City Council - Regular Meeting

Maybe that's him coming in.

There we go.

He's still eating.

Oh, he's still eating. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Erwood, council, thank you again. I'm going to introduce Katrina Woodruff. For most of you know Katrina. Katrina is our assistant administrator for internal services. And she is going to kind of shoulder the load for a number of our departments. What I like to say is that they are the groups, the straw that stirs the drink, so to speak. They touch all of our departments in one way, shape, or form, be it HR, IT departments, procurement, risk management, and certainly fleet. So Katrina's going to give you an overview of those departments, how they interact with the departments throughout the city, and then what to expect in this year's budget from them. So again, if there's any clarification or anything, please feel free to ask questions or reach out to administration at any time after this. So Katrina, it's all you.

Hello, Mayor Pro Tem and Council. Thank you for your time this afternoon. As Andy said, my name is Katrina Woodruff, Assistant City Administrator for Finance and Administration. My presentation today will focus on internal services and how these teams support efficient, accountable, and responsive city operations. We'll walk through each department's responsibilities, accomplishments, challenges, and resources needed for fiscal year 2027. Here is an organizational chart of everything that falls under my purview, which includes finance, and you know Chris Klein, the director, HR, Alicia Williamson, our director here, IT, Jim Ritchell is here also as well, fleet management, risk management, and procurement and grants management. This workshop is designed to provide a clear picture of the work happening behind the scenes that enables the entire organization to function smoothly. Our objectives today are simple but important. First, we want to provide a clear overview of the core responsibilities of the internal services. Second, we'll demonstrate the level of support we provide to all city departments. We'll highlight key accomplishments, discuss challenges impacting our operations, and outline future initiatives and resources needed for essential to sustain high-quality service delivery. Internal services has several core responsibilities that impact every department from ensuring fiscal responsibility and modernizing technology to reducing risk, maintaining reliable assets and keeping our purchasing processes transparent. These foundational areas directly affect services quality across the city. Each area within internal services plays a specialized role and you'll see how they connect as we move through the presentation. First up is finance department, which has 12 employees to support it. The finance team manages the city's financial health. That includes developing and monitoring the budget, handling accounts payable in payroll, managing business licensing, maintaining transparent purchasing practices, and overseeing debt and revenue collection. They also coordinate our audits and financial reporting obligations. Finance supports all departments through budget oversight, financial management for projects, payroll processing, vendor setup and maintenance, and assisting with the requisition and procurement process. Their partnership ensures compliance and accuracy across the organization. Finance earned the GFOA Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting for the 25th consecutive year. Additionally, fiscal year 2025 audit had zero findings. an excellent indicator of strong financial controls and consistent reporting.

Is it the first year we've gotten that, or?

No.

25th.

Nope.

Oh, 25th. Okay. Hold on, 26.

Okay, all right. All right. I thought it was 2025.

Some challenges.

The current ERP system is becoming outdated and no longer meets the needs of a modern finance environment. Additionally, the department is running out of office space, which limits the ability to grow staff capacity as demands increase.

What is our ERP system right now? It is Smart Fusion. Smart feature?

We utilize Smart Fusion for the financial piece. However, we utilize OpenGov for the budget side. We use E-Tree slash SoftDocs to print checks. So that's part of the struggle right now is we're utilizing multiple systems where it would preferably all be in one.

Okay. QuickBooks does all that.

It's really good.

To address these challenges, finance is requesting a new ERP system which will streamline processes and improve accuracy. They are also seeking an online payment processor and plan to update financial policies and standard operating procedures to match future technology and regulatory needs. Next, we'll move into human resources, which supports our most important asset, our employees. The HR department consists of three employees. HR oversees the employee life cycle from recruitment to retirement. Responsibilities include hiring, benefits administration, training and development, employee relations, policy administration, safety coordination, compliance, payroll view, Title VI management, and workers' compensation and occupational health programs. HR partners with departments on recruiting, onboarding, compensation planning, performance management, training, disciplinary actions, employee relations, and off-boarding. They also support wellness programs and ensure legal compliance through all HR processes. This slide shows our five-year staffing trends. Workforce growth aligns with the city's population and service demands. Continued growth requires expanded HR capacity to keep up with hiring, retention, and onboarding needs. Here's the current employee count by department or division. This level of detail helps illustrate where staffing levels are lean, where the city has grown, and how demand varies across functions. Overall, the city has 397 employees across all departments. The slide continues the headcount overview and provides a broader look at staffing levels across the rest of our departments. You can see areas such as public services, fire, and police represent our largest workforce segments, which aligns with their operational and public facing responsibilities. Overall, we maintain 397 total employees as of May 12th this year. Here we're showing the generational makeup of our workforce. This helps us understand employee expectations, preferred communication styles, and how we should structure training, benefits, and engagement. A multi-generational workforce is a strength, but it also means our HR strategies have to remain flexible. As of May 12th of this year, HR has hired 28 employees. Our turnover rate is 5.3%, which remains relatively low for our sector. We've experienced modest growth with an overall growth rate of 1.5%, with an average tenure of 6.5 years, a positive indicator for retention and organizational stability. You'll also see the breakdown between full-time, part-time, and city council. These are our current vacancies. Public safety continues to represent our largest staffing needs, particularly in police and fire. Public services also has several open full-time roles. Part-time needs, especially within PRT, remain flexible and tied to operational funding and program demand. HR completed and implemented a major classification and compensation study, which ensures internal equity and competitive market alignment. They also rolled out a new HRIS applicant tracking system and new payroll system in conjunction with the finance department. Both significant technology upgrades that improve efficiency and employee experience. Recruitment and retention remain our major challenges as the city grows. Another key challenge is managing generational differences. What motivates employees varies. And HR needs to tailor approaches. Benefits delivery is also evolving. A single plan no longer fits everyone. Lastly, supervisors and managers need more development to prepare for leadership roles and to support a future merit-based performance system. HR plans to increase active recruiting efforts and build stronger talent pipelines. They also aim to expand benefit options to meet diverse employee needs. Another initiative is a formal citywide internship program helping cultivate future talent. To support these growing responsibilities, HR is requesting an additional HR coordinator position. Next, we'll move into information technology, the team that keeps our system secure, modern, and connected. The IT department is comprised of nine employees. IT maintains our network infrastructure, cybersecurity protections, hardware and software, GIS systems, data management, public safety technology, audiovisual systems, and communications platforms. They also handle application management, which is increasingly important as more systems move to the cloud. IT provides a tremendous amount of direct support to other departments. They assist with application functionality, connectivity, data storage, new technology evaluations, and workflow discussions. They also support on-premises and cloud environments and ensure audio-visual equipment runs smoothly for meetings and events. This slide summarizes several key support areas, access control for buildings and secure spaces, communication tools like phones and mobile devices, and GIS services that support mapping, property data, fee assessments, and infrastructure planning. These functions quietly underpin essential city services. GIS supports significant engineering and infrastructure work. Enhancements such as the public MAC viewer allow broader access to geographic information. The team also supports data analysis for culverts, road improvements, sidewalks, ADA ramps, and more, all critical for planning and compliance. GIS also supports public services with vendor data, fire department with ISO certification, and planning and development workflows such as UDO implementation, address management, final plat review, and as-built input. These GIS systems help the city maintain accurate real-time infrastructure and development data. IT completed several major accomplishments, including migrating to Office 365, and the .gov domain, upgrading all systems to a Windows 11, modernizing the phone system, centralizing firewall management, implementing new help desk system, and improving cybersecurity through SIM and MDR tools. They also completed audio visual refreshers and major upgrades to camera servers. Additional accomplishments include call recording software implementation, the Perry Avenue Fiber Project, server upgrade to 25 gigabyte, and fiber connectivity expansions to several facilities, including Kids Planet, Greer Golf, Country Club Park, Stevens Field, Center for the Arts, and Taylor's 97 Fire Station. These projects strengthen our connectivity and improve service reliability citywide. IT faces several challenges as the city continues to grow. The number of employees, devices, and applications keep increasing, which puts pressure on staff capacity and infrastructure. Cybersecurity also threatens continue to evolve and require constant vigilance and investment. And as we expand our cloud footprint, it becomes critical to strengthen cloud security measures across the organization.

Katrina, can you go back two slides, please? This one? Yeah, we have fiber connectivity at Kids Planet in Stevensfield.

I'll let Jim.

What are we using that for? Is that for CCTV or...

The fiber connectivity allows us to better communicate with those facilities as we have security cameras out there, other access control methods as well. That's all part of our internal networking that we're now able to expand to, and those systems and locations not be isolated.

Okay. All right. That makes sense. And you upgraded the server to 25 gigs? Yes.

Yes, our communication between servers is now at 25 gig. We're actually going to be expanding that to 40 gig. Oh, communication. Communication, yes.

OK. I was going to say, that's a couple thumb drives. I got more. All right, thank you. We're with you.

Looking ahead, IT plans to conduct a citywide disaster recovery and business continuity exercise to ensure we're prepared for emergencies. They're also working on customer employee service improvements, including an AI chat bot and a new SharePoint intranet. Finally, IT is proposing a four-year replacement cycle for desktops and laptops to keep the city current with modern technology. IT will continue moving on-premises document storage to the cloud to improve accessibility and security. Other priorities include security camera upgrades and adding AI-based forensics to expand coverage, especially downtown. Staff development is also a focus.

What is the AI forensics?

Well, what that will allow us to do is if someone comes into the car, say, for example, wearing a blue shirt with a red ball cap, we'll be able to look for that individual throughout all our security camera systems where they go in our facilities. Or if there is, for example, a parking garage, if a car goes up to the top deck of the parking garage and there's really no need to be up there, then we can get notified if there's a car up there or some activity happening so that our dispatch officers could contact a patrol officer to go up and take a look, make sure nothing nefarious is happening up there. So those types of things.

And so that would be someone monitoring that or it would just automatically...

The monitoring would be anything that... comes up in that manner we're looking to have the dispatchers be notified of that because they're always watching monitors watching what's going on with our camera systems they have some of them up there as well some of our high profile areas so they will be notified first us and it will also get that information as well we'll get that notification and that would be include facial recognition automotive, some of the cameras even picking up license plates now as well. So there's a lot more capabilities available to us with the AI systems.

For the cloud base, I'm guessing we're using Microsoft SharePoint for that?

Yes, part of 365 is the ability to have our own internet and intranet.

Okay.

And we're looking to expand the intranet for FOIA purposes for notifications, forms that might be utilized in our office processes and so forth.

Are we using their authenticator as well?

No, we are actually using Duo.

Oh, Duo. It took me a second. I remember using it, but it took me a second to remember it. Okay. That's a separate service, Duo?

Yes.

Okay. Is there a plan to possibly migrate to that Microsoft's authenticator?

Not at present. I will say that the Duo has been working extremely well and a lot less expensive than what Microsoft charges. OK.

I thought it was part of the 365 packet.

It's a separate license. OK.

Probably for government.

It is. All right. Thank you. The storage of license plates and whose cars that's registered to and facial recognition, do we keep that stored indefinitely, or is it purged, or what?

Cameras that are currently picking up that, we have the flock cameras that I think you're already familiar with. That goes into the National Police Database, as I understand. We don't store that information here. That's part of that flock system that goes into the National Database. Our cameras that may pick up a license plate now go into our video system, but there's no identification that says this plate belongs to Jim Ridge, for example. You keep that video for 30 to 60 days, depending on what camera system it's collected on, and then it's purged automatically.

And go back again to the information that's given to the police, the national data set. What is that? Tell me again.

That is a camera system called Flock. It is specifically designed just for license plate recognition only. That information is captured by that system, goes straight into a police database that police officers and other law enforcement agencies can't access. But us here at the city, just employees such as IT, for example, we cannot access that information.

Staff development is also a focus with an emphasis on elevating technical training. GIS will undergo a major upgrade to ArcGIS Pro with versioning to enhance mapping and data accuracy. Now we transition from departments to divisions. The fleet division has four employees. Fleet management handles maintenance and repairs for all city vehicles and equipment. They manage fuel systems, fuel replacement planning, fleet replacement planning, I'm sorry, and performance upfitting for specialized vehicles. Their work ensures our public safety, public services, and other teams have reliable equipment to do their jobs.

On the mechanics, you have two mechanic ones. What is that?

The mechanic ones are mechanics that work on the everyday fleet maintenance of And then the mechanic three is our emergency vehicle technician that does our upfitting.

Or just PD, or they do?

They do. Police, fire, public services, they've done parks and recs. I'll have a little bit of a piece here on upfitting and a couple slides.

That's all that person does is upfitting? We don't have anybody on staff that does repairs to the park? Say, for instance, either a large truck or a tractor or anything like that. Do we send that out?

No, our mechanics do work on equipment as well.

To what extent?

But they do not work on any apparatus.

But what about machinery as far as a diesel? Are they a certified diesel mechanic or...?

We do have one that is certified diesel mechanic.

Do we lease or purchase vehicles as a general rule?

Purchase.

Good, good, good. That's what I wanted to hear. Thank you.

We added a dedicated fleet manager in 2023. This role oversees the entire vehicle lifecycle from purchasing, maintenance, budgeting, and disposal. as well as fuel management. The fleet team currently maintains 241 vehicles and 119 pieces of equipment ranging from mowers to specialty units. This chart highlights the growth of the city's fleet over time as staffing and services span. Vehicle needs grow as well, which directly affects maintenance workloads and replacement planning. This table shows the age distribution of vehicles across several departments. You'll notice variability depending on operational needs. Fleet age is a major indicator of maintenance costs and reliability, so monitoring this distribution is essential for future budget planning. Here we see the citywide totals, 241 vehicles in all. Nearly half of the vehicles are between zero and three years old. which is a healthy indicator. However, about 12% are 11 years old or older and 16% fall within the seven to 10 year category.

What departments are those in? Public service and police, recreation. Yeah.

I'm sorry, Jay.

Go ahead.

Okay. These older units often require more frequent maintenance and are candidates for replacement.

Do we go by strictly age by years, or are we looking at mileage as well? I mean, I would assume that a police car that's 11 years old has got a lot of miles on it. Magic.

Actually, the police vehicles, the patrol especially, we go more by hours than miles because they idle, sit and idle a lot. Mm-hmm.

but I mean, public services or recreation or any of these other departments that, I mean, we're, are these aging out or, I mean, some of them are aging out due to breakdown and, you know, just we can no longer continue to repair them.

It's not cost effective to do so. Sometimes we have accidents where, They're totaled out in a variety of reasons.

Yeah.

He uses a matrix of multiple, it has multiple measurements in it and age and mileage and things like that, or one of them, or two of them, but there's other elements in there, how much we've invested in a vehicle. We have experience with a vehicle that once it got to be 10 years old, that we had to replace the transmission. We look at vehicles that are maybe seven years old or eight years old that we're approaching that 10-year mark. Same make and model, for example, based on mileage or something like that, that may be getting ready at 100,000 miles. I know we're going to have to replace the transmission. So he grades all that out and then determines through a matrix which ones hit a certain threshold mark or rating. And those that are, I don't know what the number is, like 18. Yeah.

Yeah, 16, we start looking at them. 18, definitely we need to get them ordered.

Okay. When you say he, who is that?

Chris Brantley is our fleet manager.

Mike, sometime back you were really involved with the fleet, and I think one of the things that you looked at was – auction resale price, because there's a, I guess there's a point where you reach our peak as far as auction and then it start, are we still looking at that?

Yeah, we evaluate as part of that evaluation where it's probably going to hit that if we don't do something about it now, that probably by the time we said, oh, let's hold on to it for two more years, we know that we're probably going to lose a potential resale value out of it. But the biggest thing is just operational capacity anymore. We just look at the ability for it to continue to serve at the capacity level. And based on, because I mean, we've had vehicles that we thought would just be ragged out. Nobody would really bid on them. We'd get higher bids than ones we thought were better. I think it just depends on whoever's bidding on them and what their needs are for that type of vehicle. Obviously, the big trucks, like dump trucks and things like that, it's kind of hard to gauge that because jurisdictions, they may have a 30-year-old dump truck and they're replacing it with a 20-year-old. For them, it's a gold mine. So there's a lot of variables in that. But we still do look at what the market value is for timing. to make sure we're not losing money.

The fleet shop earned the SG FMA Award for quality fleet management excellent for two years since hiring a dedicated fleet manager. In 2023, the division transitioned from paper to electronic systems and implemented new field software. By 2025, they were used using utilization reports to guide purchasing decisions completed a fuel tank lining project, implemented the WEX fuel card, and added an emergency vehicle technician. Fleet is facing significant supply chain delays. Standard vehicles often take two to three months to receive. Specialized units can take more than nine months. Emergency vehicle equipment alone can take six months after ordering. Manufacturing delays also slow down vehicle upfitting. Here are the typical build times three to four weeks for police patrol cars, two to three weeks for police admin units, about two weeks for fire admin vehicles, two to three weeks for fire operation units. Public services work trucks are faster at around three to five days. Since November of 2024 fleet has completed five builds for fire nine for police, and significant lighting installations for public services and recreation. They also performed equipment repairs on 52 vehicles. This reflects a high and steady workload. Fleet is requesting one additional emergency vehicle technician to help manage growing demand for upfitting and emergency equipment repairs. They're also asking for a facility needs study to explore a standalone fleet shop to accommodate future growth. Moving on to risk management. Risk management oversees insurance, claims, safety programs, ADA coordination, and liability reduction. This work protects the city financially and ensures compliance with federal regulations. The dedicated risk manager added in 2023 manages property and liability claims, oversees coverage for 83 locations, 292 vehicles, 265 inland Marine items, and also review city projects for ADA compliance and maintains the ADA transition plan. In 2025 risk management recovered nearly $99,000 from third parties and maximize reimbursements tied to hurricane Helene. This is a significant financial benefit for the city. This slide breaks down hurricane Helene's financial impact in detail. Total costs were over $1.67 million. Between insurance, FEMA, SCEMD reimbursements, the city expects to reduce its net costs significantly pending additional reimbursement. The biggest challenge remains processing and tracking the high volume of hurricane-related claims. These are complex, long-term cases requiring coordination across multiple agencies. Risk management is requesting dedicated claims management software to simplify and consolidate claims data. This software would allow the city to automate certificate of insurance tracking, which will improve accuracy and reduce manual work. Now we'll move into procurement and grants management.

Can you go back to the last slide, the claims software? What are we doing right now?

Spreadsheets, files on our computer.

And this is a, forgive my ignorance, but this is a software that we will use internally to track claims?

We would use it internally. It would be used by risk management, HR, and finance. The risk manager oversees our property and liability claims. HR does our workers' compensation claims. And the certificate of insurance tracking that I mentioned here, finance currently tracks those. Okay.

If you took out Hurricane Helene, with your current system, how adequate is it?

We would still be requesting it. Okay. On to procurement and grants management. Procurement oversees purchasing, contract administration, bid and RFP processes, vendor relations, policy compliance, and cooperative purchasing. This team ensures fairness, transparency, and efficiency in how we spend public dollars. They also identify and coordinate grant opportunities. Procurement supports departments through formal and informal procurement guidance, scope development, pricing and sourcing assistance, cooperative contract availability checks, and general purchasing support. This includes walking departments through purchasing thresholds and processes, including the city requirements for all vendors doing business with the city. They also manage contract review execution with legal consultation, meet with new vendors, and help departments identify and apply for grants. These next few slides visually reinforce procurement's role in ensuring efficient purchasing and strong vendor partnerships. The timeline provided is for a typical request for bid and a simple request for proposal. The evaluation timeline in purple ebbs and flows dependent on how quickly the evaluators can turn around a recommendation. And lastly, the quickness of the awarded company to return the correct and required documents. This period also includes the intent to protest period, which is seven calendar days per state law. Solicitations are published through South Carolina's Business Opportunities and our online procurement platform, OpenGov. This slide shows the 14 solicitations completed to date through the formal procurement process this fiscal year. To address growing concerns from departments and in response to the increasing market costs, the procurement thresholds were increased as more and more departments faced larger number of projects falling within the formal solicitation thresholds since construction and services costs were increasing. This translated to longer periods of time for the city to accomplish required services and projects since procurement timelines were having to be factored in. There was a noticeable dip in the number of solicitations after the procurement thresholds were increased This year, we are back up to 16 solicitations which is representative of the city's continued growth and project needs. These solicitations also differ in that they are for more complex scopes and we only expect this to increase. This slide provides a high level summary of our fiscal 26 year grant activity and the impact of those efforts across departments. In total, the city submitted 13 grant applications this year representing approximately 14.7 million in potential funding. The largest portion of these requests from the fire department with more than 12.8 million submitted, followed by engineering at 2.9 million police at 966,000 and PRT at a hundred thousand. So far we've been awarded 185,000 and we still have more than $6.4 million pending review and awaiting award decision. These pending applications represent significant opportunities, particularly for public safety and infrastructure projects. The team is also actively working on a new application for 1.2 million to fund generators for police and fire facilities, which would enhance continuity of operations during emergencies. Overall, this slide demonstrates how our procurement and grants team is not only managing purchasing workloads, but also playing a major role in securing external funding to support critical city initiatives. As the city grows, procurement complexity increases. More specialized projects require additional legal review, detailed scopes, and alignment of grant cycles with project timelines. Procurement plans to create standardized internal procurement and purchasing policies formalize contract processes, and issue on-call professional service solicitations. We also see value in adding in-house legal counsel and developing consistent grant processes and templates. Thank you for your time and attention. Internal services plays a crucial role in supporting the city's growth, and we appreciate the opportunity to share our needs and initiatives for fiscal year 2027. Counsel, questions?

I have two, and it's a statement. One of the things that I heard throughout when we talked about needs of departments was basically educating folks within the departments to help them move forward. Now, we had begun that many years ago. We're not doing that now?

We are. We have training. I think you heard me mention that particularly in the IT department. It's at the rate that technology is evolving that we are just making a concerted effort to keep those folks trained with the emerging technologies.

Okay. The statement that I think would help everybody across the board, and this is overarching and it would take... every department, including HR, administration. But we were talking a lot about recruitment and retention. And we had, I think you said, the average tenure is like six and a half years. Well, first of all, what brings that number down and what's bringing it up?

I would say the large factor bringing it down is the growth. We've added 120 new employees over five years.

But that means you've got folks leaving.

And we do have retirements and attrition, correct? But as a percentage, is that going up or down?

Yeah, is that a particular department you see that in, or is that?

It's across the board. And just the number of positions that we have added throughout the years is putting that number down.

OK, in that same vein, I think it would be beneficial. And I know there's probably no work. Well, I'll take that back. I think we would be unique if we not only worked on the recruitment and the retention, because we have you know, when you get hired, you know what you're going to get paid. You know the benefits. If you carry out your career to the end, you know what you would be eligible for for retirement, things like that. So those are kind of givens. The things that are Department specific and then on down to employee specific because you mentioned age is one. Departments are when we know that police they've always had an issue always I mean many many years ago for people leaving in our public works we've always had folks leaving we can't fill the positions or whatever I think that things like that have to be looked at in a special way and a plan has to be put together the way you recruit folks and the way that you manage those folks in the fringe benefits, The picnics and the attaboy awards and stuff like that that makes this, you know, we've rounded up 400 employees. Just because we have 400 employees does not mean that we have this huge work staff and we can't have connections with folks. And so I think that starting with HR would be the... the force that kind of brings everybody together. But I think that we need to have this program in place where we're recruiting in the schools at the high schools and the colleges, all the levels. And then we want to make sure those are the right people, that we make the right hires the best we can. But then when they get on board, they're not number 401. They've got to believe they're number one. Correct. And that's going to be special or different for each age group and where they are in their careers. I always say we need to bring the right people on board. We need to pay them what they're worth, but expect the same in return from them. And then, also, love on them a lot. Mr. Merriman, at one point, we were talking. He said, it needs to be that going to work for government is not a secondhand thought. It needs to be, yeah, I want to go work for the city of Greer.

And to your point, we've been trying to be much more intentional about that.

Yeah, but I think it needs to be something that starts in HR, but then it's got to be refined in the departments. And that would include positions, pay, all that kind of stuff, plus the loving on them part.

Yes, sir.

Oh, and in the procurement process, we had the issue not long ago where we operated by policy and it cost us a boatload of money. Are we building in flexibility in our policy? Because that's not good management.

That's why we're creating the capital budget fund. And that, Chris?

The issue that you were discussing, Mr. Arrowood, was the function of accounting and how we budget from year to year. The flexibility of having this capital budget account that's specifically designed to, quite frankly, go from year to year without being encumbered or working under the constraints of a fiscal year that we ordinarily operate off of.

The dollars would move with that specific project.

I always thought they always did. Well, so they did. But what happens is it kind of artificially inflates the budget because you end up carrying it over year over year and it becomes a fund balance appropriation. The way that Chris is going to do it from this particular setup is a cleaner budget. from an auditing standpoint, way of managing multi-year projects.

On a per project? Correct. So it's not one big lump that all the projects runs out of? Correct.

It's a perfect example, Mr. Erwood, of the the tension between government should run like a business, but I want full accountability and the, the fairest and most open procurement process possible. And so while we're trying to balance, um, public accounting and public accountability for finances and to ensure that we have a fair procurement process, sometimes the cost benefit of that means that, you know, from a, from a fairness standpoint in this particular case, we, we, it wasn't the best bang for the buck from a project perspective. And so this, moving us to this particular way of managing those funds, gives us more flexibility to avoid these situations.

I think that's great. And I wasn't thinking about anything about comparing private versus public. It's just that one of the things I think that we should give our employees is the ability to be flexible and make decisions. And maybe that decision would be, you know what? If we put this time constraint on, it's going to cost us X amount more. So we probably should go back to council and say, hey, what do you want to do? I think that's very fair. And that accomplishes being open and honest and all of that kind of stuff. So anyway, just food for thought. Yes, sir. Thank you.

Chris, the ERP software, is this focused on, what are you looking at? How all encompassing are we talking here?

So it's going to be everything from a financial accounting standpoint, full general ledger detail. We would like this new software to be able to print checks. As Ms. Woodruff mentioned, we want to be able to have an online processing piece for our hospitality and business license renewal. so that way they can actually make those payments online. Right now, a lot of folks are coming in and paying with a check, right? Or we're trying to make it simpler for them to be able to do those certain things. But it would kind of encompass everything outside of payroll. The payroll HR piece, we have a different software for that. But budget piece would be another one. Again, as I mentioned, we are currently using OpenGov, so we'd like this to have all those pieces in that. And then... We utilize OpenGup for procurement. We're not looking at the procurement piece right now, but it also has that flexibility in the future if we choose to go that route. What is it called? Right now, we're currently looking at Tyler Technologies.

Well, good. I mean, you got to have a good foundation.

Anything else? Got a couple questions, and sorry if y'all have answered this already. For the salary increases we're doing, how does that compare to inflation of, you know, the for increasing size by 2%? How does that compare?

Well, this budget anticipates a 2.8% COLA increase across the board. When we looked at the class and comp system, it was more of a regional comparative analysis to get us competitive. So this budget anticipates specifically anticipates full implementation for an annual basis of the class and comp, there's also the 2.8% CPI adjusted cost of living.

But they would be... It's considered. It considered. It considered inflationary. They'll still have more money. Yes, sir. And then I know we used to do, what was that, a merit increase? We have cut that out this year. Okay. Now, was that a percentage increase on top of if, let's say you've got 2.9?

I think, yeah. So in the past, yes, sir, what we had done was, and let's use this year as an example, got a 2.8% cost of living adjustment increase. we would have done a 1% or 1.5% COLA. Each department or division would have had a proportionate share of that 1%. And based on how you scored on your performance evaluation, you would get a proportionate share of those dollars. Problem with that system is while it's mathematically defensible, it doesn't move the needle from a performance standpoint. So for instance, if a 3.5 is the benchmark, is the top of the bell curve, and we have one employee get a 3.4 and one get a 3.6, the difference in dollar amount between 3.4 and 3.6 might be $12 annually. That's, yes, mathematically defensible, doesn't move the needle from a performance standpoint. So because of just... the fact that I just don't like the system from a reward standpoint, we pulled it out of this year's budget in anticipation of full implementation of class and comp plus the COLA.

Now, with the class and comp study, is it more of a, let's say I come in as a, I don't know, maybe accountant. It may be a wrong, bad example. Public service person. Do you have, instead of going to a public service person,

two you have maybe public service a b c and then you jump up to a two so you have an intermediate how is that class and comp study for that upward movement look the answer to that is we we already have some positions that have that anticipates a one two and three are there gradations between one and two no sir it just goes from one to two um and it's not for all positions yeah because

You know, I used to work for SCDOT, and the issue you always faced was, you know, you had to wait for somebody to retire or whatever. But they did have those intermediate steps so that if, you know, let's say I go into Engineer 1, it was like 1A, 1B, 1C, you at least have a way to move salary-wise.

We don't have that, and we don't have steps in between. How our scales go up every year is based on CPI. So every year the scale goes up for...

Well, that's the one thing we didn't have. We were not guaranteed to get a raise.

Yeah, and that's the thing. Every year, the salary schedule, you're always chasing the top end of the scale, so we move it based on CPI. Now, to your point, Mr. Booker, there will come a time as we continue to, and we'll analyze this annually, and there may be an appropriate time where you look at a public service worker, one, and add a separate gradation. One of the things that came up specifically last week when we did our workshop was the position of a lieutenant in the police department. While we have recognized that the captains are doing majors work and the majors are, and the lieutenants are doing captains work, we've got a lieutenant's grade in there without the intent of filling that this fiscal year. So we always are going to anticipate those types of gradations in any position.

Mr. Booker, our intent is to move into a system that doesn't necessarily identify that in public services that at any given time we can have no more than five public service workers, too. Our intent is to create a system that once you reach a certain benchmark that you do become a public services worker, too. In theory, you could end up at some point utilizing that system that everybody in the department is a public services worker too. So we're not, the idea of waiting, yes, early on, somebody come to work here as a public services worker one, they might retire in the old days as a public services worker one because there was just never any movement. That's not sustainable and we're working on systems to alleviate that.

Now, I know at one time, I threw this out during the strategic planning session of the innovation award incentive. Did that get any legs tossed around?

In this budget, no, sir. But that's going to be part of the ongoing discussion on performance evaluations, quite frankly, is how is it that we reward and incent employees. So it's going to have to be a holistic approach. This particular year, the priority from the administration was let's get the class and comp system implemented. Let's... get us squared away on cost of living and then of course as i mentioned to you all um there is an adjustment this year for new employees to pay a share of their uh their insurance because whereas before the city covered 100 of single coverage we're now asking new employees to pay that proportion share which helps manage everybody's health care costs but to answer your question I mean, some of the things we're talking about doing might be at some point family leave for paternal leave. We're looking at how do we look at language bonuses or language incentives or education incentives. So as part of that ongoing package, to Mr. Erwood's point, how are we loving on them when we've got them? How are we rewarding them when they're here? And that's going to be part of that compensation culture that we're going to continue.

Yeah, I'm curious just to see from a cultural standpoint, you know, we've got a lot of opportunities for people to get dollars, like safety bonus. And, I mean, it seems to be times where you're getting more money, but are they – as effective as we think they are, or should we change that model and shift those dollars to other areas?

That's a great question. I think the answer to that is I think they're as effective as they can be, quite frankly, and it does put us in a competitive advantage amongst those from whom we compete. The class and comp system, we compared city of Greenville, county of Greenville, city of Spartanburg, county of Spartanburg. Anderson County, Anderson City, Malden, and Goose Creek. And Goose Creek was this kind of outlier but comparable city on the other side of the state. But the fact of the matter is we benchmarked ourselves from a salary perspective there. That did not include the soft things that we do. for our employees, the longevity bonuses, the safety bonuses, the loving on them. If you'll look in your budget, we've got money in there and departments are always doing team building type activities or doing some sort of training retreat or they're doing this or doing that. Opportunities for everybody to come together and become part of a team that's specific and unique to the department itself. It's not a one size fits all kind of thing. So those are those soft things that we're not even part of the class and comp that we're going to continue to do. And I think our turnover rate, as Katrina had mentioned, at 6.4%, 6.5% or is it 5.6%? There you go. Whatever that was, was low compared to those from whom we benchmarked.

Did you have something you or somebody was about to chime in? Go ahead. I got one more. Go ahead. OK. This is more for Chris. On the business license side, and if you've answered this already, I apologize. I notice there's two numbers that we work with. You have a resident rate and a non-resident rate. Can we find out, if you know already, is that normal for cities to have a non-resident business license? I never knew that. I paid business license every year. Never realized there was a resident versus non-resident.

That's a pretty common practice across the entire state here. Other municipalities do the same.

Now I'm curious of how many people actually take advantage of that.

Resident rate in that non-resident rate compared to the businesses we have if you could find out who actually takes advantage of that because You know I'm curious I've got one other thing that It's not direct compensation, but it affects the pocketbook of folks when We provide health insurance, and that's a benefit. So you get a person who hires in on day one, year one, and then on year five, in order to save on insurance, we you know we're looking we're comparing we're doing all this so we buy or we contract with another insurer for prescriptions or whatever and they exclude this that and the other and now some people they'll just take that it's excluded I know that Reality is that we have addressed this at some point by saying, OK, new insurer, if these people already had this prescription, you are going to cover it. I think it would be very beneficial to things like that. If we have things like that that's going on, then actually that will affect someone in their pocketbook unless there is an alternative to that. And I know, Mr. Merriman, that you've said you haven't received any feedback from employees. just in general conversation that's happened and employees have had to prove different things. And so I think it's a little bit more out there, but regardless, I think that always has to be considered. If we are, if we are, doing something to the benefits package in reduction in some way, shape, or form, then we need to consider, well, actually, that's a cut in their entire. It's not a cut on their salary. But if it's going to make them have to pay out of pocket, it does reduce their disposable income. So I think one of the things, and that would make us unique, is that we look at all of that as we move forward, not just how do we save the dollars. Because in reality, if we start cutting expenses that directly affect our folks, it will have a direct effect on how we serve our citizens. So that's just the idea I wanted to throw out there. Yes, sir.

I was going to ask, do we plan to continue the grandfathering of existing employees in our current cost-sharing structure?

The existing employees, this change to insurance for new employees only applies to new employees.

We don't have a a high deductible plan for newcomers?

No, actually, and that's one of the things that we've discussed ad nauseum, quite frankly, is trying to add that to menu of options. And Mr. Lander, I think, you know, I recall specifically being younger and looking at

I go to the doctor once every four years. That's my point.

And it was like, and I had two young kids, and I'm like, well, I'd rather bring some more money home. I'm healthy. I'll rub some dirt on it. I'll be fine. But I think that is, and we have, and you saw the demographic breakdown of who we're hiring. And we're hearing a number of those folks that say, I'd like to have a high deductible plan. I'd like to have an HSA. I'd like to have these things. This is going to be part of that, again, that menu of options that we're trying to craft. But as we talked about with the class and comp, it initially started in 2024. That was phase one when we addressed a number of the salaries because we were chasing that new minimum wage that the market was demanding. With 2024, we implement it. 2025-26 is the full implementation of class and comp. The next implementation of the class and comp piece of this will be that menu of options that we're working through.

Great.

Anything else? Thank you. Mr. Erwood, thank you.

Thank you, guys.

It's your meeting, Mr. Erwood. Do you want to do a break or do you want to roll right into it? Yes. Let's roll. Let's roll.

All right. Well, with that. You ain't going to miss me. I'll be back with you. I know who's coming.

He's former planning commissioner anyway. He knows it all. All right. Because it is. Well, I will say this. Let me start by introducing Mr. Alex Cahill. Alex, you didn't present to council on the budget workshop last year, did we? Because we did it a little bit differently. Yes, that was week two. That's exactly right. So this is his first opportunity to present to you in a budget workshop. You've obviously seen him in council meetings, but Mr. Cahill has done a great job for us over the last year. And I will bring him up to, again, talk to you about the planning and development department and all that his team is doing, specifically related to not just this budget, but how to handle the growth data that y'all see. So with that, Alex, it's all you, man. Thanks, boss.

All right, so I'm the closer today. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem and Council. Happy to be here. As everybody else said, feel free to jump in, ask questions as we go. And I'm going to go ahead and get started. So I'm gonna start with a number. You've probably already seen it, whether in the news articles and some of the data you've received, but 190%, that has been our growth in population since 2000. So in 25 years, 190%. The other number I'm gonna throw out there is 28.62 square miles. That's about what we're at as a city. All of you know, especially based on your council districts, that our geography is quite spread out. So that creates some challenges and some opportunities for us. So that's where I want to start today's discussion. Planning and development is that department that sits at the edge of that growth that we're seeing. Every permit, every inspection, every planning decision is processed through this team. This year alone, over 10,000 building inspections, 881 permits, 824 compliance violations, and 15,000 plus plan and zoning reviews have already occurred and the year is not over. We did this with adding just one person over the past five years. We don't manufacture anything, as you know. Sometimes seeing other departments is kind of fun and exciting, especially following PRT and some of the capital work they get to do. But we don't sell anything, and as our chief building official, well, I hate that I'm gonna say this, but I'm gonna say it anyway, as he always says, is our only product here is customer service in our department. You know, our customer service is for our residents, our businesses, and builders of the city. Every interaction is an opportunity for my department and our team to build trust. And we've been efficient over the years. We've been smart about it, investing in tools and technology that expand our staff capacity. We've built systems and frameworks that punch above our weight class. Our turnaround times, hands down, are the envy of others in our profession. And our staff are credentialed as credentialed professionals as they could be. But our efficiency has some limits and we're starting to meet that. So today we're bringing you a responsible budget that both continues the work that we are already doing and positions us to help support and lead the city into the next period of responsible growth management. We have done our homework on each item, program, and dollar, of course with the help of our vetted budgeting committee, and we're ready to walk through the reasoning and why we are requesting what we're requesting. We need to hear from you today, your priorities, your questions, and of course, your pushback, if you have it. This is our budget together, so we're excited to talk to you today about it. So I do want to start by introducing, you probably already know, some of our department leadership team. Ashley Cotty, you probably see very frequently at our council meetings. So she's our division manager over our planning division. Sam Dobson, we get to see a little bit less up here in front of council, but he is our chief building official. Been in that role as permanent chief building official about a year now, coming up on a year. And then Joe Holbrooks is our community compliance manager, formerly known as code enforcement. So I'm gonna go through what each division does. I know we had the opportunity to present to the two new council members recently on what we do, but I think it's a good refresher for all of us. Our planning division oversees our UDL, so that's our Unified Development Ordinance, which was adopted in 2023. They also brought forward our comprehensive plan and managed that. Engage in master planning exercises as time and resources permit. Small area and corridor planning, again, as time and resources permit. They staffed three boards and commissions. You're probably all familiar because you make the appointments, but that is our Board of Architectural Review, Board of Zoning Appealers, and our Greer Planning Commission. They also oversee zoning permits and inspections on those permits on the zoning side. They engage in project management. So I think one thing that's really important for us to point out is while we see a lot of the data that comes in, just like finance and HR and IT support other departments, we do in the development field because most development comes through our department and we help project manage and facilitate that. We oversee growth management strategies and recommend them to council, and we also engage in demography. Our compliance division, so this is, I know most of you know them pretty well. Sometimes you'll reach out and say, hey, I heard this complaint, I need you to go check it out. That tends to be our compliance division. They engage in a few things. One is proactive education, so teaching and empowering our residents to do what they need to do to maintain their properties and their homes. Their strategy is voluntary compliance, so how do we bring people into compliance without issuing a finer citation and make sure that's our last resort. Condemnations, that is the process they oversee. We have about 30 active ones right now. As you can imagine, because we both honor personal property rights and because it's highly regulated, condemnations tend to go a little bit slower, so it takes us some time to work through those. They oversee demolitions of those structures in coordination with our building division. They also engage in two really key focus areas I think are important to highlight. They are our UDO enforcement wing, so while our planning team does a great job with as much as they have on their plate, they do try to help support this, but compliance is really charged with our enforcement of the UDO. And then they also enforce what is the International Property Maintenance Code. So that is everything that you are probably most used to, tall grass, abandoned buildings, inoperable vehicles. And I know a few of you were able to make it to our engagement events last year, so really, really happy that you were able to participate. Thank you. OUR BUILDING DIVISION, THIS IS OUR LARGEST DIVISION IN THE DEPARTMENT. THEY DO QUITE A FEW THINGS. AND PROBABLY I'M ALWAYS ADDING MORE, SO I APOLOGIZE, SAM. THEY DO OVERSEE OUR TRACK IT ADMINISTRATION SOFTWARE. SO THAT'S OUR DEVELOPMENT SOFTWARE THAT ALL PROJECTS COME THROUGH. IT WAS A TRANSITION I THINK BACK IN 2021. And it's really, Sam and his team have worked really hard to get this to work as best as the tool can. So they oversee track it. They also do all the South Carolina labor verifications to make sure your contractors operating in our city are licensed and are going to be able to perform high quality work. They also oversee the International Code Council Administration. And I won't get into all the boring details, though. Sam will geek out on this with you if you want to after this. But everything from residential code to fuel code to building code goes through our building division. They are made up of three different work groups and teams. We have our permitting team. Supervisor Kelly Price does a phenomenal job seeing our permits from start to finish all the way from pre-application essentially to our certificate of occupancy. They also are the same group that verifies that our contractors are licensed to do the work in the city. Then we have a small and lean but really powerful plan review team. That is where our one full-time and part-time employee work. And they do plan review that verifies code compliance before construction to meet building fire energy and accessibility codes. You know, they're coordinating with the ADA coordinator. They're preventing delays in construction or redesign. That's a huge focus of us, obviously, in GREER. We want to make sure that we are keeping this process moving forward. And they do provide clear expectations for contractors and designers. And then probably the biggest bucket of work in terms of volume, like I said, we're at about 10,000 inspections year to date right now, is our building inspectors, led by our building inspection supervisor, Steven Wingo. He does a phenomenal job leading his guys to ensure that they are there to inspect all critical stages of development. whether it's foundations, framing, utility, finals, et cetera. They verified that work matches the approved plans. And I just want to make sure I share this, that inspections are a snapshot in time. There's no way we could possibly be at every project from start to finish 24-7. So that's really the role of building inspections.

Hey, Alex. Yes, sir. We perform these inspections, these plan reviews for residential, commercial, and industrial?

Yes, sir.

Okay, we don't sub any of it out.

Some of the commercial inspections are done through our fire marshals, though.

Okay. All right, excellent. Excellent, thank you.

And then, not a division, but we have some administrative work that we do. A testament to Nikki Johnson, if you've met her, she does a phenomenal job as an admin of one to support our department with financial management. We've recently pivoted to start doing more robust planning and community engagement efforts, so we have a dedicated staff for that. Lancey Sepulveda, if you've met her before. Metric tracking and reporting. Give my boss a huge shout out. Reno is very good about helping us get to metrics and tracking, and so that's something that we're really taking seriously and using it to impact outcomes. Admin provides division support. And then shout out to Chris Brantley and his team. Most of the fleet management work, we don't have to do much anymore. They handle most everything. And the small amount of things left really are purely administrative and don't take much time for us at all. So we are really thankful for that department. So a little bit of where we were. Just focus on this very quickly. I know I don't have as fun of slides as Ann, but she's still here, isn't she? Yeah.

That was the pigeon part.

you know, because, because our product is customer service, you know, you're seeing it in the built environment, but you're not always seeing it on the day to day. And so sometimes, uh, providing that love that we're talking about is focusing on codes, uh, super exciting stuff, but just leading from past success, um, the UDO adoption 2023 was a key thing, uh, having a zoning, uh, integrated zoning and land development ordinance, uh, the comprehensive plan initially adopted in January, 2021, And then updated, of course, this past year with council support. And then in the code cycle implementation, building codes are on a three-year schedule. So they're three years in arrear and they're updated every three years. Not confusing at all. So we are actually on 2021 building codes right now. We will be on the 2024 building codes come January 1st, 2027. All right, so that's something that Sam's team has done a really good job of implementing, teaching, and educating on. In addition to some of this past success, we saw some peak development numbers in 23 and 24, just really high numbers, including things like 2,962 multifamily unit apartment inspections from our inspections team, which is just really phenomenal that they did it with a group of, what, four or five that they have. But really what we want to talk about today is where we're at now. I presented to y'all in August of 2025 about what our three pillars really were. There's really four now. The fourth is housing. But three pillars for discussion in a 26 budget and now 27 budget are three things that we think are key and core to helping support Greer. The first is proactive community compliance. We wanna build a culture around prevention and education, not just citations. We always want that to be a last resort. We wanna be a city of empowerment for our residents. Operational efficiency I know for some of you that word is key and for me it is too. I want to do more Maybe sometimes I want to do too much But I want to do more with what we have smarter systems streamlined processes And then community engagement, you know, we build trust with our community through transparency outreach genuine dialogue not a checkbox activity, but something that actually informs our processes when we are able to and The fourth pillar is housing, which is something that you know with the housing study came up at the work session and will come back to council on the 26th. So some key snapshot numbers just for y'all to see. This is just year-to-date performance, which means it ends June 30th at the end of the fiscal year. But the development ecosystem I think is important to look at and talk about sometimes. because when we look at purely fees, which I think Mr. Merriman did a good job at the May 7th meeting talking about how they fluctuate, we may have gotten a lot of fees up front that pay for the application initially, but the pipeline is quite long sometimes for some of the projects, especially depending on funding that the developer's seeking. And so we're seeing some of this play out now. So 10,294 building inspections year to date, 881 permits processed, 313 certificates of occupancy, Planning case types, those are a little more heavy. They require a little more analysis and thought, take a little bit longer, so there's 147 of them. 340 planning permit reviews, 824 compliance violations, et cetera. Signs, illegal signs is always a big one. I know I get a few calls of those, probably every week. 261 so far that we've picked up. 30 active condemnations and 259 plan reviews. I will say we have 500, I think as of yesterday, 500 units in the grading permit process and another 532 in the final plat process. So while the applications may have been submitted a while ago, this pipeline and this ecosystem continues on.

Certificates of occupancy.

Yes, sir.

Is that, are we trending down? The certificates of occupancy. That's how many homes we said could be occupied.

That's homes and businesses.

Okay. But that just strikes me as a low number.

We are trending a little bit down.

This half a year. Oh, okay. Well, okay. Thank you. Sorry.

Yeah. And we are trending slightly down on certificates of occupancy. Some things that we've done with the budget that y'all allocated and appropriated last year, we're really focused on good governance. So we have, I mentioned before, we have a very credentialed staff. So we maintain 20 staff credentials. We attended or hosted 42 professional trainings or conferences. I say hosted because a lot of the code enforcement and building inspections and upper state Items are actually held at Grier, testament to Sam and his leadership and Joe and their leadership and ensuring those remain on site and representing Grier well. We actually adopted rules of procedure for Grier Planning Commission and Board of Zoning Appeals to ensure that they are providing you with the best possible information and getting cases that are both legally and ethically compliant, but also very clear expectations for our development community. And then we hosted trainings provided by MASC for boards and commissions and a recognition event for them as well as we recognize those are volunteer board members are a key part and integral part of our development ecosystem. On the planning policy and strategic initiative side, so we completed the housing study this year. That was phenomenal work by Heather Stahl, planner. We started the first phase of the quiet crossing study. That's really the diagnostic and learning phase, trying to figure out if coordination's possible. We adopted the five-year comprehensive plan update. We crafted and began implementation of a five-year department strategic and business plan just as a sort of capacity analysis, department analysis to see where we were at and where we need to go. We developed a draft engagement strategy that we'll talk about at the end of the presentation. And then two key things is we really helped shepherd the sports and events center that required staff to be available to co-inspect. Pretty frequently, there were some days where our building inspection supervisor had to be there every day for probably a month, a couple of weeks. So something that took up some time was really important to get right. And same with the Prisma expansion. Key things that take up staff's time, but we really want to do well.

Alex, quick question. Yes, sir. I guess I don't know if we should raise any alarms or not, but on the certificate of occupancy, let's say I've got an apartment complex. Does that count as one occupancy certificate, or is it per unit in that complex?

It should be per unit.

So trending technically could be kind of vague.

And we could break that out if it's helpful with a follow-up.

No, I'm just... Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Okay.

We also really started pivoting towards community engagement and customer service initiatives So we did host for community engagement events with community compliance. This was on the spectrum of engagement This was to inform our community. I believe one council member said they just keep getting better So thank you for that We hosted three community engagement events with the Board of Architectural Review and Planning. So kudos to planner Andy Boyles and Betsy, the chair of BAR, for leading those initiatives. We coordinated three community cleanups. We sent 135 new resident welcome letters. That was a new strategy this year to make sure that homes that were coming into the city had a list of all the resources. We worked with all the other departments to figure out what services do you provide, what sort of information do you need as a new resident as you move in so it's not hard to find. We launched a customer service survey so we can begin measuring how people perceive our services our customer service and our product. And we hope by the end of the year, we're able to have some results from that. And then we launched the building career together dashboard. Right now it is cases that go to our boards and commissions, but hopefully we've built it in a way that we're able to expand on that in the future and add other development case types. That's another shout out to our planner, Andy Boyles, who really did the legwork on building that. We also focused on some operational improvements. We ensured that our turnaround times were met and were exceeded in all cases. We did perform a capacity analysis to figure out what capacity do staff have, both listening to them, but also grounding that in real data and results. Sam and his team launched the mobile TrackIt app, so we have TrackIt development system, but also a mobile app that came with our package. I'll talk about the Actus software that, to test them and to my predecessor that she brought on, I think about two years ago, has really been a really powerful tool for us in efficiency. We did create job families for all positions. I know we were talking about that earlier. So that's the building inspector one, two, three, based it on certifications and credentials, both as a way so people have a pathway to move up, but also to keep supporting high quality development. We updated our interviewing, training, and onboarding program. We launched a standing coordination meeting with Greer CPW. We already talked to them all the time, but really wanted to formalize some of these relationships so that it was very clear that we are being collaborative and intentional. We also added Greenville County Schools and Spartanburg County Schools as not just an email anymore, but hey, let's get in person, let's talk, let's make sure that we're supporting each other's growth. And then we did something kind of unique, and I think some council members may appreciate this. We started working with United Housing Connections. In the past, when we would condemn a home, someone would potentially be displaced, and that could create someone entering the housing spectrum where they become homeless. Instead, what we did is we started contacting not only the police department who co-responds with us, but also United Housing Connections so they can see if there's any resources to get that person into a home immediately. We've only had, that was recent, it's been about two months, but we've had two successful cases where UHC has come out. So some of the change, it's something that doesn't cost us any money, but it's an operational improvement that really impacts the residents in a positive way. So I do wanna talk about the numbers. I'm a numbers guy, not as much as Chris, but I am a numbers guy. Budgeted headcount, so I already alluded to this, but we're a pretty lean staff. When we peaked in development, we got more efficient. I think my perspective is sometimes when you're forced with constraints, you find ways to do cool things with that. So that's what we've had to do over the years. We've maintained a pretty steady 20 headcount, For most of the past, you know, 19 and 2022, we will be proposing just one this year, one full-time request. Our five-year budget history has been pretty consistent, slight increase between 23 and 24. You can see personnel operating debt and capital costs here. And capital, we don't tend to have a lot of cost, obviously, because we don't have a capital improvement project. That's not really the purview of our department for the most part. But we do our highly personnel-driven department because our only product is customer service. I think one of our key assets in our department is our turnaround times. And with the budget we got last year, and it was appropriated, we were able to exceed even internal goals of our average turnaround time. I will say these are numbers that you don't see in most jurisdictions. And it's really our asset here. It helps us create that supply and meet the market. I'm not going to go through each one, but I will say for some of these, it really can't go any faster. It's just not possible. Not on here is zonings and annexations, which average between 30 and 45 days. There's no way to go any faster because of the cadence of planning commission, council, and requirements for public notice. In other jurisdictions, sometimes rezonings can take six to 12 months. If you've been a developer in other cities, you may be able to attest to that. And site development plans in other cities can take anywhere from six to eight weeks. So kudos, huge kudos to the entire team. This takes not just planning and development, but this actually takes all the other departments that are co-reviewers to make this happen. Now, I mentioned we have a tool called Acta. And this tool is very interesting and efficient, and it's been really cool to come in. Again, huge kudos to my predecessor for having the foresight to bring this on board. But it is a staff-facing knowledge and workflow intelligence tool. And it really is designed to do two things. It makes us fast, accurate, and consistent. So we are always providing the same information to residents, builders, contractors. And it also creates staff bandwidth to focus on other human touchpoints. So what ACTA is is it's an extension that's embedded. It is checklists. It is standard email responses. Everything in one place all you have to do is click a block and send the information. Now, of course, there's times where we need a differentiated human aspect, and that is usually the next step. But what this does is free up our staff to focus on that. Our vendor provided some data just this week, so we appreciate it. It's kind of cool to see. We have recently, kudos to engineering, who's recently started using this as well. So we anticipate other departments starting to buy into this and help free up some of their capacity a little bit. Fire's been using it as well. and using the same tools as us. But yeah, I guess where I want to go with this is the $48,070 that the vendor says we have saved is in staff time. If you want to see the algorithm that they got to that, I'm happy to share. It is honestly, I have it right here and it's very confusing. but the point is that there's a trade off when we're able to invest in this sort of tool or able to free up staff time to do focus on our residents and our contractors and our builders. And then I want to finish kind of with our external numbers. You know, we are the department that is primarily externally facing. And so we are, again, I've referenced, we grew by 190% essentially since 2000. I BELIEVE MR. MAYORMAN ANNOUNCED DURING THE MEETING LAST WEEK, 49,800 IS WHAT THE ESTIMATE WAS FROM THE CENSUS. IT WAS RELEASED EARLIER THAT WEEK. THERE WAS A BIT OF AN EMBARGO ON THE DATA. THEY PULLED IT BACK. THEY EDITED IT SLIGHTLY AND BROUGHT IT BACK OUT ON MAY 14TH. So it's important to see our historical population and our comparative. And again, I know we kind of covered most of this last week, so I'm not going to spend too much time on it. But some key points is that our growth rate was 7.3% last year. That estimates, puts us at about 16th nationally among cities over 20,000 in growth rate. And if you classify us as a 50,000 plus city, which the census kind of was alluding to, then that makes us the fastest growing city in South Carolina, over 50,000. in comparison to some of our other neighbors and partners. And what does this mean for Greer? It means that we're essentially, we're hitting that key threshold. Again, I think Mr. Merriman talked about that, but there's a potential to become an entitlement city when that number is officially certified at 50,000. It also means that we have some challenges that come with it that we'll cover in just a minute. And then lastly, I think what's important to cover is the population projection. Now, we use what's called the Hamilton-Perry cohort change ratio, which again, I'm happy to send a list of the... the math afterwards. This is what the South Carolina Department of Revenue and Fiscal Affairs office use and also what Clemson uses and is essentially what's called a decay model. So as you go over time, the population doesn't grow exponentially, it grows in a decay pattern. We take that and we apply a growth model number, so whether it's a low growth number, a mid growth number, a high growth number, and we give us some options to look at as we plan into 2030, 2040, and 2050. So if we apply kind of a low growth, we see ourselves at about 70,000 by 2050, a mid growth about 91,000, and if we maintain a high growth, which is more than unlikely, but if we maintain a high growth through that whole period, we see ourselves about 121,000. And this is important for us as we talk about needs going forward and what we plan for. So where are we going? Last few slides here and then I'll wrap it up. We have some key opportunities in our department. We're very excited about. I think the first is creative solutions for proactive compliance. This includes sweeps to ensure that we are being consistent and fair in how we operate. PROACTIVELY ADDRESS THINGS. I THINK THERE'S SOME OPPORTUNITIES WITH EMPOWERING RESIDENTS WITH TOOLS. THERE'S ALSO SOME THINGS THAT OTHER MUNICIPALITIES ARE DOING THAT WE MAY WANT TO REVISIT THAT WE WOULD COME BACK AND TALK TO COUNCIL ABOUT WITH THE WAY THEY HANDLE LEANS AND ABATEMENTS AND THAT'S SOMETHING THAT WE CAN EXPLORE IN THE FUTURE. THE NEXT IS INNOVATIVE PLANNING. You know, with the GCRA budget, we allocated some funds to small area planning and corridor planning, and we'd really like to create some space for that. We're kind of stretched thin on the planning side right now, but we're hoping to find some ways to be able to engage in that work and get some true authentic feedback from the residents that would be impacted by it. And then I think I mentioned this earlier, it is the 2024 code cycle that will be adopted January 1st, 2027, and we will spend some time in the fall training both staff and developers in the development community about what the impact is for them to ensure that we get a safer community and safer buildings. I believe, and Sam can correct me if I'm wrong, most of the changes are pretty minor in the 2024 code cycle, and I think a couple of them really actually support housing in a positive way. And then lastly, some of the challenges that we're experiencing, you know, growth management. What is this term? We throw it around a lot. And this council, I think, does a really good job in this administration of focusing on what is growth management, how do we plan for growth? And the key answers in planning and questions that we ask are where and how. You know, where do we want to grow? How do we wanna grow? In what way do we wanna grow? Some of the challenges that we're gonna continue to face are as fringe development meets up with other municipalities, there's gonna be a little, there might be some consternation in between the two jurisdictions and how those community members work together or how we provide service. We're gonna run into some issues with donut holes and how do we address those? Can we address those? And what does that do to impact service provision? I think the next thing is the thing we've all been talking about, and I know the mayor is really good about talking about this, but keeping Greer Greer in our planning and development. We want to make sure we're finding ways to make sure that Greer keeps its uniqueness, which can be hard to operational sometimes. So having honest dialogue about what that looks, sounds, and feels like. And then space. We will need space for staff at some point, equipment, operations, possibly community if we spend more time in the community and with community. Right now, our vehicles sometimes are probably the ones at City Hall, which we try to do a good job of bringing them over to Police Department and not leaving them at City Hall, but every now and then we have one here. We need space for our vehicles, we need space for our staff. So our requests are pretty, I'd say they're pretty lean this year. One is adding a community compliance officer. Right now we have two. We'd like to add a third. The goal would be to be able to move purely to proactive. Right now we're mostly complaint based, but we want to be able to move to dedicated sweeps, UDO enforcement. Say example, if we want to focus on neon signs or vape shops, whatever we decide on, want to have an officer that we can really train up and be able to have them deploy and meet these requests and these needs. And then also go in the community and being proactive, building relationships with the community and empowering residents to do their own compliance. The adding a third officer, the nice thing about code enforcement and community compliance is that is a very highly studied field that we know what works and what doesn't. So adding a third officer will really allow us to have more systematic inspections regardless of the complaints coming in. It'll help us ensure that all neighborhoods are covered. Right now, two staff cover the entire city. We also want some earlier violation detection, which helps reduce formal action. Again, we don't want to get to fines or liens. This also helps us with some data-driven prioritization, deploying offers to where conditions are declining so we can focus on that stability of housing. And I'll just go over this real quick. As a tax-based protection strategy, one of the studies that has been done longitudinally about community compliance and code enforcement is that it's a tax-based protection strategy, again, with protecting our asset, which is our real property, and then in turn protecting our residents that need that home to be able to live a high-quality life. Five reasons I'll make my case for a third officer. It pays for itself beyond revenue. You know, it's equal coverage, voluntary compliance, property value protection, more UDO operationalization, I cannot say that, than we're able to do now, and proactive, purely proactive shift in that. We do need to add a fleet, speaking of fleet vehicles, we need to add a fleet vehicle. We're proposing a pickup truck, and really the reason for this is a lot of the hardware illegal signage that we pick up in some small debris, right now it goes in, we have SUVs, and we'd really like a truck to be able to put that in, so we're keeping the shelf life on those vehicles longer. So with this request, we're also requesting a pickup truck. Very last slide here, and then I will be happy to answer any questions. As I said, one of our three pillars is community engagement. We've worked very closely with comms and a huge shout out to Josh. I know Merriman already gave him one, but really comms and Josh in particular helped us think through and design what it could look like. So that's something we'd be happy to talk more about in the future, but one of the things that we'd like to do is dedicate about $10,000 from our existing budget towards an engagement framework so that we are actually out in the community. Those funds would be able to do a few things. we can't always get venues for free. We try to, that's always the first goal. Um, but if we can't, we would have to pay for it. Uh, second, uh, depending on the type of engagement we do, if it's the planning type engagement, we need some really strong facilitators. And some of you may be familiar with a charrette planning exercise or scenario planning. Uh, we don't necessarily have that current skillset. So we need to hire some facilitators. Uh, and of course things like printed materials, flyers, uh, anything else if interpretation is required, anything required to make the engagement event work. So we are requesting $10,000 in the budget to be able to implement that. So with that, that is my presentation for today and we are happy, Sam, Ashley are happy to answer any questions you might have.

Last week Travis was up here talking about his budget. And one of the points I brought up was potentially adding a route to inspect our streets and roadways. Now, I see that you're adding a new compliance officer. And I'm just throwing this out there. As a discussion point, maybe y'all can discuss this internally, but what I found out over the years in dealing with SCDOT, you didn't want the person inspecting your roads being the same person to fix the items because there was an incentive not to find things. And since we've got this... Vain of going from reactionary to proactive. Is it a stretch for these code enforcement officers, since they're already looking at properties and understanding what we want our city to look like? Would adding signs and potholes and lighting be a stretch for their capabilities to implement something like that?

I think that's a great question, a two-part answer. We already do that, but we could do it better. We don't have the authority under the code to enforce in the public right-of-way, but what we can do is coordinate with public services, which we do now when we see something, and we could make that more proactive in that communication. Debbie Miles and Michelle Willis did a great job kind of rethinking those complaints when they come in. And so we've done a better job coordinating since then. But it would really be a coordination thing. We don't have the purview. It's called curtilage. So we don't have the curtilage to inspect or enforce in the public right away, essentially.

Well, even from an education standpoint, even if I'm out, if somebody sends me something and say, I've got a pothole here, you can literally pull up on your phone the SEDOT app and put that in. It'll categorize. You've got potholes. You've got a shoulder blowing out. It's already categorized, but it's just an educational component. Even though we're sending it off to another agency, They at least are trained to say, I'm on 4th Street. It's not a city road. It's a state road, which goes to the fact of us upgrading our signs to having a city logo or state logo. It's a utility function. When you're riding streets, you can tell quickly, am I on a state road, city road, county road? But you can forward that information along in real time. put the work request in. Hopefully those agencies will follow up on, but it's at least noted. And then on our end, from a forward-facing perspective, we have our bases covered. And it takes that alleviation of us worrying about a public service worker trying to decide, do I write this situation up? And knowing I'm going to have to go back to the office, grab my truck, and fix it. So it's just something to throw out there. I'm not saying that's the solution. but you're asking for another employee and I was surprised we don't have someone on the planning side, especially with the housing study that we've put out there. My concern on not having someone on the planning side is we pay for this study and it sits on a shelf for five years or 10 years or whatever the case is. Now, our track record has shown that we do a pretty good job at implementing things, but I don't want it to be lost the further we kick it down the road, the less likely it's happening, and data comes outdated. Now, out of curiosity, on your plan reviews, did you have a slide to show, has that number been trending up in Holden State? I can't remember.

I did not. We can get you that data. It is trending slightly down.

Yeah, because I think you kind of undersold You looked at your staffing. It was like it started out at 17, and now you're up to 20. But it would be nice to know. I'm sure work has gotten higher, but I'm assuming we've got longevity. You've implemented ACT, is that what it's called? There was a lot of things where y'all zoned in and have become more efficient, too. And so that full-time number doesn't really tell the whole story. It's not like... y'all been twirling your thumbs and you just got enough work to keep everything updated or covered. So I know you all do a great job when I'm doing projects in Greer. Y'all are very responsive and y'all will catch what you need to catch. So thank you.

Yeah, and let me just follow up on the housing study. The timing of the completion of the housing study maybe didn't fully align with the budget season, unfortunately. But I do think an opportunity on Tuesday night when the housing city comes back for first reading with council is an opportunity to talk about what council's priorities are in terms of implementation and where you'd like to see us go with it with the idea of bringing things back in the future as programmatic opportunities.

Well, what would be helpful for me, and you can make note of this, when we go to look at these items, we know we have target populations, elderly, workforce housing, homeless, and then I would say under 80% AMI or 80% and lower. I am curious to know what collaboration can be done with our existing developers and builders that would satisfy an area, let's say workforce housing. If there's innovative ideas that we could do from a UDO perspective to help facilitate those discussions, I think that will be paramount for us from an implementation standpoint. plan to expedite something so that we're not bearing the brunt of it as a city. We're working alongside with partners that want to be innovative, but they don't necessarily have the avenue via UDO or whatever the case may be to implement it here. Thank you. Anything else?

Alex, is there, regarding residences, is there... trends that the private sector is talking about regarding the type of single family or from apartments to condos, town homes. Are y'all hearing anything that there's a trend?

Yeah, I think so. And Ashley, I don't know if you want to add to this.

Then, not this year, but the last 18 months, multifamily lending issues and then transitioning. More recently, we've seen saturation of townhomes and less. That and some even converting.

Are there any organizations like National Home Builder Association or folks like that that are saying, hey, we think we're going to see this for the next five years? I mean, is there anybody out there putting the gas out?

We are seeing some new typologies, new to Grier, with different ownership structures and sizes and footprints. And I think that's something maybe on Tuesday night we definitely want to talk about, because we're seeing, I think we've had two requests lately for ones where there's one owner of the land, but maybe multiple owners of the structures on the site. in different footprints and sizes, and they do it in other communities. So we're seeing some typologies that we haven't seen before be introduced. In terms of the National Home Builders Association data, it's primarily single-family homes and townhomes.

Anything else, council?

Nope.

Thank you, sir.

Thanks, y'all. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank y'all.

Mr. Arrowood, council, that wraps us up for the 21st. Obviously, we're available for any questions between now and Tuesday night at first reading, but thank you for being here and thank you for your time, attendance, and attention. Staff, thank you all for being here and for your work on this. Thank you, staff.

Council, I suggest that you think about everything we've heard in these last meetings and run it through your noodle and see what you come out with. And I would say what I'm trying to do is not trying to come in here with preconceived ideas of what I'm going to do, but work through that as we start our discussion Tuesday.

Oh, one more thing. And I've thought about this. And because you put this out here, I noticed when you go through the city staffing, we call out a lot of different department heads, but via ordinance, I just wanted to bring this up, via ordinance, our department heads do not reflect what we're showing on some of these papers. And I think from a council perspective, we may want to It's kind of outdated what we're showing via ordinance. I think it only calls out maybe fire, and you can help me with that.

Yeah, I think you and I had this discussion probably a couple months ago, but, yeah, our current city structure and the ordinance don't G-haul. So there probably will need to be a discussion about that after the budget.

Yeah, just wanted to bring that up because it was in front of my face. Anything else?

All right, folks.