City Council - Special Meeting

All right, so let's go ahead and call this special meeting of the Jacksonville City Council to order. We have a copy of the proposed agenda for tonight's meeting. It's on the budget as it's advertised.

Move approval of the budget, excuse me, agenda. I heard budget and my brain went bugged. I need a quick meeting.

Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Mr. Ray, I'll turn it over to you.

Thanks, Mayor. So we sent out a request to council. The state has approved a bill, so it's now a law, that would restrict the nine different counties, including Onslow, from using a revaluation that was completed this year by the county. So therefore, the city of Jacksonville and Onslow County has to operate using the evaluation that was effective in the FY26 year. So therefore, the budget that we sent out to City Council utilizes the current property valuations that every property owner in Onslow County has for 2026 and then would utilize a tax rate that's set by the city council today. So for everyone that's concerned what their tax bill would look like next year, it would be very similar to their tax bill from the current year. It would have a different tax rate depending on what's being set by the city council for next year. Currently, the budget proposal has a tax rate of 63 cent, and that would go with your current value of your property. Everything else, Mayor, has been updated to include the capital projects plan, the ad valorem tax rate, the total budget, and then the increases that we've talked about previously, which would include water and sewer rate increase of 1%.

That's in line with what our bottom is dictating, right?

Everything is in. We did have to make some significant changes for this budget, Mayor, just based on some of the items that have been discussed by Council previously. Two of those changes are moving the standard $0.04 allocation from the General Fund to the Capital Reserve Fund. That's roughly... 3.4 million. 4.8 million. or on the current value. So we've moved that out, and then we also moved out $1.6 million that would be allocated towards the Uptown Jacksonville project, and that was based on some dialogue with council. We moved those out. The proposal that we've sent includes approximately $3.5 million of general fund fund balance appropriation. It does not have any new positions included in the budget. that were not in FY26. Same number. Same number. 631 full-time employees, 158 part-time, and six part-time with benefits. Same number for FY26 as in FY27. It does have three positions that we would reallocate for services that we've defined as a need within the organization.

Because it's not like we cut everything back as lean as we possibly can without cutting major services and doing that, correct?

Yes, we're not cutting services to the community. What we're changing is the funds that would go towards capital projects. So that would just have an impact on long-term capital planning. You'll see that in the model when we run the model. We'll do that towards the end of the calendar year. But those are the changes that we would make towards those items. We still have in the... employee movement in terms of pay scale that council has been working on since 2022. And that 63 cents fixes the pay issues? Yes, sir. That additional three cents goes towards that number. You can do it with a lower rate, but you're going to have a higher fund balance appropriation if you keep in the pay movement. We have effectively moved throughout the pay plan to make sure that all positions are addressed. And back to Mr. Unero's question from a previous meeting, this movement would ensure that every position within the city falls within that range of the defined market that the council adopted in 2022.

And that's going to make us competitive, especially with public safety, the way public safety is going.

Yes, sir. It should make us more competitive within the market. It will not make us a top salary destination, but it shouldn't make us a top salary destination based on our property taxes and our sales tax. Off the top of your head, do you know what percentage of the market we're meeting? No, sir. I would love to give you that number. I can tell you, Mayor, that what it does is it puts us within the range of the market. So, for example, every position is different. And so if we pull one position, we would be at the high end on some positions. We would be on the lower end on other positions. The majority of our positions, Mayor, fall within the midpoint of that range. So the majority or even it would be safe to say the median. So we do have that information. I'd love to say that this would put us as a leading payer for our employees, but... Well, we started so far behind.

We've been playing catch-up for the last several years, and that's kind of why we're in this pickle every year. It was about $3 million, isn't it? Yeah, so that's just what it is right now until we get caught up.

The overall number that council has moved for the past four years Systematically, we've been about $3 million every year since 2022. So you've put that, implemented that into the pay plan every year for this period of time. So that first amount was $2.6 million, and that was the heavy lift council completed in 2022. And now you're moving to that point of it's roughly $2 to $3 million across the board.

every year but this this puts us in a in a very competitive situation doesn't it yes sir i mean competitive with you know when i went over to talk to the water plant people uh we had i had some healthy discussion with them about all their qualifications and you know i'd hate to see You know, that's an essential service. We want to make sure that we're compensating them well because I don't want them going to the base or to UNWAS or somewhere else because the pay is so high.

And that's the challenge that we have. UNWAS is a great example. UNWAS, over the last three years, has had a 10% increase in their pay. rate structure and that's being collectively across their services provided so they may still have that ability to move some of our people because they may pay more for the experience once Wally's team trains them then they're gonna if they have the opportunity to go then they're gonna go but back to your point when you go online now you're gonna see roughly nine positions being hired by the city of Jacksonville all of those positions are competitive within the market and people with experience. We have a position that's being advertised now. The range is 38,000 to 60,000. So if they come in with experience, they're going to come in on that higher level of where we're at. So yes, sir, we'll remain competitive. And I think the fact that you've made these movements consistently for four years shows that there are only nine positions that are listed on the website right now. And that's incredible.

And do we also show what part of that package is, like holiday pay, insurance, all that stuff?

We list it all. But those are just the numbers that the person job searching is going to see. Then we show in the benefits package, it's all listed on there. And so they'll see that there are different numbers that will help with that recruitment, total benefits package.

Of course, you know, council already approved the two additional holidays starting this next fiscal year. That's another part of the benefits package and the 401k. You know, we saw this. What about the 401k?

What was the... That's the number that if approved, Mayor, that's another recruitment. So right now we're at 2%. The new number would be 3%. You'd add an additional 3% to bring that to 5%. The holiday schedule, we saw this last week. We saw other municipalities, and I wasn't aware, they do not, I would say they don't recognize Juneteenth as an official holiday for their municipality. And I think I talked to Ms. Edwards at an event two weeks ago in terms of, That's a value that we have that other municipalities don't have. It's us in the county. And the others, when we sent the text out, they didn't take off the holiday. And so it's just interesting to see that. So for us, if we're able, now that we're going to add those two additional days, one at Christmas and one at Thanksgiving, that's a recruitment tool for sure. So it's a total benefits package. And that's why we present those items during the budget, is so that people can see council's considering a benefits package. And that goes back to Mr. Sosa's point. That's the recruitment tool, hopefully, that people are paying attention to. That's good.

Thank you. On the two positions, or at least two of them, the additional city attorney and the downtown coordinator. One of the things I think we ought to look at is obviously some cost sharing with downtown merchants and having some discussion with them. And then maybe even looking at taking that money that's allocated for that attorney and looking at a contract and seeing what the options are. That's with the paralegal, right? No, no, not necessarily paralegal, but looking at a contract attorney that could do the work for us as an attorney. No, what I'm saying is instead of a second lawyer. No, looking at a contract like a... Just a contract, okay. Yeah. I'm not necessarily saying that we don't hire those positions, but at least have some dialogue about those to do some cost sharing with the downtown merchants and also look at the pros and cons to contracting that out versus hiring an in-house contractor.

Mayor, the downtown cost share is an excellent concept. We talked about this last year with the council. We've had dialogue with some of our downtown businesses about a tax overlay district. And this is something that the council mentioned four years ago when we sat down in an interview is how do we have buy-in from our communities greater than just your standard property tax and your sales tax? How do you create that revenue stream? So back to Mr. Yonero's point, we've had that dialogue with them, the feedback we've received. from three of those property owners is, it'd be great to see what this position looks like before you ask us to pay an additional tax. I can never tell you that anyone's going to come back to council and say, this sounds like a wonderful idea, please put the overlay on me. But I can say that if we can host additional meetings and some dialogue with the downtown building owners and business owners, at least it may get us closer. But I can't guarantee there's going to be a majority of those business owners say, yeah, let's have it.

I think the whole thing is we're trying to entice people to come down there and not drive them out.

Correct? I think that's the goal, Mayor. I think the downtown development is our key. I think Western Boulevard is doing a fantastic job on its own. And I think our ability to put additional funds into downtown is a great add. Working with the college and working with the new Joe Ed director who starts in July.

So what would Joe Ed's contribution be as far as downtown development? Do they have anybody that's going to be working

So at this point, Mayor, when our new director begins, Melissa Brandt, when she comes in in July and she starts full time, it'll be Melissa Brandt and Melissa Brandt. That's what the staff will look like in Joe Ed. And so council has committed to funding Joe Ed. There's dollars allocated for next year in there as well. Moving forward, there's a possibility that we could partner with Joe Ed and potentially move a position to them to say they can oversee downtown, then again, maybe that's not something they want. The reason I mentioned Jo-Ed is because her background, she's worked for downtown development in Fargo, North Dakota, and I think there's a strength there that may be a benefit to us. The unfortunate part is We are only one entity out of all of Joe is so when she gets here We can't say hey, can you do us a favor and put a lot of your time into downtown development? We see that right now We know that when bold was was active that there was a lot of there were a lot of meetings that they were able to have and maybe create some synergy but getting some type of activity that Had results would be challenging without full-time people to work on some of these items. So I know the county is

interested in improving the downtown. Do you think there's any cost sharing possibilities with them as well?

We have dialogued with the county. At one point we had a dialogue with the county about giving us the building that they have downtown. That dialogue has changed to potentially we may be able to bring a proposal to the council to purchase that building. So I don't I think that they'll be in that situation now. Maybe down the road, long term, they could be a partner. I'd hope we could get them to commit significantly to a long term partnership and not just one or two years so that we can have that. But I know it's a challenge for them because they're gonna have the same kind of restrictions. I think they approved a budget earlier today. So in that budget, they didn't have anything of the sort. But we're waiting for them to allocate some funds.

Did they use their same tax rate as last year? Or did they?

That was for their proposal to keep the current tax rate.

And so that would have left them at $65,500 per $100 valuation?

Another thing to consider with cost sharing sounds great, and it would obviously make budgets easier, but merchants that are already downtown, food merchants, retail merchants, they're facing every challenge that every other business faces anywhere in town, and they're also not as visible in many cases because they're downtown and not on Western or on Gum Branch or on another major thoroughfare. So I wouldn't want to... We don't want to put additional tax hardship on companies that we are glad are down here and are starting to thrive. We need them to continue to thrive, not just pay for other people to come in and do so as well. I think there's some space for collaboration, but asking them for additional tax revenues when they're already putting out their own money to upfit you know, and then operate from a downtown location, maybe a little more than is warranted in my opinion, just because business is hard enough and new businesses have a really tough time the first three years. And many of the businesses we're seeing down here are in their first three years. So we want to continue to support them and, and, encourage them and have the public want to come down here. It's all good. I just don't know that a tax on top of it right now would be well received or practical.

The thing about it is, too, is when we do generate new businesses down there, they also pay tax, property tax, sales tax, all that kind of revenue.

A lot of cities have downtown organizations that are funded by the merchants and you know, to help them plan events, to do, I mean, when I was in Bristol, they had a downtown association that was very active in planning events and, you know. But is that something that the city does, or is that something the organization? That was something the merchants did. Like a home, what do you call it, HOA? Yes, like an HOA. Like a business? Yeah.

Mr. Willihan. Could you put on the screen the page from the budget that deals with the positions that we're talking about?

We can ask Lisa if she can pull it up. Those three positions.

It's one of those early pages that isn't numbered. I took mine out. They're talking about it. Item number four.

This one. Item number four.

Yeah, I think Anthony just went to go see if he can get it on the screen, just FYI.

I can just go on. Downtown coordinator, engineering project manager, and staff attorney.

So, council member, you're talking about the downtown coordinator and the staff attorney.

Like doing away with those positions or adding them?

Well, what I thought is we could have some dialogue to see how we could, for example, look at the difference between a contract employee and a regular staff attorney. And then the downtown coordinator at least have some discussion with the downtown businesses about some cost sharing. I understand what Mayor Pro Tem has said about taxes. But I think at least we ought to have that discussion to be, to make sure that we can't enter some kind of partnership even with Jo-Ed or even the county to help us fund that position. I would encourage Downtown Grove.

On the bright side, I mean, dollar spent is a dollar spent. You can only spend it once. But they are currently funded positions that are just being moved laterally, not new position added for additional funding. So that helps a little bit.

And so the difference, just to clarify back to that point, is to make sure that, like I said in the intro, these are positions council has allocated. So when I talk about the 631 positions, when you go a couple pages after that, already allocated positions, no new positions created within the department. So when you see the engineering project manager, you see us utilizing this position for the services that we have listed. Part of those being... Capital projects the other side of that being in neighborhood improvement services projects. Those are project management services that we would That we need some depth on to help us move forward and especially if we're going to be more aggressive in building new homes or renovating homes

As far as the attorney's position, in my opinion, I think having another attorney on staff is merited largely because one person handling multiple cases and all of the issues and questions of counsel does not have adequate time to answer questions on legal issues and deal with UDO stuff and other things that are happening in the departments. And if you look at the budget on page 50, last year what was spent in legal with only one salary was $510,000. No, 282 was the amended budget. 282, yeah. But we had a lot of outside council hire, a lot. And some of those funds were pocketed in other places, so it wasn't even all showing up here. So I don't. I suspect we're not spending more by hiring someone who's going to be available to us with the best interest of the city all the time. I think we're just moving it from the parcel over here and the parcel over here and the parcel back yonder into one person that we can have access with all the time to help Warner.

Ms. Welsh is very... Oh, I definitely think she needs somebody to help. But I also think when you hire a firm and you have a contract attorney, you have a little bit more flexibility because you have... additional help with other attorneys that may have some expertise in those areas.

But you're also not on the high priority list either. If you had two dedicated, that's who's working for us all the time. If you're working for a firm, they might have 10, 15 different cases or whatever their load is working on it. And they just kind of get to you when they get to you, that kind of deal.

And also, what's driving the legal work? What's the uptick? What's driving it? For us?

Largely issues with planning and permitting and UDO largely for us. It's usually police matters for most municipalities, but not here.

Yeah, I mean- UDO issues. And if you think about it, we have, a lot of the legal time. I mean, we are spread out in lawsuits. That's something that we're managing through. And what we're looking at is in our operations, when I talk about the change in business practices, our operations, we need to make sure that our departmental operations and functions are being vetted properly so that we are complying with the law. And I think that's a big deal. When I talk to council members, I consistently make the statement that I cannot provide legal opinion because I don't have that training and education. Lorna can, some other external members can, and we need that access for our functions.

Can we at least have that kind of discussion before you put it out? I mean, have some internal discussions about both those positions to see what the most cost effective way is for us to handle those.

If I may, the quality of work between the contract and the staff has been debated. has been debated because years and years we had Marsha Dodson who was contract not an employee of the city and I felt that through as a result of different conflicts of interest it was better that we have a full-time attorney who didn't have any outside interest and I still believe that As far as the work product, the work product that you are anticipating or getting, it can be filled by either because it was done before. My concern was I thought we saved money, a lot of money, because I was looking around. I was on WASA at the time. I know what they were spending. And I was looking around, and it was a lot more money for part-time work. And they had a full slate of clientele still charging us for what we could have paid a full-time attorney. That was clear. So that part. But with this, I kind of look at... Councilmember Yonero's position. Because you can still get at what you're trying to get at. And it would give us an opportunity to see exactly how much of that you would be billing.

So with that, I'm in agreement. And I would just...

I know it's reappropriation is what we're talking about already, funding positions, but it's still an amount that is available for budget. I would transfer that to fund balance and then pull it out as needed. I would do the same thing for these other positions because I'm not convinced that we need these other positions, the engineer project manager. I'm just not convinced. And the downtown coordinator, I think there's a lot. Well, when I talk to council commissioners, specifically Tim Foster, I've talked to Commissioner Padgett, They are eager to work with us. I don't know why, what's the disconnect? They sound eager to work with us. There's a lot that can be explored, and we were on the cusp of doing that when Councilmember Lazar was here, and Commissioner Eichner, Commissioner Bright, Commissioner Buchanan, and Ron was there. We were making very good progress on things that we could do to partner on. And I feel right now that everybody has good intentions, but it's a little bit of a solo effort that we're operating from here. And I really would like to explore that. And I think we can do it by transferring the funding for these positions to Fund Balance. And then when we need it, we consult and we apply it. And I would do the same thing for this lobbying, $50,000, because I don't quite understand that. Because the lobbying is for... Military host cities advocacy. Some of us participated in the North Carolina League of Municipalities session that dealt with that. They really didn't talk about this in the form of a need. So I'm not sure if I'm unders—well, I know I'm not understanding this $50,000. I can see it in other areas, and I think that the city manager mentioned some of those other areas in a meeting I had on special projects that you might need to go to the legislature or go to D.C. on. But it could be pulled out of fund balance if it were transferred over. So that's my position.

I'm curious, going back to what you said a moment ago about the contract attorney. Mm-hmm. in that how much money was spent on a contract attorney. I'm trying to register that in my mind. What's going on here? Are you saying that we're not spending, we wouldn't spend that much on a contract attorney versus a staff attorney to assist?

Good point, good point. If the general theory is that you save money by having staff, I agree with that. But I was thinking that And this is maybe why we need more conversation. Councilman Yonero was telling me about a lot of time-consuming work with these body cam things, having to go to court over the body cam disclosures. That seems like something that could be kind of delegated to that function of the contract. And part of this, I think, we could benefit from more discussion from Lorna. But if you're just doing that, I think you could limit what you're doing with the contract attorney, and it wouldn't escalate to the cost of a full-time attorney. We would see that. But if it did, of course, it would make more sense to then have the full-time attorney. But I think transferring this money and exploring, I don't think that locks you into not having a full-time attorney. It's more like, let's test this from my point of view.

But if we approve with these positions in there, we could still have that kind of research. If we approve these positions, go ahead and prove the budget the way it's written and everything else, and then have some further dialogue about, is that a possibility?

What I was suggesting was transferring the money for this. I know that we're informed that it's not additional budget, but it is an amount of money that can be calculated that we can transfer to fund balance. And then nothing happens with this until we say so.

Let me see if I follow you on this, okay? We're saying transfer the money over to fund balance, but still have a discussion on it at some point. In other words, leave the positions where they're at. Don't fill them, but put the money on fund balance.

Yes.

Okay, once we establish a need. Yes.

It doesn't change the budget, it just moves to a different fund.

Just to clarify, you would end up approving a different budget or you would do a budget amendment at the next meeting in July and you would budget amendment and remove the revenues. Actually, you would probably reduce the fund balance appropriation in an amount that would be adequate with those positions. That's how you take that action. Other clarification, and back to Mr. Willingham's point on the staff attorney, is the staff attorney would also serve as a legislative liaison and a lobbyist for the military host cities. I'm not sure which conversation that Mr. Willingham's referring to in terms of what the ask has been. We've been working military host cities for the entire time that I've been here. One of the things that we're trying to do both federally and locally, is to receive a different allocation for funding. So, for example, we want a designation, federal grants and state grants, that would give us extra points in any grant process based on the fact that we're a military host city. What that would be, it's basically a revenue in lieu of, and that's what we're pushing for. It's what we've been working on for a solid two years. So when we talk about lobbying, originally we put that amount in there. For a federal lobbyist, the $50,000, as we talked about before, and then for the staff attorney position to be the state-level lobbyist, part of the challenge that we have on a lobbyist is not being one of many. Back to Mr. Willingham's point about working with a firm, that's a challenge that we see. So we utilize the efforts that we've been doing, both the mayor, Mr. Massey, and I, with the military host cities, to try and receive that additional allocation. It's a tough lift, but it's something that we're gaining some traction on. That goes back to Mr. Yonero's point that if we're trying to generate additional funding from different sources, this is one source we feel confident that can happen. It's why the council approved the military host city resolution a couple weeks ago at the council meeting. And one of the things that we're pushing forward is if that gives us two or three points on an application, if you think about our housing projects, that could be the difference in us receiving that grant funding. It could be water and sewer grants as well. It could be economic development type grants. So that's where that push is something that we just have to keep working on. I think this year we've seen some of our council members have been very effective in lobbying. It still doesn't mean that we're capturing everything that's happening right now, but there's a value there just in terms of that operation.

There's also a lot of folks at the state and federal level that unless they served and lived in a military host community, they don't get at all the impact of being a military host community. It comes with a wealth of benefits, but there are also challenges, and it's not challenges that the other municipalities face. So if we all get lumped into, you know, it's a round peg in a square hole kind of problem sometimes. Things that apply here are a little bit different than things that would apply in, you know, Durham or...

Yeah, that's the difference when we talk about host cities versus college host cities. We have different challenges than they have, and we've been very aggressive in joining together for our five communities to try and see how we can magnify our voice. I can tell you that since I've been here getting Fayetteville back into that dialogue, It's just happened. So Fayetteville was not an active partner in the military host cities. Now having them into the discussion and as active as they are, it's an incredible value add for us. And that's because, just like our mayor, they've said the same. We have to be more active in what we're trying to do, and maybe it'll be of benefit to our citizens. I have a question. So the staff attorney is to lobby. That's what we're adding. Part of the staff attorney would include lobbying. So you'll have legal support for departments. You'll have lobbying efforts. And you'll have police department functions. That's going to be a busy position. And that's at the state level.

So if we were to do that on a contract basis, you lawyer people here, as a contract attorney, are you charged for piece work by billable hours?

So generally what you're going to do is you're going to enter into a contract that says we will pay you a base rate as a retainer, basically to keep you on our staff, so to speak, and then an additional hourly rate. Now, those can change, right? There's some folks who will say, if you pay me a flat rate of this amount per year, I will be available for you in court every Monday. But those are incredibly rare. Most attorneys are going to be dividing their time between different courtrooms and doing different functions.

I can see that being rather expensive in the long run.

I think it would be very expensive in the long run.

Well, and most municipalities our size have multiple attorneys. I mean, even like for the county, for instance, I mean, they have a whole, yes, they have Brett, but they also have his whole firm, you know, that works for him and all those paralegals. It's not just him.

That's correct.

So, I mean, he has a whole force behind him where, you know, Laura, I think you're just kind of by yourself, aren't you?

So, I'm actually the only attorney in the top 30 most populous cities that I could find that is just a staff of one. So, a lot of folks will do outsourcing to an entire firm, sort of like the county does. The county has Mr. DeSantis' entire firm at their disposal. So, on a Monday, whenever they're doing body cam footage, it could be one of four different attorneys that appears in court on that Monday. But most folks are going to be in-house. generally have multiple in-house staff. I think, again, I'm the only one that I could find in a municipality around this size that is in-house, but only one in-house attorney. Those are not very common.

When we were doing interviews for the position that you ended up sitting in, many of the candidates had mentioned that they were surprised there was only one attorney because they came from a city that had four or five.

And we talked about it here in that process that we want to revisit that with council, but we wanted to have our city attorney on board before we revisit the discussion. And this is where we're at in terms of the staff time and the demand.

Well, we could kind of look at that anyway to see if it is a viable option, couldn't we?

We could look for sure.

I mean, I don't know what the... And so maybe what we do is approve these positions, but don't fund them and take the fund out of fund balance. After you go back, just like the city attorney or the second attorney, if you go back and you say, you know, it's going to be this much and it's going to be extremely expensive, then we go with at least have a pathway that we can go down.

If we make adjustments that would require the budget ordinance to change, then we'd have to... That's why I recommend the other plan.

If the council were to approve the budget ordinance as it is, then at the July meeting, we would have a budget amendment by council that would remove funding It doesn't impact the positions, but you would make the first budget amendment in July, and we would obviously not take any action until that point so that if council wanted the intent to be that, you would have a budget amendment so that if council were to move forward with the ordinance, you have the ordinance written and the documents prepared as you would, and then you can make that amendment at the meeting in three weeks.

I'll go with that because we have to have this budget approved by what? Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Yes.

We have until midnight tomorrow night. We'll come back tomorrow.

We'll live at 59. True.

Good morning, Dr. Clarkson. P.M. I just wanted to know, in time past, with the contracted attorneys, do we have a financial, or do we have a number on how much we've spent in

So this is the problem. It's been very ad hoc. So as we've needed outside counsel, we have hired outside counsel and it's been sort of done on a case-by-case basis while Mr. Carter was here. Some outside counsel is paid from neighborhood improvement services because they may have a legal issue come up and then suddenly we have a $15,000 bill and we have to find where in the budget we can pay for it. Some services may have been paid out through police. We say, okay, ALEs come and They're helping us with a case. We're going to hire the Goldsboro City Attorney to come in and do this. And then suddenly police has a bill for $22,000. There's always been these little pockets of places that aren't necessarily reflected in the city attorney's budget. And over the past year, I've actually worked very closely with Mr. Ray, and especially with our finance director, because it is something I feel it's important to have a centralized budget for legal fees. When the auditors come... They need to know what lawyers are touching which things so they can get accurate reports. And it's actually very harmful for the city to be looking through some of these things and saying, we don't know if there was outside counsel there. We don't know necessarily who to send the notice to to give us updates on. We could really pull every department, but it's been very strategic. I know on Mr. Ray's part to save money to say we could centralize this function and even use other functions of other positions like in police. So court liaisons and things of that nature handling subpoenas for the police department, that would take some of the pressure off the police officers if they have a legal person handling some of those issues as well.

So we've been spending the money, it's just been on the onus of the departments to pay for it. whereas we need to centralize it. Do you have that? And that happens often.

So as the attorney's talking about, we do that often. But in terms of transparency, it's not transparent that way. And the council member said, you already have these positions allocated. Why would you present this to the council in the budget? It's for transparency purposes. At any point based on the charter, the manager can reallocate staff within that fund and move those positions. But transparency matters so that you don't have a question mark when someone asks you about this position. So just like those expenses, every director sitting in here has probably found a line item where they've had to allocate funds to pay for a legal expense. But I can't tell you what that number is right now. Unfortunately, I can provide that later, but I don't know that number now. We'd sure like to know that number.

I can pull that. Make that a part of your record keeping process that we can track.

Well, in the future, we've actually changed that, Mayor. Everything will be transferred into a legal budget and then paid out of there. That's the goal for clarity and for tracking purposes. That's part of those operations that you just can't let it linger and you're pulling over here and over here and over here. It's not the scarecrow method of funding stuff. Yeah.

Or surprise bills, because we may have hired outside counsel to handle a case that at the end of the case, the outside counsel then sends us a bill. We didn't negotiate up front with outside counsel to say, to what extent are we going to pay you? Where is this money going to come from? We're really, I want to reassure you that we're really working hard and we've really worked hard over the past year to put this together. It's not just kind of an idea out of the blue. It really is because we do see this need based on all the other information we've been gathering. Has this ever come up during an audit?

No. Well, it kind of took me a little bit by surprise when we started looking because from what we knew, outside attorney fees were paid in legal from outside attorney fees. lines. The main reason that they do that is because from the audit perspective, the main thing that the auditor is trying to determine is if there are any pending lawsuits that may impact the city financially. So like some attorney fees, if it's HUD related, if it's Certain things in the police department wouldn't be an issue that they weren't paid out of outside attorney fees, but we really need to centralize that so that we can let the auditors determine so that we're not doing that. The auditors don't care about closing attorney on a piece of land. They care about an outside attorney that's doing work for us that may, there may be a settlement involved that costs the city a material amount. So I think that's why we've been okay to this point. But just because we all were on the same page with Lorna coming in and reviewing the outside attorney fees and knowing that there were some other cases that we were working on, we knew we had paid some attorneys and and started to look where we paid them from and realized it was in the department. So just so that we are making sure we have everything centralized and the auditors can see everything so that we're being transparent, that's why we need to make that change. And just to add to that, as far as the amount in total goes, that's been challenging because There's an outside attorney line, so that's easy when things get paid out of there. But if a department's paying it, it's usually paid out of a contractor professional line, which from an accounting standpoint is perfectly fine. That's what they are. But when they are in that line with all of the other contractor professionals, unless you know the name of the attorney, there's really not a way to search for that. So while we have been able to find some of it, there could be other things that we've paid attorneys for that are... We maybe could give an amount, but it may not be completely accurate.

I think we need a system that does document that.

Yes.

And that's where we're at now, Mayor. We know that we need to track it more effectively. The dialogue previously has been let's keep a department budget as low as possible, and if we have to pay things out of other people's department, then we do that. But that's not... Still coming out of this thing. It's not transparent for us, Mayor, and back to Dr. Washington's question. When you're looking at an audit, you want to see total expenses from a particular, not just a fund, but from an operation as well. And so legal expenses are going to go across multiple funds and multiple departments, but we have to have that streamlined so that it can be easily pulled up. That's why the budget books that we present now, we try and put all those items together. But there's still some areas that haven't been kept in that same lineup.

And to Mr. Carter's credit, he also trusted a lot of outside counsel that he'd worked with for several years. So to establish relationships with them that I hadn't necessarily established relationships with. And I'm just a little more of a control freak. And I like to be able to know every single bit of fees that are going toward an attorney for the city.

That makes a lot of sense. But going back toward what you said is, so we could approve 63 cents, approve the positions, but not the funding and go back with a...

You could approve, yes sir, you could approve, if council is ready with this budget ordinance, you could do that. And what I would tell you is no action would be taken on any of these, the funding for these three positions until the next council meeting. And if you requested to add a budget amendment or a discussion item on any of these positions, then we could discuss those at the next meeting or even the following workshop based on council's request, and we would not take action on hiring those positions or starting those positions until you can discuss at that meeting if that's what you ask.

Just a quick question, and it may be silly and frivolous, but we're not getting into a gray area here. Obviously, council has to approve the budget and has authority over the budget, but when it comes to hiring, we hire the city manager and the city attorney. Everything that falls below that typically is manager's responsibility, not council's direct responsibility. We're not getting across a line, are we, in managing the budget in this particular way?

Yes, so this, of course, we appreciate that counsel's so involved, right? That's great that counsel's so actively engaged in making sure that they're being good stewards of the public funds. But that is correct, and there's a reason why I've stayed silent on the attorney position as well, except at very strategic times and when asked. And that's because even Mr. Ray hires and fires everyone who isn't me, and that would include a second attorney. So it is definitely something that he's allocated under our charter, that authority. Mr. So Mr. Ray has allocated that authority to basically counsel gives him the money and then he assigns the personnel. She's the city attorney. I still work for you. Mr. Ray unfortunately is not allowed to fire me. He might wish to.

No, never. OK. We have to be careful where we are comparing to make sure we're comparing the apples and oranges.

And when you talk about the grad dissents, they're contracted. His whole office is contracted, right?

We, the equivalent of that is our full-time attorney and the contracts, all these contracts that you're talking about, that's the equivalent of that. We are doing the contracts. I would be very happy if we had all, our staff handled all legal matters and we had no contracts. But I don't think that's going to be the... It's not practical because there's some things that are... That's not going to be the result. So you're still going to have contract attorneys. So I just think we need to know, we need to scrutinize a little better what we're talking about this extra attorney to do. And I know attorneys do lobby, but I don't know about that.

And that's a good point, too, in the comparison, Mayor, because the county's the same. Brett Selms' office does not handle all the county legal services. They handle the majority of those, but they also have some other contracts based on that.

And there's certain requirements of a law firm or attorney that may rise above what... Right. Expertise. Expertise, I mean, is what I'm looking at. You know, where you would actually have to hire somebody again as a contract attorney.

Who else has a full-time city attorney or county attorney in any of the municipalities around here? Around here? Wilmington? No, no, I'm talking about in the county.

At Richland? I think most of them are contracted.

They're all contracted. So we've made one step in that direction of the full-time attorney. If you asked some of the people you probably mentioned today as a comparison, they'd probably tell you to get rid of the full-time attorney and just do all of the contracting.

I'm sure some people were that short-sighted. You know, it would think that way.

They may not face the number of challenges and issues that we're facing, either at the size we're at. We're not the same as Richland's or Swann's were. I think the county would tell you that. And they have a firm. We have one person. But we do have extra funds.

They have a firm in-house? No, it's all on contract. That's the point. They would tell you to do the same. By all contract. I don't know about that either.

The conflicts of interest piece you raised earlier was interesting, too. There would be you know, more opportunities for that and fewer with staff. But you're right. We're paying it one way or the other. It's just how do we pay it.

Okay, I'm good with it. Well, it seems like we could make a motion to do the 63 cents. And then I don't know how to frame what... Mr. Ray said, but...

I think it has to be two separate actions. We approve the budget tonight and then come back with a budget amendment next time.

But it seems as if the only thing that we're really tossing around, if I can use that word, is the staff attorney. Are we coming back? Are we considering the coordinator as well as the engineering project manager?

I think all those positions are needed, in my opinion. I mean, to have an engineer, I mean, that's a big thing for Wally and his group to have that. And then if we really want to focus on downtown, I think that's also important as well. I mean, if you want quality work, you can't just farm it out and say a little bit of everybody does a little bit here, but up here, you need someone that's focused on if you want to get it done properly.

That's what we've been doing now. We're at a point now where we're trying to focus people with the proper expertise on some of the issues. Like that project manager, it's intended to help NIS who have been managing some of their projects themselves, and they don't have some of the same expertise. you know, that a project manager has. And so, you know, we're trying to do more efficient, be more efficient in our operations. The larger we get, the more that you find yourself adding a position with that expertise, and that position serves the entire city.

Well, that efficiency will eventually save you money. I mean, it might not right out the gate, but as time goes on, you'll make that money back.

Slow is smooth. The smooth is fast. Mm-hmm.

Just to add on to this question, the project manager position, if we're going to be more aggressive, I still think we need to focus on six new builds a year in terms of houses. I think that's a goal that we have. It's an aggressive goal, but I think it also should include some of the remodels, and that's something that both Pamela and LaShawn have looked at this past year, and as we venture into that, Doing a remodel and a new build are two different functions. They're challenging, and I don't have that skill set. And so we have to find someone that can manage those projects. And so even in that job description, it's going to be different than what we're asking for for some of our other project managers. We're going to have to look for construction management experience in terms of housing, or we're going to be in the same spot. So back to Mr. Ganero's question, it's part of that review and analysis to make us more efficient. It's going to be the only way we can accelerate a build program unless... we go out and hire our own contractor and let that person stay on staff and that's what they do, but they're still going to have sums. So that's not something we're going to do. It's not something we're asking to do. I'm just saying in terms of the efficiency level, to reach that point of development, it's what's going to have to happen at some point.

If I make a motion to accept the budget at 63 cents, And then we move on with these three positions later in a workshop and have some more dialogue with those positions in the budget. And it would give us an opportunity to talk about how we make the best out of those dollars.

Yes, sir. And to go back to Mayor Pro Tem's comment, all you would need to do, Mr. De Niro, is send me the email and say, I'd like to have this discussion at the next meeting or the August workshop. I'm great with the August workshop. You'd say the August workshop? Yeah, I think the workshop's more appropriate for that. And you get that second, we'll add it on the workshop and we'll work together? I'll make that motion right now.

And I'll second you.

Ms. Marshburn, do you have the motion? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. I hope you see that. I think so.

Nikki, you second that? I do. Okay. Any further discussion? If you're not, all in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed? Okay.

Mayor, the second item is the, so it goes along with the budget option. If you recall, this is a nonprofit grant funding. At the last meeting, LaShawn gave the presentation. We do have the presentation in case there are questions from council, and we do have LaShawn here as well. So I believe Ms. Smith is the council member that said, let's move this out to we can consider the budget. So we're prepared for any type of presentation if you want that or questions for me, Terrell, LaShawn, or Pamela.

I move we go forth and approve the non-profit grant plan. And I'll second that. Oh, look at you. I'm going to give you a shoulder when we go back there. We have a motion and a second.

Motion and a second. Any discussion? Any further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye.

All opposed? Okay. Mayor, I just want to make one comment for you, adjourn please. Lorna sent out an email earlier. There was a question about the last council meeting that I did not attend. There was a question about the validity of the action taken by council. Lorna has opined on the action. She verified in that email that the City Council did not violate the open meetings law of the state of North Carolina and therefore that the action taken was valid. There were some questions that we've received to say the validity of that action. And then further, I spoke to Mr. Willingham earlier today and he requested that instead of utilizing the four Warren representatives as the committee that would work on the redistricting, if we can utilize an outside firm to put together that redistricting plan that would be submitted to the council for council to review and consider adopting. Based on staff's discussion, we would support that greatly, Mayor, and we would like to move forward with starting that process to vet and select a firm and bring that contract back to the council. There's not a formal action, it's just if you're good with that, I'd love to. You just need a consensus. I just need consensus informally to move forward, Mayor. And if you're not good with that, then I would ask that we put that on the next... I need a consensus on this.

All those in favor, go ahead with that. We'll get to work on it, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. That's all we have. All right. With that, I would entertain a motion to adjourn.