second about plan. But here's the contingency fund calculation. This is where we left [clears throat] it from your budget. We had an 11.19% uh miscue from the million48 that's calculated from a 20% of the general

funds department's operating expenditures. That's how the contingencies historically are calculated. So that means we had to come up with a reduction of about a half a little over half a million dollars. 586 to be exact. 000 um five 586 not million 586,000 all right from the million48 so that broke it down by these departments if you spread it amongst all departments to share the pain that's how it would have fared it out that means general would have had to have cut 137,000 police department would had to cut $265,000 um 65,000 from parks 75 from higher and 31,000 from planning. So you could pick on some of the lowhanging fruit, but that doesn't come even close to bringing us back to a million48. This is a standard number for 20% for uh cities of the first class. That's normally the amount, but that number can be adjusted. That number can go up or down as far as your comfort level is concerned and what you are willing to u accept as risk as far as catastrophes and things that would happen that would need a demand on the unrestricted general fund without going into some sort of debt which is also available to you. Uh most of this has to do with what you foresee in the near future both from the economic front as far as growth to the city is concerned as far as where the revenue streams are going to grow because they have to because your expenses are outpacing your revenue streams daily. Um, if you were to look at where I looked at the budgets and what I was

able to do to the budgets, um, I brought it down to about a 6.9% instead of 11.17. And that means 81 if you split it along the lines of equal distribution uh 6.9% off of everybody's uh amount that they need for the contingency um you're looking at 347,000 and not almost 600,000 about half. So if I were to adjust this number this 20% and you say well I What would 15% look like as far as a contingency? It would put you just under threequarters of a million dollars. As far as your contingency, you'd be right right under the 300 uh $750,000 number. Now, your current budget right now for your projected unrestricted general fund is 660,000. So, I I actually don't have that number. Let me look. That's street. I want to I'm gonna move over this to show you what it would do because I can actually do this on the fly. All right. So, here's the amount that's in there right now. That's even with the 6.9%. If I were to change this to 15%, you're looking at a $95,000 shortage from the amount that would be required. you would be required to have 755,000 off of the current operating expense budget and we still only have 660 that's 210,000 greater than we had before I looked at the budgets and you would be looking at sharing and share alike 1.9% and that broke out by these numbers that means police department from what I've

already done to them and they haven't seen it yet they would have to come up with another $42,000 somewhere. Now, they could do that by looking out thinking outside the box. What can you do that you might be able to conserve a little bit more on a controllable expense? And I'm only asking them to do it on controllable expenses, things that they actually control. Pens, paper, pencils, how you do things. Look at it a different way. Save money. Postpone doing something a little bit longer. uh as far as how they operate and they could most likely generate $42,780 or a combination of that and revenue. Other than that, this is pertaining to you. Other than that, you could look at generating additional revenues, and that comes from if the county sales tax goes up, any bump in that will offset that $42,000 just with a revenue swing. So, there's nothing that says that you can't do that. And then if they need something that has been cut, they can come back with a budget amendment. By that time, we would know a little bit more of the trend of the revenue stream and you could make a an informed decision as to whether you want to allow that or not. But it forces them to come to you and justify it just like they do any other budget resolution. It might mean that they'd have to do a few more. It's not saying that everything's off the table, but it's saying you are going to hold them to a specific number and after that they have to come to you and you have a critical look at what the revenue streams are doing, what the expenditures are doing and have them justify why they absolutely need the item or whatever it is. And that goes for all departments.

So, uh, I don't I mean, it's it's a bitter pill and I'm I'm just the bearer of the news. You can say, "Hey, I don't care. Let's go back to the original budget and we'll do it." Um, that's fine with me if you want to do it. You guys control that. I just am showing you the numbers and giving you some advice on, you know, the trend has got to stop. If you if you do the 15% a recommendation that I would give you is this that you do that for one year and you move it back to 20% in all subsequent years and you adopt the ordinance for the uh that you will scrutinize and be mulling over this year. You adopt that along with the trigger points that you will refine and decide on what you want in there. And those are mandatory things that happen at the next budget. So, as you see right here, this budget with a 15% uh contingency percentage off of the operating expense, that's putting us about 12.6% below. Our targets right now are 2550. Uh I think it's 10. Let me look at it. I got so many numbers floating around in my head. Okay. The current is 10% 25% 50% and 75%. So when you get 10% there's a certain trigger that goes into effect that says capital items are postponed. Any capital item that's built in and that would strongly affect the police department because they don't have any relief for capital expense from a city sales and use tax where the other departments do. But anybody that has a capital project or a capital expenditure, whether it's an office piece of equipment or any of that, um, that would that would stop. You wouldn't have that. That's a trigger point. If you get to above 50%,

personnel reductions are a trigger point. You you would first attack those budget those budgeted items that are not filled and then you would look at whether a hard look at whether you need to do staff reductions. But that's really getting if you're below 50% of the actual amount that's listed for your contingency, you've got some significant budget issues that you need to be looking at. So, I would recommend that you if you did that 15%, it's a one-year deal. 20% it goes up in 2027's budget for 2027 and you uh seriously adopt the uh recommended AML recommended contingency ordinance that we tweaked for the city. I've already tweaked it but obviously we're not anywhere close to having it reviewed and and approved in a three reading. And then um the what I call the fiscal performance policies which talks about how we're going to conduct our daily day-to-day business. So what it's saying is we understand where we are. We have a plan going forward and we've got to stem that tide and kind of turn it around. You missed a lot. [clears throat] I know. I'm sorry.

One question. Yes. When you reduced the increase in the insurance expenditures from 15 to 7.5, [clears throat] you said it only went up three last year. Does that hold fairly? I mean, does a trend support that?

We saw um a a trend that was about five to eight% in the be before the last three or four years before the catastrophe started happening all over. And then the insurance industry went berserk. And when it did, we saw 11, 12, 15. We even saw 24%. And then we had to we we had that. That was an original submission to us. And that's when we looked at the deductible buyback and we looked at changing from BA B something. No. Was that the That wasn't our property, was it?

That's health. Pardon? No, no, we we're with Travelers now. Who we were with before Travelers. No, it was uh the the group that managed our insurance that did all that was um insurance. Yeah, it's not it's a it's Oh, I'll get Hillary Clark or whatever. Is it? No, that's our health insurance. The the bottom line, we switched from EIC, I think it was

EHC. That's it. We went from EHC to travelers. They because our Osborne's not an insurance company. They are an agent that puts you with and places you with insurance companies. And we we switched and that helped us. But then we had that deductible buyback gap insurance that we needed. And then we decided that we would change the deductible on that possibly and or not uh include in that and it lowered the amount of the amount. we do work that. So, um, every year that's a kind of a battle that I have with all the with Osborne as far as and they're very willing to work with us even to the extent of keeping and holding down the the rates based on their um their uh commissions. So, it it's a it's a it's a deal though, but it's something that [clears throat] I think we could look at every year. And if we're if we're short of it, we can look at creatively looking at the insurance itself. If we're if we end up being less than what the seven and a half% is, that drops right to their bottom lines because that's a a budget gap that's favorable.

And I just want to visit one back when we were looking at the street budget in the last meeting, did you ever figure out if you file the claim. Yeah. And I've got that taken care of now. So, did we are we receiving a reimbursement for that? We will. Yes. Okay. But how much was that?

Okay. Okay. So, he's taking out, sorry, he's taking out the cost of the new tractor, but [clears throat] $75,000.

I'm going to go ahead and get to the street now just to kind of bring it all into perspective and then we can start talking about some things [clears throat] that we needed to look at. Um, there we go. So, this is the street department. Um, the reason I'm bringing them in is because while they're not necessarily in a critical uh nature status right now budgetarily wise, they're in a downward spiral. And when you look at the amount of projects that are being pushed off as a result of the I'll show you. G, you're seeing it. It's right here. This is your operating revenues from 22 all the way to 25. 22 we had $1.2 2 million in revenues. We have now $1.3 million in the operating revenue on street. That's a 4.67% increase since 2022. Since 2022, our operating expenses have increased 32.85%. That's operation expenses. It's not the city sales and use tax. It's not sidewalk. It's this. So that's the staffing and the things to operate that department. that that is a that is totally unsustainable. [clears throat] Okay.

So, that's why I'm sounding the alarm and I've been sounding the alarm on that. But down here, you'll see their fund balance. It it is, if you wanted to say in all respects, healthy, but it's not a healthy trend. So, when you look at the street and M, that is the live bank account. That is what we have uh at farmers bank for all the monies. There is no checking account called sidewalk checking. That's a live account. No live city sales and use tax. These are virtual accounts to account for a restricted use. So when you look at the bank account, the bank account shows 4 million1. That's what it it does. But you break it out between its components. It breaks out in that way from 21 22 23. That was a spend on the sidewalk projects and then that was covered in 24. That was your ending balance. Here's your ending balances in 25. So we went from about $4 million 45414 million to the extent that 1 N to 17. You don't see a lot of movement in here on $500,000 being generated every uh year to that department through city sales and use tax because that's $511,000 is all that they get in a year. So that means these projects were either not done or being pushed off primarily due to the COVID years right here. There was some reasoning for it and now projects are starting but you see the depletion from 4 million to 2.6 6 million in 25 and it'll go to 1.7 in 26 as a result of a large deficit being created or generated budget-wise, not actual by the city cells and use tax street because they're going to spend this $598,000 plus 511,000

and the difference to make up a this $587,000 in a hole. Now, that would be covered by this $1.9 million. That's going to have to cover that. That's going to shift up to the street on&m. And so, that's why it's showing 1.7. That would be the all-in bank account balance in 2026. That includes the turnbacks.

Let me show you the turnbacks. I'm going to share you some information on that. That's an interesting question. And I want to I pulled up the fiveyear history. This is the five-year real history on street. Man, I guess I better lower that [clears throat] down. Okay, I I know the numbers. So, I will just tell you this these two numbers right here that you see in this column. Let's look at 25. 379 is the property tax or the tax turnback. And then the $84,000 in 25 was the state turnback money. That's the largest contribution to the on andm side of the street department. If you look at 2021 all the way to now, that number is flat. That turnback stays relatively the same. So I thought, is that an anomaly? Let's look at that even closer. Let's go and look at the tax. So the tax in 2021, we received 340 to 354 to 365 to 375 to 379. That's a growth based on tax. It's very It's flat. That virtually ties directly into, unless I'm wrong, and it could be, ties into property tax. Where's your growth? Most don't understand how that can be because we're one of the Sebastian County's personal property taxes or just

Oh, okay. So, the increase, we did talk about that, too. The increase could be not it it could be the appraised value that's generating the additional revenue and not actual new new homes being built and generating revenue as part of new taxable property. You're absolutely right in that regard. Th that that could even be worse scenario because that means the growth in our tax revenues for that period of time is based on assessed values not on actual sales of new homes

from until this year. So take so for now take what you said aside. Y how do you grow then? How would you grow your that tax? New homes. Sell new homes. Grow your city. That's the only way to do it if you're going to be on a five-year rotation for appraisals.

And I get you on my appraisal and I'm going to help that a little bit. Yay. Good for you. Uh, but that was a good question. I just wanted you to see. And then the 804,000 that's uh state turnbacks based upon per capita.

That's however the state turnback comes to us. I mean, we get a note every year from AML about what that's going to do, but it is per capita. Yes. But it's laying flat. So, so within the street department operating budget, do we have any lot items that are contributing more than others to that trend? Well, one of the things I did was you see this 221,000 150. The 150 is a sidewalk transfer for the sidewalk fund. I removed that from my calculation that showed 36% um when I when I Let me go here. When I go back to this, this number of $1.2 million in operating expense is negating that 221 and that 150 because those are transfers to the sidewalk department to cover their shortfalls and to fund their building of sidewalks and uh it wasn't happening in the previous years. So, I I didn't want it skewing the number. So, I took that out. But if I go down to the bottom, you'll see that the actual amount was 1.5 million. So I I the anomalies that were there I wanted to remove. So it kind of apples to apples. But the five-year history, I'll I'll drop that down to 100%. Maybe that'll put more on the screen. That and then it just raised it right back, didn't it? There we go. So the the five-year history kind of shows you the trends and I gave all this information to Jeff when we started looking at it. Fees professional we had a big increase there for some of the work that was happening uh regarding some of the future projects that are on his books.

Oh, you're going to have to leave. No good. No sneeze. Yeah. We're good. [snorts] Make him do it.

Um I don't I don't necessarily see any anything that kind of really stands out except the numbers in the expense lines are rather high here. You're looking at uniform expense going from 6,000 to 10. Um a lot of that I I don't I mean that I don't know about that. 10 11 10 that would be his he'd have to tell you all about that. Um 11 to 18 776 a lot of it could be if it's materials and supplies it could be inflationary driven salaries went from 280 to 476. Now remember, we were only using 22's numbers. So you would be looking here. So when you looked at salaries, it' be 320 to 476. That's quite a jump.

Did your staff size change? You wouldn't know. Well, yeah. 22. Did your staff size increase? Well, only [snorts]

[snorts]

So, what else could be that jump? the war on drainage had an impact right here. Um the drainage expense went up. Tom, are you sure are you showing that turnback money in their budget

if in the street budget as revenue? Yes. You think it should be isolated? No, I was just I I would like it to be I would like to pull it out of there and move everything that's related to it into its own virtual account so that we can restrict it and we can very easily show this money was used for drainage, sidewalks, and street repairs. Right now, it's hard to do that. I'd have to go back and analyze every single expenditure to tie back to the use of that money. I support that. What do you need to do that? I do too. What do you need to do that? Your blessing.

Resolution. I say do it the first time we get asked I'd say do it.

Yeah, that's an ordinance. Okay. We need an ordinance. [snorts] Can you Well, let's let's We can do it. Sure. We can do it at the next voting meeting anytime you want. And then what that would do is that would give a clearer picture of the usage for the capital spend and it would give a better picture of the operating side. So you would it would parse out. So can you draft up one?

Oh, sure. Tom, with your with your tweaking, I guess what I'm looking at is this thing that you know, no twerking. [laughter] There's something I didn't need to see tonight. That's vision I can't get out. I got to sleep tonight. [laughter]

Uh I guess I'd still like to say that you know you Yeah. the trend is not our our friend and you know I'm thinking you that you know we uh to me I said we we still need to kind of bring it in where you know if we're projecting this amount of revenue our expenses need to you know need to match that. We don't need to be uh borrowing from the you know surplus. And I'd like to see if you go back there again to see, you know, uh where uh our our shortfall is, you know, and then, you know, just u saying that, you know, uh I think we really need to

I guess it's your it's not my decision though, but it it would be yours as to your comfort level as to where you feel this year we could survive the year at with the balance that we currently project that's unrestricted general funds going to go and of course during your budget quarterly meetings you'll be able to see that trend and I can show it to you one one just to remind me do we have any unfilled positions that we've budgeted for I mean I could go look

I mean [clears throat] because I'm thinking that you [snorts] We could at least say let's not fill any positions. Just, you know, I mean, that's just a thought, but a hard one, but like I said,

I like that 15% there. I mean, because I said, you know, I think it's a a starting point. I mean, I' i'd sure like to see it 20%, but I think if we follow it up with a contingency [snorts] plan that's saying, you know, that we're going to have to uh, you know, abide by and get it up there to the 20%. Um, I know there's a this is a big adjustment year, but u but in order to get that 755, you said you still have to we have to still come up with another 95,000 worth of uh twerking, I mean tweaking. Is that [snorts] right? [cough]

Either word is bad. tweaking has to deal with drugs, [clears throat] but I mean that's what we have to really do to get to that 755 is to do another 95,000. [cough] Let me let me do this. Let me go to the insurance, the general insurance. I want to see something.

Well, you're looking down as chief question. So, chief, what how long does it take you to hire somebody? I mean, they got to go. I guess it depends on if they're coming from another department or if they got to go through the whole school. [snorts] try to hire [snorts] us city limo. So, does the budget as it is reflect that you're not paying but nine months of it? No,

potentially a lot. So I haven't been able to study.

So I'm just thinking there might be some potential savings there just just because of timing. You know, we're not going to get somebody right on board to start paying now. So probably [snorts] insurance agencies. around this area offic [snorts] I was just saying if we're if if it did take three months and I think this is what Ralph was getting at then our budget should reflect nine months of expenditures. And that's just on paper. That's not real money. It's just saying instead of

it's just making much more realistic. Yeah, we're going to save to go along with what you're saying. That's exactly what we did on the code enforcement for the planning department. if they're looking to hire that person in if they get the go-ahhead on their budget. We reduced the annual salary based on the higher date, the actual hire date of that start and it did make an impact on their budget. Their budget went from minimal to $14,000 contribution back to the general fund.

We've touched all the lowhanging fruit. they can do the same thing on their officers and then give me those numbers and that probably would make up the whole difference. Well, not not just in personnel, but I know they were asking review truck or vehicles that that's another expense that could be

we already took that and I'm going to go into that right now. That's why I didn't want him to have that. [laughter] Just real quick what I was just ago. [snorts] I have no option to upgrade to our roughly 8500 [clears throat] for us to stay in compet. AC the three cars that I was asking to trade in two cars in those three.

Can Can we Can we talk about that? Just let me explain then you can rebut. Okay. Because you're rebutting and then I I'm going to have to counter that. I'd rather counter it first and show you the rationale behind that. Now, nothing says that these are this was in stone. What I was doing is presenting to them a an more aggressive look at a budget. [clears throat] Yes, certainly you would have the opportunity to come back to the council and say, "We need this." And you could have done it with a resolution and say, "We need this. Here's why. And even though it was taken out of the budget, I think it needs to be added back." back and I already addressed that with all the directors. That's your option. Your option is it's not there in the original budget. If you need it, come back and justify it. And you just did, which is fine. But I didn't have time in the week that everybody was not here to get all of you together and go through it. I put finishing touches on this today. Now, we had a discussion, the mayor and I, and we had a discussion about the vehicles. And number one is, are these vehicles actually in service right now?

Are they in service? In other words, are you using them? Okay, that's what we he had a question about. So they're out of commission tells me that they're not being used. Okay. What we were saying is instead of $100,000, which [snorts] is what you had budgeted basically for that with the trade, the 62 and the outfitting of 36, by doing that, what if you put a transmission into that into those the ones that need a transmission?

100,000 versus 5,500. I saved how much money? I'll trade you 10,000 $11,000 for two transmissions in two of the vehicles instead of buying two vehicles and I saved 80,000 bucks. One's got 93,000 miles on it. One's got 97,000 9600.

I I hear you. That's the discussion between you two. All I'm saying is here's here's what I did. Well, for your answer, but I I'm I'm saying the mileage. I don't know why that's

what we're looking at right now. We're we're under to me, I don't say unprecedented times or [clears throat] whatever, but we're under, you know, uh trying times because we we never really thought that our our sales tax dollars would kind of go down. You know, here we've seen it go down. We don't know if it's going to be a continued trend or not, but I I'm I'm not I mean, I can turn on the, you know, the six o'clock news and see that it's not just us. It's, you know, it's across all all cities and stuff. And, you know, we've we've been, you know, borrowing from our surpluses, you know, for for years now. And I said, and what we're trying to do is I think, you know, I don't know, uh, but just trying to see what we can do to to buy time and stuff. It's always whatever expenses we don't really have to do if we can kick our expenses down the road instead of kicking our surpluses, you know, down the road. That's to me what we're trying to look at here. carast. I don't see as a as a taxpayer or business $100,000. We came up with what we could get.

Hey Brad, can I interrupt you for a second? Chief, I'm sorry. So to [clears throat] to go back to what Tom said earlier, he and I did have conversation on on your budget and everybody else's budget before I left for Little Rock Municipal [clears throat] League. And I apologize to you. I've not been able to visit with you about what he and I discussed. And and it was very specifics and Tom I think will admit along with me when he and I are talking about vehicles together, it's two guys that don't mechanic, if you will. That's not what I do. that's what that's not what he does. So, we were tossing ideas back and forth of what what could be done and and I apologize very profusely to you for not having a private conversation. Uh I don't know that this is the format for it, but it is what it is and that's okay. So, what makes sense and I did ask questions. Uh can't I don't know what 90,000 miles I know what it means to a private car. I don't know what it means to police car. I assume it's a lot harder those 90,000 miles on a police car is a lot harder than the 90,000 my wife drove. So I think that's where you're headed with your point.

Yeah. And idling time. I don't I don't know about that. So, but the question was was brought up due to Mr. Brown's uh points here is that we're all trying to do the best we can to figure something out. What does that look like? What does that make sense to a car? And I'm talking real real world because you only know that and your your your patrol officers only know that. So I would just take that as what is could that be something you could look we could look at and I don't mean you I mean the the us as a group and and and I don't know it may not make sense at all you know and and if my car broke down I'll just go a little bit farther. my car broke down with transmission. I'm gonna have to put a transmission in it because I can't afford a new one, but I'm not patrolling the city of Greenwood either and and driving it like you guys have to. So, I that I just want to say that that there that conversation did happen and [clears throat] you should have been brought into it a little bit quicker than

than today, but go ahead with your Yeah. Absolutely. Sure. No, I got that. I get that. Hey, another question, Brad. [clears throat] If you have a transmission fixed, you take it, I guess, to a professional here in town.

Highway. I'm just thinking, I mean, what does a transmission cost and what is it? So, I mean, we've got three mechanics in the street department. Is that something that they could do or do they have to be

here time away from his You had you had a guy one time, but I don't think he's over there anymore. [clears throat]

I'm just That's what I'm thinking. If there's things that we take, I mean, take breaks and things like that. If we could do it oursel in house, It would help mention office earlier. I I'm wondering if if we could maybe I mean just the way we negotiate contracts with somebody cleans the building. Could we maybe look at some of these folks that do the work on our vehicles and tell them, "Hey, you're getting all the work. Can we shave a little bit off for the volume of work that we're doing? Maybe. I don't know. I'm just engine from that particular year model. Famil

99,000 miles.

100 is equivalent to 500. Basically what you just said. I just know that as far as police departments and our training machine.

That's all hands on deck. That's fire and police working together. Pretty much saved in the same fire and public understand if we know the rules of the game before we get up here and talk to this tax issues all cut.

[clears throat]

No, no, not 10. This isn't designed for you to give me the budget today. You take the time you need and get that budget back to me like within the next couple of days. I'd be appreciative of that. This isn't sit down and we're not going to hash out your budget because

Hold on a minute. I want to I want to clarify one thing. You keep saying don't cut from public safety first. We're cutting from all departments, not you first. You're part of it. You're in it. You see this line right here? Everybody's equal. We took initially we took 11.17% which is this right here, 11.19. And we said everybody gives that up. You just happen to have the largest amount to have to contribute because everybody's sharing the pain alike. somebody that only has a budget of 588,000 giving up 65,000 of them is a huge thing for them. That's that's not giving that's not taking it from you first. That's that's saying everybody shares in this pain alike just equally distributed. It's up to the city council as to how they want to divvy up that pain. if they if they say you need to c cough up a lot more. And what I was trying to show is that the departments that are contributing back to the general fund right now, even after I've looked at their budgets, which is right here, um this is the one that's got the greatest amount of uh impact to the city's general unrestricted general fund. And that's that's a that's an unsustainable thing. So there's got to be some

but but the thing is if you go back to that previous slide there right there that 787 you know I mean you know nobody can you know you know a a private entity or city cannot sustain you know spending you know $7877 per day per day more. And so that's what we're kind of that's that's the only thing we're looking at. And like I have to agree with Tom. We're we're not picking out on you, Chief, you know. I mean, because because I

I take pride in in what y'all do, you know? I mean, we're one of the safest towns, you know, in the in the state and you do an excellent job and you're doing an excellent job with animal control. I mean, everything that you have taken on, you've done well and stuff. It's just that we're looking across the board and it is no fun to, you know, to to cut back. I mean, that's why in the past years we've always said, "Hey, let's balance the budget by just taking it from surplus." And we've done that till we're, you know, uh, we're we're at a, you know, a crossroads now where we can't you just can't do that anymore because we're we may be in jeopardy of, you know, gosh, if we have a big ice storm or if we have a tornado that comes through the center of town, you know, I mean, where's that money going to come from and stuff, you know? And we need to be responsible to say, you know, we really have to have a surplus and and yes, it's going to be painful for you to cut. It's going to be painful for the parks department to cut and for the streets, but it's just it's we've got to live within our within our our income. And we haven't done that for the last, you know, four or five years because we've always been balancing the budget from robbing from the surplus. I say robbing, pulling money from the surplus. And so that's what we're trying to do. And yes, you haven't had a chance to see the adjustments and stuff, but I think that's, you know, what we're having to say is that adjustments are going to have to be made across the board. And so that's [clears throat] what I think, you know, Ralph is looking at when we're trying to say, yes, you think it is throwing maybe, you know, bad money after, you know, good. But if we can say if we can fix a transmission and it gets us nine months for $5,500 instead of, you know, $95,000 right now, because I'm thinking this is not going to be a permanent thing. I'm I'm thinking that, you know, you know, better times are ahead. Our our sales tax dollars are going to increase. You know, that this is not a definite trend, you know, that it's going to stay this

way forever. But for right now, like I saying, until we see the trend because it improved the last six months of last year, you know, we thought it was going to be far worse, you know, when we looked at the first six months of last year, but it it ended up improving. And so I think it's going to, you know, continue to improve, but it is what it is right now. You know, I mean, our income last year was less than what we budgeted, but it also was less than what we brought in in 2024. Is that you know if I understand that right Tom and so you know we we have to we it's just a time that we have to tighten our belts across each department

I can't imagine go up conversations are better I mean it's kind of tough we're hunting money [laughter] and everybody's going to have equal share in that but it's better to have this conversation now than maybe six months, a year from now, we're talking about a a riff, you know, reduction in force. And so, if it comes down to fixing up some old cars to keep us from getting to that conversation, that's a great thing to do.

But you, you know, what we, you know, those needs kind of like the access system, you know, we got to have it. We we got we got to have that now. But to AC's point, if a transmission could get you 12 months down the road till maybe there's better days and we can maintain our staff and not have a riff, you know, be having conversations about a riff because when we're having conversations about a riff, it all this stuff doesn't matter. We're looking for bodies to get rid of. So we don't we can come back in the black.

[clears throat] We got till January 31st to sign off on it. So [laughter] at midnight looks like 11.8%. That's what we're 11.8. Is that what you Well, current budget from the current budget it's 11 19%.

The thing that's so compelling is putting the people if the transmission does not compromise the safety of one of the officers. So, I don't know if if a vehicle like that could have a transmission and be used in a lesser capacity by someone resource officer, anything like that. But but certainly if the transmission only only if everybody's safe because we don't want to comp we don't want to compromise the safety of one of our officers for that. That's not a good tradeoff. But it is a good trade-off if it doesn't compromise their safety for like a year. U we're just trying to think outside the box for anything

that helps the budget. The value of those three parts value $6,000 transmission as much as trade in value. Trade in value. Yeah.

Not the value of the car. That's the what you would have to get for it is trade for another vehicle. Yes. But what we're saying is if you could get a year out of that vehicle, we're saving this year on our current budget the equivalent of about $90,000, which is a huge chunk of your budget right now. But if you look at this, this is unsustainable given what we know is happening on the general fund. So we need to be thinking major creative. I don't want to solve the problem just for one year. That's the point. I want to solve this problem to reverse this trend so that we stay above keep our heads above water. So, we need to be creative as far as every department, but I guarantee you every one of them can come up and do exactly what you did today. They could come up and justify not cutting their budget for this reason and that reason and that reason. And I'm well aware of that. We've had this conversation. I had it with the mayor. I said I guarantee you he is going to fight for everything in this budget regardless of what we do. If you'll notice, we did increase your vehicle repairs and maintenance to justify the cost of an of a transmission in that. So the we adjusted your budget in both directions. However, it's not like we didn't give any thought. That was not willy-nilly. It was to generate some interest in them to say instead of merely because their directive to me could have been cut everybody 11% and they live with it.

I was just explaining to Mr.

I got it. I But you might increase your trade in value by putting a new transmission. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. It's true. I I don't want to interject two thoughts [clears throat] which may or may not mean anything to anybody but myself. Mr. Brown mentioned earlier, you know, we're we're tornado shy of a or you know what he said, tornado, ice stom, whatever.

So, and and that's that's a scary place to be in. Uh I don't know that you can ever get away from that totally. I don't think you can ever get away from that totally. But who would we would who we would and no everybody knows this. I'm just stating the fact the people that would we would rely on to help us in that situation would be the police department and the fire department when those things happen. That's that's who we turn to. So they've got to be top-notch. And I'm not saying anything everybody doesn't agree with. They got to be top-notch. They got to have the best equipment we can afford at the time. I I think it is worthwhile, chief, looking and you'll be a horse to look at some ideas and I' I'd be glad to sit with you and and anybody that's got equipment and vehicles to to to go to our local mechanics and maybe have a meeting or maybe not a meeting that probably wouldn't work out, but transmission guys and say, "Hey, if we put you in line to fix these cars for a while, uh let's let's work let's talk about that and get an idea." And the other thing is just real quick as we're talking about all this and this has got to be talked about. It's and it is painful as Mr. Pal mentioned. It's hard. It's hard on everybody.

Uh but we are here along with what we're doing today. We've got to also be on the other end of this and saying what are we going to do to fix it? And one is to do what we're doing. The other is to do what you said, get get more folks in Greenwood to save the [clears throat] money. And I don't you know that's a that's an age-old question. How do you do that? Uh, we've been through programs to try to get that done, but we've got I'm I'm tickled to death with this new act. Uh, not act, what is it?

Issue three that's going to be put out there to to help some of our all of us to to have a tool uh to get things and some in some incentive packages which we've never thought about before. So, I just want to say that and say we're we're in it all together. We got to figure it out. So, and I I want to pat Brad on the back and his staff, too, because I mean, this this just goes to show how impactful grants can be.

I mean, if we're looking for 60,000, $70,000, and his staff has done a great job finding grants as our parks folks have. I mean, that's money that can offset some of the help offset some of these costs. So, you know, I know you guys do, but I I say continue to keep your eyes open. any kind of chance you can for for grants. Every department has done a really good job at that for sure every year.

Can I Well, I just want to say chief too, you know, you just basically inherited this department, you know, so you haven't had a, you know, a long track record, but again, you know, and I was like saying I try to reemphasize what the mayor and Tom saying, it's not just you that were, you know, that we're saying, you know, that those cuts had to apply to. is, you know, to to everybody and you're you're now just experiencing it firsthand. So, you haven't had a chance to really, you know, uh, look at what you can, you know, uh, cut and what you can't and stuff. But we're and that's what we're doing right here is we're throwing out ideas and saying where can we do it you know feasibly and and because you know that's you know we we ideally I would like to do that 11.19% you know but I but if Tom says that you know we can kind of get by with you know 750,000 and it just be you know was that 6.9% whatever you know then I said you know I'm willing to do that if with commitments to say we're going to you know work our way up there. And so again, you're doing a great job, Chief.

I think my only right now.

Well, I just want to say I appreciate Jeff, too. I think, you know, we're a I take pride that we are a first class, you know, city, you know, but we're also a small city. And I appreciate you, Jeff, saying, you know, if there's anything that, you know, we can do mechanicwise or whatever, you know, that your your your department's willing to help, you know, so we'll do anything we can to help.

And that'll be I think that's great. I appreciate that. So, I want to go on the record to say that I was charged with doing what I did to present back to them to show what potentially could be done. There was no intention to just say, "Let's go with that without any discussion with the directors because we had to find out how feasible it was based on where I saw some potential pad andor some fat in the budget and remove it. And I also want you to hear this last thing. There's a call on the I'll let him can't hear over there.

I got cancelled.

Okay. I just wanted to make sure you could hear it. Um this is the contingency fund reserve statement that would go with the plan. What I'm what I'm trying to say is to stem the tide, we need to put in safeguards in place. We need to have triggers in place. We need to have something that is a plan of action. If we don't have that and we reduce our contingency down to 15% of the expenditures, which is a 5% below what's normal, um we're going to be hardressed to explain that in a bond rating call for number one because they look at contingency funds and the other is this. It says contingency funds are for unexpected general fund unrestricted general fund balance. The predict it says the green city of Greenwood should consider a variety of factors including one the predictability of revenue and the volatility of expenditures. A high level of unrestricted fund balance may be needed in if significant revenue sources are subject to unpredictable fluctuations or if operating expenditures are highly volatile. We are in that. We were in that for the last couple of years. That volatility, perceived exposure to significant one-time outlays resulting from disasters, unforeseen immediate capital needs, or state budget cuts. Right now, we're not experiencing that, but that's a possibility in the future. The potential drain on general fund resources from other funds or operating departments as well as the availability of resources in other city funds. So the general unrestricted fund can give money to any department, anybody that needs it. You could allocate that money to them. You could help fund street operations if you wanted to. Can't go the other way with restricted money back to the general fund. So that's why this general fund is highly important and every city knows that. Um just watch the news on what you heard from yesterday in Fort Smith. the potential impact contingency funds have on the city's bond ratings and corresponding increased

cost of borrowing. That's what's got me concerned because I know we got some debt potential down the road, pardon the pun, potentially from street and from water sewer. Um commitments and assignments of any portion of the city's unrestricted fund balance that have been committed or assigned for a current or future purpose where you need to bail out a project. in other words. So that's all the reasons why I'm trying to maintain that instead of allowing that to slip. And then I also showed you that every year the city has not submitted what I consider to be a surplus budget. It's always been a deficit spend budget balanced by the unrestricted general fund in those five those six operating areas. Um in the days when the I I have it here. I want to show this want to go here and I'll go up to general fund and I want to show this and I'm just the bearer of the bad news and I do have a lot of ideas now they're not necessarily all going to be in you know openar armed welcomed I'm sure but I do have a lot of ideas about how to make this work I'm bringing that back down so what I wanted to do was go back up to the general general fund and show that well let's go to some of the years here you'll see it down here when the general fund was generating like in this case $669,000 $550,000 generally could have covered the majority of the police department's actual deficit and it did. So that's why we generated 191,000 because the franchise taxes that we kind of reserved for the shortage in the police department was with they were within the range that it was absorbable and

tolerable and the amounts of the surpluses generated by fire by animal services and parks more than covered it. So when you go down to the next few years, you're going to see that that general fund surplus, which is what's the cause of alarm, has been dropping at a significant rate due to projects the general fund has on the books that are necessary and needed. And then you see we went back up to 370. We ended the year down as a deficit in the general uh department, the general and admin department. There's not the money to cover what used to be the money to cover. And that trend is only widening. The gap is widening. So that's why I'm we're not picking on a department. I don't want to come across that way. We are challenging everybody to say, "Hey, I couldn't even come up with 11% based on the budgets that were submitted." So there's got to be some out of the box thinking. There's got to be some ways that the departments can start really crucially looking at turn off the lights, do something to lower our energy costs or whatever um to try to impact that as much as they can on the controllable expense side stuff that you control. And then the other is the we'll look at the hard look at the expenses that the finance department has control over. some of the things that I think we you're looking at the um the general fund. I I hit them with a 4 percent reduction. He didn't even know it because I haven't given him his it's right here. [laughter] But I just finished this today and got all this together. But the general fund I I removed a lot of things. One of the things that's probably not going to sit well is the fact that the wiring in this building or the the thing that they were doing for $16,800 that's gone. We can wait one more year. you know, that type of thing. We It's not that we're not going to do it.

It's that

right now it's not a good time. And then the other thing that I was putting in there is these these trigger points would help safeguard. It's a selling point back to our argument to the bond rating company um that we have a plan. I I see light at the end of the tunnel. One of the things that I know is coming down the pipe and that we've talked about is the potential for a public safety or a sales tax dedicated that is the recoupment of that quarter that came off of the uh county sales tax that now would be dedicated to the city. It's going to bring us back to the level we were before they county lost that quarter to EUS which benefited Greenwood in no way, shape or form. Just so you know it, that money was totally collected and dedicated to you University of Arkansas Fort Smith. Once that money went away, it was free for the taking. We should have immediately jumped on that and grabbed it for the city of Greenwood. And when you do a sales use tax, one of the things that you realize is that it doesn't put the burden solely on the citizens of Greenwood to fund expenses that benefit the city of Greenwood. It puts it on everybody that you draw into the city that buys in this town. And so it's it's an expense that's borne by visitors and people that are not citizens here.

Hacket, pardon, Mansfield and Hacket, fellas. We like them. Yeah. Come on up. Oklahoma. Can you explain again what we lost to the the quarter that we lost to Eupus and what I don't understand how that

county University of Arkansas Fort Smith uh was approved for the county tax was uh what was it 1.25 I think it was 1.25 that 0.25 25 was a tax that was voted on by the citizens for the support of the University of Arkansas Fort Smith. Um it came up for a renewal and the citizens voted against it. So EUS lost the quarter and so the county sales tax dropped to 1%. Now that 1% whatever is collected is being distributed per capita to us. But that quarter was dedicated sort of like our road bond totally to the you to EUS. Well, once that quarter went away and the citizens were paying 9.75%, we went down to 9.5. It didn't affect our city sales and use tax, but it affected the overall tax collection for what the citizens are being charged and anybody else that shops in this area. If we jumped on that quarter and said to the citizens who would be the ones voting for it, we would say, could we go after and get that quarter to stay at 9.75, but now claim that back to the city so that we would be able to use that for police, which don't have a city sales and use tax for them to fund their capital. This discussion would be moot if they had a half a million dollars a year more being generated by that tax. So, I see that down the road.

And that's good because they mentioned something about that municipal league and and I remembered you talking about that. So, I was just trying to figure out how it'll fit in. Thank you. Mhm. And so, uh, going back to, you know, we were looking at 11.1, but then you said that, you know, uh, it's feasible that we could do the 755 or whatever at at 6.9, but we still need to kind of come up with another 95,000 spread across the the departments. Is that it? That's if you were to get back to the seven seven 15% the 755,000. Yes. I want to move this out.

Well, I would like to see that. I don't know. I'd like to hear what y'all comment.

Yeah, I I agree. I think if we could do the 15% this year like Tom suggested and then shoot for 20% each subsequent year. I think we have I think it's much more achievable and it's an easier pill to swallow and and that there's nothing that like saying uh come June or or you know the second half of the year we see the trend is working in our favor that you know each department comes back and says hey we have this special request or or or whatever you know that that we we want to you know put back in the budget or that you know we want to uh you know asked for and stuff, you know, because I because again, I don't see that these are u

that's the whatever.

Yeah, that's the benefit of having those quarterly budget meetings is to, you know, adjust as we go. Well, some of the things you guys have suggested, I don't know that how well it's going to work, but certainly it's it's worth department heads talking to each other about is, and again, don't throw rocks at me, but sharing equipment. I've spoken to a couple of departments already, and they both look right at me and go, "Really? You don't think we're going to need that the same time they're needing that?" And I and I get that, but it gives some time, like you said, Mr. Brown, six months for use and somebody for example and say what what do you guys think about this and for the future now I don't you know you took your tractor out already and that was a 70 thou 70 I went to Jeff and it took me one phone call to say hey and he already knew what I was going to ask and so he took it out and decided he could do with what he's got this year and do the best he can so those conversations can happen and will happen amongst these guys and gals including Tanya so in six months you may see a whole [clears throat] request that doesn't mean $75,000 from them. It may be 20 from everybody or something. I don't know.

So, I don't know where you're headed with all this time. Are you going to go through departments and kind of do No, you're not. That was not your plan? No, my plan was to show Okay. But could you show could you back that that screen again where it's to the 15% contingency and just say kind of show where we need to do kind of an additional uh to get to that that 15%. What would it look like if we did 10 year option?

Okay. Well, that is a good suggestion. And I can make that five. It doesn't matter. What number are they comfortable with given what I just read about what a contingency is for?

Well, I think I think you know any number you put in there is the number you put in there, but if it's going to I mean that would further impact our bond rating. I mean with the contingency plan in place for coming back from that, it's still a good idea, but that's a that's a big risk and that's I'm I'm more comfortable with the 15 and u I mean everybody's going to have to look at their budget and just say yeah we're going to have to find those things somehow. I as well more comfortable with the 15. I know y'all said that's what y'all we need to do. now not be talking about a riff in a year.

Agreed. I'm I'm already wondering how that in street department. Boy, that's quite a jump between salaries. That that needs to there needs to be a little deeper dive. I don't know what the explanation is. Bottom line is we're paying it. So that's it. Can you show that one more time?

What the the change over the five years about the fiveyear? Um Yeah. Yeah. This is the salary laborers line right here. It went from 320 476 150,000. So where I mean if we did we add people during that time? in the budget. We're using extra help. They can't full Danielle, do you have any take on that being HR? No.

No, I know that. Anything other than that? I mean, he does have a lot of employees. Well, yeah, but compared to what we had, what what is it? I mean, have we added a lot of positions? No. Yes, sir.

Total. Yes. Yeah, that's an additional 95. Well, yes.

Well, that's not been changed. Your your budget's still intact. This is just a I created a separate one for this.

I have your other budget. What's happening? Uh, if we go back to your original budget and everybody goes back to their original budget, you're you're $247,000 away. Well,

that's an argument everybody. Well, that's what we're kind of looking at is trying to can you scroll tighten the belt as much as you can. doesn't mean that you can't come back because I mean we'll always entertain the idea say hey you have fuel costs have gone up or whatever you know I'm seeing this trend you know but we're right now we're just trying to present a as a a tighten budget as we can

yeah so you be looking at cuts So one one vehicle in the outfitting you said would be 50 plus. So you you would surpass your 42,000 is what you would be. Yes. But that's under the revised budget that I did the proposed revised example the shock and awe if I will.

Oh that's that's already a reduction. [clears throat] I can testify to that. We don't know. Right.

But but what I'm saying is when that comes up because it's not line item at that point. It's bottom line. So maybe you've saved some other maybe fuel's down. I don't know. Bottom line is you can live with the absorbing of that additional cost to a point and then it's let's say in August you can't live with it anymore and you're going to need a budget adjustment. So you come to the city council then after this budget's approved and you justify needing the bud the budget amendment and when you do submit it to them we will know they will know what the revenue stream is now after six months worth or a quarter's worth of collections. So we'll know if the trend is positive and where you're going to get extra money. asking for budgetary.

Well, the rules in the past are needing to be changed and that's what we're trying to do. Sure. How long how long are we holding animals at the animal shelter? 30

and you've already done a lot of that already. Yeah, you have.

Oh, the truck. Casey, you had your hand up. Well, we come up rehire

because it may come down to if there was a an employee in the street department or there's maybe an employee in the parks department that got, you know, quit. Let's say, well, do you need them as bad as we got a police car where the transmission may fall out? And and we we know you're not interested in the police car's transmission falling out, but as a city, we're looking at the big picture. We are. That wouldn't help. Well, I'm not talking about it. It doesn't the the employees hit the general fund.

Mine's not general fund. All your employees are paid out of free. Take your scenario out. Maybe well they parks uh fire all the rest of them. You know, we don't we we take a hard look at replacing it. Sure. Maybe uh Stuart's administrative assistant quit and found a better job. wanted to get away from him. I don't know. It's possible. All All possible.

Yeah. So, so we that's when we take a better look. Hey, the pastures are we think they're going to be greener in six months. You're going to have to hold off. We've got to Brad wants a police car and uh needs needs a police car. Not one. Needs Yeah. But if an employee,

if you were to lose an employee, it may be that there are things that you needed pretty bad to fix a tractor, replace tractor, and you know, hey, I can I'll put that off. The money is still going to stay within my realm, in my paradigm, but I do need these maintenance things done. Can we move? Pardon? Oh, personnel money. Not personal. Yeah, you move your personal money. It's called a donation. [laughter]

What? It's you're not it your bottom line is what's important. Not not line by line. So it if you save it in in salaries for the year, it can offset an overage in another line. Yeah, you can. No, we're not line item in that. The only thing they restricted to line item was capital expenditures. That's because I would be doing a million budget resolutions every year.

Yes, sir. Chief police department. I think you might want it. Sounds like you might want to pause.

I yield. Whatever. So, so those are the things, Rod, that come up when you and I'm not saying I think that's a you got to look at all things, but that's exactly what would be heard immediately. as it just was. What do I do? Brad, chief's bound to feel the same way.

The crew he and it's been stated before a little bit. I don't want to get it too Brad the chief does such a good job with street police department. Nobody wants to go anywhere unless they're going to a higher paying job. Nobody. They're not leaving that weekend. So, I don't know. I mean, I I hear what you're saying. I just don't know. Still, these are better conversations than who we going to lay off. No, I agree. I totally agree. And that's the direction we're headed. Yeah. Well, yeah. To answer you, Chief, I guess I'd look at you and say, "Well, you're going to have to do with what you got because everybody else is doing the same thing

or what you'd like to have until until the time is better." That's my answer tonight. year. Yeah. Whatever. Months. I take that. insurance

and that's what we're looking at. Yes, I I I agree. Things have gone up. Inflation has caused, you know, materials and and all sorts of supplies to gone up, but our our revenue hasn't, you know, gone up to to meet that. And that's that's where we're at this, you know, crossroads and stuff, you know, and so Tom, I I I would say that, you know, let's If this if the council approves it, we'll do this 15% contingency and let you uh kind of work with the departments and then when's the time that we can get back together to after the departments had time to, you know, try to do their twerking, I mean tweaking. After Snowageddon. Yeah, after Snowageddon. Yeah.

By the way, this is your budget. This is the real numbers from your budget, not the ones that I've changed. This is where your budgeted number was 2 million three. That's your contingency amount for the 6.19% because I adjusted this down to 15% from the original budget. That means we were off 324,000. That's what we have to come up with as a city in order to make this 786,000 because this is based on the original budgets with no changes to the budget which I remember I saved 210,000 but adding back yours probably about 205,000. So when we look up here, you were $147,000 needing to come up with in order to make your portion of that 6.19% now instead of the 11.19. So you asked for your go back to the original budget. That is your original budget and that's how much money your contribution would need to be off that original budget. Now, if you could, can you come up with 324? [clears throat and laughter] $25.

In an overall picture, that's kind of small, isn't it? Small. I just wanted you to know, but also in the overall picture, it shows appreciation. Right.

Yeah. So, when would be a date that we can meet again? Didn't we have something? Did we not have something on the horizon before?

What year? We are down 27 jobs. So that takes one away. We're addation. [clears throat] The other thing is Academy bylaw train. I think it I think it may be important for the council to know Stir what the

numbers you're talking I mean I hear what you're saying it makes sense but what what does what's that cost can you say tonight or can you need a for a volunteer fireman to start. How long it takes before you start painting? I know you said you've got equipment already, but yeah, put all that put all that together. But they need they need to know a time frame, I would think. I mean, if it doesn't cost by the guys that came on last year's3.

So, how do you hit the So, how much is a new firefighter hitting the general fund? So

they're getting $25 a call.

How long was that? Probation. like Danielle says that you know if they don't take insurance it's it's they they get insurance

and that that's it when they come off of probation immediate so when that would be our biggest cost so that would be the biggest cost so assume like They all took it. So if he hired five,

it' be like 2500 or somewhere in that neighborhood. So how many are you looking to hire? Last year we pass. I've already lost one of those city. Well, you need just you need at least one to send them to the academy, right? I need one more us.

But if

but if you had five good candidates, then you'd try to hire them all, would you? And so assuming uh I'm just saying five if we say $600 a month per uh volunteer. Uh that' be like $3,000 a month, but that may not hit till a March or April when we uh

those can those funds you're talking about be used to pay all this thing we're talking about insurance and wherever you're getting this money act 33 That's what it would be for pays for the equipment.

Yeah, you pretty much did. We did it when you were in office. Yeah, that's I'm just saying there And then I know this is a whole another conversation, but you get five or six guys and they're in the same boat that everybody else is in. you got a job at Walmart or whatever, you're really I mean I I know you're doing better because you have a better you have a percentage

but but not a guarantee that any of them are going to show up or or can during during work if the council I would say if the money's there I would consider keep going. I don't Well, if the council is not not imposing a and maybe you are, we probably need to say that tonight. If you are imposing or want to impose a hiring freeze, his question is irrelevant because if you're not doing it for everybody, then you're not doing it for you. But if that's if that's the goal or

I'm think I I'm not really saying a hiring freeze. I'm saying maybe a hiring postponement or something like that. you know, if we could kind of push it again to the later half of the year or even that's a freeze. I mean, I'm not trying to be silly. Absolutely. [clears throat] [clears throat]

So they don't they don't have they don't have to go at all if you can have enough folks here. Sure.

If they hold it here, you got more people that work here that are more apt to go. Absolutely. So, so I guess rather than looking at in terms of freeze, if we I mean if we've got a budgeted position that we lose a person during the year, then they need to come back to us and say, can we replace this position? Replacement. Not okay. Not a hiring, just a replacement of council. If if we bring somebody in, if a position frees up and they want to replace it, they need to come to the council and have that approved

as a replacement so we can consider where we are in the budget at that time. And I think we're not correct. No, I mean, yeah. So, We're not the first person to request. We're not talking about your volunteers. Okay. Yeah. You're I think you're good. You're good to go hire your volunteers. Yes. So, that brings back to when would be a time that we could meet. I did have a date kind of set before about this or not? No.

No. Okay. Okay. No. No, you may not leave town. I will be leaving town probably Monday or Tuesday. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. When? Monday if possible. Because I have Monday. I don't think anybody's going to go anywhere. Well, I seriously doubt anybody's gonna Monday is a water sewer commission meeting as well. Okay. Well, if if they require me to be in Still Water, I'll be in Still Water on Tuesday.

I That's what I'm saying. I've already informed them. They know the weather condition. What's the deadline? We cannot go. I'd say Tuesday then. I'm for Tuesday, you know. Can we do Tuesday? You know, yeah, we're gonna Hopefully, Steve, the snow will keep you here till Friday. Friday. Tuesday's a ball game night, of course. I don't know if it's home or not include for him. Well, yes, I believe. Oh. Uh, no. [laughter] Uh, yeah. No, [laughter] I'm fine with Tuesday. Rod Rod, how's Tuesday with you? Pardon?

I like the life. It's It's Steve and and Tim. That' be questionable. But if we could get Roger, that would be a four. Uh Tuesday, I believe this the game is in town. But regardless, I mean, he'll it be I mean, he'd be gone if it's out of town or in town, would he? No, he didn't call out. Oh, he didn't. Okay. Football he did, but I don't think pretty sure he does. He doesn't call the games out of town, does he? Basketball. Basketball, does he? I could be wrong. first time in the last. But if we get four of the councilman here, you know, I think we'll still be in good shape and maybe get typically only has issues in here. Yeah,

I'd be fine with Tuesday if we could do Tuesday. Let's do Tuesday. What time? Uh, I say six. I'm six is easier. Yep. Spaghetti. Tom, when when you So, are you asking all departments to have their edits in by when? Friday. He needs it by Friday.

By Friday, time we leave because I'll I'll put it together during the snowageddon. I will. Nothing else to do. And then I'll have that presentation ready for Tuesday evening. But, and I want to make sure that I understood you right. I know we dis Water sewer, you don't need anything.

Water sewers budget actually got better because they're a big recipient of the insurance based on their their facilities and their insurance rates dropped. And by the way, it's not seven and a half%. I budgeted eight%. So that could go down. I could make it five and see what the impact would be. you know, it's there's some things we could do to tweak it, like I said, but

I I wanted to point out police the um holiday pay you on that holiday that came up day after Christmas, the one time never happened again for 12 more years or whatever. Um, the impact was budgeted in I when you first saw their budget, this was not in there because they had their budget review study session. No, it was after that was in there. Um, it I said it was about 4,200. It's $4,1568 impact because it's an additional holiday pay in this column right here. Instead of 13 holidays, they got a 14th holiday. So that is in there. I didn't want to

I guess it was added in fire for one of once and fire. Yes. Tom, I'd ask when you got when you get the budget put together on Friday, could you email it to us so that we could re we can review it ahead of time. I'll I'll if I get a list of your emails. I don't I could send Yeah, I know you do. Could I get a list of those? Yes, that would be great. Um, I will when I finish it. Yeah. Yeah. When you finish it. That will be over the weekend. Got it. Okay, great. As long as you realize it ain't going to be Friday when you get it. Can I get No, we'll have to wait. You may not have power over the weekend.

You may not have power. We may not have Wi-Fi. [laughter] It's just going to be a lovely snow. It's not going to be impactful. Just a dusting video. There'll be somebody does something stupid at 2 am and the whole fire department and police department's out there. So, all right. Anything further? Council Tom, sum up. What am I doing? We're doing 15% one year potential increase. We'll go over that during the approval, but 15% I've already dropped that. And then uh modify the budgets based on director input. They were and that was due by Friday. Due by Friday.

Have specific goals on He has specific he has specific amounts. You'll be here tomorrow. Tomorrow afternoon.

All right. I'll meet with you and Hunter. I've already done planning because they both came in with their suggestions on their own and said this is what we want. Because they had new rates put in. We've modified their budget considerably based on these new fees that they have. So, they generated additional revenues and expenses and uh I'll get with you as well in person and make your changes. Um you send me yours if you could on email and I'll input those into from the original budget. Um you can give me anything you want to give me in your operations side the street and um who else is in

pardon? you whatever that number was that Tom showed.

We go to contingencies because that's where it was. Um 15% is 6.19% and your number is $147,000. My question is where is going to figure out 17,48 if we can do that and I'm going to use as example again 147 what this number is okay

we supposed Okay, this is from your original budget. This is your you have already submitted enough to potentially wipe that out. Okay, in your revised budget. So you I don't think you're going to have to cut anything. I mean, right now you have a surplus of 14,000. Um so you're real close. I don't think there's much you So you can build a snowman this weekend and not have to worry about it. Unless you're feeling benevolent and then you can Exactly. The police. [laughter] Yeah. Fred, can you make it 150 transmission?

Yeah. The more you cut, the less he has to cut. [laughter] I'll trade you two for a trans trade you two covers for a trans. You do have an original police vehicle in your possession, so we could do some swap back. Everybody got their homework?

No. Okay. Seriously, do Okay, we want to I want to just say we all know Tom works hard, blah blah blah. [laughter] No, he does. We we tell him that all the time. But I I want to tell the department heads, uh I know it's hard sitting in your shoes. I used to sit in your shoes. We we weren't asked to do quite what you're being asked to do when I was a department head. Uh but there were there were years that were lean and you just do what you have to do to make the city work. And and nobody in this room is selfish. Everybody's doing their job because of everybody else. Uh police department doesn't work well if the street department doesn't work well and vice versa. everybody. So, I want to thank you personally for what you're doing. Uh if you get to build a snowman this weekend, good for you. Uh but but if you're not, you're trying to figure this out, you know, and if I can help you, you know, I'm not a numbers person. Never have been. That's why he's there and and they're sitting here. But I I just want to tell you that I appreciate what you're doing. It's tough.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So, keep up the good work. Let's We'll work it out together. And Kumbaya, Tom, I'm sorry you're in the spot you're in because you're in a bad spot. Mom don't, like you said, he don't make the weather. He just reports. [laughter] The sun does. The sun does the weather. This stuff for breakfast. All right. Motion to adjurnn officially. Thank you. [clears throat]