Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

Good.

All right. Um, good evening. Uh, welcome to the city of finance committee meeting. My name is Jeff sassy, chairing the committee. This is July 28th, 2026 is 6 o'clock. And I'm going to call this meeting order 1st of all, let's, um. GO AROUND AND INTRODUCE OURSELVES, WHO'S IN THE ROOM. SO I'LL START WITH MY COMMITTEE MEMBERS.

MARK DORKVOLDEN, BOARD 1, VICE CHAIR.

MARK EVANS, BOARD 6.

CAMERA INFRASOL FINANCE DIRECTOR.

JESS, ECONOMIC CHIEF OF OPERATIONS. AUSTIN WHITE, SUMMER INTERN. MAYOR JAMIE CLERRY.

JASON GATLIN, ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES DIRECTOR.

Anyone else want to introduce themselves?

Rachel Falkins, Alderman Ward 5. Renee Shepard, Arts Council Chair.

Andy Gilley, Parks Director. Dave Mooney, Citizen.

Welcome, Dave Mooney. Keith Furry, Planning Director. All right.

Fantastic. Yep. All right. First on the agenda is acceptance of the agenda. I'll give a motion. Make a motion we accept the agenda. All those in favor? Aye. Okay. No changes there. And then we have the approval of the minutes from May 26, 2026.

I know that we accept the minutes.

And then we'd say you are going to say it. Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye. And those minutes are approved anyone on public comments?

No.

All right. Moving right along. We have audiences and resolutions reading of a resolution 2026 24. A resolution authorizing the waiver of certain municipal fees for community amenity structures. Such as the blessing boxes and little free libraries that provide a public benefit. Uh, so I'll just need a motion to discuss that. All right, uh, let's discuss it. Larry, do you want to introduce it?

Sure. About a year ago, we had Grace Place in front of us and they had a large, large project. And one of the things that they were required that we had never really thought about was that when you have nonprofits like that, they were required to put up trees to replace trees. We had a lot of money in our tree bank that developers contributed to. So the board waived those tree fees for them because it made sense for them to keep that money toward their ministry. Um, as opposed to trees, and we could, we could use our tree fund for that. Um, similarly, uh, we had a situation come up where. Our, our zoning code didn't really address blessing boxes and little libraries. And, um, so we've had some in the past, but this is a situation where. The staff had to do some work on it and it fell in line with what we typically charge for. Uh, once I knew that, um. That's like sort of stumped. I can't waive fees. Y'all don't allow me to do that. Um, and, uh, just because I'd like a project and so quickly talk with staff and anybody thinks that government moves slowly. They should have seen our staff that day because Keith and his and his employees and lands very, very quickly figured out what we needed to do to change that. And that's what you have before you. Um, and so, uh, what that does is, is it looks at these structures and. Waves of peaceful.

And I really appreciate you bringing this forward. This is an example of where we just, we didn't, you know, it wasn't thought of ahead of time. And so making that movement to bring it forward and do the right thing. I really appreciate the staff working on this and working quickly, as you mentioned, to bring this forward.

If you all have a motion, I appreciate that motion would include that we consider tonight.

Okay. Any questions on this?

More of just, I don't know if it's really a question, but... And I'm not finding fault with this, but I'm just trying to think in terms of what latitude do our department heads have when we're presented with something like this, where we could raise it up to you and to Jesse and even to Boma saying that, okay, this is something that's out of the ordinary, is extraordinary. Because to me, if we had talked about this, we could have maybe... foregone the common sense is exactly what you're saying well and again i'm not i'm not um i'm not faulting anybody i just wonder is there something that we can do for the future and i'm not saying we're going to be able to do all these things for all these people but um it would have saved uh the city some heartache and some unnecessary bashing yeah and And I'm not faulting them either because people were just frustrated by that. And I get it. But I just wonder if there's anything we can do. It's a possibility.

One of my first questions to Lance was, can I just do this? And he said, no. But maybe we figure out a way that I or staff can do it. Yeah. I think that's what you're suggesting.

that or what is that latitude and to what extent? And then can we quickly get involvement involved? Something like that. Just so that we don't have to go through that in the future. Make sense?

Or is there, to piggyback on that, or is there a way to build another into the budget or something along those lines? Something that does not require for us to be able to do a dollar, a certain dollar figure or something along those lines. Y'all could give me... Y'all could give me... You've got to give me some very, very explicit arrows. Okay. That's what I was thinking that might be the problem. Each case is so individualized. A general waiver is not something that I think that many of us, many of our constituents would be comfortable with. But it's worth looking into.

I'll talk to Lance and I'll talk to Keith and probably also talk to Greg's story about that. Absolutely. Thank you.

Well, speaking of very specific parameters, I do have some things I want to bring up here. So. On section 1, it does say community access structures for the purpose of this resolution defined as a small non commercial structure designed to provide a free exchange of donated books, food, household items, or similar materials for the benefit of the public. And then it provides some examples. But it, it creates a lot of latitude. It creates a lot of wiggle room. In my view, so what I love this ordinance, and like I said, I'm grateful that we're bringing it up, but I'm hoping that we can provide some additional structure to it. And maybe even some limitations, maybe some definitions. I'm thinking, like, limitations on pharmaceuticals, vaping and smoking supplies, drug paraphernalia and limiting the size of these. Uh, of these, um, structures, uh. I think that's that that is a pretty good for for us to be for us to consider this and approve it that we need to set some limitations and guidelines on it. Um, and so the question, what's that? Yeah. That's a key question. Yeah. So what do you think about.

You know, it just gets. It's why this was a problem to begin with, just exactly what y'all were talking about. If we get too specific, which the specificity that created this issue, which isn't a problem and just we're solving it, was really comprehensively looking at all of our fees. and then trying to assess, just like this, I think there's definitely a community benefit from waiving these fees or some non-profit fees. But still, even when we waive fees, there is a cost associated with it. It's just everybody's paying it instead of the non-profit paying it. But some of your concerns, or some of mine too, of what you're talking about, Alderman, about what if now that we're gonna do this, what if somebody puts something in there we don't want? And then it's like, how do we further define it? One thing that I did do that's totally separate from this, and we don't even have to have this other thing in the zoning ordinance, but we're doing revisions to the zoning ordinance right now. And I put something in there. It's going to be in next week's planning commission meeting with a bunch of other stuff. It's not just that. But I put in there something about this. So that wording that you were talking about, I can't remember what it was called, community planning.

Can you access structures?

Yeah, community access structures that ties into what I'm doing in the zoning ordinance. Okay, and it's defining that and part of that definition is the director determining that it's a community benefit. So that's. But still, again, it just depends on who the director is. Sure. You know what I mean?

At least there's a person to go to.

Yeah, what that's going to be. So the zoning ordinance, and I think that'll all pass. That's how we're going to get to you guys. So I think with what you're doing this evening, and that just takes care of the fee. And this particular fee, it actually hasn't been paid. And so I let the big folks know that are associated with it, that they didn't need to pay it, that we were going through this process. And if it didn't, if the process, which I think will be successful, but if it's not successful, me and my wife will pay the $126. That was what I was going to say.

Yeah. What's the fee? $126.

So I think... I think if we kind of overdo it and get a little bit too much detail, we're going to get caught in another little trap of something in the future. But I think this gives us quite a bit of leeway. And the way that's written, it gives us enough leeway that, you know, if it's something kind of noxious, Then I think it could be something that a future planning director or myself. You know, could determine now this is really not a community benefit. And of course, if someone has an issue with that. Then they can appeal to the board of zoning appeals on the decision from the planning director. So that could, you know, so there's an option to clarify that even if. Even if a future planning director would determine something, something very different.

Can you clarify how this gives the latitude though? Because what I'm reading, it says, or similar materials for the benefit of the public. That's a wide margin and who's the target if it's benefit to the public or not?

I think what you could do on there is kind of what I did on, I think, on the zoning ordinance part of it. the best the best, the only thing you could do is say, by determination of the planning director, and of course, that's still open ended, it's subjective, you know, to some extent, but otherwise, you get into this lengthy, all of these different things that it's not going to include, and we will leave out something that You know, two years from now, some churches want to do or nonprofit and we're like, yeah, you don't really fit into that. Why didn't y'all think of that? Why did you why did you not think of it two years ago? So, you know, that's that's kind of looking at it. But I think this will I think it'll take care of that. It'll take care of the issue with the fee and then what I'm doing in the zoning ordinance kind of clarifies it. So it's not. It doesn't get confused in the future, you know, 5 or 6 years from now. You know, this, this whole issue goes away and we know we're not charging fees, but it's like. You know, what is that? You know, what does that really cover? And so by defining it is what that is.

Well, I like what you propose there, though, is to include something in here that says basically at the discretion of the planning director. I know in Section 2 we do have the planning director or the board designee is authorized to approve fee waivers for structures including but not limited to the audit. So with that language, Does that and maybe it's the Lance question? I don't see him in the room with that language. Does that also mean that the planning director gives me have the authority to not approve? Uh, even if it if someone else might consider it to fall within those categories.

I think Section 5 kind of speaks to, adds to it also. It says the plan director or designee is authorized to establish reasonable administrative procedures and application requirements necessary to implement this resolution and may deny or revoke a fee waiver if the qualifying conditions are no longer met. So I think there's some other things within here that kind of gives them some latitude and gives them the leeway from an administration standpoint and

And approval, and I might provide a clarification. It's. The language isn't actually in there specifically saying the planning director, but it's saying for a community benefit. Which at the end of the day, anything in the definition is going to be ultimately defined by the planning.

It's actually does indicate some parameters as well. Yes. Which could get could be helpful. Yeah. Also. Well, I'm. Any other questions or comments? I would like to move this on to the positive recommendation and wave to Nicole tonight so we can get this completed for who was it that supported for it? If the board is amenable to that. Hold on one second.

Do we have another one? previous yeah but it was it was back in 2024 i think it was community church and it was uh i think originally it was yeah i think it was 120 it's the one sitting right there in front of them but they haven't they haven't said anything and it's a couple that's a couple years ago so just keep in mind if they ask for it that they would include them that's the only other ones to charge for do we need to change

Well, so you need a retroactive list that was in that self that I mentioned in my email that will ask for that to be retroactive. I'll do that. But we haven't charged this one.

So yeah, because it says retroactive to January 2016. Yeah, that would cover this one.

But not the one two years ago.

Yeah. One big motion.

I'll make a motion we approve this and waive the two-week rule to give it to BOMA tonight for a vote.

Second. Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Great. I think that passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Next on the agenda is discussion on Arts Festival. Who's going to lead us on that? Renee, did you want to jump up here so we can hear you a little bit better?

Yeah.

Okay.

So, if you don't mind miss Renee, and I will kind of tag team going through the arts festival. This column is the chair for the committee, so I'll just give some. Contacts and some background to the arts council and to the festival. This year was the third year we've done the festival and it is entirely run by the arts, primarily entirely done by the arts council. So city staff aren't involved very much. It is mostly something between the liaison and the council that they handle and put on. The arts council through the city budget does hire a manager for the event. That manager is called Good Neighbor. Good Neighbors done the event for the last three years and the event has steadily increased in terms of popularity and foot traffic that's coming to the event year over year. So it's grown and it's expected to continue to grow. We've done a contract revision since we started with Good Neighbor. The city signs those contracts because the mayor has to sign all the contracts on behalf of the city. So through the city's budget, we put money in for the contract for the event management. So when we started the arts festival, the expectation was that the arts festival would over time pay for itself. And it may do that. It just hasn't started paying for itself as quickly as we thought. So we just wanted to make sure that we framed expectations. We do have money in the budget this year to pay. Or the arts festival, and we also budget for the revenue of the arts festival as well. So, we anticipate revenue from sponsorships, like us bank was a big sponsor. So they give us sponsorships and then we also have the vendors who come and they pay a fee. So there's multiple ways and then food and beverage sales. We get some funds from that as well, too. So the contract that's in your packet. It's on page 8. Is an extension agreement, so this is going to continue with good neighbors. The 1st year they started, they had a 40,000 old management fee. And that was basically a flat fee and the other items that they incurred were. Repaid to the city so that the city's fee was really to the event manager was the 40,000. This contract, it's been renegotiated to less than $40,000. I think it's $35,000 in here. It's a flat fee. And then they get a percentage of the sponsorship. So in terms of the contract change, that's really all that's changed from the first year. It's actually dropping $5,000. Last year, we had a contract change where they did a flat fee of $25,000, and then they had A chance to earn the extra 15 for the 40,000, if the event broke even, which it did not do last year. So they come back and said, hey, we'll do it as a flat fee for 35,000. So, 5,000 less than the 1st year a little bit more. So, that's in terms of why we. Put the contract in here just so you guys can put eyes on it and understand that. You know, it's possible that if the city is going to continue to do that, there is some subsidy. The subsidy was about 8,300 dollars this year for the city to put that event on. I think after all the just so we ended up paying about 8,300 dollars. So it's close to breaking even, it's just not quite breaking even. And then the Arts Council did a really good job. They put this together, City of Stafton put this together, Arts Council again put this together. And I'll let Ms. Renee kind of go through this and talk about this part of it.

And I do want to point out that this information came from PLACER. So it came from the PLACER data that we received.

Sorry, you came from where?

The PLACER data that we received, the reporting information that we got.

And that comes from any of the neighbors?

From Parks.

Oh, from Parks. From Parks, okay.

Zoo Neighbor also has ways that they sort of estimate attendance and that sort of thing, but I don't think it's as close to being as accurate as PLACER. And this year, we actually did a manual count, too, and one of our board members built their own AI, you know, counter system. But it was basically that. It was a counter system. And the good news is, it was very similar to what the Blaster Battle was. Very cool to see that.

The numbers are coinciding well.

Yes, they did. They did. So anyway, I think there's a lot of information here. You also have this in your email. I think I sent it to all the older women at some point. But I just want to point out a few things. And as Jesse said, the idea is that over the three-year period, we've grown attendance. This year, there was a big lift, about 1,400 more people attended this year than they have in the past couple of years. And over the two-year period, those unique visitors look like they're 21.5% is the growth, which we were pretty excited about. At the bottom of the page, you'll see the ARC vendors. They also have increased year over year. That's certainly positive. It's a good growth thing because that's a revenue stream. And let's see on the next page. On the next page, we have the basic calculation that's used to look at the potential economic impact. Again, this is an estimate for an idea of what could be possible. And the estimated tax revenue there is city tax revenue. In the middle of the page there, and then, of course, year over year growth from the 1st year to the 3rd year is close to 18%. At the bottom of this page, they're just some examples of local businesses that where people went to get that information.

No, I didn't want to interrupt her, but I did want to point out that it looks like your year-over-year growth increased by almost 15.5% from 2025 to 2026. Is that correct? Right here? Yeah. 15%. I think this 17% is from the original. Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, thank you.

Sure. Um, on the next page, um, again, just some information about, um, the nearby businesses that we're receiving festival traffic. 131 of them, um, as the report showed us, so that's pretty impressive. The top geographic sources there, the attendees, um, you can see 50% of the foot traffic. Right. Because that shows a good solid community support, but it also shows that 50% of the traffic came from outside of Hendersonville. If I look at the next page of the budget performance information, this gets into a lot of information about the city's expense year over year. What Jesse said earlier, the negotiating contract fee had a big difference in the 2026 number, of course. And I'll just note that the very first year we did it, the Arts Council had a budget set aside for whatever we were going to use that on, and we used it on the festival. So I think that's just an important point. And then the cost per attendee, you can see in that right column, is continuing to decrease, which is what we wanted to do, of course. And I think on the final page, there's... Well, I'll say on the final page, the information about the individual patrons. So we tried something different this year to get our sponsorship up and to get more community involvement. And we actually did... grow our individual contributors, our patrons is what we call them. And we grew that by about 300%. But we didn't really change our sponsorship dollars. We had some folks back out, and we didn't grow that as we'd like. That's our biggest challenge still, and we're going to have to go back to that. But... But it is, as Jesse said, a very popular event. We had people tell us that they've now made it their annual Mother's Day event. People enjoy it. We contemplated should this event cost to attend, and we just don't think it should. We think it still should be a free event. because that doesn't eliminate anyone, anyone can come. And people come back more than once. Sometimes they'll come on Saturday and see something they like and they'll come back on Sunday. So anyway, that's really basically what I wanted to highlight here. There is one thing I wanted to mention about your overview, Jesse. You talked about Good Neighbor and they get a portion of the sponsorship dollars. So as I understand it, that's a fee for them to manage that relationship. So once we find sponsors, or if they find a sponsor, because they do as well, then they take that managing that relationship on for whatever time period is left. And it includes contract information, it includes providing them information for the event, Setting in both of those, you know, all of the communication that happens with them at that point. Beyond that point.

And then one change that's included in this year's budget to you is a big tent area for a shaded area. Yeah. I know there were some comments about that at this arts festival. So that is included in the budget for next year is to do a bigger tent shade area maybe in front of where the music is played. So if you have kind of a wrestling place that you can do that.

I stayed up there some of the time with you, you and Rachel both, and it was very well attended. I have to say that people that we met were a lot of them were from Murfreesboro out of the city and ways down the county as well. We're very interested. Some were even visiting from other states and they just heard about us. So it was exciting. And their comments regarding the vendor goods. They said, well, this is great stuff. And then we're very pleased with the goods the vendors provided. It wasn't something like a park or anything else. It was reminiscent to me. One of them said they were a long-time National Museum. They said it was very similar to the Centennial Park Arts Festival. They still do. Very similar vendor quality there in Nashville. So, kudos. Very good.

I have several questions. I already talked with Jesse about the one contract that there was a mistype in the 25 versus 35. Yeah. I got to see the first. I do. And so that fee is paid. I think it says paid over four or five times, five times at 7,000. Rather than, I mean, that's fine, but what are the benchmarks as far as making sure that they're living up to what you're doing and agreeing to the $35,000? Yes. Good day. Is it just this is what we need to do? We're giving you these dollars, but are there some things, some benchmarks, some that we're wanting to see as we're moving toward the festival and as we relinquish more of the fee that we're responsible to give them?

There's a timeline for sure in the planning process. There's nothing built in the contract, I don't believe, any barbage to manage any particulars. But I meet with them regularly. Once or twice a month in the beginning, like August-ish, when we start having conversations, once we get the contract ironed out. And then beginning of January, it's every week. And so there are deliverables and things that we talk about and things that we change. They also, because they have the experience that they do, they're great at problem-solving. So an example of that is this last year, we always have that special nutty spot in the park. No matter what happens. It rains that week. It rains in the spring. And so we have that special nutty spot, which... People fall in because they walk through it. I walked through it, which I don't did that. But so in order to kind of avoid the traffic coming to go there, they they did this differently this year. So instead of a long sort of vertical U shape, they did three new shapes that were I'm going to say horizontal. They were just pointing in a different direction, but that's a great example. And of course, during the festival, all kinds of things that come up, but along the way to answer your question, we don't just let them go. Got it.

And then also in the contract, I saw where it says talking about expenses and it says they shall receive $53,500 and there's five equal payments of that. Okay. It says starting January 1, 2026, but I guess that will change. What is that for and where do I see those expenses within the budget?

That's the payment for the management fee.

That's like all the... Reimbursable. It's reimbursable, like the port-a-potties and any other expenses that they have. And that's one that they actually true that up at the end. And then if they've spent less than that, we get money. And part of this year, they're sending us a check back because they spent less than what was...

So it's these expenses that are in this budget. So they're paying for those things, not the city bank.

Yeah, and I just want to say, when we first talked about how are we going to do this, because do we want for the city to have to put out to bid every single expense that goes into this? No. So Good Neighbor handles the administration on that. And they have a list of vendors that they use, but they have also been open to using vendors that we have suggested. Sometimes Gilly has worked with them on things. So you're saying no?

I'm saying sometimes we've suggested using local people that they've not used.

I will answer to that because we have talked about that because Andy did suggest some of the local folks that he works with on other events. And what we found is the pricing for us wasn't as good as what their vendor might have. And so we pinch pennies because we're trying to, you know.

As long as it's not coming from China. But it's a big benefit to us.

Well, initially, we just didn't know how we could do this being an arts council and kind of loosely having been reformed. How are we going to do this festival? And Good Neighbor managing the procurement process for us is a huge benefit. It would wear Tamara out. I mean, it would be all out. It would be.

Well, the last question I have is more just around. And I know the council does a great job with this. But what's the thought as you step back and you see how you've done it progressively gotten better each year? What's the council's plan for this? getting to the point where they are profitable? You know, what's the plan for finding more sponsorships? Do you have goals as far as you want each council member to bring someone to the table? And then the other question with that is why do you think more people attended this year versus other? Was it just because the weather was better?

Our plan is always to grow sponsorship. How do we do that? This last year we tried something. It didn't turn out to be terribly beneficial. Our council is not made up of people that are all great at going out and getting sponsored offers. We just weren't set up that way initially. So we decided it would be a good idea to go out and find some ambassadors that might be able to go and help us fund this. People that know how to do that and that are connected in the community. We didn't find that as helpful. Maybe we didn't get everybody's involved in something. So there's a lot of competition for the dollars. And I think the folks that really meant well and that kind of jumped on board initially didn't have the time or They weren't able to put in the time to do it. So I call a lot of people, including our individual stuff, a lot. So this year, I think this year, just a slightly different approach. I'll go back to each and every one of those people and ask, can you introduce me to? And Good Neighbor, I'm talking with them already about some larger projects. corporate sponsors maybe that are in the area that might be interested. One of our challenges is that some companies don't want to support a brand new event. We still feel like we're a young event, but it's not year one. So maybe the support that we've had from the community and the progress that we've made so far might be helpful. And I hope it's not a plan. What was the second part of your question?

Why do you think more people attended this year? Because it was a drastic increase.

It was a drastic increase. I would say media marketing. Last year, when we got towards the end, we shaved off some of our marketing budget at the end. And the social media stuff happens more at the end. I think that, I think people talked about it.

Okay.

And I really appreciate even the opportunity I had to be at a chamber, a couple of different chamber events to talk about it with people. And I just think word of mouth is also good out there.

Thank you. Great questions. I do have a question on this second to last page. You put focus on me. I want to return to that. For the first year it says Arts Council, it was 1905. That was many of the Arts Councils getting themselves for their event, right? Since then, you've been able to put money back into that line item, and that's where it's coming from the festival and line item, right? So the money you're making on the festival is going back to the festival or how so far?

We haven't made any money on the festival yet, but now there's a separate budget line item for the event. Maybe you can talk about that.

Oh, a city line item.

Yeah, it's both in the general fund and the single services budget. And that's where that's actually where it was budgeted in 2024. It's just when it was originally budgeted wasn't earmarked for the festival. They got repurposed as part of the funding for the festival. And when we budget this year or 88, but it's what's budgeted. No, you're good. I was saying I couldn't remember the exact numbers.

So what's the difference between city expense and then that line item 88, 5.

Because the sponsor revenue comes in and the revenue from the vendors comes in. So the gap this year was $8,300.

Yeah. So you have a revenue line up here and then you have expenses.

And then out of those for this year was $8,300.

And hopefully next year it'll be less. Just to manage expectations, we do hope it'll be less, but we know we need to have a tent. We didn't pay parking attendance this year, which we haven't passed, and that didn't really go too good. It turns out 7,000 or 8,000 people cannot park without walking each other in. And the management fee for the company is going to go back up. So it's certainly everybody's focus is to replace that extra expense money with with new sponsorship dollars and renew or increase the sponsorship dollars that already exist. However, those are expenses that we've just realized we need to do that. And so we might be in the same situation. And certainly our cost per attendee will be higher next year because of the management fee going back up.

Unless you get more attendees.

Yeah. Well, that's... And we will. It's growing organically to a large extent. I mean, I think a lot of the growth is organic and the effort of Renee and the rest of the art sports.

That was a two-day event, right? Yes. Any thought on making it three days? Or are you not big enough for that yet?

I think we're not big enough for that. I think we could. But we also could do ticketed events at the event. Or we could do larger entertainment events. getting free for certain things that you have to get a ticket for people right right so like I've always said my dream is to have a Mother's Day brunch on Sunday morning but we're not at a place yet where we're able to grow and add those things we have to be able to kind of get this done first and do that later, if that makes sense. So we had lots of opportunity to grow. And I always like to talk about the Tempe Arts Festival when I think about this because they are similarly situated to Phoenix. They've been doing an arts festival for more than 50 years. There are YouTube videos about it if you're interested. They have 350 vendors. They go Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, so they go four days, and they have like 250,000 people that visit. um it's pretty cool it's very cool um so it has potential and there are other examples just like in all of this country um but it's just slower which i just wanted it to be in terms of that and adding new things uh well we have it in the budget we've already approved that aspect of it um

And so last year was about the same that we budgeted, right? It was a little bit less. But and they came out just $8,000 reading the red. And you've seen a trend that coming down which i'm very grateful for when we first were considering this that was my one stipulation like i want to be able to see this within a couple of years be self-sustainable work so close to it i mean that's very impressive getting it down to eight thousand dollars in three years in three years and the tax revenue yeah that you see yeah there's yeah i mean we're not going to say oh we're covering it with the tax reform but if the return on investment is huge There could be people using our hotels. There could be going out to a restaurant afterwards. But we don't track those things, so there could be more people.

We have an estimate based on the Placer data, which is, well, our art vendors, we know half of them come from outside of Tennessee.

The Placer estimates put us at $61,000 in Hendersonville City.

sales tax revenue. Potential from this event. Of course, the

And of course, that's not included in the budget and all that, right? So, yeah, there's a good chance that they are green, and we just don't track it and see it.

Well, there's a lot of ancillary benefits, but yeah, just part of it. That's exactly right.

Well, one thing to note, too, is we talked about the 26, or how we know 26 was $8,300, but the 27 budget, as it's presented to us here, is almost... break even. We're under $735. We feel like we've done as much as we can to reduce expenses. Probably always small things that come up.

Like growing canes.

What works, what doesn't work.

There's only like 30 years.

Yeah, and I want to encourage you. Let's keep going in. I know you want to too.

By the time we got to our fourth kit, we pretty well knew what to do.

That's right.

That's what you think. Any other questions or comments? And we do not need to vote, right?

No voting on anything else on tonight's budget.

Fantastic. Love yous a lot. Let's move right along. Next thing on our agenda is discussion on how to fund the amendment as opposed, as proposed in ordinance 2026-08. I'll make a motion to discuss that.

You don't need to have a motion. No, I don't.

No, it's just discussion. Never mind.

Just discussion.

All right. And this, the 2028, let me bring it up here. This is the personnel rules and regulations policy section 4, public safety, assistant chiefs, promotional pay and to amend the proposed 202627. Budget ordinance to appropriate funds accordingly.

Yes, that's great.

And I thank you for our. Public safety chair for being here, and I know you're also the sponsor on this ordinance 1 of them. So, do you want to take it off?

Yes, we have come up with a way to fund that either for the salary line of the place in that word.

Through the sex tax revenue, the additional from this from this year is that you're saying, or for the current fiscal year. That current fiscal year, so not the year that we just completed. It has to be when he said, but we're going to need to make a budget amendment anyways, because of our finalized sales tax revenue, right? Because of the revenue.

No, we don't go back and revise the budget from the Friday or once the year's done.

right but we're i'm sorry so but we're going to make an amendment to our current because of the revenue from last year no no okay we're just going to leave it okay um so okay uh questions comments i'll let you guys go first do you have anything you want to share or no i just didn't know um more about this salary line and then the uh sales sales tax

What what parts are we going to adjust?

We can adjust in the police line. They had 2 and a half had 2 and a half vacancies. We can take a 1 of the vacancies and fund this. We also had 4 and we can fund. Fire with both of those. Uh, I mean, both positions with that, we also have a sergeant that's retiring. And to fill his place, there'll be excess money.

In the budget as well, this is somewhere we're going to need probably the chief to both chiefs to address some of this information as well. So.

The fire department gave back $116,145 from their salary line. This year, police department gave back $468,355 from their salary line.

Highlight what year for me.

Highlight what budget year. That was 26.

We haven't closed 26 yet to have those numbers be final yet.

I suspect those will be...

I'm positive that the final numbers that you have, Terry, had the 1st of July, they won't be in there yet.

Give back means money not used. Correct. Yeah. Two weeks, is that what you're saying?

The idea from going, what we currently are doing is we're budgeting our police department at two vacancies. The reason that we're budgeting at two vacancies is because we're never 100% full the entire year. If someone leaves, it's a month, two months before someone comes back up and fills that position. If someone gets promoted, someone retires and then folks promote it. It takes a couple of weeks for all those promotions to take effect. And so you have gaps in employment basically just as the day an employee leaves, you can't have an employee ready to hit the street. When we were having vacancies of 16, 18 people at a time, it was millions of dollars a year we weren't spending. And the police department budget, because there were 16 or 18 people who weren't there, we weren't making payroll. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right now, I think we have four vacancies in police.

Are those planned vacancies or they're unplanned vacancies?

A lot of times what happens is you'll get some younger people who come in and they want to be a police officer, and they go through a couple weeks of it, and they do a ride-along, and they say, this really isn't for me. So then they come off the payroll. And then it takes a minute, you get someone back on. And so, you know, that's just the natural course of it. But those four that we're talking about right now, we still haven't budgeted. So we budgeted this year. We took all the positions.

Are they recently...

We're getting into the weeds a little bit.

I apologize. Go ahead.

And we said, hey, we're going to budget for 100% of these positions to be filled, less two. So we budgeted two vacancies. You could budget two and a half, still somewhat conservative to say that there's two and a half vacancies. Right now we have four, and that half of a vacancy would cover the cost. of the promotions for both the police and the fire departments for us. Now, we would only want to do that with BOMA understanding that we're budgeting at a two and a half person vacancy rate. I don't think that we would at any point exceed it, go below that. So I don't think we're going to, at the end of the year, look back and say, oh, we are on average vacant one position. Like right now we're vacant four positions. And as folks retire and there's promotions that happen, usually when they promote up, their salary is a little less than the person who sat in that position previously. Sure. So a two-and-a-half-person vacancy I think is fair to assume, and that would cover it. The other option we could do is sales tax. We traditionally try to budget conservatively. You know, this isn't a huge increase to sales tax if we were just to say, we'll increase sales tax X dollars. It's $6,800. $6,800 to cover. Yeah, the local option sales tax. So that was it. So what this amendment would do is it would eat up the surplus we currently have. So we have a surplus north of $10,000. This would take that surplus to zero. And then we would have to fund the difference to not be in a deficit position. That difference is $6,800. $6,881. So that's what you'd either have to increase the sales tax revenue, or you could say we'll decrease the PD budget by half of the person from a vacancy. And that would more than cover the $6,800. So those are options. Now, we just went through the budget and we sliced and diced all these expenses. So we're looking at it, we're like, do we really go back and rehash all these things we just did? It didn't make a whole lot of sense. And the board asked for some of those things to be put back in. So sales tax is one where we try to be conservative, especially so mid-year, maybe we have the ability to adjust some things for needs that we see. This limits that ability a little bit. Uh, it's not quite as conservative, but still, it's. Probably reasonable to say you can increase your sales tax that amount. I don't have any heartburn over that. And then the vacancy issue is. I don't I don't think that at 2 and a half people vacancy is really against. I think that's we're going to end the year around probably too big. But I just want the board to understand that's what we're doing with the police department budget if we go there.

What is this going to do to us going forward? I'm sorry. No, please. Going forward next year, what are we looking at as far as the budget goes? Because part of our job is to do the forecast.

Yeah, so it would increase the budget next year as well. So it's going to bump the base up. It's going to bump our foundation, salary foundation up. So next year... it's going to be that much more. All things being equal. Yes. So it's going to raise your expense platform. Your expense platform bumps up a little bit for all future years.

And it will reduce a little bit what our surplus will be.

So, yes, those are all good comments, but I guess I'm going to offer something from a more positive standpoint, if I may. When you look at that and you're projecting in the future, you know that you're going to have some people who are going to retire and then the people are going to replace those people at a lesser salary. So there's going to be a positive end to that, too, where Yes, the foundation is, as you mentioned, that pay, that will, but it's not going to be as drastic as, you know, we're talking about taking care of some people's salaries here. What's the total cost on that?

About $20,000.

$20,000.

Is that for this year or for what's left in the year?

It was it was assuming that this is a full year. No, it was assuming 10 months because it's been 11 months because this was going to be approved in July.

So, we're talking about. Yeah, 22 yeah, 22,000. So, I appreciate when we left the meeting last time, I asked, you know, can we just ask staff to come back and present something that we can possibly do this? I think rather than messing around with the expenses and adjusting that, leave it as it is. And then I'd like to see that we just adjust the sales tax revenue. I think that's the simplest thing to do. Again, I know that when Tamara and the team projects that, it's always very, very conservative. And I don't want to always say that we're always going to beat our budget. I hope that we always do. when we're talking about revenue. But we've had to come out of a great year where we every month we were over previous years, we were over budget. And so I think we can enjoy $6,800.

Well, and I want to ask what do you when your professional opinion, what do you feel is the safest pathway for this?

I personally think between the two, adjusting expenses and increasing the local option sales time, I think increasing the sales tax is the better option between those two.

I agree with you. So I want to push back on that a little bit. And the reason for that is because this year, yes, we are 2.59% up. Last year, we were down three quarters of a percent from budget. So we actually did not make up what we budgeted. Yes, we increased it at mid-year, and I understand that, but we still, we readjusted our budget. Then we spent that money when we readjusted the budget at mid-year, and we ended up three quarters of a percent down. So over the course of four years, yes, we are up because every other year we've been up, but it's not a foregone conclusion that we will be up year over year. And I hate to say it, but this eventually too will drop, will end. It's just a matter of when, and we don't know when that's going to happen. So I struggle putting this in the sales tax, when to me, that's the bigger unknown. We can control staffing. We can say we're gonna budget X number of employees not being hired, and then we just don't hire people, making sure we maintain that status quo through the course of the year. This we can't control. We can't force people to spend money in our city.

But when you're looking at the, I can see what you mean talking about the percent of the budget. The reason that we didn't make it in 25 over 24 is because we budgeted 8% more.

been really budgeted in the previous year.

You know, for 26 to 25, we basically held our budget flat. And what is our sales tax budget for 27?

Our sales tax, it's 22.7. The local option, we're budgeted $108,000 less than what we ended this year for. Exactly.

So I think for me, again, I think that's nominal. Again, I still think that it's easier. I think you can control your, you have just as much control of your revenue as you do with your expenses. My problem with Adjusting expenses is that once you do that, and you make a decision about staff, it's a fixed cost and you're in that. And so you're not really you can't make a decision about filling a position, especially when you're talking about public safety. You can't hold off or say, I'm not going to hire somebody in public safety.

That's exactly what we're doing here.

No, that's not what we're doing. What we're doing is we're saying it's a vacancy. It's a known vacancy. And the only way you can control that is by saying that we're not going to fill that position. The vacancy that they're putting in the budget is just it's a vacancy. It's a known fact that happens that you're always going to have open positions and you're just banking that that that open position is going to be is going to be open. It's not saying that you're not going to fill the position.

That's the way I look at it. Yes, sir. So when it be a hiring freeze, it's an assumption on what the actual vacancy rate is.

And you also mentioned that this, you were talking about police, but although we don't have as high a vacancy rate in fire, there are some times where we have some vacancies in fire department too, and that's not even entered into this.

The difference with fire though is that we did this last year is when we had an opener recruitment, we hired one more in anticipation of someone leaving. So the next academy, I'd like to do that again. And then the overtime budget has gone over in FIRE. And so that's kind of, and those budgets are together, the regular and the overtime. I mean, we separate them in the budget so you can see them, but they're budgeted, controlled as a group. And so sometimes the FIRE uses some of them over time. But we budget a lot more for overtime for FIRE this year than we did in the past. I just think that FIRE's a lot, you know, fair enough. It's closer. And once people get in FIRE, They don't leave fire, like, we see a lot of once I get to the train. Yes. And, you know, you see people leave more in place and I don't think that's just nationwide.

Okay, well, any other discussions?

No, I don't think I had anything else to add.

Thanks. We've got one minute left. So discussion of retiree health benefits. Do that quickly.

One minute.

So the discussion, I was expecting somebody else to be here.

We can always skip that. And you've got the packet to the rest of that. Any other business? No. And any motion to move?

Second.

All those in