City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon.

I would like to call this special call meeting to order. Councilwoman Gale, can you lead us in prayer and reflect on what you said last week? I would like to call this special call meeting to order. Councilwoman Gale, can you lead us in prayer?

Father, it's in the name of Jesus Christ that we say thank you for another day, God. Father, we thank you for life, health, and strength and the activity of our limbs, God. Father, we thank you, Lord, for this meeting that we are hosting today, God. Father, we ask that your will be done, God. Father, let us not forget the reason that we are here, God. Father, to better develop this city of Henderson, God, as in a united front. Father, we thank you for each and every one that has come out today to participate, God. Father, we ask that you continue to lead, guide, and direct us, God. Father, anoint our ears that we might hear what you're saying to us, God. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.

Amen.

Thank you, Council Member Lee. Madam Clerk, could you call on Ms. Shanahan? Present.

Ms. Donato-Mena?

Here.

Mr. Noah?

Here.

Mr. Feinberg?

Here.

Mr. Bembele? Here. Mr. Gaines? Here. Ms. Gill? Here.

Locke? Here. And we have a quorum. Thank you, Madam Clerk. We're going to move forward to a new business. and if we all could adhere to our rules of order. Thank you, Mr. Hawthorne, for joining us. We see you on the screen. Mr. Hawthorne.

Yes, good afternoon, Council, for the last minute. I just want to say that This past week was sort of hectic, but I do want to say that I want to give kudos to the Department of Higgs. We took a lot of suggestions we had as a reviewer. The budget meeting is over and over again. We came with some additional cuts I think you'll be satisfied with. The packet that you have, even though it's a little rough, we tried to emulate the last packet before the cyber attack. that we had. So you can get a broad financial set up of what was going on throughout the year. Again, the cyber-type campaign, but they worked really hard Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, after we met in the ceremony, we were trying to show and be transparent of what we are asking for as a city. So again, I'll let the brings the FUCA up to introduce the budget as we all have a paper.

Thank you.

Any other comments?

James Meeker, Council pursuing to the regular scheduled Council meeting that took place earlier this month, where, in review, as a budget as a student at that time. more cuts were requested. As Kendrick had mentioned, we've been working on how to accommodate those cuts and also to reveal some other developments that came along just this week that played nicely into our hand as it relates to the overall budget. The meetings that we've had and the determination of where that we could find additional funds was primarily through um just a handful of departments that had the the wherewithal to identify where that those guts could be generated from such as uh positions within the police department uh where where we're intending on freezing those positions also in the fire department uh the finance department did give up one staff that will be transferring over to the warrior department and the other And I also mentioned that the recreation has the two positions that are available to loosen up expenditure funds. And I'll also mention that earlier this week, our period report for sales tax came in much higher than forecasted. So that allowed us to go into the FY27 budget and revise the forecast for uh sales tax revenue all totaled with the amount of funds that these explosive positions and the moving of one of our positions in finance to the water department that equated to a savings of 667 251 when we factor in the amount of revenue that we can safely forecast for the fy 27 budget as it comes from, as I say, the sales tax line items. That equates to another $300,000 in additional revenue. Some other incremental revenues that we're able to adjust along the line gives us a total savings of $1,346,251. You'll recall that the original recommended budget earmarked $5 million out of the fund balance. With these cuts and additional revenues that we can bank on for FY27, that $5 million is now $3,653,749. A very sizable savings. In fact, a fund balance that hasn't been this low in three years. So that's where we have arrived at through those additional cuts and through additional revenues for F-127.

Questions, council?

Thank you. Do we have a motion? Make a motion. Can we adopt this budget? 6-27 budget season. If there are no questions. Do we have a second?

Yes, please.

We can still make a second. Do we go on to discussion? Anybody got a second to pass the budget? Dan, we don't have a second here.

The motion would fail for lack of a second.

The motion would fail for lack of a second. Do we go on to discussion?

Well, there's no motion to discuss. I suppose a different motion would need to be made.

Yes, Council Member Vanderbilt just made a motion to discuss. Do we have a second? Second. Full motion to discuss. All right. Councilmember Vanden Heuvel made a motion to discuss, seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Tammy Walker. Discussed. Go ahead, Mr. Vanden Heuvel.

The position that you was talking about, Joe, that you all moved from finance, is that position still set at the same salary?

It's a lateral group salary, yes. Okay.

Excuse me, Councilmember Vanden Heuvel. Well, one thing that Joey's, we didn't explain that we eliminated two positions out of our customer service to transition. So that person of as well as a utility building specialist, those salaries combined were eliminated and made it flat.

That's what I'm saying. What we have here is an expenditure problem, and that accompanied with the revenue problem is really the issue with me. I still see that some positions, even though that's not in our purview, some positions should be made part-time. We're paying a lot. and insurance. And I guess my question with this is, is there a way that those employees that's making the top dollars or any employee can pay their own insurance? Now, my primary thing is preserving the budget. And so I was just wondering if that is at all possible.

I don't have an immediate answer for that. That would have to go under considerable review and analysis.

we will be able to review it i just want us to say that a couple years back we did make a motion to pay lifetime benefits for a lot of the retired people and people who did a certain amount of years and um i think that's one of the things that the staff look forward to even though it's not really is the fact that i have this insurance and pay for by the city again is that the uh pleasure of the city council how you want to handle that and i do know that a couple of Municipalities have done that and they have lost a lot of staff. Um, but again, there were a couple of staff. I won't say a lot, you know, but again, I do understand your, your, your result in trying to, uh, minimize the budget, but, um, we are looking to an appointment back if you want us to, but I think that that will probably lower morale or another stressful, um, economic and staffing around here. You know, we are doing more or less. Again, when we brought our staff here, of all the department heads in, they made sizable cuts with police, fire, customer service, recreation, those that, because we didn't want to stop the quality of service and quality of life of a lower entry position, as well as the citizens throughout the city. So please take that into consideration before you make a motion for us to do anything with the law.

I don't have a problem. I must admit, I don't have a problem with emergency personnel. Those are not the people that are included because they are essential workers. But I just feel like somewhere along the line, some other positions should be downgraded to part-time.

That's the question, right? You were talking about the lifetime insurance and stuff versus when that was changed some years ago, we had to draw, then we draw a line. And how many years was it? If you already had 70 years vested, you kept it. And if you didn't, you lost it. It's 15 or it's 15. I don't get it. I've been here a lot of people say they have 13 years.

That's a nine, I think.

And the idea was that it would continue for those who've been here the longest, and it eventually goes away, because we lose the employees. We lose that benefit as you stay longer, and those who age out continue to get it. And I don't know where we are on that in terms of employees, how many are or not, but the idea was not to jerk it away from everybody, but to gradually phase it out. I think it was the auditors told us long term, there was no way you could sustain it In fact, I do remember the auditor said he, all the books, the way this is, you can't sustain it. So that was a way to rectify over time about taking it away from everybody.

But also to be clear about that, that benefit was taken away and given back. So.

If you were invested five years and a certain date.

Yes. And it's like three or four of us that were invested. Yes. Yes. Okay. Can I ask a question?

Joey, so just make sure I understand from last Monday night on the, I guess it was the 8th when we had the budget come for us until today. So over the past week or so, you've found, you've made some additional expense reductions that are in excess of $600,000. and you've picked up some revenue enhancements on the order of 300 or some thousand dollars and I think the total number you improvements you gave in the budget was a little over a million dollars is that right okay yeah that's pretty good you know when you factor in that though the amount of those savings and and then add in the additional revenues right the total was just over 1.3 million okay that comes off the table

for FY27, reducing down the fund balance from the $5 million down to just over $3 million.

Right. OK. And the bulk of the savings, you said, have come from, you said, some positions within the police department and fire department. Can you just describe that a little more so I make sure I understand?

The police department identified two full-time positions that they're able to freeze. Now, there was also an adjustment into the retirement benefit rate. We have a cushion in there of 25%. The actual was just over 17%. So with the amount of staff in the police department, that equated to about $300,000 in savings just from that loan. So that's in addition to the frozen salaries is that adjustment to the benefit rate.

And it was only, excuse me, it was only one firefighter.

Okay. Yeah. One firefighter, of course the finance staff moved over and the recreation has identified three positions to freeze.

Those positions in recreation, they are 45, one is 100% counting, the other was 45%, my joy said it was two, 45%, excuse me, 45% for recreation and 50-50 for one of the ACOG Recreation Center staff that we have frozen.

And also two custom service positions.

Those custom service positions have been eliminated. And we have transferred the person, one of the staff members, over to custom service.

There's your homework. There's some good work. That's another question on this. I think the police department, we don't have this year. They're not replacing policy.

Is that correct? And for the FY27 budget, there's not a cap value for that. They're going to see about the prospect of utilizing other funds in other areas to kind of piecemeal those vehicles as their budget allows.

I know public safety is a fairly good budget, but they seem, the police seem to be more than jumping in here to help.

Yeah, we really benefit from the police department every year for, it's kind of ironic, but the savings that we get because of open positions falls right back into fund balance. So it's a pretty hefty figure every year.

Isn't that about a million dollars? I think so. Okay. So, Joey, I just have a question moving forward.

with the condition and thank you Kendrick and Joey for finding a million dollars to save but moving forward how is this sustainable going down the road like next year the year after well you know we're kind of on the hook um each year for the level of expenditures that uh that we have to accommodate and as as you know been saying so much over the last few years uh we've we've got to have a a revenue offset to be able to afford the level of expenditures that we have. We've got to grow and we've got to have revenue, additional revenue.

I agree. I also did my research as well. I don't know about the study because I never saw it. I missed it. But I will say this. There is no municipality the size of ours or within our four-county radius that pays what we pay. our departments. Every department head in this city makes six figures with the exception of one. And so I don't see that anywhere. So I don't know who did the study and I don't know what they compare us to, but this municipality is not big enough for the salaries to be sustainable. I love the salaries, but to sustain them moving forward, we definitely have to get the work and get some development in and and some other things going in our city to sustain the salaries that we pay. So I think that's all I have to say.

Yes, Mayor. Yes. we understand that like i said we didn't have a lot of crucial conversations um this week seriously and so one of the things going forward we got a lot of people retiring and i'm gonna get when we go when people retire we're gonna sit there and do our own internal paycast start to see what we're gonna bring the person in to be still doing a great quality survey to the community so just because we um someone retired this position right here maybe we can do it at a lower level to get the same quality work out of you so we we will That depends on the department, responsibilities, things of that nature. But we're going to be creative like we was this past four or five days to minimize the financial impact on the system.

Awesome. I also think that we need to upgrade our range because if you look at the range in the budget, the range doesn't meet the salaries. They're superseding them at the maximum level. So I think that's just something that could be done through HR and maybe Joey, I don't know,

We'll look into that. I think I'm being honest with you that that's probably take ownership of that. I want to get y'all numbers. I want to get y'all back on to the platform that we used to have them before the cyber attack. So it's probably the formatting thing that sort of messed us up in the beginning when trying to get it out so quickly. But I definitely make sure we go back and correct those items.

Thank you.

So how would you like to see discussions? I would like to see a copy of the study. I asked for it before, and I would like to see a copy of it, please.

I'll make copies when we go to closed session. I have one in front of us right now. Okay.

Our employees that do duality roles, where does that revenue fall from, and have we looked at job descriptions to where if they could do duality, that we could make those job descriptions fit within that job instead of pulling money from other parts?

There are some staff that may have part of the function of one fund and another fund. So the equitable way to accommodate the salaries is based on the time that's spent from that person's involvement into another fund. So we do have some crossovers in that regard. Thank you.

Council, how would you like to proceed? All right, Dan, you have no motions.

I will advise the council again that we do need to adopt a budget. So I'm not sure what, I mean, we need, if you're going to give direction to the manager and the finance director on what to do, That's fine, but we're running out of time to adopt the budget.

Don't we have to have this budget adopted by the end of this month?

Yes.

Okay.

Okay. So what direction would you like to give us for another session? Okay. And what do you want us to concentrate on?

Well, anybody want to go for me? I think I have some ideas, you know. I'm very impressed with the amount of money that was able to, man, I'm sorry. No, absolutely. I'm very impressed with the amount of money that was, um, been able to be saved at 1.3. Um, and looking at the additional, um, uh, tax revenue, um, and the freeze, um, the elimination of a couple of positions, and that's very impressive. But since I was the only one to make that motion, It's evident that we need to go back to the drawing board before my colleagues to examine this further. And I'll leave my additional questions for closing for the next budget session. Thank you.

All right, Dan, we're going to move on. I think we have a closed session meeting. Does anyone else have any recommendations for the budget before we leave that place?

Do we want to go ahead and set another workshop so that we can, you know, have a go ahead and notice things?

I'm careful about this when you go. Tracy, do you have any dates in mind?

Whenever everybody can do it. I don't have anything.

Okay, let me set it for Monday. What's it at? Wednesday. I mean, if you got to save a million dollars in six days, I can't imagine what you got to come back with. So I'm excited about that. Want to do a week from today? Can everybody do a week from today? That will be next Wednesday at 430. We can get a consensus now. That would be great. It can't be anybody.

24th.

Okay. I'm just kidding. I'm marginal. I'll see if I can change it.

Will we have a core on that day okay well next wednesday all right then can we go into closed session there yes we are going into closed session for yeah all right

Yes. Do we need to table this or a note on that or what do we need to do?

Well, there's the motion that was made failed for lack of a second and no other motion was made. So there's really nothing to table. But we do need to have a motion to adopt a budget and an adopted budget by July. So I don't think there's anything to table. We'll just need to notice a new special meeting.

um do we have a motion to go into closed session but someone should look on the general statute 143-318.11 a six for personnel matters within this so that we're watching on the floor of our councilwoman champion and seconded by mayor pro tem wall and close session