City Council - Regular Meeting

Let us pray. Father God, it's in the matchless name of Jesus the Christ that we honorably come thanking you for another day, God. Father, we thank you for life, health, and strength, God. Father, we thank you for the activity of our limbs, God. Father, we ask right now, God, that you will bless our minds and hearts, God. Father, give us insight into what we need to be doing, God, what we need to say and what we don't need to say, God. Let us and keep us, God. Father, let us be about our Father's business, doing what's best for the community of Henderson, North Carolina, God. Father, we just thank you for the citizens that have come out today, God. Father, let everything that we say and do be done in decency and in order, God. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.

Thank you, Councilwoman. Thank you. I would like to welcome you all to the special call meeting for the purposes of our public hearing for our budget. Thank you all for coming out tonight. Madam Clerk, call the roll.

Ms. Chanigan?

Present.

Ms. Govan, 10 minutes. Here. Mr. Noel?

Here.

Mr. Sizer?

Here.

Mr. Venable, couldn't be here tonight. Mr. Hageby? Here. Ms. Gale? Here. Ms. Walker? Here.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. The Mayor and the City Council welcome and encourage citizens to attend our readings We will make sure tonight that everyone follows Robert rules of order. Once we go into our public hearing, which we have not done yet, we are asking that citizens hold their comments to three minutes. Comments are to be presented in a civil manner, be non-personal in nature, fact-based, and issue oriented. Except for the public hearing comment period, citizens must speak for themselves. Citizens may not yield their time to another person. Topics requiring further investigation will be reviewed referred to the appropriate city official, council committee or agency. Personnel issues are confidential by law and cannot be discussed. Comments involving an ongoing police investigation are not permitted and citizens should not expect council to deliberate and or comment on subject matter brought up during the public comment period. Mr. Manch.

Mayor, thank you. I'd like to start by suggesting that it might be productive and beneficial if the council could perhaps address whatever questions they might have to staff at this time before we have the public hearing. I think the public could benefit from that and perhaps some confusion or disinformation that maybe has risen leading up to this point. Having said that, I defer to council's wishes, but that would be my suggestion. Absolutely. Council, questions? I have a couple of comments.

I guess one's a question. Okay, let me recognize you, Council Member Davey. First, and I did bring this up last meeting, I wasn't here the whole time, and it's not going to change tonight, but I would love for us to have a, now that we are looking at issues of our budget deficits, I'd like to sit down after our budget meetings and talk about our shared programs with the county. We have several programs with the county, which I believe are inequity. I think our citizens in the city who are also county taxpayers pay exorbitant costs for some of these services. And I know we have contracts on those. It's not something we can do tonight, but I think as we move forward, we might find some money on those or at least some discussions I think will be very beneficial. One other comment, and I think this could be a part of this budget, As I still wonder, as we were working on the Montgomery Street Park, and the county was in a ratio of the rec services, 55% cities, 45% county. And we were putting funds together to pay for that part. The county was going to pay 45% of the costs beyond the Part F grant. And, of course, we were going to pay 55, 45. And that paid for it. Well, it doubled in costs over the years. I get that. But as we got to that, and they looked at what their 45% was, they declined to do it. I realized they were going to look at it in terms of the 45-55 rec department cost to operate it. And this was a park, so I guess the out on that was not necessarily having to do 45% on the park. But at one point, they were committed to doing that. And I don't know if that was a written contract or that was a handshake. but that's several hundred thousand dollars. It would certainly help now and in the future. I kind of wonder where we're all on that. I know we all just said, okay, they're not going to do it.

We did not like it, but here we are. We did not like it, but we also asked the city attorney to take a look at the documents that we have in place between the city and the county. And it's my understanding that he thought it wise to open the discussion with the county attorney about the issue and we're negotiating it now thank you council and yes we will set up uh committees to be able to take a look at the at the uh contracts that we have in place with the county especially 9-1-1 some of those issues i'm one rec library with three i'd really like to look at so

Okay, absolutely. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you. You're welcome. I wanted to go last because I had a few questions and some of these questions have been brought to me. Some of these questions are from my own research and I'm trying to get clarity on this enormous, I think it's been said now, $11 million gap with the budget. And we are here tonight to attempt to take in this recommended budget, but I do have some questions because both, can everyone hear me okay? Okay, I'm sorry. It's a few in the back. I got you, sir. I will take care of that.

Can you hear me okay?

Thank you again, Marist. I have a few questions because I have my constituents who've voiced their opinions to me via email, telephone, text message and I have gotten a message. And so the question is about this budget because it brings out an atmosphere right now of division and we try so hard to avoid that. And so I would like to ask a few questions to see if I can just iron out some wrinkles from both our city manager and our financial director and maybe one other director. But I'll start with this because people ask and say, you know, what does the county have to do with it? Why is the county making so much noise over the city budget? Well, the county comes to Henderson and they spend taxpayer dollars and they deserve answers as well. Our city of Henderson deserves answers and I just have a few questions because I think I deserve answers as well. My constituents hold me accountable and they expect me to be as transparent as I can and ask the questions that they cannot. And so, first of all, I ask the question, there's a lot of anger around and I say why. And then I asked, well, who do we, I mean, who do you want to blame for this $11 million gap deficit? And can you really blame somebody? Can you point fingers at somebody? You know, I was told to make better decisions for the city. So that started me on a research to where I am now. Okay. When I came on board, I was born in January, 2023. If I'm wrong, Taylor, was there already a employee type survey on pay studies? When was that started? The pay study for sales?

As far as the very first one, the first one that the city has done, I'm not entirely sure of that. I know the most recent one on which the council acted, I believe, two years ago. That one was, I believe, started

When we started it, it was completed. September, it was completed. It started sometime in March of 24.

March of 24, everything.

Before that was 2014. Okay. I'll have to check to be sure that it was 2014.

Okay. Thank you very much. And that particular study was done so that we could maintain retention and also compete with the surrounding counties as far as pay and salary. And so my question right now is, during that study, and they'll say council acted on it, but at whose recommendation that city employees needed a raise, deserved a raise, and they so do. Let me start by saying that This is about numbers. That's all this is about. And was there ever any time? During this discussion of a pay raise because my first year coming on, I was learning about the budget. That's why I continue to train. My second year was last year and this is my third year and this is why I'm trying to learn a little bit more. But at any time when you were discussing this 20% pay raise across the board,

think that that was something that the revenue could not withstand that the city could not stand and that goes also to mr fuqua yes and i'll i'll let joey uh address that but my recollection is that he had the recommendation or that was probably implemented over a three-year period and i believe too that um 12 blackman my predecessor I think that he had also advocated for instituting it. Joey, did you have any other?

Yes, I can give some more information on that. And it seems kind of started a little bit before the PACE study. Let me give you a perspective for everybody in this room as to where we are right now from some recent history. When we went through the whole COVID pandemic, it really created a real challenge for the city because that pandemic impacted on the city's revenues. And the federal government allocated ARPA funds, the city of Henderson, received just over $4 million in ARP funds. Under the auspices of the rules and regulations that governed the ARP funds, there was provided to municipalities the ability for those municipalities to use those funds for revenue recovery. The city of Henderson certainly took advantage of that. option, and we were able to take those funds and apply it to our budgets to offset shortfalls. Now, along the same time frame as we were recovering from COVID, loss of revenue, using ARP funds to cover that gap, we also developed a trend within public safety of a large number of terminal So it was in 2023 that council decided to assist in the matter of a great deal of turnover in public safety, and raises were provided for the police department to make them more competitive, stop the bleeding of turnover. And that assisted. Well, I also want to mention that in the last 10 years that I've been here, The city was only able to give four COLA increases, cost of living increases. The other parts of that 10 years was no raises whatsoever in any form. There was a couple of years that the city was able to give $1,500 bonuses to help in that matter. Now, across North Carolina, on average, 80% of municipalities offer a cost of living increase every year. we were only able to do four cost of living increases four years out of 10. So when the pay study came into play, as we move forward through this chronological series of events, the pay study came to everyone's attention and it was launched. And that pay study was done by an independent contractor that took municipalities that were similar to Henderson in demographics and other variables that made these other comparable cities ones to use for the data that ultimately resulted in where those salaries were to be established for positions across the board. So the base study was done. The salaries were disabilities that were chosen. When those salaries came on board within our budget, it was in 2024. The actual start date of those salaries was after July 1st of 2025. So it was in FY25. And as a result, to handle the bulk of that revenue requirement, We had to spend an enormous amount of fund balance to balance our budget. We had exhausted our ARP funds. Everything had to come out of fund balance to balance the budget. And we did so. Now, it was in 2024, after the first raises that we were able to provide for public safety to offset the turnover, increase retention, that That was the first year that we had to spend a little bit extra out of our fund balance. The pay raises as a result of the pay study increased our dependence on fund balance. So it was in 2024 that I first addressed council with the information that on the trend that we were on, we were going to run into some issues with our fund bonds availability going forward. And we talked about that during the budget meetings that the minutes for those budget meetings will show that we've spent time addressing the fact that we've got to work on getting some revenue into the city. The next year comes around, the same scenario plays again because when those salaries hit the bottom line with the fringe benefits and so forth, We're on the hook for that every year. And there has to be an offset before we start to get to where we are right now. So during the budget presentations, during council retreats, there was a poignant time during my delivery of information to the council that we've got to get revenue. I think the council will all remember that that's where we were at. That was the order of the day is to put something into block. Now, as FY27 budget came due, we use a 14-page spreadsheet. We call it the matrix. Now, all of the departments across the city, they populate those 14 various tabs and spreadsheets with They're asked. It's their wish list. It covers everything in operations, everything in debt service, everything that's needed to fund these departments for operations. And it also includes a very healthy ask for various types of capital outlay equipment, trucks, dump trucks, backhoes, you name it, across the board, all the departments. Now that can be in the millions of dollars. The $11 million that kind of started to go viral as far as the city's deficit, that million dollar gap was a result of those budget, the grand total of those budgets from the matrix, the ask list, the wish list, the everything list. So when we received all of the budget matrix, did all calculations, we saw that we had an $11 million gap between revenues and expenditures that we knew we had to pay that. It's no surprise. It happens every year. It could be similar every year. So we take that matrix, we see what the gap is, and then we start the process of paring it down to what we can live with. I knew that when that gap was at $11 million, that fund balance was going to take another record-breaking hit. I did not want to spend a dollar more than $5 million out of fund balance, but I had balance. So in paring down those expenditures and really going after cuts aggressively to get to the point to where it was able to be balanced through the use of $5 million. So the $11 million was the first value of expenditures. that we started to work on to get it down to 5 billion, and that's where it is now. So that is the process. That's where we're at right now with the FY27 budget. $5 million is coming out of fund balance without new revenue streams. Next year at this time, we'll be in an even more challenging situation because we won't have $5 million in fund balance to balance the budget because through the course of FY26 that we'll start on the audit within the next month and a half, it will reveal how much fund balance in FY26 is going to be burned. And that's typically going to be about a million two. And the FY25 audit that was just completed revealed that we had unassigned fund balance available at 5.5 million. We're earmarking 5 million for FY27. That doesn't mean that we're spending 5 million. We're earmarking it. Through the course of the year, we'll determine how much of it we'll have to spend because of expenditures outpacing revenues. But if you spend another 1.2, 1.3 million, your audited unassigned fund balance is going to go from 5.5 million down to 3.8, whatever. But next year, you're likely going to need $5 million or more to balance the FY28 budget. And that's where the rubber meets the road in that regard. And some very hard decisions will be needed if you don't have revenue. Again, it's my job to advise the city manager and the council what the health of the city is financially. For the last three years, that's where I'm feeling like to make an impact during my budget presentation is to say we've got to have revenue. Okay. We're on this trend here.

Okay. And thank you for that, Joey. I would like to back up and back up before the spreadsheets. I want to back up to where it was known that the city could not withstand 20% rates and that it was recommended it should be, you know, stretched out over a three-year period. or even over a two-year period, former city manager Terrell. Why did you bring that to our attention? Why did you come to council? And I'm just curious, maybe. I think we need to stick to the agenda.

Oh, okay. I was just trying to. Those are questions I think.

Can we answer at another time in closed session or?

I because my constituents are asking the questions and they want transparency. I understand your constituents are asking the questions. I don't think that it is. OK, I'll skip over that.

Yes, ma'am. OK, let me skip over that one. OK, Joey, let me skip over that one, sir. OK, I'm sorry, let me skip over that one. I want to say the first year of the tax increases where they were given across the board and like I said again, sounding the alarm, and then we should bring in revenue. So we need to bring in revenue basically to fund the salary raise. Because you're saying, I'm trying to clean up the city. I try to pick up trash. I try to do anything that I can. So a developer or a business owner will say, Well, you know, maybe we could do this or maybe we could. Advertise, network when I go out, make contacts and do everything. And I've heard you when you say revenue, but I didn't know we needed revenue to fund salary raises. And when we say bringing revenue and economic development and downtown development, that is great. But we are facing a losing battle and we are expected to bring in revenue or depend on a data center for revenue For salary, right?

Councilwoman Walker, I might ask you one more time. Can we please stick to what we're talking about tonight? You're going back in history two years. We're here to talk about...

He said the data consent couldn't get here quick enough, so I just don't do that.

Right, but that's not what we're here to talk about tonight.

Just stick to the budget. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Let me make sure that I haven't had any on that. Do you, besides... Do you have any other recommendations for revenue? I wanted to speak briefly on the taxes and the tax revenue that was expected to come in. And I know another reason for salary increases is because we said we would be getting tax revenue in from the tax increase. And when the tax increase came in, it kind of didn't live up to that expectation of bringing revenue to us. And that shortfall of tax revenue that affects our deficit now, how did we get so behind in the negative with that portion of tax revenue?

Well, when the tax valuation happened, the revenue neutral rate was 0.45. The tax rate that we had prior to the rate valuation was 0.75. So through the calculations that took place in order to value what the tax rate should be as it relates to total valuation, we had to be at 0.65 in order to generate enough revenue from that tax increase to handle operations across the board. And now keep in mind that the $5 million amount of fund balance is not something that just popped up for FY27. We've used over $4 million for the last three years. And through inflation and other departmental needs for various types of contracted services, supplies, other operational lines within our budget, you're gonna have increases just from inflationary measures or extra needs that might come about. That's why that We're at where we are right now with 5 million. It's not something that was all of a sudden a shortfall. We've been dealing with this for the last few years.

Thank you for asking. I'm going to let Councilman go ahead.

Thank you. And Joey, so getting back to that with the revenue and the taxes. Okay, so being in this situation right now where we are and we do not have a hiring freeze, is that correct?

We have positions that we're not filling, yes, ma'am.

Okay, but we're also still hiring individuals as well in high salaries.

Well, I'm asked what is a high salary, but As far as hiring, yes, we've had, I think, one recent hire for our development services department. That was banned immediately and downed by several people. And I believe our police and fire are continuing to recruit because of the deficits that are there. But those are generally the only places that I believe we're hiring at this point. Only places? Yes, ma'am. Okay.

do you feel about an audit um joey i i feel totally comfortable with an audit let me let me just uh comment on that i've been here 10 years and every year the city of henderson has had a clean audit uh with the exception of the fy25 audit where that was negatively impacted by the cyber attack the city did have to respond to uh the nc treasury local government commission to finance performance indicator concerns. And all of those concerns were tied back to the cyber event.

And Joe, I know you have a macular history here. Even last year, I gave you an award. And that's why my kind of sounded the alarm on that. I'm finishing up kind of with my last.

I want to also add that the finance department for the city of Henderson has received

eight straight consecutive years of excellence in reporting for financial reports yes thank you eight years and so um lastly i just want you to know that our constituents have a campaign for an audit with state auditors today voting and that's done by constituents and cast along and longer

We're not going to do that tonight.

Oh, I just wanted us to be aware. So we don't, we're not caught up.

It's okay. But the city has already had an audit. That's what we all have. So let's, let's not do that. Yeah. Are you down? She was good. But he can go ahead.

Well, I think I heard you say is we've been having, and I would, and I agree because I've been here a while. We've been having issues of less revenue for our expenditures for some years. I'd say five has been pretty straight. goes back to the trail as a manager. Then we've had Pasan and now Taylor. So it goes back to the end. We've been running some small deficits and using fund balance of a million, million and a half, two, five, six years ago. I remember that. I watched it grow to- Mr. Beattie, please. Can we just get to 26, 27? What I'm about to hear you say is that we've had issues about revenue, not enough generated revenue. We've raised taxes substantially. At that time, and then use it immediately one year on increased society. I've sat with you and talked about it. We used every bit of it for our personnel, which is wonderful, but we didn't put any aside as we've been running deficits. At this point, we're at the point where we're running larger deficits because we have less revenue. We've had less people in the city. We have less taxable property total. Our collection rates down because of the economy and the cost of things continue to go up. So what I'm hearing you say, we're going to continue to need more revenue and continue to be in this situation. It has nothing to do with the tax rate. except I'm raising it to try to balance things.

That's correct. And every year there's going to be inflationary values that are going to escalate operational expenses. The city is a business. North Carolina is a business. The United States is a business. And if a business is not growing, it becomes stagnant and starts to deteriorate. I have implored council for the last three budget meetings, presentations, to develop a committee that would be focused on development. Partner with the EDC and spearhead this effort. Develop a welcome package and start to schmooze these developers and show them why Henderson is worth coming here. I myself had contacted a developer in Frankenton that's doing all of the explosive development in Frankenton. I was there, met them on the street, talked with them, arranged a meeting. had them to come to Henderson and start the process of looking into land development and I I don't think that that's going anywhere I don't know why once I made the contacts and try to connect some of the uh people together and I I don't know where that's at that's the thing the kind of stuff that we've got to correct that's what's going to it's going to take for Henderson to become solvent going forward and become a thriving community. If you don't do that, you're going to be facing next year with some very hard decisions. Go ahead, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am.

You're welcome. Joey, do you recommend budget cuts? Not only do I recommend them, I've done them. This year, on this budget? I thought 2017. 2017? Yeah. Do you recommend budget raises?

Budget raises?

I mean, do you recommend individual departmental raises? You and Taylor did this, correct? Completed this? Because some, there are some raises on here and there are some budget cuts. Not across the board, but. What do you mean raises? Raises to a department. So maybe you can help me understand this and then I can go forward, because I am, a lot of times I'm looking at 27, amount of money that like you're saying next year what we are projected to spend and if the revenue isn't brought in we'll be in a bigger deficit and so basically what you're saying is if we don't bring in revenue over the next 12 months our deficit number will look like what would it look like we're going to the city of pennington will be in the same position next year

As we are this year, the need to balance the budget is likely going to be 5 million again or more. But because of the audited FY26 financials, it's likely that the city will have to utilize out of the earmark for front balance, 1.2 million. That's what the FY25 audit revealed is that the city used 1.2 million out of the earmarked fund balance. That's likely going to happen again, all things being equal, plus the amount of inflation. That $5.5 million of unassigned, which is the portion of fund balance that's available to use to balance a budget, will come down by another $1.2 million. You're not going to get that $5 million available, and that's likely not going to be enough that year. Okay. Do you support personnel pay? It's very possible that personnel, departments, cuts, is an option.

Council Member Walker, that is not Joey's purview. That is for the city manager. Can we please stay? I think that's something that you should talk to him about. That's not what we do. Thank you. Council Member Chen. Joe, can you please remind people to make negative comments? Because we're not going to do that tonight either. Go ahead, Council Member Chen. I just had a couple of questions. I don't know. I know you'll stop me if I'm not right. But I was looking at certain things that maybe I should start like this. Who exactly get bonuses? Councilwoman Champion. Yes, ma'am. The salaries are in the purview of the city managers. I understand that. So let's, that's not what we're doing tonight. We're talking about the 26-27 FYI budget. If we want to talk about salaries and things like that, please direct those questions to the manager, but not in this room tonight. We are here for the budget, the recommended budget. Yes.

Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you, ma'am. Go ahead. Ask a question about the airport. I know that at our last budget session, we mentioned both the airport, the Boys and Girls Club, and do you remember the other one? I know we said we were going to make a $500 donation. Can they question me? Absolutely. That's in the budget. Yeah. We were giving $500 to the Boys and Girls Club, and I think $1,500. And that 30K to the airport, what is that?

Can you tell us a little bit about the airport 30K? Well, historically, the city of Henderson has supported the local regional airport. It's just a traditional contribution to help them with their annual expenses. And that's pretty much where that is. We support the localities.

Okay, and can I ask him about travel? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. You know, we talked a lot about travel. The other budget session, we spent a lot of time on travel. And to be honest, travel is our least worry. Travel is our least worry. And, you know, I wanted, I'm the only one who goes to training. I'm the only one who's going to training this year. That's nice. Yeah, okay. You've gone to training, I'm sorry. Yes. But besides Mary's Elliott, as far as council members, because she kind of has her own thing going as mayor's, I'm the only council member that has gone to training this year and I paid up front for it. And, um, and it's only somewhere close to like $900 and I'm asking to be reimbursed later. But my question, when it comes to cutting travel across the board and my colleagues, again, say we don't need travel. and travel should be in our stipend. I want to know how many other departments, in a sense, are going to training, not mandated, not police and fire rescue, but just departmental here at City. That is a question for .

Okay.

Because of the budget cuts, I was thinking that it may have been an enormous amount of travel that happened while the budget cuts went to travel. Was that just one of the places, specifically council's travel, that you saw some income that, or some funds that? Generally, hold on.

Councilwoman Walker, throughout the entire budget, everybody's travel was cut. It wasn't just the board. It was everybody. That was in our budget.

Okay. So if a department was given $5,000 budget and it was cut, what was it before it was $5,000?

We're going back another year. Can we stick to 26-27? We kind of got to compare the years to find out where that comes from. That should be in the budget. Did you read your budget? I did. There should be two years. Everything should be there. We are here to discuss 26-27. And I want to just be clear, 26, 27, anything that happened in 2020, 21, 22, 23, all of those budgets have been passed and signed by either the sitting council or the previous council. In the last two years, the budgets were passed by everyone on this council with the exception of Councilwoman Gill and Councilwoman Jimenez. Everybody else around this table signed the paperwork for the budgets to pass, the audits to pass. And so why are we going back? Can we just move forward with 26, 27? That's why we're here, isn't it? That is the purpose of this meeting.

Well, the rest of my questions will be for paper, so I'll wait at this time. Thank you, Joey. Okay. Anyone else?

I have a question. Absolutely. Go ahead. Please do stop me if I should say something. I do appreciate how it's been handling today. Um. I feel like I'm walking in actions in a good way in a good way.

That's all I'm talking about 2627. We're going to move forward. I'm not going back anything further than that because we're here tonight. This is a special call meeting where we have to stick to the rules of the meeting as to why we here. Sure. All the other questions that you have outside of the preview of 2627 can be something that you can talk to the city manager and even Joey at enough time. Fantastic. Thank you so much. Absolutely.

I do have a question. It is related to budget year 2627 regarding our administrative, I guess, section. I guess I just want clarity as a newer council member. Does this, Joey, does this include two staff members or is it just our city manager?

The administration budget, which is code 10 420, is for two individuals. That's the city manager and his assistant.

Okay, fantastic. Yes, I will segue that statement by simply saying that political, not political, but public, that's the right word, public outcry and just frustration regarding our budget for this year, 26-27, is absolutely warranted, and I understand that. However, I really am passionate, and I believe everyone at this dais is passionate about giving our citizens the right information. So again, I just want to clarify the salary that I see here for $192,000 is split between two. That's correct. Not one.

Great.

That's all that I have.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Anyone else? Any more discussion before I open the public hearing? Okay. I would now like to open the public hearing. or anyone that wants to come and speak. I think we had three people sign up. Tracy put a sign up sheet out. So anyway, if you want to speak on the budget, whether you want to be for it, against it, it doesn't matter. Just come on up. We got three minutes to address the council. Pell is going to keep time. And we'll give you three minutes. Come up, give your address, state where you live. Do not make any direct insults or anything negative to anybody around this table or anywhere else I'm going to ask you to move. Thank you. Come on up.

Hi, I'm Melissa Lemon. I live at 1806 Parker Lane. I've been a citizen and resident for 25 years of Henderson. I don't even know what to say. I have two pages to say, but after all of this, I'm not even sure what to say. Um, and talking about the current budget, I want to make sure that when you get to pass in the budget that we don't make a decision like we did last time. And when you get to pass in the budget, you say, let's go up on the property taxes again. So, I'm kind of trying to head that off when you get to pass in this budget that you don't say we need more money. Let's raise the property taxes again. because we took a huge hit the last time and there will be an uproar if you raise it again. So that's regarding the current budget. I think I was going to address some of the things that happened in the past, but I'm trying to be respectful of what you said about the current budget. I think the reason why the public is having an outcry and the public is having issues with this is because, like me, I was ignorant of the budget deficit that we were in until this year. That's on us for not paying attention. But I think we're looking back at some of the decisions that have been made by the council And so now we're saying, like, wait a minute, how did we get here? There have been a lot of bad decisions. And so the public is not confident in the initial decisions that the Council has made. I won't go into the whole list of examples I had about the bad decisions, but where we are now going forward is The public, we have budgets. We all have budgets. We have to stick to our budgets. The city's got to stick to their budget. So if you can't make a budget, then you don't give the substantial raises that you give. I don't begrudge fire, police, public work. I don't begrudge their raises. They all deserve it. But if we don't have the money to give it to them, we can't spend it. If we don't have the money to do things, we can't spend a million dollars on the splash park, skate park. We don't have the money We have to cut. And I think that's why the public is upset is that we're just now learning what this huge deficit is. We didn't know about it. Maybe we weren't paying enough attention, but we need financial responsibility from the council to show us that you're concerned. I'm glad you brought something up. And thank you, Mr. That was a lot of explanation that I really needed to hear. Thank you for, you're making a big deal about travel and, and, um, training. We have bigger issues. So I'm just asking y'all to really, really pay attention to the spending that we're doing. Let's not spend frivolously and let's not raise the taxes again to try to make up for the deficit, which didn't work in the first place. Thank you all.

Thank you. Have a great night. Anyone else want to speak?

I'm Lee Faulkner. I've been here about 55 years now. I enjoy being in Henderson. I appreciate Henderson. My friend, most of us are ignorant about what's going on. We're trusting you guys to do this for us and do a good job of it. We appreciate the work that you do. But most of us had no inkling that we were in such financial trouble. And I appreciate your interest in trying to figure out what it is How we got here, and I know we can't speak about that tonight, I did hear a comment concerning a recommendation that we do some studies as to how we can bring people in that can add revenue to our community. Obviously, we've lost some revenues over the years, and we've got to figure out a way to get it back. And so doing things that look into that, to me and most of the people that I've talked to about this kind of thing now that we've talked about it is imperative. So I'm interested in what he had to say about how come we didn't really go after that situation when it came up and we knew that we had to get some more revenue in here, more than just taxing people. We need some companies. We need some people. What people that I talk to are concerned about is that what's going to happen now or what's threatened to threatening to happen now what may be good it may be but we're not letting the the community know the good points about it and why we need to do it other than we've got to if if all you can tell us we is we've got to do this or we're dead or something like that we're not going to be happy if there are good reasons to have this come in here now you need to let us know and you need to let the people know and we need to get some other other kinds of income in this area if we can get it. And if you're not, I don't hear the question, are we doing that now? I don't hear any kind of focus on how do we get stuff other than here we've got this opportunity to get something that we desperately need. I don't hear anybody else talking about, is that going to keep us from getting attractive alternatives to come here? because of things that we keep hearing about. So that's what I'm concerned about, and that's what the people that I have been hearing from are talking about. Thanks.

Thank you very much. Anyone else?

Good evening. My name is Mary Susan Woodlands. I live at 109 West Lake Drive in the city limits of Henderson. And tonight I'm asking for transparency from our elected officials and city workers for the citizens you represent and work for. Our budget is in an alarming state. Money can't be spent that is not there. We deserve to know exactly where we stand, line item by line item, nothing hidden. Raising taxes to extraordinary highs where people struggle to pay them as evidenced by the tax collection rate is not a good thing. That is not the answer. The answer is responsible spending cutting anything unnecessary whether it be travel meetings hiring because raising taxes affects everyone homeowners businesses and renters we saw evidence of that in the list extraordinary tax increase no one is unscathed some can absorb this cost but many absolutely cannot and getting back to the purpose for city council When I looked it up, it made a lot of sense. The city council's members fiduciary responsibility requires them to act as stewards of the public trust, legally and ethically bound to manage municipal funds responsibly and avoid conflicts of interest. And I think that's what we need to get back to, financial oversight and transparency. duty of care and loyalty, other things like that, strict avoidance of conflicts of interest and obedience to the law. And wrapping up, taxes do not need to be raised to cover inadequacies. Our finance director has said more than once that to make the budget, we have to bring people and businesses in. Raising taxes does not bring people in. It makes people question why our taxes are so high and what do we get for those high taxes. It makes people want to move other places and that is the last thing we need to happen. For people to abandon our city because of the things they see and hear and responsibilities that are thrown on them with these higher taxes that they can't see tangible results from. So I'm asking you to please not raise taxes so that we don't run people and businesses away because after selling real estate for 23 years, even before the past few years, the question always was, Why are the tax rates so high in Henderson? And that a lot of times there wasn't a real answer for that. So we need to be competitive and we need to do things that attract people in and raising taxes is nothing that would attract people, families or businesses to come to Henderson.

Thank you very much. Anybody else want to speak? I will now close the public hearing on the budget. Council, how would you like to proceed? Good question. Go ahead, Tim. I'm sorry.

If the council wishes to have more deliberation and discussion, we can schedule another meeting. Yeah.

Is that a consensus for the council to have more discussion? I'm for more discussion. Yes. And two people missed you. That's three or four or three. All right. Yeah.

Do we have a did you have a day in mind? I did not at this moment, but I think we do have a schedule in place that you've already approved. And we'll we'll you'll notice out there.

And there is one question. Absolutely. At the next budget session, will we be able to discuss and possibly make amendments or adjustments? Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. All right.

Do we have a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn. Second. I have a motion to adjourn by Councilwoman Champion, seconded by Mayor Walker.