Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Welcome to the City of Harrisville Finance Committee meeting for September 8th, 2026. It's six o'clock, a little after six, and my name is Jeff Sassi, Chairman of the Call This Meeting to Order. First item on the agenda is exceptions on the agenda.

I make a motion we accept the agenda.

All right. Any changes? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Item two is minutes for the previous meeting. Do you have a chance to look those over? Anything you need changed there? I didn't see anything I think we needed to address. I'll let you two accept. I'll second. Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Aye. And that's passed. Next is public comments. We have one item, or one person wanting to speak. Oh yeah, we can do that.

Does that seek to move? Mark Burgdorf, Alderman Ward 1. Mark Evans, Alderman Ward 6.

Tamara Ingersoll, Finance Director.

Russ Edwards, Hendersonville City Judge. Jesse Eckneroth, Chief of Operations.

You're about to introduce yourself. Oh, I'll do it anyway. Terry Smith. All right. Thank you very much. Thanks for reminding me. Well, the next is public comments. So, Terry, you want to introduce yourself again? Take it away.

Hey, my name is Terry Smith. I live down off Cursed Crossroads. I've been a resident of the city of Henshaw for 30-plus years. I've communicated with multiple people, references to the safety line. I just want to make sure they don't get lost in the government. I talked to the general committee. They said it's over in you guys' lap. So right now, we have some retiree benefits. One of the ones that I'm concerned about is the health care benefit. So when you're a city employee, the city subsidizes your family health insurance. So for me and my family, I'm the lowest tier. As you can see on the form here, it's about $475. I think the new numbers came out today as to what the premiums are going to be. It goes up about 10%, I think, is what it's going to be. But when I retire, that premium is going to jump to $1,218 some odd dollars, a massive increase to that premium. And if that's at a time when you retire and your income is going to be reduced, then the premium is going to jack up $600, $800, depending on which plane you pick. And this is from the family. As an active employee, my family insurance right now is $456. When I retire, my premium would go to $1,218. That's my share. That's not the city's share. That's like a 167% increase. If I dropped my children off the plan, just as active employee for me and my wife, it's $310 a month, and that premium would jack up to $946 or about a 200-some-odd percent increase in the premium the day I retire or when I retire. What I'm asking is that the city considers looking at continuing that, I don't want to call it a subsidy, but that portion of the contribution of the employee's retirement plan when they go into the retirement phase until the time that they get into the Social Security, not Social Security, but the Medicare bracket. I don't think that that's an unreasonable request. As an employee, you already pay that to me or you pay that for me when I retire. To push that burden of financial off on me at the time when my income is drastically reduced seems a little bit unfair. I communicated with the mayor. He says that's going to be about $8,800 per retiree employee is what the burden is that the city would be freed up from that I would have to pay. And I think if you actually looked at it, there's probably a zero impact on the budget because salary compression is probably going to make up that $8,000 difference if the city continued to pay it versus if I got paid, it gets pushed off on me. So when I retire, somebody's going to take over my job and somebody's going to take over their job and then each one of those people is going to make less money. So that salary compression savings is probably going to make up that $8,000 that you currently pay. But at the end of the day, you already pay it. So what I would ask is that you just continue to treat retired employees when it comes to the health care plan, the same as you do active employees, and continue to make that premium payment just like you do if they were active. It's going to be a few years, four or five years on most of us, right? And then we hit Medicare, and then all that drops off. So it's not a forever pill. It's just a shorter period of time. So I guess I just want to, I guess you guys were talking about it, I just want to make sure that you guys don't forget about it and kind of focus on that, think about that, and maybe we can get that done earlier on in January or the first half of the year before, because I think January is when our new contract for health care comes on board. That'd be January. Right now it's going to be open enrollment. I think January the new contract is written that we go for. So anyway, that's what I'm hoping for.

Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Smith. That closes the public hearing or the comments. Moving on to ordinances and resolutions. Item 1 is Resolution 2026-33, Resolution to Adopt and Mend Financial or Finance Policy Relative to the Handling of Returned Checks. I need a motion. So moved.

Do you want a second? I'll second. Just so we can discuss. And Tamara, do you want to take it away?

Yeah, absolutely. So this is being brought forward because we have a very old policy on how to handle return checks. The last time it was updated was 1987. There have been TCA updates since then that actually specify what fees we should be charging for a return check. The prior policy said $20, which was based on what the bank would charge us. Well, that's not really what we're supposed to be charging. The fees that TCA dictates is basically 1% of the check amount. Or if the check is under $2,000, it's really either $20 or the amount of the check. And that's really to compensate for the administrative time that it takes for us to handle those return checks as well as any fees the bank may charge us. This policy is also comprehensive. It directs staff on what needs to be included in a notice that goes to somebody who wrote a bad check to us or we had a check that was returned. You know, how do we do that notification? What are those expectations? So it's really an updated policy, but it's creating a comprehensive policy to take the place of the old one that really didn't have much teeth to it.

All right. question. I didn't read in here where it had anything regarding electronic payments. Sorry, did I overlook it?

Yeah, the very first paragraph, this second one, it applies to checks, electronic checks, drafts, any other item that may be returned.

I was so excited about this. Thank you. Appreciate it.

My question had to do with, because we've gone through this with the personnel regulations. Is there a time when we need to be looking at, not that I'm looking for it, but having something like this and it's that old, are there other policies that we need to be looking at? Yes. And I'd rather not piecemeal this. I mean, I'm fine with doing this for now, but at some point in time, we really need to look at all those and update them.

Yeah, we're looking at a lot of the older policies. Unlike the personnel policy, a lot of the finance policies, they're very targeted for unspecific items. Some of them are new and have been updated. They're still valid. Some, like this one, were really, really old. And so we're looking at them, doing a review, identifying the old ones that need updating, and then some of the new ones that may need some updating as well. Yeah, absolutely.

And how many do... Would you say that we have on average?

Policy updates? No.

So until this last property tax season, I say we may have, you know, a dozen a year. But this last property tax season, we had about 30 of them for property taxes that were returned. It was a crazy year, which I don't think that's real common. Probably a dozen, maybe 15 of them a year. Not that many. And how much does our bank charge us? Nothing. Nothing. We don't get charged for a return check fee.

Okay. What is the difference between a $2,000 check and a $20,000 check in the administrative process? There really isn't one, except that $20,000 means that we have $20,000 less sitting in our bank account.

Yeah.

I'm just curious because I checked with only a couple of municipalities and they haven't instituted a percentage base. And so I was curious why we chose to do a percentage. Is it just because TCRS?

No, it's based on the TCA. Yeah, it's based on the state law. That dictates what we should be charging in. It actually specifies in there that the following, that we shall charge these fees. And that's what the TCA says.

So they're dictating to us what these fees should be going to be.

Yeah, there's a flexibility in this. So this is set. There is another option to add a fee to reimburse for what the bank charges. But we didn't feel that that was necessary to include at this time.

But there's not. CHARGED.

WE'RE NOT CHARGED. WE'RE NOT CHARGED. YEAH, WE CAN'T LEVY THAT BECAUSE IT'S NOT CHARGED. BUT THIS IS SPECIFIED, THE PERCENTAGE BASE IS SPECIFIED IN THERE. I WILL SAY THE MAJORITY OF THE CHECKS, I DON'T KNOW OF ANY CHECKS THAT ARE LARGE THAT HAVE BEEN RETURNED. THEY'RE GENERALLY VERY, YOU KNOW, UNDER $1,000 TYPE CHECKS. THEY'RE VERY SMALL.

So essentially, it would still be $20. Yeah. What I would like to propose, and we can discuss this at GOMA, is instead of... We'll need to look into that and see if the 1% is mandatory from the TCA, or if that's a suggestion, with the city being flexible enough to be able to determine its own fee. So I'm thinking we do an admin fee plus the bank fee. So if they ever start charging us a fee, we're still collecting an admin fee, a flat admin fee to process those collections while being reimbursed for the bank fee that we're being charged as well. And so that would be my recommendation. But this policy by itself, without not considering any fees, is definitely needed. We need to update this. And so I would absolutely move this for approval with that recommendation.

And I can gather a little more information to have if you want to ask those questions at BOMA. I can have information in front of me or I can send it out ahead of time.

Yeah, if you have that for BOMA, that would be great.

On this, did we... I was trying to look for it because I thought I might have seen it, but is there a grace period, like if the check is returned, do we give them some time to make it good before we do the $20, or is it just automatically $20?

It would be the fee.

But they have 10 days to pay it, right? Yes. What happens after the 10 days?

Well, it depends on what it is. If it was for a permit, they put a hold on the permit, and basically they have to stop work on that property. If it's for property taxes, you know, and then if they don't pay it by that 10-day mark, they come in and if they don't pay it at all, it ends up being turned over ultimately to the clerk or master to do collections for it. So it really depends on what it is.

Yeah, that's what I was about to ask. You know him? Are you aware of him? May I? Yeah. Okay, thank you. George, have you found any... Are you aware of any return checks or anything like that? I mean, because somebody would have to really be making a big mistake if they gave a judge a... Yeah.

We don't take... That wouldn't... Well, that wouldn't come before me. It would not come. On an insufficient fund, like writing a bad check. But are you aware of anything going on in the court? The clerk's office, you would know, Tamara, don't you?

Yeah, we don't accept checks for court. Oh, okay. They only have to pay with cash or a credit card.

All right, good. There we go. Yeah. Takes care of the problem.

Yeah. For sure.

Thank you, Judge. All right, any other questions? Anyone want to make a motion on that one? I'll make a motion we move to follow with a positive recommendation for discussion. Do you want to add the recommendation? OF A DIFFERENT FEE TYPE OR NO? SORRY. WE'LL MOVE IT TO THE BOARD.

AND TAMARA WILL BRING IT. YOU SECOND IT. I SECOND IT, YES.

AND TAMARA WILL BRING THAT TOWARDS. YEP. PERFECT. ALL THOSE IN FAVOR, SAY AYE. AYE. AND THAT FASCINATES ME. THANK YOU. 2026-15, ORDINANCE AMENDING BUDGET ORDINANCE TO REFLECT THE FINAL YEAR IN DEPARTURE ADJUSTMENTS TO THE CITY'S 2027 FISCAL BUDGET. Any questions on this? I'm going to be so disappointed if there aren't. Oh, you know I do. Does anyone want to go through this?

Do you want me to walk through the items that are on here?

Just the main points. Can I give my explanation?

Okay, you can give your explanation.

So since we set the budget in April or May, we have some projects that will not be finished by the end of the fiscal year. We have several projects that last more than one fiscal year. So we have to make an estimate of what we're going to spend in the previous fiscal year and estimate what we're going to need in the next fiscal year. And those estimates are estimates. And so what happens then when we get to the end of that fiscal year and we true up all the books, we find out how much we spent, how much we still need to spend. We have to adjust the budget accordingly.

And there's several on here that are revenue and expense offset through grants. So that completely makes sense, of course, because we got reimbursed for those expenses. Couple of questions I had. If y'all don't mind. No. Line 14. We had a park sponsorship in the amount of $82,000.

That wasn't originally... Yeah, those are funds that are held in a restricted account or a reserve specifically for parks projects. They're based on donations that are received. And so they've been... been being held over the last couple of years, waiting for that to get large enough that parks can do a project with them. And so now Andy has asked me to budget those funds.

Is this primarily Mary's Magical?

He's hoping to be able to put in a swing at Mary's Magical Place.

Okay, great. So now it's down to zero again, right? Approximately?

Pretty much.

They need to do more fundraising. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then we have. The Westlake median improvements increase of $216,000 from what we originally thought was $363,000. We saw it was another 60% higher.

Yeah, well, they spent that much less than what they anticipated. They anticipated having more purchase orders issued before the fiscal year ended in 2006, and that did not happen. So the funds that were budgeted last year, so it's carried over.

Okay.

All of these projects on here, if you look in the far right-hand column under notes, they say true up of the projects that are rebudgeted. All of those are rebudgeted, so it's just truing them up to what was budgeted last year, and then based on the actual expenditure. Some are increasing, some are decreasing. Okay.

What about the decrease in the Summersville Road spot improvements, though, in line 38? Going from $400,000 to $264,000.

Yeah, they actually spent more in fiscal year 26 than what they anticipated. So it's the opposite.

So that was all budgeted in the previous fiscal year, and so we're offsetting it in the new fiscal year to account for it. Got it. That's all the questions I had. Any other questions? All right. All those in favor of approval, say aye. Aye. Aye. Next item. Reading of Ordinance 2026-16, amending Title I municipal code by adding a new Chapter 13, general penalties and enforcement of establishing a tiered system of monetary penalties for repeated violations of municipal ordinances. Can I get a motion? So moved. I'll second. Great. Any questions on that?

Well, yeah, we have a judge here to answer any questions for us. Yeah, judge, would you like to go ahead and do that?

Well, I'll answer any questions.

Okay.

Well, whatever you want. I mean, the way I understand this, it only applies to property code violations. This would not be any kind of traffic code violations. And so it's, The Tennessee Constitution, I think in the late 1700s, said municipal courts can only impose a fine of $50. So maybe back then that $50 was a lot, not so much today. So that's an interpretation from the Tennessee Constitution. The Tennessee Code Annotated just recently has allowed municipalities to impose a monetary penalty of $250 for... the second violation, property code violation, and up to 500 for any third or subsequent. So it's important that language is not a fine. So it's not an arbitrary fine that we can just impose on second and subsequent. My understanding is the city would have to show some kind of reason for the city court, the city judge, to impose a fine up to those monetary amounts, such as what kind of efforts did the city have to make to try to fix these problems or enforce the property code violations, because we have a lot of apartment complexes and other businesses who just never show up to court. It's every single week we have the same ones, and they just don't show up to court. And all I can impose is the fine and court costs. and a penalty for not showing up to court. So my hands are kind of tied here, but this gives the court a little more teeth and makes this a little more enforceable. And so they might give pause and think, should I continue these not complying with the Hendersonville City Code if we can impose penalties up to a certain amount? Hopefully this will pass. I'm fully supportive of it. I won't impose the maximum 250 or 500 every single time. I think the city would have to show something. But I think this does pass constitutional muster, and it can be. When I first saw it, I was like, I don't know if this is constitutional, but we shall see if there's any challenges to it. But until then... I hope y'all can impose this or pass it. It can be less. I'll give a lot of people grace if they actually show up to court. For example, we had an apartment complex and that has come every single week and finally a property manager showed up last week. Showing up is half the battle. If they can show up, I'll give them some grace. I'll say, look, I don't need to impose these fines. We'll just do court costs. We just want to get this fixed. And so we can give them an opportunity to get the violation fixed. And if they do that, I won't even in charge the fines or the monetary penalties. It'll just be court costs as long as they can show they're making some kind of effort to get it fixed. So This may not even apply to people who actually show up to court and are making some kind of effort to get their property in compliance.

So in this particular ordinance here, unlike the one we just talked about where the code annotated denotes shall as the term, this here gives you an option. It's up to your jurisdiction and your judgment. Correct. Okay, good.

Yeah, it says up to, that's where it gets us discretion. It won't just be an arbitrary every single time. Good, good.

So it feels like, again, it feels like it's not punitive, but it's an effort to increase regulatory compliance.

Exactly, exactly. And to show some kind of, you know, how the city is out money trying to enforce their property codes.

Couple of thoughts for questions for me when I read through this, um. And thank you for mentioning about because this has to do with buildings. Because property properties, because I don't really see that. That's very clear. It just says monetary penalties for repeated violations violations of the same municipal ordinance. Um, so I think. I mean, it just wasn't clear that that's what we're talking about. And I know at the very end, it says that what excluded. So, but basically we're talking about property or buildings, right? That's really it.

Yeah, and it's just Hendersonville municipal code violations. Traffic offenses, almost 90, probably 95% of them are state offenses, state code violations. One came in today that is just a municipal violation. I mean, it could be... A parking violation, but I think it's excluded by this ordinance.

On page 22, it's excluded. I see where it says that about traffic, vehicles, moving violations, all that's excluded from this. I wasn't clear about what we were talking about with this. So what are some examples of some things that we're seeing as far as code violations?

Well, I could mention one apartment complex on the west side of town. I've seen the pictures. It has an enormous amount of trash that piles up. Every single week it piles up and we have so many complaints and it's just nasty. So it's trash violation. Trash. That can be one. Not cutting the grass. People not cutting the grass or having trash in their yard. That's a property code violation. And that's residential.

Rush shouldn't say this, but we also have a problem with a couple of property owners that have too many accessory buildings in their backyard.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. I do have one correction, I believe, on page 19. It is one, two, three, third, whereas it says September 24th, 2996. Oh, wow. Shh.

That's some things in the future. And for context, this refers to Chapter 13. And Chapter 13 of the Municipal Code is dealing with property. Okay. So it fits well into Chapter 13.

And we can update that.

What is that supposed to be?

2026. Oh, okay.

It's probably supposed to be 1996. 1996, yeah. That's what I was wondering. Uh-oh. Because the ordinance was 1996.

Okay.

Could this apply to, I think, short-term rental violations?

It was 1996.

That's a property code. It's a municipal code.

I think that's probably supposed to be $50. Right.

Can I add something? Sure. I'm sorry. I'm fine. Okay. Unfortunately, there are some violators that don't really pay attention until the cost... escalate some um and that's not something we want to do because we really don't want the money what we want is we want compliance we want the neighbors to feel safe and the tenants uh to get what they're paying for uh so if we have to go this route it's an option um but i like what the judge is doing is you know if they show up before give us some time to fix because that's what we're looking for um i know this isn't really related but do we have

a warning to your system before we actually start imposing these, or how does that work?

Very much. Yeah, if it's Jackie or it's Jim, Jackie's in codes compliance in place, and then Jim is with planning compliance in planning department. They have multiple conversations and at least two letters before they get a citation, before somebody gets a citation. And very often a visit is involved as well. Yeah.

So what's the difference when you have one from planning and one from police? What's the difference?

It depends what they're enforcing, if it's from a planning ordinance or if it's codes and police. I'll tell you, sometimes I have a hard time understanding the difference, too. So if somebody has a site plan where they have a driveway and that's it. but then suddenly they want to widen that driveway and create another curb cut, that's gonna be in planning. But if somebody has grass that's growing too high, that's gonna be in codes. It very much is a gray area and sometimes crosses over. They work together a lot.

And you say police, so she actually worked, she didn't work for the police department.

We moved that about six or eight years ago.

But she's under codes? Code violations within the police department. Not building codes. People take her seriously.

So is she under the police budget or the codes budget?

Police. Okay. It's property maintenance codes, not building and safety codes. So cutting the grass. It's not life and safety issues like foundation and structure. It's cutting the grass, trash, property maintenance.

Okay. It's... And that's police? Okay. That's just my thought.

Some cities do it one way, some cities do it the other way.

Do you have another hour you want to talk about? Yeah. Just forget I mentioned it. I'll do that.

Any other discussion? Can I get a motion? A motion to approve. Send it to Belmont. One second. All those in favor of sending it to Belmont with a positive recommendation, say aye. Aye. 2026 17 ordinance amending Hendersonville code regarding parks and recreation golf course commission beer board stormwater management appeals board and zoning and the 2025 zoning ordinance to authorize a training stipend for members of city boards committees commissions and other appointed bodies who are required to complete official training And I need a motion. Not so much. I'll second. All right. Thank you. And thank you for bringing this forward. Any questions on this?

You don't have any questions. No, it's fine. We've got Lance to pull this together for us.

And is this training compensation? Is that just a one-time thing? It says training stipend. So is it training for each one that they do? My understanding of it is it's very, yes, one-time training.

One time per year. One time per year, one time annually, yes. And I'd like to go ahead and recognize our esteemed colleague, Alderman Ian Robertson, who put this forward earlier this year. as an amended version for training. I think it garnered a lot of support on the board. I hated to see it not succeed at that point, but I think that this is well overdue and something that the board can move forward to get a well-trained staff because we always have better results, better outcomes with well-trained staff and well-trained volunteers.

And so just to be clear, so this eliminates the $100 monthly stormwater appeals bill, and then that falls into the training just like everybody else? Just like everyone else. Everybody would be treated the same. Absolutely. Okay. Yeah.

I do have a question on parks. Yes. The first section there, all the other sections at the very beginning state all and every other condition shall serve as such without compensation except the parks. Where did that go? On page 28. Yeah. They're the only ones that don't start with that line. I was wondering if there was a purpose for that.

I don't have any idea about that. I don't think that's a...

I think Parks is the only one of those that is dealt with specifically in our charter.

That might be why.

Okay. That might be why. Everything else is based on ordinances that were passed by the city legislative body.

I don't think it changes anything. They're not currently paid to.

That's my best guess of why they're different.

Okay. We can clarify that with Lance. Yeah.

Sounds good. And then my only other thing was it seemed like all of these, like all the wording is the same, but then you have different headers and you have different starting sentences. I would just want to maybe clean that up so it's consistent across the board.

Sure, and what we can do is we can check with the attorney to make sure that these are appropriate per ordinances and pass that a bit down. So we're trying to clean this up. Yes, we'll go ahead and do that.

One last question on page 30 for the Appeals Board. It has appointed, in the compensation section, it says appointed members shall be removed from the board for absence from meetings or other just cause. I was wondering why that was in there in compensation and why that wouldn't be a part of its separate section. It doesn't seem to be related to compensation.

Another thing for language. Yes, let's discuss that. Those are my only questions.

Anything else? No. I'll go ahead and help her to move this to BOMO with a positive recommendation. Second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Pass unanimously. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. Discussion on retiree benefits. No vote on that. Who's going to lead that conversation? It's not me.

I have some information that Jason Gallo had provided to me that summarized basically where we're at, the cost and all of that. And then I have one more tidbit of information that is not on here. So just for clarity, I'm going to pretty much read what he had to recap where we're at with the retiree benefits. So for employees that were hired before June 30 of 2008 and have 30 years of service, they're eligible to receive the city portion paid for their medical insurance if they elect to continue on the plan. Employees that were hired after June 30 of 2008 do not get that retiree benefit. Retirees that have less than 30 years, but were hired before that date, they get prorated based on the number of years that they have worked for the city. Right now, we have about 20 retirees that are on our health insurance. Only 19 of them have medical insurance through the city. One of them has just dental and vision, but no medical insurance. 16 of our folks are employees only. Three of them have their spouse included on there. No one currently covers their children on the insurance as a retiree. But if we were to increase the portion of what the city pays to be the same as the employees, that would definitely change the amount that's being paid for those three that do have their spouse on there. Approximately $25,000 annual increase for the city based on where they're currently placed on there. And then if we were to adjust to say that the 20, all 20 decided to add their spouse, that would be an increased cost of about $176,000 annually or roughly $8,800 per retiree. And just to put this in perspective, the last employee who qualifies was hired in May of 2008. They just reached their 20 year with the city. Likely, And they're only turning 40 years old this year. Likely they're going to work for another 10 years until 2036. They'll be 50. At that point in time, we would have to pay those retiree benefits for an additional 15 years beyond that, putting us at 2051 before the last retiree is fully paid off for all of their benefits. One piece of information that's not on here that I literally just got on Friday, we got the most updated actuarial report back from our... consultant that does the other post-employment benefit actuarial for us every year. And I was hoping that the dollar amounts would go down. We paid roughly $170,000 last year for all of the retirees. Our actuarial actually showed that our cost went, our liability went up $30,000 this last year, even though we paid in almost $200,000 towards our active retirees. So that number keeps going up. Our liability is well over $2 million for the future payments for the retiree benefits.

Over what period?

Until 2051. Yeah, to cover the remaining current and future, obviously anticipated payouts. They only do a full estimation of dollars out a few years because we don't know what's going to happen that far out.

So if I'm going to understand this correctly, they were hired before 2008. They get the same insurance, the same cost as a retiree, and then it's prorated after that.

Or prorated if they haven't worked 30 years.

Yeah, prorated if they haven't worked 30 years. Employees hired after June 30, 2008 are not eligible for any retiree benefits. Okay.

And that's currently costing us about $200,000 a year.

Yeah, right about there.

So right now it's just a discussion, but is this going to come before us to make a change on the health benefits? That's already instituted, right?

Yeah, so that... What is in process right now is going to continue in process. If BOMA wanted to make a change to that, it would have to be brought before the board of some type of ordinance. But you saw a lot of what's called like OPEB, other post-employment benefit reform happen around this 2008, 2009, 2010 time period because those health costs really increased drastically around that time. So, when, when Tamara talks about liability, there's 2 types of liability that cities look at 1 is the pension liability. Like, if if we stop business today, how much are we on the hook for for all the employees? The other liability for their pension, the other liability is the, which is basically healthcare. We stopped today. How much are we still on the hook for? What are we liable for all the. And so a lot of those OPEB liabilities actually, in some cases, superseded some of the pension liabilities for some cities. So kind of nationally, cities and agencies, water districts started pulling back those medical retiree benefits because it got expensive. So if you look at a lot of cities around that time frame, they did the same thing where they started pulling away from those retiree medical benefits.

So what's in place is going to stay in place.

And if there's a change, that'll have to go before the board get voted on.

So do we know of any other municipalities that are offering retiring health benefits?

No. I haven't looked into it. There's... There may be some who are.

So we did the salary study. The salary study was supposed to include health benefits, right? It was supposed to encompass everything, and we didn't see anything on that?

I don't know if we specifically looked at retiree benefits, but I can provide something to you guys if you'd like on which agencies provide retiree medical benefits.

Yeah, I think that would be beneficial. Just see where we stand in comparable agencies. I'm sure in the military area. Sure. Yeah.

I do, but I don't know. I got to do some more spending on this. Well, let me, I'm just going to ask Mr. Smith this. So what you presented here, Mr. Smith is just, you'd like to see that the retiree benefits be. Be changed where it includes anybody powered after 2008. Is that why you're bringing this?

I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not, I don't know what I'm asking for is that the people before 2008. We've gone through a lot of retirement changes that have been benefits that we look through. I think Chief Jones was here at this time. Originally, it was supposed to be 100% for family, you know, that kind of stuff. And it's changed now to where they're just paying ours when we retire. And so all I'm asking is that from the 2008, you know, back in time, like when I came in 1990, that the $8,000 that when I retire be transferred, that the city is currently paying, that When I retire, that debt is going to be transferred to me during my retirement time. I'm just asking if the city can continue to pay that as if I was a regular employee, that $2,000. I thought that because the salary compression that's going to occur, the $2 million or $176,000 or whatever is going to be somewhat offset by Salary compression, meaning that the guy that when I leave, there's going to hire a guy to do my job. He's going to make less than me. So that salary, that cash is actually going to be less and less as you go down through compression. So when the guy promotes, takes my spot, somebody else is going to promote and take his spot. Somebody else is going to promote and take his spot. so that the impact on the budget is going to be far less than what we think.

I get what you're saying, but the math doesn't quite work. It's not quite as clean and as clear as that.

I get what you're saying. And so my request would simply be that the 2008 mark, or the spot, not necessarily change, but just that those that were headed for the 2008 continue to get benefits that you would have as a full-time employee when it comes to the premiums on them.

When did that change as far as the premium changes? For spouses and for families, right? What premium change?

So that may be pre-Jesse. So back, and you may have to ask Chip Jones on that, but when I came in 1990, it was, if I remember correctly, the benefit was when you retired, you and your family get your health insurance covered by the city. And over time, that has just been degraded to meet budgetary needs. And so I think Chief Jones can speak much greater on that because he was... Well, I'd rather not hear from Chief Jones.

I'd rather hear from... I mean, I know what you're saying, but what I'm trying to get at is we need to hear it from someone who's been in administration. So I think what would be helpful, not that really... Just to have the full picture is, okay, well, when were the changes made? If we can... Even if they're incremental. Even if they've been incremental.

Got to check the archives.

Yeah. Tamara, you mentioned a bunch of statistics on exactly where we are with retiree benefits right now. Do we know what that cost would be if we implemented the same benefits to families, retired families as well? Based on what Mr. Smith provided to us here.

I don't know the exact dollar. I don't know.

Oh, it's right there.

If we were to implement it, I mean, Jason did some work on this, about $176,000 a year. Obviously, that's going to adjust over time depending on how many retirees we have on there. That will also increase our liability, which means that we have to increase the amount that we take out of our unassigned fund balance and put it into the OPEB liability as well. So I don't know exactly what that would look like, but I would imagine that it, you know, is probably going to add at least another million dollars, if not more, to our OPEB liability. Potentially more than, you know, could potentially double it.

Yeah. So roughly $175,000 to $200,000 a year. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, you know, it's going to definitely, you know, they would have... That impact.

Oh, we definitely need to do more research on this, uh, and see if there's some avenue to consider, um, any other Congress discussion on this. Okay, let's move on sales tax. Thank you. Appreciate it. Appreciate all your input. What's your question? Sales tax.

Well, so we got our very first month of the sales tax under the new method that the state is doing the distributions of the sales tax. Our sales tax looks, well, local option came in really, really strong, surprisingly strong this month, just over $2 million. Only month that that's been happening in ever has been, you know, in January for the December sales. So...

Is it really reflective of the sales? Or is it just the, like you said, the way it's recalculated?

You know, we'll know, I think, when we get the next, when we see the next month's one, we'll really see the trend on the local. I wasn't expecting the local option to go up that much. I thought the local option would go up a little bit. So that was a pleasant, actually a really pleasant surprise. So we'll see if that continues, that same trend, when we get to the next month.

And so of this $2 million, is it 614 is how much? So what do we budget for July?

Well, we don't budget on a month-by-month basis. We budget for the year. And then I'm assuming that this same level of increase is not going to continue for the remainder of the year. I was just curious.

Okay.

Fingers crossed it does.

I mean, that would be great. The state share taxes, and this is one where the different allocation that the state is using, they did updated population numbers, which they'll be doing annually instead of just using estimates based on the census data. So we grew quite a bit compared to other agencies, other cities, other counties. So our... State share tax taxes did go up quite a bit this month. I think this one is going to stay probably a little more consistent, but again, we'll see if that's two months in a row. July seems to be unusually high, so we'll see if it continues when we get to the August revenues. But either way, we'll take it. um, hotel motel, um, July is down a tiny bit. It's very, sorry. So it's down, um, July is down on the revenue side a little bit from the prior year, but it is, you know, I think it's right in line with where we wanted to, we budgeted a little bit under what our, um, actual collections were last year. So I think we're right on track to be where we want to be from a budgetary standpoint.

But July last year seems to be an anomaly anyway.

July last year was, was a little bit high. So I think we're, we're looking good there.

I know it went up a tiny bit. Our,

Earnings is down a little bit. As we're working on some of those larger projects, we're spending some of our money. We just have a little bit less that we're investing. Stormwater fund. This one doesn't have a whole lot to report in. Really, July, August, September, we're really just collecting on the delinquent stormwater bills from prior years. We don't start to see the new year collection until we get into October, November. PIP is also up compared to last year from a revenue standpoint. Local option, which makes sense because if our local option is up, we should see this up because it's a piece of local option. It's not because of me. The PIP is all because of Eddie. He definitely pushed that one. We don't have a whole lot as far as expenditures on the, so far this year either, so.

That's great. Why don't we just get some more money