City Council - Regular Meeting

Coming to order, roll call.

Mayor Byron Nolan.

I said tardy.

In route. Councilwoman Rutledge. Present. Mayor Pro Tem Stephen Chisholm. In route. Councilman Bishop. Excused. Councilwoman Scott. Present. Councilwoman Howard.

Here.

Councilwoman Richardson. Here. Councilwoman Howard, you do have a quorum. Okay.

On the approval agenda, we will not be voting on anything. So the two gentlemen, the mayor and the mayor pro tem, may be in route. So we're going to start meeting the order. Okay. Approval agenda. So moved.

Second.

Okay. There's been a move and a second. Any discussion on this? Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any nays? Ayes have it. Okay, city clerk. Okay, discussion of action. Darren Carrington, you have the floor. Treasurer.

I think you're throwing your phone on me.

Today is Monday, okay? Okay.

You're throwing your phone on me. Bad phone.

good evening um again want to um thank council for uh meeting again on um this is our third session for the fy27 budget we want to i think we will be completing all the funds this evening We're going to start off with our two row funds, Fund 202, which is our major streets, and Fund 203, which is our local streets. That's the information that you have in front of you. I'm going to turn it over to our DPS director, Mr. Bivens. He'll kind of walk through, not so much the numbers, but kind of what the numbers reflect in terms of the activities that we're projecting for next fiscal year. So I'll let Mr. Bivens take over at this point.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Council. Councilwoman Howard.

Thank you.

Viewing the audience and the audience here, I'm just going to give you a brief high-level overlay of both departments. I'll start with the major roles. So major roles in the city of Inkster consist of Avondale, John Daly, Beach Daly, Inkster Road, Middlebelt, Carlisle, Henry Ruff, Harrison. So we consider those major roads, and when we say major roads, they lead to other cities. They're just not within the boundaries of the city of Inkston. And Cherry Hill. Half of Cherry Hill belongs to the city of Inkston and Denver Heights, which is from Inkston Road to Beach Daily. That half belongs to us. The other half belongs to Wayne County. So in this... In this budget, we use road funds for street sweeping. We use it for doing major repairs on major roads. So the project we have upcoming in FY27, as we all know, is Cherry Hill, from Inkston Road to Bee State, which we share with Dearborn Heights. That is a joint project. We got funding from the feds. In the assets of $2.7 million, which will be split between us and Dearborn Heights. Our portion of that is $1.6 million that we will have to pay.

That's what?

$1.6 million and some change that we will have to pay. Of that $1.6 million, a million will come back to us. So we actually are the hook for $600,000. And that's from Inkster Road and Cherry Hill to Beach Daily. This project is going from Inkster Road to Gully, which, you know, Gully extends over to Beach Daily. We have another project that we're anticipating getting funding for that we filled out an application back in April. That's for Avondale Phase 1, 2, no, 2 and 3. We hope to hear from the feds, and if we get that funding, this project will commence in FY29. Wow. Because we're waiting on the funding from the feds. We put in, we were assisted by some, what was the name of the company here? Well, it was recommended to us by MDOT, right? Yes. And it was recommended to us by MDOT, and it was in Michigan. I can't call the name right now, but they assisted us in putting this application together. Okay. It was a very nice application, and if we get approved, I will share it all with you. Now, for local roads. And in each one of my road departments, I have one full-time employee. That's to cover snow removal, cold patches, anything we do in the roads that's outside of water departments. So you will see that at each budget item, we have one employee in there to cover those areas because I can't pay people out of water for doing road work. Okay. In local roads, we have no projects for FY27. Okay. Because all the funding we have will be geared towards Cherry Hill. So we will, as far as we will continue to do street sweeping, we will continue to do coal patching, but we just don't have a major project here for FY27. Once the revenues are built back up and funding, we will Look at road work to be done on local roads. As you all know, we have potholes everywhere.

Right.

And we will be addressing the most critical roads. I need to say that again. We address the most critical road. So every year, when I sit down with this budget, I put it together, me and Carrie, and we have a sit-down with the mayor there. and we go over five to six year plan, five to 10 year plan, what we project and what we see in the road department. We do a PASER study every three years, which rates our roads. Is it one through four or one through five? One through four? One through 10, with one being the road department, with one being the roads. We're in between one and four.

What quarter?

PASER. Well, my engineering department goes out and they evaluate each road in the city of Kingston. We're in between the numbers of one to four. So our roads are in pretty bad shape, just to keep it simple. So as we generate revenue through the gas tax and the money comes in, we sit down and we put a list together, a wish list. Then we get evaluated. We go over there with the mayor and he says nay or yay. So what we're doing. So we have no money for FY27, as I stated before. But we will be doing the miscellaneous stuff, like street sweeping, snow plowing, cold patching. Is there any questions?

Just one, if I may. Yes, ma'am. You said that Harrison was considered a major road.

Yes.

Why so bad?

And I'm going to be honest with you. Mayor Nolan's first term, we budgeted Harrison for about $5 million.

Okay.

That was infrastructure and road.

Okay.

It's 2026. Harrison would probably cost me a little over $22 million to be done.

Oh, wow.

That's infrastructure and road. As costs increase, so I've sent requests to Lansing. that claim it as a historical road, haven't heard back. I've tried to get funding for that road on every avenue out there. Me and Kerry, we always looking for funding. Anytime we talk about a road, Project Harrison is the first road that comes to mind. Because I know it's, well, Avondale used to be the worst road, but now Harrison is, and I know that. I try to figure out ways of trying to even minimize it and do a little at a time. but that would be wasting city money because that road is that bad. It's undermined and there's no base under that road. So it's just a pure road. There's no base. So it would have to all come up. All the water mains got to be replaced, storm, sanitary, sewer, and the road. So trust me, it's always on my radar.

So we can't do temporary patching? No, ma'am.

Because you don't want to take good money and put it to bad. Because even if I did a temporary roll, you're still looking at a couple million dollars.

Thank you.

right any other questions thank you appreciate it thank you wait real fast yes ma'am um so is like repaving like the dirt roads that we've already torn up in the in the budget or is it for like last year's budget like will they be talking about project roads they're here yeah those are part of the ffrf and um

money we got because we're putting in water main and sewer the road was including that because we tore it up so they will be replaced as you saw part of John Daly get replaced by half of John Daly because we tore it up these roads so Carlisle will be replaced you see Princeton getting replaced so those roads will be replaced that money is accounted for nothing further thank you you're welcome

So are we all set on 202 and 203? Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Okay, so what we have now is Fund 208, which is our Parks and Rec Fund. That should be a one-page or two-sided, one-page document. I'm sorry.

He in the back. Can I go and get him? Because he said he wanted to be in here with that. Okay.

Again, can I ask you a question on 202 under the grants, the state grants? So you didn't put anything in there because we're still waiting for, is that state share revenue we're waiting on?

So state grants are not the share revenue. Those are... You know, we generally put specific grants that are in that category. I don't know if Jerome or Kerry, if we are expecting any specific grants for the road funds for next year.

It's for Cherry Hill. It's for Cherry Hill.

It's for Cherry Hill. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right.

You will see that book once the project is complete and we actually capture the revenue. We don't put... Well, speaking with the treasurer and discussing this, we don't want to put projected revenue in there until we capture it.

That's a good idea.

We won't capture that revenue until the end.

Okay. All right. Thank you. That's what it is.

Okay.

Gina, who are we waiting for?

Clint, he's going to be in on this part. He walked his people for his meeting out, and he's coming right back to you.

Oh, okay.

I held the meeting up for you.

Okay. So we are covering Fund 208, which is our Parks and Rec Fund. As a reminder, this fund is primarily funded first and foremost through the property tax millage. I apologize, I was supposed to check the numbers. I can't recall the exact numbers, but that millage is expiring this summer. It was, I believe, a 10 year millage initially. So when we do the July tax bill, that will be the last year that we're authorized to assess that millage. We are planning to, and remind me, clerk, bring the language, are we bringing that next week to the council? So the administration is looking to renew both the recreation millage and the senior millage, which is also expiring. this year. So we have the ability to assess it for July, which will cover FY27. But after that, there's no authority for the millage. The plan is to bring that for November. put that up for renewal in front of the voters with the expectation that if it's passed that will keep funding in place for the not the fiscal year that we're heading into but then we'd be looking at FY 28 which would start a year from July 1 if you guys follow what I'm saying with all that okay And so, as I said, so both the Parks and Rec millage and both the Senior Commission on Aging, the senior millage, are expiring. We've got one more year to collect those funds. And that's what you see here, along with the... revenues that the department, the fund generates primarily through the recreation center. Those are gonna be our two main sources of funding. Additionally, we have a number of grants that we, I think we talked about those on our first day. Those grants are not captured here. Those grants flow through the general fund. That work is done on behalf of the recreation center or the senior center. But they do not flow through the parks and rec fund. Those are captured within the general fund. And so just working our way down, we've got the, on the far right column, we've got the property taxes. which again is generated solely from the millage. Then we get into the revenues that are coming from the department. This is gonna primarily be, the largest is gonna be our, we got two things. One is the rentals for the rec center. And then secondly is gonna be lease revenues from One Detroit Credit Union. So those revenues are reflected there. We're showing, and I do want to speak to the building rentals. Last year, the prior year compared to this year, we're trending about half of what we had projected. We had been right around $70,000, $75,000 for the last few years because of all the work that's been going on there. We've really not been able to utilize the building, and Clint can probably speak to that fact, but it has had an impact on the ability for the city to rent those spaces as we had in the past. It impacts revenue, but we're not talking about a large amount of money when we compare to the large amount of work that's getting done there and how badly that work is needed. So You know, we've taken what I would consider to be somewhat of a conservative number for building rentals just at $50,000. I don't think we're going to get to that number for this fiscal year. I think we, you know, depending upon how everything shakes out, we could well exceed that number, get closer to where we have been historically. But again, I think we're looking at a temporary situation where the rentals have been down just due to interruptions tied to all the construction and everything going on over there. But we expect that that's going to be ending soon. in the early part of the next fiscal year. The roof has been replaced. We've got to get the HVAC completed. We're doing some flooring work and painting, and all those things are expected to get done in the next, I would say, 60 to 90 days is kind of our timeline with that. Moving on to any questions there on the revenue side?

we doing anything to like increase revenue this year like besides rental or like just change anything up it can be no i just was wondering so one of the things i was considering is uh just going up on some of the prices for rendering space and different things inside the rec center to get kind of more competitive with surrounding rec centers and different halls that rent space because we're extremely low compared to the others in the area i agree

Thank you.

Yes. When you talked about renovating the building, are you upgrading the electrical system?

Right now, we just had Fairfax in the building. They upgraded the electrical. They replaced old electrical panels upstairs in the control room, and that's mainly tied to the new HVAC system.

Mm-hmm.

So that's going on, and we do have Fairfax also looking at some other things that need attention, electrical boxes and things like that.

Okay, because on one side of the building, I noticed when it was used, they couldn't do plug-ins. They couldn't use one side of it.

Yeah, those outlets were not operational. So, yeah, that's one of the things I haven't looked at.

Okay.

It's how we can get those things connected, so it may take... more work and more replacing of other electrical boxes inside of the work center to get that back working. So that is something that I took to Jerome. He's okay to come in and do the work, to do the investigation of what's going on and to do the work that's necessary. So he's provided that with them. They've given him invoices. He's paid them. So they're working right now solving those problems.

Does that include the gym? Because I heard most outlets in the gym didn't work.

Yeah. So that's in the entire building. Okay.

Thank you. Anything else on the revenue side for Parks and Rec? So we'll move on to the appropriations. So on appropriations, we've got some work for professional consultant. We do couple things there one is our grass-cutting for parks and for the rec center are captured there then we have our salaries and we're looking to really up the amount of staffing that we have there that's one of the key things that we're focusing in on we're trying to really you know, upgrade the overall, uh, operations at the, at the recreation center, not only in terms of the physical condition, but also from, uh, staffing kind of the, um, objective is for us to have two people. I believe it is, uh, Clint, we want to have two staffers there, uh, you know, anytime the center's open. So, um, in addition to the director, we've got, uh, uh, Is it assistant director? And then we have some part-time employees or less than full-time employees. So one of them I think we're projecting out at about 75% time, 60% to 75%. And then the others will be about 0.5 FTE. So they'll be more part-time. But, again, these expenses are going to be higher proportionally. primarily because we're going to be employing more of the part-time employees. We'll still have the same two full-time employees, but we're looking to have more part-time employees and more hours dedicated towards that. So that's why we have a projected increase in that particular category. You see we had about 175,000 from last year. Next year, we're... looking to appropriate just a little bit over $200,000. So the next few categories are really things that are just kind of fringes and the like for the employees and salaries. Then we've got The office supplies and operating supplies, we've got a small amount in there for special events. We have building maintenance supplies. The utilities is another major category. That's going to primarily be our gas and electric tied to the building. Is there water to it? And it would also include water, correct? Yep, those are going to be our three main things there. Then next we have building maintenance. We're projecting $110,000, but one thing to keep in mind, included in that we have two things that we've kind of identified. One is the HVAC repairs, and then the other thing is elevator repairs. And both of those systems are going to be brand new, during the fiscal year so we could see a decline in those areas even though we're keeping the number the same could be offset because as I said we're trying to really take a look at increasing the overall operations over there and providing support for the staff the director and assistant director and the staff so we do have a RFP that's currently out for janitorial services over there, and we may very well end up spending more money on that. So some of the savings that we may get could be offset from paying more to clean the building, but we're going to end up with a better product. So we're keeping that number the same for right now. We'll kind of take a look at that as we go through the year.

Keep in mind the flower beds, too. We're going to take out the two flower beds in the front, the ones that are broken. We're going to remove those and either concrete over that or create something. You can put a flower pot or something else there, but it's not going to be like what it is now. It's not going to be a big cinder block structure. Those will grow. I mean, that's the first thing you see when you walk in. And we're working on that now. Yeah, yeah. So we're going to get those removed. So that might be, we may have to use a little bit of that money for that. And then the next goal is we're thinking about having a competition. We looked at trying to hire an artist to do a mural. It got to be a little expensive. We got through, was it a $50,000 quota? It was something huge. So we're thinking about, somebody gave me an idea of making a competition. Some up-and-coming mural artists, because Detroit looks wonderful with the murals. Making a competition, whoever wins the competition gets to do it. But, you know, we'll pay them something, but it won't be $50. Where are you looking to put the mural? I always think that brown, that doo-doo brown awning I hate with a passion. So, in my mind, that goes everywhere. I hate it. I hate it.

Which one?

In the front. That is horrible. You want someone to put, like, a sunrise or something? I don't care what it is, but it can't be doo-doo brown.

That's the name. We just paint the awning.

That may end up being what we're doing. But we need something cool because, you know, that's our heartbeat of the center, so it needs to be kind of cool.

A cool color.

Yeah, it doesn't have to be mural, but it has to be cool.

What happened to the guy who painted the first one?

Which one?

On King's Road in Michigan Avenue.

No, that was Sweet Beehive, that person. That was a private thing. I know that person's name. I think they're from Detroit.

It's not on Sweet Bee.

Which one are you talking about?

It's on the side of that building.

Yeah, they on the whole building.

That's on Sweet Me? Yeah.

I just think it'd be cool to have like, I think it'd be cool to engage the community. I think like that's been our goal is just to engage the community and use the talent that we have. Because we know we have it. We just have to give it an opportunity. Yes, exactly. To do it. Exactly.

You've never seen me color.

Yeah.

You don't want me up on the audience. It's going to be bad.

We don't want you to color. You're good. I do like the idea of the different murals, even just around the rec center.

We've got some artists in the community. That's a big project.

Yeah, for sure. um i have a couple questions um so didn't we get a new system uh like for help manage um like reservations and stuff and is that like a part of a bigger system and the city or is that no no we just bought a new civic plus civic rec civic rec yes we just purchased that not too long ago i just didn't see it like would that go under the subscriptions and stuff like that i I just didn't know where you put it.

We may have paid for the first year. Did we pay for the first year?

You know, I can't recall, yeah.

That makes sense. And does that system tie back to the treasurer's office?

So, yeah, so right now we... So I think it does two main things. One is that it makes the reservation process a little more seamless for the, you know, residents and everything. And then the second part is the...

First year has been paid, but that's why it's not.

Got it. Okay. We're not trying to decide if that's what we're going to continue.

And then the second thing is that right now we have to kind of manually give people back their deposits. This would help automate that deposit refund process.

It's going to make it cashless. There's no more accepted money at the rec center and all that. Go online, book your room, and, you know, you're straight.

That's what the Height's done.

Taylor has it, too.

I went in there and it was like $25 to see AAU basketball.

To watch? Yes. Oh, wow.

$25. $25. The AAU does that. The AAU basketball game. It wasn't that expensive back in the day, but I guess it's been a long time.

That's a lot.

That's a lot.

$25.

Enter.

But doesn't AAU charge separate, though? It's a lot. It's not unusual, but it is a, that's what everybody charging that.

Yeah.

It is a lot of money, but it's not a huge amount. You know, when I went there, I mean, getting off the subject, but when I went there, people were parking on the grass. It was full. You couldn't find any parking spots. So imagine, $25 for all these people. That's amazing.

Big money. Yeah, it's big money. Apparently. Big money. Okay. Okay, so we've got a couple other things is looking at the building maintenance and just talked about that where we think we can save some costs, but we're also trying to again address some of the key things, specifically the upkeep of the building. And then the next big thing is our capital improvements. There's $50,000 just allocated in there. Right now, we're not spending that this fiscal year, again, because of the grant situation. This is something that we could very well take out. As we move down, we can kind of see where we are from a spending standpoint, but this is something that we could move out. There are some funds that are available. We could keep a smaller amount in there based on what else is going on with the fund. Then going over to the next page, two items there one is the summer fest and that would be for next fiscal year so that would be for the july 26 summer fest um that would be an appropriation for that we're trying to get you know again a focus on programming for the parks and recreation fund and getting some consistency with the events that we're putting on um and so we're we're uh including that amount in there for this year's summer fest as i had mentioned before we are doing some fundraising on top of whatever is appropriated primarily through vendors and from sponsors. And then the last item is we make a traditional or generally make a $100,000 transfer out of this fund to the Commission on Aging Fund. And so that's been the $100,000 that's usually made, and we show that amount there for commissioners. for Parks and Rec. So if you look at it, the total appropriations are up to $644,000. That's pretty much tied to the increase in employees. If we wanted to look at reducing that because we are spending above for next fiscal year, we are spending above the estimated revenues. We are fairly conservative on the revenue side. We want to boost up the revenues. We want to give ourselves ample time to do that. But then looking at the appropriations, there are some areas that we could reduce, including that capital improvements category, to get the appropriations a little more in line with the projected revenues. This would be kind of a one-time thing. There is some some fund balance that is in there. But again, we could certainly take out some of the expenses. I think both in building maintenance and in capital improvements would be two of the areas that we could look if we wanted to keep the cost in line with the projected revenues.

One of the parks and recs commissioners asked me, since the senior citizens are getting their own wing, should we still be sending this $100,000 over to them? And or should we take that money? Are we responsible for the utilities as if they were part of the rec center?

So the expectation is that the commission is going to be paying their own utilities. We don't have a set formula in place. I think the idea is for us to take a look at what the recreation center has historically done. Compare that with once the senior center is open to try and get some idea. But right now, the idea is for the commission to cover their own costs for the utilities for the senior center.

I wonder what the projection would be if we said, hey, we're going to hold this $100,000, but we'll pay your utilities. You know, are we basically at the same point? Because it's kind of strange for us to take our money and give it to them and they turn around and give it back to you. In the building, it belongs to us, essentially. Even though it's theirs, we own it. We have to maintain it. We have to fix it, whatever happens to it. But I guess we can play it out the first year, see what they spend, and maybe adjust something next year. But something we probably won't because it's $100,000. And I see we're a negative for this year. Yes.

You know, that's, you know. Why cut things that we may need, especially when it comes to, like, capital improvement? I mean, it's like the rec center needs.

And they have their own millage.

And that's what I was going to ask too. They have their own millage on top of us giving them the $100,000? Yes.

And I don't know what they plan to do employee-wise. I mean, you know, I don't see it's just at this point. But I don't know what they plan to do with the building. Are they hiring? They need a receptionist, I believe, unless they're going to get a volunteer. Obviously, Sabrina gets paid by the alliance. So are they hiring employees? I don't know what their plan is when it comes to all that stuff. Who's going to clean the kitchen? Are we going to clean it? Just like we have our other kitchen. And they're probably going to keep it clean themselves, I suspect. But, you know, we probably should talk to them after we cut the ribbon and they're all happy and everything. We should probably have a conversation. We need that money back. They are? Yeah, receptionists. They're going to hire a receptionist. Okay.

How much they paying? Move.

22 an hour. That wouldn't be a bad job. Part-time.

Part-time. That's right. I didn't think about that.

Application. That doesn't sit right with me that they're going to hire someone for 22 an hour, and then our Parks and Rec people, I think, maybe just got a raise.

Oh, wow.

Like, I just got, like, I'm not trying to rock the boat. Oh, no. It is. Just move it out there.

Yeah, that's, yeah. We should probably at least be consistent with what we're paying our folks in the same building, essentially. We need to have a conversation. Yeah, we need to. We might lose one of our parks and works in Florida.

No, I mean, I would. I'm not going to lie. To be a receptionist.

To be a receptionist. One of the seniors who would like to remain anonymous came to me last week and said, hey, what if I don't want to move into the new building? I like what I'm doing right here. Can I stay here?

Well, yeah. I mean, seniors can use the rec building, but, you know, no, she got to go.

Was that you asking, or what?

You go ahead, you evict her. You work on that.

I have one question for you. I remember in past administrations where money was taken out of the park fund. the recreation fund to do other things. So by this being partially funded by the millage, or is it all funded by the millage?

All funded by the millage. The millage and then revenues from the recreation center.

So going forward, is there something that we can put language up under the ballot to let them know? with their money that's funding?

It can only be spent on Parks and Rec. If someone took out $10,000 and spent it on something else, they're probably out of order.

Now, there was a time when there was some monies that were being moved to cover pension costs for Parks and Rec.

That was years ago, wasn't it?

Yes, that was some time ago.

That was a long time ago.

But outside of that and then... Well, no, no.

One year, I believe, there was some money taken out to buy football equipment.

Right.

We don't have a football team under Parks and Rec. So that might have been legally questionable. But that has passed. We didn't get in trouble. But we wouldn't do that. I mean, we can't do that.

That's what I was asking. Is there something that we can give before they pass the millage? This could be funded up under there? Because if something comes up, like professional consulting again and we haven't had that before so they kind of be kind of skeptical or what happened some years you know what i'm saying we can put out some information there when we talk about the mill it's our information sheet we can send with the water bill or send out digitally what we could use for that and you know what i'm saying what we use the money for these are the things we can use the money right you know i mean but so if i feel like if that's the case then we put like we we'd have to put those guidelines right like the millage wouldn't

No, it's the law. We need the millage. Yeah, I mean, so. That's why I feel like it's like. Oh, we're going to pass the millage.

Pass the millage. What I'm saying is, it's always people coming back.

Asking for it.

Asking. What it is, okay. What stuff is.

Can I have this? Can you do this?

Right, yeah. That's fair.

Okay. So, yes, like I said, I think the thing is, you know, Do we want to trim? And, you know, went through some of the building maintenance costs. Don't have everything. You know, a couple years ago it was about $100,000. Last year it looks like it was less. Right now there's not, you know, those costs. So, you know, something that we could take a look at. I'm talking about that $110,000 at reducing that. Reducing it? REDUCING THE $110,000 THAT WE HAVE IN BUILDING MAINTENANCE. BECAUSE AGAIN, WE JUST HAVE NOT BEEN USING THAT MUCH. I DON'T WANT TO UNDERESTIMATE.

WE NEED TO DO ANYTHING WE CAN TO BUILD UP THE

What it is, like, we've been lucky enough to get grant money for the major stuff. So, now, the electrical's new, the roof is new, the HVAC's new, the elevator's new.

That's the main one.

The flooring is new.

Yeah.

So, we shouldn't have a lot, a lot of maintenance.

The kitchen's jacked up.

The kitchen? We just got to keep it clean.

The kitchen's jacked up. So, we need it. The kitchen's jacked up.

I'm not going to have a lot of building maintenance at the rate that I got.

Right, because everything's stupid. We need to get the kitchen together. There's some stuff. When you rent the kitchen out and people spill stuff and do stuff.

It's not only that. It's the usage of it. And you can make more money if you get a good kitchen because people will have dinners, more showers, cabarets. They do all of that if we have a good kitchen. I upstate one.

Are they willing to pay more, though? Because we've been undercharging, and then when it's time to fix the kitchen, we all.

They do what you get. Yes, they'll pay. That's a good asset.

Councilwoman, when you say the kitchen, do you think it's the way in which we've managed it? Or are you saying the equipment?

The equipment is not. The stove, you need a new oven, a new stove. You need a new deep fryer in there. And then you need to make sure that those people clean up because they don't do that either. So when they make a deposit, they don't get it back.

We've got to raise the deposit, though.

Right, we've got to raise the deposit. It doesn't matter because they just don't. And then you have these non-profits that come in and they don't clean up after themselves. That's true. And it's just a problem.

She cooks things.

We just make a feed. I just know what you need, and I know that when the... You have to rent out the kitchen separately, maybe. You know what I mean?

And then that feed can go to her. It would probably have to be to get, if you're doing, say, the cabaret, or even like the Goodfellas that do the, even though there's no charge for that, it's still a problem. when people come in and they're doing things, because I went to a party that they had there, which was a birthday party that they had, but one side of the building, the electrical didn't work, and you're running cords over it so people couldn't have their DJ. I mean, it's really a mess. So it's a lot of work that we could do, and that could be our moneymaker if we make it top notch.

I agree.

That's how I look at it.

Well, we're going to try to fix all the major stuff out of the grant money we got from the county, because we still have a little bit of money left now. It's getting eaten up by stuff like asbestos. We didn't realize we had asbestos. We have asbestos. It's $58,000 just to get the asbestos out from the floor. 58 000 just to take it out and then we got to buy the flooring and put the flooring down so you know money goes real quick but yeah it's all the building and we got to stay on top of the kitchen stuff because i don't you know until something breaks we have been a good job doing a good job of preventive maintenance on the entire building but the kitchen even even more so i mean we got to figure out what it would take for somebody to come in every week or two and check everything, make sure it's working properly, degrease whatever needs to be degreased, make sure the refrigerator's clean. You know, it's just gonna be more money in cleaning, I guess that's what we're talking about, right? Again, a little, a cleaning company is a little, a step up. We've been getting people who clean.

We might need a cleaning company. We have a professional cleaning company that comes in and their kitchen is light.

They do the industrial cleaning.

How often do we do it, twice a year?

He's doing it quarterly, I think. Yeah, quarterly. And they're doing it twice a year. Okay. So that's a step up. So some of the things that I'm thinking about even, like we got an old dishwasher in there that's inoperable. Why is it there? I don't have that. And what does it take to get it out of there?

You can just take it out. The deep fryer, we took out the deep fryer.

The deep fryer for the summer camp stuff. Well, to be a licensed child care facility, which is what we need, that status we need to have, To have a summer program for the kids. To get the grant money for Wayne Metro. They said that deep fryer is a no-go item. It had to go. There was no way around it. The mayor talked to people. We talked to people. They said there's no way around it. Deep fryer has to go, so it's out.

Which affects you if you're trying to fry some chicken or french fries.

Baby, I know how to fry with a skillet.

I'm not asking. I give you a skillet.

Cast iron. Problem solved.

A matter of time. I know where I'm the same thing. We had to take that. You had to take it.

It was filthy. It was filthy. But we had to take it out.

I cleaned it myself. It was spotless. Good. It's good to know. I had never done one of those before.

You want it for your house? We got to put it somewhere. You want to put it in your house?

Oh, absolutely.

We had a fish fry. We got to plug it up somewhere.

Plug it up. It's spotless. Absolutely spotless. Maybe we need to pass that on to the customer. You're going to rent that room. There's just an automatic kitchen cleaning fee added to it. Especially if you utilize the kitchen.

You shouldn't even ask them to clean up.

In the contract, there should be basic cleanup after yourself in the contract. However, if you're utilizing other stuff, It's just small. But ultimately, in my opinion, if it's a small enough fee and you charge it on every single person, then that almost pays for the industrial cleaning. You know what I mean? So it may not be like $100 or $50, but it could be an extra $10 or $20 no matter what you have to pay.

What's the deposit?

The deposit is $200.

Oh, that's too low. That's too low. That's very low. I mean, especially when you're using the kitchen, because you can break something in the kitchen. You know what I'm saying? And $200 is really not going to be much.

One of the things I noticed, too, is that any time you're using grease, And that's the key. You're a basic cleanup and you're not going to hit that. And especially over time, the grease is going to build up.

It's going to build up.

The industrial cleaner came in and it made a big difference the first time they came because they had all the grease. They had the chemicals. Right. To get the grease off. Right. And that grease is sticking to everything. It does. Grease is next.

And your fan. The fan and everything that's in there.

Which I feel like is why we could, like, if every customer pays a small fee, it will cover the big fee. You know what I mean? The big haul that later will happen. And I know we don't, like, like to pass always, like, those different type of costs on to, like, our citizens, residents, whoever rents it. But I think it's just, like, time. Like you said, like, $250 or whatever to rent certain rooms or $500 for certain rooms. Like, that's really cheap, you know, for everything that they get. So...

You know, it's funny. I had somebody complain on social media about renting something for four hours for $100. You saw that?

Yeah.

That was like, what world do you live in?

Well, if for whatever function you're doing, everybody don't use that deep fryer. Right. So maybe if, you know, when you're doing the contract, will you be utilizing the deep fryer? Then that's an extra fee.

Extra charge, so we've got to clean it. We've got to drain the oil. We've got to do all that.

Yeah, you do. We have to hook it up. We don't get it ahead of time and then set it up. Because we got to put it up and then take it back down for licensing purposes. We can't leave it just sitting in there like it was. Exactly.

We probably got to just leave it to summer. You can't use it.

Yeah, you can't use it.

Because we got the kids there in the summer. Now, if then in the summer you want to put it back and then next summer take it out again, we can do that.

You have to remove the whole thing?

Yeah, take the whole thing out. Can't even be there.

Wow.

Otherwise, we can't have the camp there.

Wow. Okay. That's interesting. It is.

I thought it was a little strange.

Really?

I mean, I guess they think kid can get his hand in there, throw something in there, the grease pop back up.

It just changes in general. Like, how many people know how to properly put out a grease fire? Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's just the overall. It shouldn't be in the kitchen. No.

Right. We could have just locked the kitchen, though. But they were like, no, you have to take it out.

I mean, that makes sense. You've got to save it for themselves.

So I do want to have one question, well, statement. Looking at this fund balance, and fund balance, it's been a while since Parks and Recs, like you were saying, Parks and Recs was generating.

Yeah, so Parks and Rec, we've...

Generating money.

Yeah, we kept that in the positive because we knew that there was the risk of there being a, you know, like if the roof went out, it would have wiped our front down. You know, we're in a little bit different position now because something could still go wrong, but it's not, you know, we're not dealing with an old HVAC, an old roof, bad floors, that kind of stuff that... You know, it's still a older building and there's still things. But we've addressed a lot of the I think the major concerns that we have there. And so, you know, the question is, do we want to be a little bit more flexible this year in terms of spending a little bit more than we're expecting to bring in? I think, you know, again, one of the things we're certainly going to look at is trying to. you know, build the building up, the rec center up so we can boost revenues. We don't, you know, we can try and incorporate that into this year, but we're taking a conservative approach. And then we also can see how the expenses shake out and what, you know, what we can do with that going forward in terms of the building costs and everything.

Yeah. You got to spend money to make money. You do. Listen, we're not going to do it now. We're going to keep pushing it off like we do everything else. And then it's going to be a bigger issue. You want to make it attractive, like you're saying.

Right. Because people will rent. They're always looking for a place to rent. But you got to make it beautiful.

Yeah. Also, too, are we keeping this, like in budgets moving forward, this Summerfest line item? Or is this kind of like a just for this year thing? So I thought we kind of discussed like a while ago, like the summer festival might have to be something that's sacrificed in order to kind of keep pushing the, Yeah, which I'm OK. Like we already have it done. I know we talk about we want to kind of celebrate the city. But like I said, is this something that we're going to just continue to approve every year?

So I think it's a couple of things. One is, you know, we didn't have as much time this year from in terms of planning. As we wrap up this year, we're going to start planning next year's right away. Then it's about how much money can we raise? We'll have a lot more time to focus on fundraising. And then I think the question is, at what level do we wanna try to do this? Is it more of a local thing? Do we wanna have it be more of a, broader audience you know terms of the acts that we bring in because that that's one of the big drivers for the cost um and then it's just you know just a matter of priority i mean i think it's certainly something that everyone has indicated they want to have here as a annual event it's just a question of how much it's going to cost and where that money is going to come from and you know is it a priority for the parks and rec fund over some of the other things that they could be doing

and we're putting in park i mean i guess it makes sense for it to be in parks and recs but it's like give him something i mean you go there you go yeah he doesn't even notice he does it anymore everybody else is the trees right now the cottonwood trees though I don't got a Zyrtec for you. Sorry. But that was it. I just wanted to know. And then, like, making sure that, like... Because I know we had like a little bit of a cushion in the general fund, but you were recommending a lot of this one instead.

Yeah, I mean, I think it just makes sense to take it out of here, at least for this year, and then kind of evaluate it moving forward.

We can make some money. We have a dunking thing. With the mayor up there, they throw the ball. Do that already. How much money?

Anything else on Parks and Rec? Any other questions or comments?

You guys are doing a great job over there. A good job. Yeah, you're doing a great job.

That's our revenue. We get up, keep that up.

You got something else? Basketball game coming up tonight.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. Y'all schedule these at every basketball game. That's what it is.

Come on, y'all. Y'all.

So we have our rubbish fund, garbage and rubbish. Not a lot to report here. We have two big things here in terms of revenues. We have our tax millage that generates revenues from our property taxes, and then we have the rubbish fee. We're proposing to keep the rubbish fee at the same rate, which I believe is $83, $81 or $83. And we think the fund is in pretty healthy shape, all things considered. When we look at the expenses, we've got a few key things. One is our contract rubbish. That's what we pay to the contractors. Republic is our, is it Republic? Priority. Priority. They always go through name changes. So Priority is our contractor right now. That agreement is up at the end of this month.

End of this month. So we will, I've had talks with the mayor. I've had talks with the mayor and Mr. Carrington. May the mayor will be meeting with Mr. Rutherford, but... Not looking good right now for priority. No, it's not. You know, as you've seen them in the news, so we ought to have some discussion with them. It might not be a full-term contract. It might be, you know, maybe a one-year.

They want a longer-term deal. They want a 16-year deal right now.

They're performing horribly right now. We're not in line with that right now.

The same thing happened last year, though, right, when they asked for we extended it by a year.

They put them on probation last year to see how they would do this year. And up to now, they was doing pretty... This is the second time it's been back.

This is the second time.

And it was around the same time last year. And I'll just tell you, their issue is... It's not... I don't know how they run their company, but it's on the planning side. So everybody knows the first year compost starts. So they bring back their seasonal employees. But then, instead of you putting out three trucks, now you need four trucks. Now we got a problem. Now they got a problem. And it's every year, so you got to get it right sometime.

Who's been knocking on the door, going to the headquarters? They won't even talk to them. Now they start picking and choosing what they pick up.

They sure do, yeah.

And that's the problem.

Mr. Mayor, can I ask a question? Who else is out there doing trash as far as priority?

I heard there's a company out of south of us in Ohio that's trying to come into Michigan. But we know about Rizzo. He got out of jail and started another company. You know, Rizzo was GFL.

Was there a waste?

The one who originally owned GFL. That's why they had to change their name once he went to jail. But he's back out there. We're in the wrong business.

We need to be right.

The city of Wayne, the city of Wayne just did their bid and they stayed with priority at a much lower rate. We just got to look and see. Westland has somebody else.

There's only a couple.

It's only, it's like. Westland still has priority. They got priority too?

Yeah, because I don't see no other trucks to save something. No.

It's not a lot. I look at it like this. You have waste management. And I don't know if it's a benefit to waste management to take home Inkster, Garden City, Dearborn Heights, and Westland for the simple fact our trash goes to their landfill. I don't know if that's a plus.

They get money anyway. Oh, yeah. They get money off the landfill.

Wow. Right.

So it's not a whole lot in the market, but... We are, Paul is trying to schedule once I get the mayor's schedule, trying to schedule with me, with me and the mayor, so that will be a very intense conversation.

They keep taking us to nice restaurants because they know their service sucks.

I have been. You want to go?

I don't eat. I tell you, I don't eat a lot. Nothing. I'm like, give me the expensive steak. Y'all ain't picking up no garbage. Y'all can come.

She trying to say we eat. Might as well get a meal.

That's going to be interesting because they all over the news. It's bad.

Bad luck. I would think that they acquired some of that from waste management, correct?

Well, no, they bought GFL.

GFL. Okay, so you would think that since they almost got a monopoly out there.

Then they can do what they want to do. Then you're stuck if they got all the accounts.

Right, right.

What are you going to do? They did fire their CEO, so they do have a new management team, too. So they're going to do some transitioning.

Okay, well, hopefully they can get it together.

Hopefully. We will see. I sent you guys the last email that you look at where they said they was about to buy, I don't know, $160,000.

trucks and some other stuff yeah they say more staff and all yeah they'd be spinning us though every time something go wrong they give us some bs right you know when you're going to be caught up over sunday they have no idea when they're going to be caught like something when you pick up our garbage like they used to you know like penalize them like yeah i mean i think one of the other cities withheld their payment last night different heights somebody yeah i don't care about that well they're gonna get if they pick up the garbage they're gonna make you pay them at some point i mean it's It's bad. I think another city didn't pay them last year when they did this, too. They stopped paying them. They'll care then.

Right, and that's where I'm at.

It's like a catch-22, though. You withhold the payment, and they just say, okay, we're not going to send no drugs. Then we have a problem. That's what I'm saying.

It's a catch-22. So right now, they're not violating the contract because they send me notice every morning that they're behind. So as long as they adhere to that and then they send us a letter trying to address the issue, I can't really find them.

Right. Not per the contract. Right. But their contract is up. Right. We'll probably have to renew at least for a year and get ourselves together and see if the market changes. We may not have a choice, but much of a choice.

Okay. Okay.

So just kind of wrapping up with the rubbish fund, like I said, this fund is in pretty good shape. We're generating more than sufficient revenues to cover our costs. Even if there is an increased cost in terms of what we pay to the contractor, there is sufficient fund balance to cover that. to um to cover that we try to keep the um projected costs in line with the projected revenues but we do have some some wiggle room when it comes to the fund balance um so that you know with the contract expiring if we have to go up again we've got uh we've got money set aside to uh absorb absorb that for this fiscal year uh for the for the next fiscal year without having to look at any type of uh change in what we're charging and everything Everybody all right?

What's the incinerator again?

Not what is it, but... That's where we take our trash. Oh, that's the price for that?

Yeah.

Right there. Yeah, I remember that.

So, okay, it's just the name didn't change the landfill.

I'm sorry, you don't remember. Who? You don't remember that? I do.

I'm 38. It was there. Oh, okay. Wait, why did everybody say that, though?

Oh, wow.

He's loud and proud. Izzy don't know nothing about it, though.

Loud and proud, do not.

I was just wondering, because I saw, well, I see the word incinerator, and I know that used to be the incinerator there, and it's not there, but it's just the verbiage didn't change.

Our garbage still has to go to landfill.

Okay, that's what I was wondering.

Okay, are we good?

So we got one more to go.

We're doing good.

Y'all want a ticket? I think they're going to ask us for a lot of money, y'all. There's too many of them here. One, two, three, four. Something is wrong.

They setting you up?

Man, this is a setup.

You need to ask them for a loan.

Right.

So our last one is 592. Are we just going to push on through this here?

Go ahead. This is the last one? Last one. And then Darren can get to his golfer. Leave him alone.

He's golfing today.

No, not today.

I just bought my first pair of clubs. I'm going to try to golf in his golf outing. Uh-oh, you ready? Yep.

Oh, Lord.

So you have to watch out.

When is your golf outing?

Oh, it's 22nd. At least come drink.

Thanks to that.

Thanks to that. It's fine. You called me?

Okay, so I'm going to...

start off here we have our two or three times um fund 592 our water sewer fund um we've got as the mayor pointed out almost all of our administrative team there um keep in mind carrie's on the clock so she gets paid by the minute yeah So we can keep Jerome and everybody, Jerome, Tori, and Maya here all night. But Carrie, so ask her her questions first, and then she can lead. But so Fund 592, as you guys know, this is one of our more important funds. you know, for terms of city operations. It's been a very eventful fiscal year for this fund. We've done a lot of important activities for the city's water system. Like a lot of communities, as we are always reminding people, we have a very aged infrastructure that's in need of a lot of work. There's no way around that. We've been doing a lot in terms of the funding for this, the state revolving fund. And this year, this past fiscal year, the current fiscal year, started at the end of last fiscal year, but we replaced all of our water meters. That was approximately a $6 million replacement. You know we had some kind of growing pains with that, but I think we're in a much better place with our customers. I know we're in a much better place with the system that we have for billing. We were not able to accurately bill a large percentage of our customers. And we feel really good about the system that we've been able to put in place. We started last spring. We are pretty much, I would say, over 90% complete in terms of the installations, the installs for all of our customers. I think we're getting much better, much more quality data in terms of us being able to bill. And so I think it's going to provide us a foundation for having a better system, a better operation moving forward. We don't have a lot of the data from that, you know, because it's probably only been about four or five months when we've had the majority of people on this system, but we're gonna be tracking just to see how this works. I think we're gonna see some improvements in the amount of water that we're purchasing from Gliwa. that wasn't getting sold to our retail customers. Generally referred to that as water loss. We were above 30%, meaning for every 10 gallons that we bought, three of those gallons were just being eaten up by the system from a cost standpoint. So more than 30, probably closer to 40%. And so I can't stress just how important the meters are, how important the – revolving fund that we, uh, program that we're involved with, uh, with the state. Um, as you know, we did the bonds, uh, last year. So there's tens of millions of dollars in capital improvements that's going on. Um, the department is just really active, really busy. Uh, but it's just really, really necessary work. You know, oftentimes you don't see this stuff until there's a water main break. Um, but there, you know, there's just a lot that's going on with it and a lot that has to go into it. And so, um, You know, I think over the last year we took some important steps. We want to continue that in the next year. And so let's just kind of dive into the budget here. I do want to point out that our contract with Gliwa expires and it's expiring.

And we will be bringing the new contract before you guys July 1st. Either the first meeting in July or the second meeting in July for your approval. Then we had a 6% savings carry from GLIWA. But I understand, even though that's a savings, I still have to do what I have to do with the infrastructure. So it's a savings on one end, but that money still has to go into the ground. So I can't do nothing else with it because I know previous administration has asked me to give it back to the residents. We can't do that. We just can't, you know, because our infrastructure is crumbling, you know, about 70% of our infrastructure. I think we're the third or fourth oldest infrastructure in Michigan. Yeah, we're almost approaching 100 years. Yeah.

So, Kind of what I heard, because one of my questions was, if we have less water loss, will it allow us to lower rates? And the answer is no. No.

It may stabilize. We may not be jumping. We jump every year. We didn't raise them last year. We haven't raised them this year. So if we win that, hopefully we can stay somewhere close to here for a while.

So as I gave you the history of the water department, we were averaging... Right around, what, 16% increase per year. 12 to 16% increase. We did nothing last year, and we got to order all the study beds before right now, and the way it's trending. We probably won't do anything this year. If anything, it will be very minute.

Well, let's not.

Oh, I'm sorry. Let's not say that.

It's my job. So as the director said, we don't have a rate increase as a part of this budget. There's a couple of things. One, we talked about the new meters. We're doing a rate study, and that really involves us taking a deep dive. We have a consultant that we work with taking a deep dive and saying, okay, how much are you bringing in? How much are you spending? And how much do you need to spend? Because that's one of the things we – there's probably – bunch of projects that we could be doing if we had the money for it. So it's not a situation where we save and we can refund the customers. We have more capital needs than we have capital. But the expectation is that we're going to sometime early part of next fiscal year be able to come back and give you guys a clearer picture of what's going on. Showing you with this rate model again how much we're bringing in what the numbers are looking like, what our capital needs are, how all of that shakes out, and what our current rates, how that reflects out over a projected timeline. One of the things that we'll also be taking a look at is our rate structure. Like right now, we charge, if you don't use anything, you aren't charged anything. A lot of communities have kind of a base charge because there's, you know, if nobody used anything, we still would have costs for the system. And so one of the things that we will look at is saying, you know, maybe we have an upfront charge that no matter what, you're charged $25 or something. There's just some number, even if you don't have any service, because we know that there's a cost with just maintaining the system, right? Right now, all of our costs to the customer are based solely on what they use. And we might want to look at kind of a hybrid system where there's a cost for being connected and then there's a cost based on what you use. But, again, right now we're not proposing any rate change. We'll come back sometime in the summer, early fall, once the rate study is done, and be able to lay things out and make more of an informed decision, an informed recommendation, and let you guys make an informed decision on that piece of it.

If we did like the base rate for people who even don't use, like would that help us even not have to raise the rate even longer? Or like, you know, does that mean that we could pass? I know they don't want to pass savings on to the customer, but water has been such a big issue here in the city.

So that's thought is, I mean, as water costs rise, we're going to rise. We're going to raise. That's right. Yeah. But I would be scared to death after going through this meter installation process. to turn around and have to explain to them what the base rate went for. And then if you're used to that, I'm going to let the next man do that.

Well, I think it's just like a community approach. Like, I think that, like, kind of what we were talking about with, like, the kitchen cleanup, like, something so basic. Like, if everybody pays something, right, it's a community. We are the city of, you know what I mean? We are the city of Inkster. So if I help, it helps me.

Exactly.

That's what it is.

I just got an idea from a very famous legislator. told me something about the water bear we said if i think it was an ipsy years ago they uh had two meters on the towels so meter for inside the house and then a meter for outside the house so if you order your grass uh which just seeps into the ground you don't pay the sewer cost And I was like, wow, that's kind of cool because people complain about the sewer costs all the time. If you water your grass, why are you paying the sewer costs? It's going right in the ground. But now that requires you to have two meters. Good luck whoever's got to tell people they've got to get another meter or not.

So, Mr. Mayor, as you say that, your water department and engineering department,

having discussions really I mean it makes a lot of sense but you that's another piece of hardware we would have to buy or the residents would have to buy but they probably be happy with not paying sewer on those yeah I would buy one if I had a choice the first thing I have to do is we would have to change the ordinance

Change the ordinance? Our city ordinance. To reflect that, we have, me, Kerry, and Rodney, our S1, have had discussions.

We can change the ordinance. As long as the resident has the option, they pay for it.

We just got to sit down and go over it with you so you can understand exactly how that works.

Because other cities do do that.

For swimming pools and irrigation systems. And larger facilities that recycle the water.

Would your study kind of help us make those decisions?

Yeah, so it would lay all those out, different alternatives. I think one of the things with our race structure, because a lot of people talk about our race compared to other communities, and I believe it's... The way our rate structure works, the people who use lower amounts of water actually pay a little bit more than people who use... Yeah, they overpay. The higher amounts. Because the one unit, if you... are using a larger number of units, those costs are spread over a larger usage, as opposed to if you're only using one or two units, because we don't have that flat rate model. Everything is just built into the usage, into the usage rate and everything. That's really the purpose of the rate models for it to say, okay, this is what it would look like. This is what it would cost the average customer. Some of it could just be a situation where we're just not increasing the overall cost. We're just spreading it around a little differently. And so we wouldn't necessarily raise rates. We would just be distributing them a little bit differently. The objective would be to just divide it up a little differently and then capture that customer who's not necessarily using anything, the vacant house and the like, who still is connected, but they're not using it. But there's that cost that's associated with using the system. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah.

Thank you for saying that. That's interesting. And then I was one last question.

Um, we rectified, like, a good amount of the water bill issues. Like, do you feel like things are stable? Yeah.

So just kind of looking at the big picture, the lobby is not as close, not as crowded and heated as it was a few months ago. And we definitely have seen a decrease in that. I think there were a few things going on. One, it was people who were getting estimated bills, not knowing what their actual usage was. And so when they got their bills, they're like, hey, I was getting billed two, I was getting billed three units. Now I'm getting billed for six. And it's because that's what their actual usage was.

Our water loss. Right, okay. Because we didn't know how much water, you know, meters, you know, 70% of meters.

Yep. And then we had situations where people were getting estimated and Their usage may not have been that high, but they had leaks and they didn't know it because until they got a new meter, it wasn't showing up on their billing. And so I think the first few months, first four or five months was a lot of that. And we just had to communicate, work with people, show them like, hey, we're seeing this. You may have been using three units before, but now we're seeing seven, eight, ten units going through your meter and everything. So it has certainly, I think, the number of complaints, if you will, has gone down. Tanette Harris, our water analyst, does a really good job of, on a case-by-case basis, explaining what's going on. I mean, we've got the technology where we can look that up, and she does a really good job of laying that out and explaining it to them. Some people are a little bit more open to what's going on than others. But we do, you know, try to follow up with them. After Tenet, they meet with Jerome and with our engineering consultant, Rodney, if there's still some questions about the information that we presented to them. But I think overall, I think we've seen a significant improvement in that.

Perfect, thank you. I'm finished. Thank you.

I have a question after.

Have we had a rate increase from the authority?

From Gleewood?

We're about to sign a new contract.

So we're about to get the new numbers from Gleewood. And so we'll be bringing that to you guys the first meeting of July. I think we need to have it to them in August, I believe. But we're going to bring it to council in July, yeah.

I know when we was having all those water issues years ago, before they became the authority, remember when they came up and they explained to our residents what our wholesale, we are the wholesalers, and then we got pepped. That would be good to have them if they still do that.

They have put a PR group together within GLIWA, and they are... That's some of the stuff they're going to be doing this upcoming year. They just want to come to council and talk to you guys. They also want to talk to the mayor, have a meeting with the mayor, so I have to get them on the schedule. So they just want to be more informed.

Yeah, because that was very informative. That let our residents know that we wasn't really overcharging because we're being charged from here. And then if they charge us, we got to come pass it along to our residents. So that would be good for them. Okay, that's all I have.

Again, one other good thing about the meters, too, is that the leak detection in the city of Eastern, that meter's doing what it's supposed to do.

That's good. So I don't have to call you once more, right?

That's what they're with, probably, is doing what it's supposed to do. Yep, and it's been very spot on for me. Okay, all right.

I had a question. Yes. As far as when you were talking about the different rates for those who water their grass, And just to me, that would go in line with if you're washing your car every day, every week outside, that water's not going into the grass, it's going down the driveway. But those who fill up a pool, yeah, in that particular day, it's not going to the sewer, but when they drain it, that's not all being soaked up by the ground. So how do you calculate for that?

So when we write the new ordinance, that would be part of the ordinance. If you have runoff going into the, storm drain or sewer system, you do not qualify. You do not qualify for that system. Because your waters, you are paying, you are using our sewage.

People wash their cars anymore?

These are people who are really, these are people who are really not, people who are taking advantage of this are people that are really not using. Like we have a facility next door to us, was it Plastico Steel? And they have a unique situation where they capture the water. So it's not going into the storm drain. So something like that where they actually not going into our sewer system, but it's, it's, we're going to put a, uh, we're working on, we're going to put an ordinance together, have some discussion with the mayor. So he made sure he's on board and understand exactly what we said, because like I said, other cities do that, you know, so we just coming aboard, you know, I have one last question.

I'm sorry. So if we don't raise now, do we have like a really large hike later? Like in a Dearborn Heights situation? Wasn't it Dearborn Heights? They just had like a crazy last year, had like a crazy rate hike. And it was like on the news and it was a really big issue. No, it was Garden City. It was Garden City. It might have been Garden City.

Like, do you think of something that... It was on the news right along when we was putting out music. Right. I appreciate it.

That's what we had in the past. We went several years without raising the rates. I don't know what was going on back then. And then the big jump. And that's what started the lawsuit years ago.

Would it almost be better to gradually raise it instead of us not raising it at all? Raise it maybe...

We're trying to get some data. We would do it normally right now, but we're trying to get a year's worth of data with the new meters, and then we can do our accurate projections and say, okay, this is where we're at. We may say, hey, we've got to raise it 20 cents, or we may have to say we're fine where we're at for this year.

You know, that's just my because I'm like, as we say, we get out of this like, yeah, we're not on the news for this. And then now we're on the news because we had a what was like 23 percent hike in like Garden City.

Yeah. I mean, I'm certainly hopeful that we won't be looking at those kind of numbers. I think as the mayor pointed out, it would be hard for us to ask you guys to raise it. Because we just don't, you know, we don't have the details to support it. That's the purpose of the rate study. But I firmly believe we're going to see some improvement. It may not be great, but I think we're going to see some improvement just from us being more able to accurately deal. I can't overemphasize how, you know, that put us in a less than desirable position not being able to bill accurately. Just and I think, you know, we see just if you look, that's why people were angry because they were getting less. You know, we were billing them less than what they were actually using. So now that we are billing people more accurately. letting people know that they have these leaks, and in order to get their bills down, they need to fix it. I think we'll see our revenues will be more in line with what we're purchasing from Glee. And I think that's going to have a big, big impact on us. How much remains to be seen?

Keep in mind our revenues may be a little down because we have to wipe all late fees and stuff. A lot of people pay late. But since we got off track with the bills and stuff, so we, what, six, eight months? We haven't charged any late fees. But that's okay. Once we get back to normal, we'll be okay.

The problem that I get from residents, number one, is they were complaining because you're saying the meters is going to address all of that. Some people get credit for the next six months where they don't have a bill. Other people are over billed. So the new meters will address that.

Yes.

But the thing that they're angry also about is the quality of our water.

Okay.

Because even with the filters, you're changing the filters frequently when you're buying that because our water still has that, it's still not clear.

Yeah.

So, quality of our water. I think we're number one or number two in the country for the best water in the country. When people say the quality of our water, I'll be trying to understand.

Because when we say, hey, we went over for lead and water, whatever. Right. We flunked the test, and that's when people get worried. In their minds, we have bad water. We have, like you said, some of the best water in the country. But in their minds, we have bad water. I don't want to drink it. I have a filter in my house, but I have two filters. I filter it coming out of the faucet, and I filter it when it's in the refrigerator. But we still have the best water.

I mean, it's great water.

I mean, Glee does a great job of taking care of the water coming out of the river. I mean, People are lining up, really, to buy water from the grid. It's the pipe stuff.

It's not the water, it's the pipe. Old houses or any houses, if it's deteriorating, it's going to be in your water. Whether it's steel, lead, whatever it is, whatever the pipe is, you know, you got to replace it.

My friend Mackenzie, she's like kind of been addressing the Instagram or the, sorry, Facebook people. And she'll give people like testing strips. And a lot of the times their water comes back safe. It's just like, I think also like the fear one. And then like you said, pipes is the other one. So I thought that was interesting because she was literally addressing the issue. And if they did have like, funky water when it came to their pipes, she would give them one of Councilman Rutledge's filters until they were able to get their pipes done.

So we should start pushing out, it's not the water, it's the pipes. If your pipes need to be replaced, your pipes need to be replaced.

Well, we do, Mr. Mayor, in the CCR report that you signed that letter for. I mean, we should do it.

When people say, oh, my water, no, the water is fine. As a matter of fact, do your research on some of the best water you can buy. It's infrastructure. It's the pipes. It's where the water is flowing through. If we start pushing people, people understand it. They just think, you just think bad water, the water's bad. You're not thinking about what's making it bad.

Yeah, that's true. I guess they're looking at the fact that they have filters and they have to change it so often.

Right. That's a good problem because you got the damn filter. I mean, people complain about whatever they can complain about. Like, Yeah, they can replace their pipes. I mean, right now, we're replacing the lead pipes because we have to. But really, that's on them. I mean, we're not going to say that because people get mad, but replace your pipes.

I think one of those things is like when we... We always look at things as lasting forever, but stuff only has a certain life span. We get away with a lot with roofs and hot water tanks and furnace and even cars because the older generation used to do every single piece of maintenance that was in the owner's manual and the car lasted forever. We get in the car and be like, why this car bumping up and down the road after five years? I was like, well, you're supposed to change your shocks out at 50,000 miles and you ain't changing them. You got 100,000 miles on the car. So it's the same thing with the pipes in the house. The stuff, I mean, it doesn't say when you sign your mortgage or buy the house, it's going to last you forever. It don't say that at all. It don't say nothing's not going to build up in those pipes or anything. You just cut a section out and look through it, you might not be able to see through it.

Anyway, let's move on so we can go watch the game.

You cannot run things based on the games.

Okay, so we've got our water sales consumption there. That's our revenue based upon... what we build to our customers and it's broken down between water sales and sewer sales so somewhat of a moving number we putting in $12 million in the budget, but that kind of remains to be seen just based on, you know, are there going to be, you know, in some instances there are going to be more units built. In some instances, you know, there may be as we take care of some of the water loss, we could see less being built, which is not a bad thing if we're, you know, unit for unit needing to purchase less. As the mayor mentioned, The penalties and the tax rollovers, we did not do those for December and July. We did not roll over any overdue bills onto property taxes, and we have been waiving penalties for a number of months. We'll be looking to get those started at the beginning of next fiscal year, but there is some financial tradeoff with that. So that's pretty much it. We have the property tax component for a water sewer, but that's pretty much it when it comes to the revenues. We have the sale to the customers and then what we collect on a property tax side. Moving on to appropriations. We've got our permanent salaries, which is the DPS workers, the water and sewer component of DPS. Again, as a reminder, we don't have any monies included for any contract increases that may come out of the new contract. So that would be an additional cost. Here we're just kind of keeping the same number of budgeted employees at, current contract amount the next items are some of our fringes we have seen a couple of employees that have rolled off on the pension side so we're projecting a little bit of a decrease in that particular area And then we move down to the bottom and start looking at some of the operational costs. You see the operating supplies that are there, tools and equipment on the next page. We have our fuel cost. We've got, you know, different maintenance and supplies. And then we get into some of the project costs. And then I'll let Jerome kind of answer any questions that you may have here. But we've got our professional consultant figures here. A lot of these are going to be tied to the – projects that are going on for professional consultant, engineering consultant. Those are some larger ticket items. We've got our repairs tied to the lead copper. We got repairs and then repairs tied to the lead copper that are there. printing and advertising, which is for our water bills. I do want to point out that we will be, we're making some revisions. We've been taking some of the feedback we've gotten from customers and we're going to be updating our water bill. Water bill has been changed for a very long time. So we're going to be updating the water bill. The plan is to have the new water bill in place, and we'll bring that to you before, but to have that in place for the July billing, which would go out in August. So we're going to try and make the bill a little bit more user-friendly, a little bit more transparent in terms of how the cost and payments are being applied.

When we look at the engineering consultant, what's the difference between a professional consultant and an engineer? We know who our engineer is. Who's the professional consultant? Those are the contractors, fix water main breaks and stuff like that.

So talk to me. 564-801 and 801.407.

Everything alone, I'm calling Kerry to get some money. It's 2.441 million dollars.

Yeah, the other line out of it. I'm sorry. I got out of the hurdle. Outside. Outside. Okay. Outside.

And then the last item I'll point out there is the capital outlay. We've got $36 million in projects that I mentioned. You know, there's just a... Large volume of projects, large volume of work that the department is doing, a lot of contractors, a lot of projects, a lot of repairs that are going on, and we've got a figure of just under $37 million for next fiscal year that's in this line item. So I'll turn it over to you guys for any questions.

We got a lot of projects. We're going to schedule the ribbon cutting for DPS building, so that's coming up soon. But as soon as we get a date, he's going to send it up. Wednesday.

Next Wednesday?

No.

17th. That's next Wednesday.

SO WHAT TIME ARE YOU GOING TO DO IT?

EARLY FOR YOU. YOU WANT TO DO IT AROUND 11 O'CLOCK, MR. MAYOR? I MEAN, IT'S UP TO COUNCIL.

I MEAN, IT WOULD BE QUICK TO HAVE A LITTLE FINGER FOOD OR SOMETHING. I NEED YOU RIPPING THE SCISSORS, YES.

That's a lot of work for you guys.

So make sure we send something to case and do a press release. I guess the public is about it too, right? They want to walk through and look at some stuff. And then we're going to do a groundbreaking for the animal shelter. At least we're going to get the shovels out and dig some dirt and throw it around. So we're going to do that soon. We signed a contract already, so. We just got to get with the contractor and see what they want to do. Right behind the police, right on the corner.

Where do you see it? They're doing the finishing stuff.

We were hoping by the end of this month, right?

Yeah, I think they're supposed to be completed and then this month, early July.

So we'll have three coming up very soon. That's going to be September.

I thought it was to be done.

So the grant, it has to be executed fully by September. But they're going to be done with construction by the end of this month. With the baseball field? Baseball field, yeah.

They're going to regrade it and all that?

I heard the sign work. That'd be four this summer. They got the playscape up. They got the new pavilion up. When they start paving, there's no one out there.

We're getting closer. That's good. We need a new sign. I hate that sign. We talked about that. What sign? Wheatley Park sign. Whose idea was that to do graffiti for all of us? It was paid for. Paid for. We got money for that. Still ugly. We got a nice clean sign. Because King Park sign is like that, too.

All of the park signs were like that. It was funded. Federal money. That's your department?

You mocked that up? Real tall.

Somebody thought it was a good idea. No, actually, that was...

I think that was a competition. I didn't design it.

The election was rigged. Y'all got any questions? Y'all ready to go home? I got some country ribs. Is that an invitation? There's only five of them. They thick, though, but it's five of them.

Who are your children?

We had a public participation.

Yes, public participation. You got any public? Maya, you just sat here all day. You ain't got nothing to say. They put a raise in the budget for you? They put a raise in the budget for you? You need to have something to say then. The floor is yours. I can answer that question.

I do have one question to the treasurer. Are we going to have, before we pass the budget so everybody can see, the department's, remember I was asking the first couple of sheets that we used to have? Yes.

So for Monday, we'll have... And we're working to get this to you guys by Friday. We'll have the complete package of everything that we've covered here along with the, so all the departments put together into one document, adding the, I know we need to add the department names, and then with the sheets of employees. by department. Now, the question is, we show those one of two ways. We can show each department with each employee that's included in the budget. We don't show the cost breakdown for each employee. We don't have to have that.

We used to. We don't have to have that. Yeah. We used to have all of that.

We used to have the dollar. Yes, yes, yes.

And so the position.

Yeah, the name and the position.

Yeah, but you can kind of, even if you don't put the name on it, you can kind of guess for a lot of the positions. Yeah, but one of the issues is we've oftentimes put a specific number for a specific position instead of like what's budgeted. And so sometimes people will see we may want to put some money in the budget. It doesn't necessarily mean that that money is going to go to that individual. And that's where it kind of gets into a little bit of a tricky situation because we may include money in the budget that may not be granted um you know may not be granted july one and people will see oh i'm i mean that that would be the first thing employees would get that and that's the first thing that they would go to

Now, I don't know if somebody else showed it.

Yeah, they would.

And also, too, we had.

Yeah, yeah.

We had.

Well, it's public information, so you can't.

Well, yeah, it's public. But we had that. And it was also in the book, like the Park and Rex fees. Wasn't it? how much you're charged for. I had to bring it up again.

Okay. But we'll have the budget and we'll have the, by department, the number of employees, you know, each employee, each, not their name, but the position that's budgeted in there.

Thank you. Anything else? Public participation? We have no public?

Mayor and council communications?

Anybody?

No.

I'm going to waive my rights. Any motion for adjournment?

So moved. Second.

Moved and seconded. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Aye.

That was a good meeting.

Whatever.

I know. And I was like, can I get that Home Depot card?

Thank you.