City Commission - Regular Meeting

window two ways. Okay, colleagues, we're all set. Nice to see uh chambers with some friends here to for this uh special meeting on this cold cold evening here in December. So, I am going to call this Kazoo City Commission Committee of the Whole meeting to order for Monday, December 8th, 2025. First order of business, roll call. Click Bing.

Commissioner Hess, present. Commissioner Hoffman, present. Commissioner Pradle, present. Commissioner Slayby, present. Commissioner Wilson, present. Vice Mayor Duncan here. Mayor Anderson, here. Thank you, Clerk Burling. Next, communications. Manager Moore. None. Mayor.

All right. Thank you. Well, this is uh committed the whole meeting and the focus of this meeting is uh to have really a public roll out of our city of Kaloo budget for 2026. It has been available on the website since uh at least the 1st of December, but this is our opportunity for all of us just to look at it together here and ask some questions. We're not taking any action on this. Uh this is really anformational and input session. First order of business is public comments. Is there anyone who would like to make a comment? Committee the whole comments are limited to two minutes. Please come forward. State your name and whether you live in the city. My name is Edward Nickerson. I live in the city of Kalamazoo. Uh for about a week or two after they had the incident down at the Talazoo Valley Museum, a lot of people were telling me that they had a waterline break and I told all of them people I was standing in front of the doors with a kid and I don't know if it was the fire marshal or somebody else came out and told me that They had a fire there. Maybe you could check to see what really happened. Seems like to me that resources from the city are spent on it. That's about all I have to say. Thank you. Yes. Next, please. Hello. MK. Um, yeah, thank you for

hosting this meeting. [sighs] Um, I was going through the, um, budget. Um, I didn't see the amount for the shelter, um, program. Um, which was concerning. That's one of the major reasons why I was here. Um, so, um, I don't know, is that on there now? I didn't check before I came if it was the number was on there, but it should have been on there. I think it's one of the biggest things that we need to be investing in our city. I think that we should find the funds within the budget, especially the police budget, which is like 45% and a lot of overtime and a lot of just kind of like community things that I community like investment that with police like policing things that I'm just like, do we really need to be doing those things? I mean, based on the O report, we need to be doing more like meaningful community engagement than just like super wasting money on like superficial cop things. Um um other than that, like I commend some of these programs. Um the home share program, I'm glad that's coming up. I know it's been in the works for like 2 years now almost. Um, but you know, it just it's just [sighs] it for what we're living in right now in the country and the housing crisis and everything, it doesn't really overhaul any of the real systemic issues. And at at the same time, I don't feel like there's a metric like is there a metric to measure like um how like the funding is like bridging gaps? Um, is there some kind of I don't know the share prosperity? It it does talk about like equity, all this stuff, but I don't feel like there's really something in the in the budget that really lets us know, hey, this is how we're overhauling and and and bridging this gap um this year, right? Because I feel like we need to start making strides. We need to start being intentional about that. We have systemic issues in this city, right? It's not only like, oh yeah, we need to fix housing. Housing has been bad for over 30 years. We're talking about big gaps and and and the budget's just not

intentional enough. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else in the chambers who'd like to take advantage of public comment?

Hi. Uh I am Albert. I live in Kalamazoo and Brigandi Bachet. I'm concerned that every time I walk around the city or drive around I say I see unhoused people uh out in the streets even during the night during the winter right now which is kind of worrying and I think like a big chunk of the budget should go to fix that very obvious problem that it's very visible and does affect a lot of people that's it thank Thank you. Anyone else who'd like to take advantage of this public comment period? Seeing no one, thanks to those of you who uh did come and make an effort to provide us with a comment. And now we are working uh heading towards our work of our work session here. Manager Moore.

Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and City Commissioners. It is Thank you. Okay. Thank you, mayor, vice mayor, and city commissioners. It is our pleasure to present the FY2026 budget for your consideration. Having not been a part of the extensive work that went into assembling this proposal, I want to say how impressed I am. This budget reflects a thoughtful, responsive, creative, creative, and fiscally sound approach to implementing your vision and meeting the needs of our community. I want to express appreciation to the 55th city commission for its vision, leadership, guidance, and direction, and continued support throughout the process, throughout the development of the budget. and also thank you the 56th city commission for your careful and deliberate review of this proposal. [clears throat] I would also like to acknowledge the many individuals whose efforts shape this document. First, I would like to recognize former city manager Rissma for his leadership in this work. Members of the core budget team, Laura Lamb, Rebecca Kick, David Marquat, Steve Venci, Melissa Fuller, Stephanie Radat, and Colin Hall H Hallsberger. Our peer review members, Carolyn Williams, Tanya Huitt Smith, Danielle Bacham, and Chelsea Downs with Herbert Herbert Hubbert. I extend additional thanks to the entire cabinet and key budget personnel across the city. without whose effort and dedication this product would not be possible. So this afternoon you will hear from a few members of the core budget team. Department directors are also here to answer questions should you have them. If you have additional questions after

tonight, we ask that you would reach out to us in the city manager's office and we'll make sure we get you the information that you're looking for and share it with the entire city commission. So tonight begins the opportunity for public input, but this is not the last opportunity. Again, we will have the public hearing on the 15th and for your final consideration on um January 5th. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to staff so that we can begin our conversation. C O Lamb Welcome, CEO Lamb. Thank you, Mayor, vice mayor, commissioners. It's great to be here tonight. Um, so, as uh, city manager Moore mentioned, uh, we've got multiple opportunities for engagement with regard to the budget. You can see where the budget proposal can be accessed. Um, also where there are additional opportunities for comments to be made throughout this process before the January 5th meeting. which we hope we'll be able to get a budget approved. There's a delay. We'll see. It was working, Scott. I know you checked it. It's probably easier. All right. Okay. Let's try this again. So, to start start off, we want to do a look back. And this really gives us a sense of understanding, you know, how did the 2026 budget get developed? This timeline shows that we always start with Imagine Kalazoo 2025, our current vision. Um, you can see at the beginning what inputs inform this budget. You've got Imagine Kalazoo, you've got the national community survey, you have the retreat that we held with the previous city commission. These inputs then help inform departments proposed budgets and their special requests. And as a part of that evaluation process, the special budget team looks at alignment with Imagine

Kalazoo and alignment with the commission priorities. as a part of that process. So, a little bit of background on the National Community Survey or the NCS. So, the city conducts a community survey every two years. The most recent one was conducted earlier this year in January. This was the seventh time that we did the National Community Survey and we do this to gauge resident perceptions on our their their life in Kalazoo, government services, policies, programs, etc. NCS uses a scientific survey that allows us to take a representative sample of Kazoo. The survey used a probability sample of 2800 households. It yielded a 10% response rate which was about 281 u responses. Now the key to this is that those results are then statistically significantly weighted against our profile based on census and American community survey. that allows us to understand with about a 95% confidence rate and a 6% uh margin of error what we think the general population thinks about our services, about our programs. In total, over 600 communities use NCS. This allows us to not only benchmark against ourselves yearover-year, but also against these communities to understand where we might fall in the rankings. So this table here it shows the basically the resident's p perception in terms of quality of services and in terms of importance. So you can see in terms of quality, education, arts and culture, health and wellness rising to the top. In terms of importance, you can see safety, economy and utilities as some of the most important things that our residents feel or that our residents rank. Now this one here actually lets us look at how quality of services may not correlate with the importance that residents place. So you look at the gap

between quality and importance and what we can see here is safety, economy and utilities are the top three where people feel that these are very very important programs or projects initiatives but they feel the quality is lacking and we see mobility kind of coming up as the fourth. Whenever we go through the national community survey, they really try to have us focus on these elements where there's where there's a gap between resident perception of what's most important and their perception of the the quality of the services we're delivering. These community survey results were shared in depth with the commission at the retreat in an effort to have community survey voice inform the prioritization. Just as a side note about the community survey results themselves are being incorporated into imagine Kalamazoo 2035. We also had departments really try to dig into the results to be curious about where there might be a disconnect or a difference between resident perception and maybe staff's perception of our work. In some cases, we've had departments identify where they're going to target communications when there's a feeling like we really are doing a lot in this area. How might we communicate that better? How might we be more targeted about those improvements and future plans to improve? We're also working on a data visualization project so that we're able to take perception of residents, which is reality, but also provide some context of data, whether it's investments, total dollars, or as an example where we understand that that our community is still looking for greater perception of safety. We also have some really good data coming out of public safety that suggests there are some great trends in our crime data. We're not trying to negate community perception at all, but we're trying to provide some context. So, we'll we'll have some time to talk about that at a later date. So, in terms of the commission retreat that was held in March, there's some prep work that many of you are familiar with. For the past three years, we've used a gom model, goals, outcomes,

strategies, and measures. Leading up to the retreat, we communicate with all the commissioners and we asked them to prioritize the top five outcomes that they'd like to see us use in developing the 2026 budget. You can see the results of that prioritization here with affordable housing, community prosperity, decreasing violent crimes, especially among youth, economic development, and then support for the unhoused. So at the retreat itself, we have staff come forward with both existing strategies and potential strategies that they feel could help us achieve the outcomes prioritized by commission. In the retreat itself, we have staff and commission going through a pretty challenging exercise to evaluate those strategies based on impact and difficulty. At the retreat, the commission identified these seven strategies you see at the bottom of the slide for us to be able to consider in the 2026 budget and beyond. So in these slides, you're going to see the imagine Kalazoo goal. You're going to see the prioritize outcome and then you're going to see the strategies and measures that came out of the retreat. For this first slide, safe community, we have mentoring, interventions, mediations, and city programs for atrisisk youth and their families. And this really speaks to an ongoing work, the collaboration between public safety, Kalu public schools, police athletic leagues, and community partners to really go out and make sure that our youth know how many incredible programs exist in this community to support them. We also under safe community had the installing the overt pool mounted cameras in the downtown and the north side cultural business district. This work was actually completed in 2025 and staff is going to be seeking additional funds in 26 to look if they can expand that program. In terms of share prosperity, I talked about home share. Heard a comment earlier. This is a model where you've got one or two more unrelated people living together. This can generate

income for a homeowner. It can promote companionship and it really can create expanded opportunities for housing. Now, staff are currently working uh with a home share feasibility study, and there are funds within the housing development fund designated for a launch if that feasibility study proves to be favorable. You'll also see here um is the unhoused support. And so, this 2026 budget proposes to continue $500,000 for unhoused support for emergency shelter during extreme weather. Now, the budget document can be very difficult to navigate. Um, this is being recommended out of Foundation for Excellence funding and that can't be viewed on the special revenue fund page. Continuing on with Share Prosperity, we have critical code repair. This is partnering with community homeworks to assist low-income households in preserving their homes and making very critical repairs. There's 135,000 included in the proposed budget for that. We also see Bridges to Career Opportunity. This is a partnership with the North Side Association for Community Development to amplify their existing programming particularly around workforce development and financial coaching. So this works with their existing programs but is looking to provide additional support to be able to magnify the impact. Lastly in economic vitality um we've got invest in Kazoo entrepreneur networks or Kaen in the capital consortium. This work is really trying to help entrepreneurs who face barriers to traditional banking access the capital that they need launch grow or to per or to acquire their businesses. Thanks to our shared prosperity coordinator Kevin Ford, work has already started this year on the capital consortium program. Mr. Ford was able to secure a grant through the international city managers association for us to join their economic mobility cohort. This is a national cohort which Kazoo has the opportunity to participate. In addition to the grant covering our our involvement in the cohort, it also

provided funds to support KZEN to start the work of relaunching the capital consortium. This means works already started. So far, a dozen banks, credit unions, community development, financial institutions have been engaged. Financial reps have been invited to committees. There's been presentations made to the community reinvestment act to try to get their support and really try to make connections to local banks. The e the ecosystem, the entrepreneur support organizations have been engaged to strengthen the launch. And there's also been a landing page established with the two committees, access to capital and education with history and information for interested parties. Now, I'd like to introduce Deputy City Manager Rebecca Kick and David Markwart, and they're going to dive into some of the key aspects of the 2026 budget. Thank you, co Lamb, and welcome Rebecca and David.

Thank you, mayor, vice mayor, commissioners. Good evening. [snorts] Um, so during the commission budget session, of course, we discussed Imagine Caloo 2025 and we discussed it for probably the last time. We're now on our pathway to Imagine Caloo 2035 for the next budget session. So as we wrap that up, we're really proud of the work that we've been able to accomplish through Imagine Helmsu 2025 and the priorities that the commission is funding in 2026. So these priorities crosscut many of the 10 strategic goals that are in Imagine Calu 2025 and uh DCM Markart and and myself will be highlighting those proposal strategies. You did hear from some of them from uh COO Lamb as well. But just to highlight the housing development fund which we fondly call the HDF uh that fund supports affordable housing opportunities through three different strategies. So the full amount will cover mixed income multifamily gap financing as well as housing rehabilitation and appraisal gap and rental subsidies for infill housing. Additionally, the home share program funding is also included in that HDF line item. That's why you don't see it in uh a separate line item on the sheet that you have. So I just wanted to call that out that it's in that HDF line item. Again, uh CO Lamb talked about our commitment to keeping people in their homes funded through critical code repairs. We know that those code repairs can allow people to stay in their homes longer and that's why it's so um important that we continue to fund those uh continuously. The bridges to career opportunities is a model developed by the local initiative support corporation in partnership with

the north side association for community development. This will this funding will establish the bridges to career opportunities center. BCO is a nationally recognized framework that integrates foundational education with workforce training and bundled services to help adults with low incomes achieve financial stability and career advancement. These services include contextbased adult based basic education, occupational training, career coaching, financial counseling, and access to income supports, which we know are all very critical to raising um the wages of people that are in our community as well. [clears throat] Another program that we have supported for several years is foreclosure prevention. Between 30 and 80 tax foreclosures occur each year in the city of Kalamazoo, especially in our core neighborhoods that surround our downtown due to financial emergencies brought on by medical bills, spousal debts, or other emergencies that can cause loss or reduction of income. The goal is to reduce or eliminate uh these causes of annual tax foreclosures. And the program allows the county treasurer to assist owners experiencing a one-time qualifying event with financial assistance to avoid the foreclosure and retain their homes. Over the past 5 years, the economic development team has also partnered with the United Way of South Central Michigan to administer the Kazu microenterprise or the KG funding grants. This program was created to provide uh grant relief to small businesses and entrepreneurs in the city of Kalamazoo uh during COVID. And we've continued this program this next iteration of the program. While we plan to continue offering the $5,000 amount of grants that we have been doing

in the past, we're also going to increase those to $10,000 to be able to support the next level of entrepreneur growth. So seeing and learning from the past uh KMAG programs and really expanding on that and understanding that sometimes 5,000 is not quite enough. We need to boost that. So we're hoping that we will fund 20 or more establishments uh with those funds this time. Uh we have neighborhood and uh planning grants as well. the amount for planning this request to support the neighborhood planning effort that will follow the approval of the Imagine Helm Zoo 2035 master plan. And so this will help three neighborhoods uh do planning and outreach activities and include outreach items to be able to kick off those plans. The capacity building request is for a small amount of funds to support neighborhoods that are not within the core neighborhoods or and do not receive general funding from the city. But this will give them some starting dollars for us to be able to engage and um help those uh neighborhoods that are a little bit more fledgling. Demolition funding is also something that we have done on a continual basis because many of the homes that experience fire uh blight in particular cannot be uh we can't use CDBG funding when it's an ineligible option but yet uh those buildings still we need to be very responsive in cleaning those up. So, we've requested the additional assistance from you in order to help either demolish uh three to four buildings about 15,000 or so per demo. Um otherwise, the the fire blighted

buildings tend to remain there for much longer um than they should. So, that funding has been really um wonderful to have as a gap funding. And then there are improvements in Milan Park and Spring Valley Park of over $500,000 that would be invested. And um you're going to hear a lot more about the significant street improvement budget increase. Um obviously this really goes back to that NCS National Community Survey information that CO Lamb was talking about. Again, the perception of our roads not um being to the quality that they need to be yet the importance for us to fix those roads is very high. And so showing that we can initiate more funding towards that and obviously this is with a lot of significant state help um that we can start to turn the tide on that and I'll leave it to you David. Thank you, DCM Kick. Uh good evening, mayor, vice mayor, and commissioners. It's a privilege to be here with you this evening. Uh another way in which we are uh finding success within Kalamazoo is ensuring that our young people have good access to um opportunities to thrive within our community. And a number of things that you'll see within our proposed 2026 budget include things like our superrec program at all things possible. Uh in our super wreck program, uh we've got nine weeks of free summer camp programming of course that uh we offer Kalamazoo uh youth and that is offered at five sites across the city of Kalamazoo. This is really remarkable for a city of this size and I know draws in hundreds of uh young people uh every season. Um the uh the all things possible program also is a really nice way in which to uh prohibit the summer slide, if you will. um ensuring that there's a good transition from middle

school to high school opportunities through that programming. Of course, the uh partnership with my city kesa is another uh really important opportunity to uh employ young people ages 14 to 21 and we'll continue to support that effort uh through the FY26 budget. uh in our youth action council and counselor and training programs. Uh we attract roughly 30 youth leaders uh providing them opportunities to uh grow and learn and and lead within the uh organization uh specifically within the parks and recreation department. uh in addition to a youth advisory board and providing them opportunities to lead in really unique ways and really important ways that will uh uh um help establish their their uh strength moving forward uh here in Kalamazoo. And then the police academy league also um we've got a really great mentorship and relationship building program that attracts uh close to 2,000 individuals on an annual basis. So we're really pleased to be offering that up in our 26 budget as well. Uh in we are also focused on ensuring safety and well-being. Um and specifically that has some things to do with our infrastructure. You heard a little bit about this through director Baker and his presentation on our water rates uh last week. Uh but we will be investing $38 million in federal funds u into the Arcadia Creek through the protect grant. Uh this is a really important storm water infrastructure improvement that will pull 60 acres of land out of the uh flood plane in addition to 70 homes and buildings that will be removed as well. U you heard a little bit about our progress on the lead service lines as well from Director Baker. We will be investing $6 million $6 million uh through the FY26 budget. Uh and again that will help us uh significantly make progress on uh lead service line replacement to the tune of about 1,200 uh service lines uh in the FY26 budget season. We'll be making

improvements of course through capital improvement plans uh for uh KDPS facilities and equipment upgrades. And then of course uh as you heard from Director Baker uh investing in our water and wastewater improvements as well. And then finally, we uh look to uh create a stronger city organization. Uh we recognize that our strength is in our diversity and so we will be building uh uh some new DEI conference and training opportunities with the county of Kalamazoo starting in the fall of 2026. We will be embarking on some really important and much needed uh improvements to city hall. Uh we are under contract right now with uh architectural engineering firm to begin those studies so that we can create better accessibility into and throughout city hall while also accommodating our workforce in a in a healthier way. Um this commission and the previous commission has also adopted a number of budget requests uh for us to make improvements to our cross town facility. Uh this will continue to accommodate uh public safety teams but also accommodate uh community planning and development, our communications team and uh uh internal service departments as well. And then in FY26, we will be embarking on a compensation study for the MBU uh NBU staff class. Um this will help us ensure that we are being competitive and and uh remaining uh a a strong force within within the region and across the country as well. So at this point in time I will turn it over to our esteemed uh CFO Steve Asenzi.

Thank you David and welcome Steve.

Good evening Mayor, vice mayor, commissioners. I'm going to take you through some of the numbers behind a lot of the projects and uh different things that you just heard about what we're doing with [snorts] this budget. Um so for starters, this budget is a decrease of 11.4% from last year. Um majority of that coming in our capital plan. Um so roughly it's $54 million decrease year-over-year. If you remember, last year we had a significant um project with our drinking water state revolving fund of 110 million. Um obviously that's a one-time type of item. However, we still have a robust capital plan being put in front of you that keeps funding at a very high level for it. And then just kind of going through some of the highlights here. Um, you know, the budget maintains a millage of 12 mills for city operations. Um, this is decreased from the 19 mills um that the city is able to levy thank and thanks to the FF's continued funding for that. It also budgets 1.8 mills for solid waste. um includes 711 full-time positions and six part-time positions. And then here we have the different buckets from the FFE.6.6 million going toward tax reduction, 5.1 million towards budget stabilization, and another $5 million in aspirational projects. This year, we're happy to report that we're expecting increased funding to our local and major streets programs. um the state with their budget um rework some of the how the gas tax works for road funding. We're expecting a rough roughly 33% increase to those funding levels which will help support the increased capital plan and operations going forward. We're also creating a new building inspection fund to carry out state building code inspections. That work had previously been reported in our general fund. We're now transitioning out to a special revenue fund where it will be self- sustaining and it'll have a fund balance that will allow it to be flexible and more reactive to changes as

permits. You know, if we have large building projects like we do right now, we're able to kind of increase um funding as we go because it's got its own funding versus competing against all the other general fund projects. And this this budget also maintains a balanced general fund over the five years. And I as I kind of mentioned that, you know, the 2026 budget does have a deficit of $1 million. Um that has been part of our five-year plan for a number of years. Roughly 750,000 of that is was has been planned from day for years. 250,000 of that is that transfer for that building inspection fund I just mentioned. But then as you see here over the five years, we we plan to have revenues catch up to expenditures. And then along with this, we maintain our um compliance with our internal fund balance policy of 15% of operating revenues um in our fund balance. Um so you can see here where we have a slight um surplus at the moment. Compared to that policy, we're still under the 20%. Anytime we go above 20%, we allocate that to toward one-time costs. Otherwise, we maintain a little bit of a buffer there to allow for these years like 2026 where we have to have a little bit of a deficit without having to cut services. Our general fund revenue is expected to increase 1.2% to 86 million. Um as you look there you see the breakdown largest share of our budget is comes from our property taxes with the next largest portion coming from the FFV and other revenue and then also you know followed up with state grants and revenue sharing and then other charges for services. And I mentioned property taxes being the largest part. You know, we're quite aware that there has been a lot of discussion, you know, publicly, nationwide, sta, statewide about, you know, the amount of property taxes that are out there. Um, as you look at

typical city of Kazoo resident, you know, roughly 47% of their tax bill goes towards education between the state education fund, K resa, school debt funding, other um millages there. So if you look at your tax bill, you can see all those millages. And I just wanted to bring up for you know just public knowledge that roughly 41% of our millages are extra voted. That means that at one point in time they will come up for renewal um and it will be up to the voters to renew those millages. Um so and those millages are specific towards providing specific services um in the in the area. So just a little bit of education as we look at our property tax bills every year. [clears throat]

And then we're looking at our general fund expenditures increasing 2.35% to 87 million. Majority of our general fund goes towards personnel as we're providing services to our community. Then we have other services and charges which is which create is comes from software outside contractual utilities um and other professional services that the city needs to in order to run to supplement the services we can provide internally ourselves. And then just kind of looking here at our general fund by department, you know, public safety is our largest um portion of our general fund at 47%. You know, historically as we've looked at other communities, it's not always the easiest comparison. Um but when you add up, you know, police, fire, EMS services, and other communities, it typically adds up to around 55 to 60%. So we do recognize a general cost savings by having public safety allinone. And then I would also like to just kind of mention here, you know, budgets for these different departments can fluctuate from year to year. Um, it had been reported that the parks budget decreased $20,000 this year. That decrease was made up of a few things. We had some one-time projects in our 2025 budget that did not carry forward to 2026. We also had um some programming for our holiday um parade and other holiday services that it just depends on the time of year of when we recognize that. you know, as we secure that funding is when we recognize it. So, it was in our 2025 budget due to timing. We did not have that funding secured as of yet, but when that funding become secured through a grant or other donation, we will recognize that as that comes in as well. And then just kind of getting into a few of our budget challenges. Um, this year, the state of Michigan did not approve their budget till October 7th, you know, and that's at the time where we're trying to pull all of this together and create our budget book and get everything done. and the state budget has a significant impact on what we can do through our the various revenues that we count on through the state. Um a

couple of the changes that happened this year is the state changed how they account for gasoline taxes. They're increasing the standard gas tax. However, to offset that, they removed the sales tax and gas. The sales tax used to have a revenue sharing component that would come to our general fund. Um so through that change the general fund saw a decrease of about 350,000. Um and then another change that the state made as well was in the 2025 budget there was a public safety trust fund created by the state. They removed that in the 26 budget and they replaced it with a public safety revenue sharing component. That revenue sharing component came in roughly $700,000 less than what we were anticipating based on the trust fund. So these were all things that we had to adjust to kind of at the 11th hour for preparing our budget. And then as we see here, our operating revenues increased 2% which sounds okay. However, it's falling behind general cost increases where the CPI is expected to be around 2.8% for the year. So all those challenges kind of build up and we have to find solutions. We had, you know, every department provided some cuts to their future plans um as we prepared the general fund budget. And then, you know, the biggest place where we took this from was looking at where else we have extra excess funding potentially. The city has historically contributed 3.5 million with its, you know, partners. Um the city has a shared retirey healthcare plan with CCTA. between the city, the water wastewater funds and the CCTA. We contribute 3.5 million to that fund every year. That fund has now been over 100% funded for the last 2 years. So it's a place where we look at going from an area of scarcity because just four or five years ago was at 40% funded to a place of excess. And also our retary healthcare plan is a closed plan. So we're kind of moving into a new phase of how do we

manage this plan? [snorts] On the chart up above, the blue line represents, you know, if we were to maintain the $3.5 million funding. The blue line represents what would happen in that trust fund over the next 20 years. And that's per our actuarial report. The orange line is where we would anticipate to be as we reduce this contribution from 3.5 million down to 1 million. it still maintains a strong fund balance in our um OPAD trust fund and kind of and ensures that we can still continue to offer those benefits and maintain the benefits that we've promised to our city retirees. Um so this is you know one of those areas where we can move from scarcity to surplus and then also ensure that we're utilizing as much funding today as we can for our community that's here today. Um I mentioned the number of positions in the budget before. We are requesting 14 new positions um that will add to core services for the city. Of those 14, only two are funded by the general fund and that's our labor labor relations specialist and foyer administrative assistant. Um we've seen significant uptick in the need for both of those positions particularly in our FOYA as we've seen the FOYA cases more than double in the last few years. Um, continuing on, we have some positions for our local major streets. Those are largely made possible due to that increased funding I mentioned from the state earlier so they can continue to do carry out the um increased capital plans and day-to-day work of our streets. We're also adding two positions in our solid waste fund that will help clear litter, trash, and debris throughout the city's rightways. And then we have positions in our water and wastewater funds. Um, these positions are funded through the water wastewater rates which director Baker presented to you last week. Um, these will continue to help support the ongoing services in those funds. And then through our downtown economic

growth authority, that's one of the component units of the city. We work contractually with them to provide staffing. They've requested additional staffing as they start to see their revenue increase. And so that this position then would be worked through an agreement with the downtown economic growth authority for the city to provide additional staffing to them and they would pay for that. Stepping into our special revenue funds. Historically we've shown you totals of our special revenue funds. This year we're bringing in just the operating amounts in our special revenue fund. I have a number of slides later where we'll go through all of our capital plans. Um but we felt that this would be a little more impactful to show just the operation portion. Um so we see here the diff you know a number of the different special revenue funds that we have presented. Largest being major streets foundation for excellence with the aspirational funding. um other special revenue funds which include excuse me um our Kazoo Municipal Golf Association, Cemetery Fund, the building the building department fund for inspections I mentioned again earlier um drug enforcement historical commission and blade abatement. So those funds all add up to total about 5.7 million. And then we have our solid waste fund which is funded through our millillage of 4.7 million, local streets at 4.3 and then um additional community development at 2 million. And then stepping into our enterprise funds, we have our water, wastewater, and parking funds. These are funds that rely upon the charges for services that they can derive through their operations. There's no general fund component to any of these funds. um they are purely rate based or which they're purely rate based for all three of them. Um you know looking at our wastewater roughly 49% of that 50 million is related to treatment and other related and related activities to treatment for our wastewater. Um the

water system is split between a few different areas. Um most notably water supply and treatment and also water distribution. So that's how the water gets from one place to another and gets to your house eventually. And then stepping into our capital plans, I mentioned we see a significant decrease compared to last year. However, looking at our overall trend, we're still providing a very robust capital plan that is still near all-time highs for spending, which you know is to maintain city operations, maintain city infrastructure. And then I just want to note here that these capital plans can also be found either in the budget book or we have them separate if you go to kazoo city.org. org/budget. Um, we're continuing to invest 40 nearly 43 million into our water system. Um, continuing with POS compliance, system reliability improvement, lead service line replacements, and uh, treatment station improvements as well. The wastewater treatment system also includes 26.2 million in in funding. That is a significant decrease compared to historical amount of projects in that fund. Um you know director Baker has some presentations coming up. We [clears throat] are kickstarting a project related to um solids handling and how in that process um that that program will or the excuse me that project will in the long term improve our our um environmental responsibility and also reduce ongoing operating costs by pre-treating some of the waste before it goes out to a landfill. And then here's where we have a large increase in our planning. We have 56.3 million invested into our local major streets. Of that total, 46 million is coming through outside sources largely

through state and federal grants. Um so again, taking advantage of those partners that we can and improving our system as much as we possibly can with the dollars that we have on hand. Um the goal of this is also is to maintain and improve our paser ratings. And so that's the pavement surface evaluation rating. It's a visual inspection done of the roads. Um MDOT has, you know, carried this out for a number of years. And so working towards improving that entire um street conditions and then we're looking at increase or continue investment into 2.8 million into our general and parking CIP. Um mostly we've talked about a number of these programs already tonight. The mill and park improvements um safety improvements over at Homer Striker Field um KDPS building maintenance equipment and software um and record software for them as well as that becomes a more and more important part of our day-to-day lives and also fleet heavy equipment. And then just kind of a summary of where all the funding comes from. Roughly 57% will be from bonds and reserves that we have on hand. $5 million from a drinking water state revolving fund bond which has favorable interest rates and often principal forgiveness as well. Um $2.2 2 million from jurisdictional transfer which are funds that we agreed to with the state I want to say eight seven eight years ago where we took over some of our downtown streets network so we can um program it as we see best fit and then they provide us funding to help to maint to ensure that that was maintained for the first decade um and then intergovernmental which as I mentioned that is your state and federal grants that we're bringing in as well and so at this point I will turn it back over to you mayor for discussion and questions.

Uh thank you so much CFO Vency. I appreciate that. So commissioners, this is obviously just an overview and we've had the budget book in our possession for a while. So this is a good time for us to go through things that uh we may have found uh not clear in the budget book or questions that we have, specific questions for anyone who's here. Uh but do I do first of all just want to say thank you once again to everyone on the city team who's worked to put this together. Uh you can uh basically take an hour or two and and summarize this but this is the result of hundreds of hours of work uh collecting input uh working through department by department and uh giving us what is required which is a balanced budget here uh in the state of Michigan. [snorts] questions. Commissioners, Commissioner Slaybe.

Yes. Thank you, staff. So, upon reviewing the proposed budget as is laid out on the website, when you look at the other funds, so for example, insurance fund, DEGA, brownfield, NCBDA, and even the special revenue funds in the first section, those pages are blank. Could you share more about why those are blank? Why we don't have any numbers there? Just so that the public can understand if that is incomplete, if there's still pending data, or that it was intentionally left that way.

Um, we're going to have to look into that. I don't believe they're blank. They're not intended to be. Um, last time I reviewed them, they were not blank. So, we'll have to take a look at that and get back to you on that. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. Other questions? Commissioner Slay.

Yes. Um, so I was curious with the GOSM model, uh, why we didn't consistently apply that across all goals. So it looks like we pretty much have very specific measurable targets for each of these goals. One could argue the launch of the home share model is a specific one. We either do it or not as a pilot program. But on our last goal with e economic vitality, it it's very vague. Increase funding and programming development aimed at filling gaps in existing network. Increased number of businesses supported. It doesn't say number of businesses or a percentage increase. So why is that the case for that one? uh compared to all the other ones where we have very specific measurable targets.

Certainly. So I think um certainly with the GOSM I would say the measures can often be the hardest part for us. Um in the case of that one you have the goal of helping entrepreneurs that have had access to capital but because you're talking about a relaunch there was not an ability to really drill down to the details. So I certainly can acknowledge in many ways the area where greater metrics, more specific metrics were needed, but the way that it was phrased is that we want to be able to launch the capital consortium. The thought being that as part of the launch and the engagement, you would then be able to develop and track more detailed metrics. So we're simply saying that for the economic vitality which has been decided a priority for this community that we are only going to say that we've been successful by simply putting in place this network versus having specific measurable targets to understand if we are indeed filling these gaps for entrepreneurs.

I now understand your question better. So as part of the retreat that economic vitality was the outcome and then we went through and prioritized strategies that particular strategy was the one that was prioritized. That's not to say that therefore that is the one and only strategy related to economic vitality that's going to be um implemented in 2026 but we had uh probably 25 or 30 strategies that were put up relative to the outcomes that were prioritized. So there were other economic development strategies there. They just didn't get prioritization. Does that answer your question?

Yeah. I guess it just still seems inconsistent. I mean, even just before that under share prosperity with the bridges to career opportunities initiative, you know, we have it very clearly stated that we aim to have 50 residents receiving bundled services. So I guess you know I don't see why we couldn't have something under here that's very specific measurable by saying you know we are going to contact 50 businesses 100 businesses just based on staff capacity and what we've been doing over the last 5 years and I think I would love to see something like that so that when we say we are successful in these goals that we can actually speak to those measurable targets like we're doing across the other goals um that have been set as priorities by the by the commission. Point well taken. I think step one is launch the capital consortium. We hope to be able to check that box. What I definitely hear from you is in doing so, we want to have more specific measurables such as number of businesses engaged or entrepreneurs engaged or ideally we're able to report out how much capital has actually been obtained through the consortium. So, we'll make a note of that. Thank you.

I'll let I'll let everyone else have a turn. Okay. Commissioner Slay, Vice Mayor Na, did you have a question? Yeah, if I may. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. I just wanted to respond to Commissioner Slayy's earlier comment. So, we did just pull up those websites. Sometimes you just have to give them an extra minute to load or just reload them. Um, I know I pulled one up. It looked blank. I reloaded it. It came right up. So, those are active.

Okay. I will say I I did pull it up when you said that it was there. I was able to pull it up on my desktop, but I still can't pull it up on either of my mobile devices. So, I'm just, you know, if there was a message on there in the text saying, you know, please wait that there may be, you know, a delay in the data downloading because again, I've tried this several times on mobile devices and I haven't seen it. So, I'm thinking about our residents and if they, you know, if they go on there and they they don't see that there's at least a note saying that there may be a delay in the in the data downloading that they may be frustrated and not understand why it looks incomplete. Understandable. Totally agree.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Mostly questions uh about public safety. So, do we have somebody that can speak to that here? Yes. Okay. Um so, I see uh public safety taking up almost, you know, half of the budget. would you be able to speak to response times, outcomes, uh, etc., so that the public knows what we're getting for our dollars?

Sure. Thank you, Vice Mayor, commissioners. Uh, yeah, be happy to answer those questions because it is a significant investment and we recognize that. And as you saw from the surveys, it's also a very important need for the community to have a safe community. And uh, I will tell you that um, we are a very busy department with that investment. Uh year to date, we have responded to 1828,57 calls for service. Again, it's 128,057 calls for service year to date. Um we have responded to um a little over 340 uh fire calls and around 8,520 medical calls. So, a very busy department. And um the thing I'm very encouraged about [snorts] is our crime stats are really trending in a great direction. and uh co Lamb kind of alluded to that and [clears throat] I have some great numbers to share that I'm going to be sharing publicly here soon year-to- date numbers, but we are down um 16% from last year in part one violent crimes. Um but we're also down 15% in violent crimes from two years ago. We're down 29% in violent crime from 5 years ago. And we're even down 10% in violent crime from where we were 10 years ago, which I think is a very significant trend. Same with property crimes. We're down 12% for the year, down 26% from two years ago, we're down 38% from 5 years ago, and we're even down 16% from 10 years ago in property crimes. So, those are all very encouraging. Uh, the the other thing that's been a city commission priority. Um, and we appreciate the support of the commission to invest in public safety personnel and technology to make us more effective, but gun violence has been a number one concern in our community. And uh we are down this year 23% in assaults with firearms from where we were last year. Um but we are down 36% from 2 years ago and we are down 49% from where we were 5 years ago. So um it's very encouraging to see that the strategies and the investment is paying off. Homicides are down significantly from

all-time highs that we had in 2023. We're down 30% from last year in homicides, 67% from two years ago, and we're down 50% in homicides from where we were 5 years ago. And um of this year, we've had seven homicides, and the detectives have worked hard uh with our community. We've solved five of those seven. And the other two are currently under investigation. Um but, uh you also uh asked about response times. Um our response times um are uh for a shots fired caller in progress call is about 203 seconds which is 3.4 minutes on average and it's a little over 7 minutes for all calls for service. So, we try to be very responsive and quick and we respond to if you call, we respond. And so, um, again, we are working hard and I'm very encouraged with our community partnerships and strategies that, uh, the data is showing that we're trending in the right direction.

So, that I'm clear, if I heard you correctly, gunshots in Kazoo, our response time is less than four minutes. Yes, it's a little it's just a little over 3 minutes for shots fired calls. That's on average. so many times where they're quicker, but on average it works out to three minutes. Thank you, sir. Yeah, this one isn't about public safety. Thank you so much, uh, Chief. So, uh, there was a mention of a summer program earlier. Yes. And I just took uh notes. What are what are the age um what's what's the ages for that summer camp? Um, the summer camp or the outreach program? Because we got a lot of them with PAL with our outreach. um multiple programs. Yeah. Multiple programs. So,

specifically the free summer camp, sorry.

Yep. So, one of the things that was a city commission priority was to reduce um calls for service um and reduce youth um part one crimes. And so, one of the things that we do is a doortodoor um with our pastors on patrol and our community policing officers and our street outreach team to contact youth that we identify are most at risk. And so this past year in 2025, we um made contact at 58 separate residents of youth who are at risk um to try to get them engaged in programming some of these youth camps that you're talking about. And so I don't have the numbers of PAL participation off top of my head, but I can get you those because we've had significant um um numbers enrolled in the PAL programs. Um but I can tell you um what we track is not necessarily how many kids enter these programs. It's are we reducing juvenile involved crime? You know, and uh so I can tell you we're down 23% in part one juvenile crimes from where we were last year. So those directed contacts um and face toface in people's homes and getting them engaged in programming is um working.

I'm sorry, just a follow up to that. I'm asking what's the youngest that we take into those programs and what's the oldest? Um so um the it depends on what programs you're talking about. So, parks and wreck have a wide range of programs for younger kids. Um, a lot of our pale um activities are really from all age kids. We have from te-ball all the way up to baseball. We have flight football all the way up to rocket football. So, it's really a wide range of kids. U some of those programs obviously are not public safety programs. So, Patrick H is here also. I don't know if you want to respond to that. He's ready to go because I don't know the exact ages, but I'm sure Patrick does. Well, Chief Sir, I appreciate you.

Uh, Vice Mayor, for the super wreck program e, I think that you're speaking of, the, uh, ages range from 6 to 12 years old, and that's for the free campsites throughout the city. And then same for uh, the summer campsites as well, the paid sites that we have. Thank you. That's all. Thank you. Other questions, commissioners? We'll give other a first chance here just in case anyone else who has questions right now. Yes, Commissioner Hes.

Sure. Um, so one of the things that we have is this uh from the from the safety Go ahead and stay here, Chief. Um, uh, we have this perception of of a safety gap and we're hearing good things from you. I know that we have our public information officer, Zach Hamilton, putting out all kinds of great information. Maybe you can share what kind of things that he does and the and and the new um like the video series that are coming out and and things that are coming out so that people can understand how hard you're working uh what our officers, our sworn officers and our detectives and our our civilians are actually doing on behalf of all the people of Kalamazoo to keep them safe. Uh so it sounds to me like and and from looking at the data, thank you. We've been working really hard and you've heard us in the last few commissions here um about our our priorities and um there is a perception of a lack of safety in Kazoo and how are we going to turn that around?

Yeah, we fully recognize that u perception usually lags a little bit behind reality, right? Because we know we had some really challenging years as a community. We had a couple years uh especially right after the pandemic where uh violent crime spiked and it wasn't just Kamzoo. It was really a nationwide thing. Um we were just confident that we had strategies in place that would get that back under control. Now admittedly it has taken a little longer than what I had hoped. I thought we'd recover pre2020 numbers a little quicker than we have, but we are obviously trending in the right direction. Um the one thing we're very transparent so if we have an issue um we report it. Um, we have a public information officer that gets that out and um, and I think that's good and bad because people think, well, there's a lot of crime. Well, maybe they're just more aware of it now because of how quick social media is, how we get that information out because we do want to let the public know what's happening, areas to avoid and all that. But the crime um, you you hear a lot of chiefs saying, "Well, crime is way down from 2023." Well, yes, because 2023 was record highs throughout the country. Um, but we can say that we're down from 2 years ago, 5 years ago, and even 10 years ago. we are trending in the right direction and we are trying to get that word out that you know um we have great partnerships in our community. Public safety is working hard. The numbers are showing and the other thing that we're working is to try to change that perception. One of the things we recognize is we want people people to feel safe coming to our um neighborhoods and our downtowns and the violent crime shows that it's a very rare thing and especially in our business district in downtown. How can we help change that perception? And one of the things that the commission approved was those u co lamb talked about those overt cameras. So you see throughout our north side cultural business district in downtown we have these uh white boxes with our shield on it and blue light with cameras so people know this area is being monitored um and it helps us prevent crimes and hopefully solve crimes if they occur. And uh so that's something that other communities are doing. So we're modeling that to try to help uh improve that safety. We're also really focusing on officer presence. We want

people when they're downtown um and in our neighborhoods, they want we they want to see officer presence. We do community surveys, and that's something that always comes up is more officer presence. So, we're encouraging our officers to get out on foot, do foot patrols, bike patrols, be in the neighborhood, be visible to try to help that perception because I can say all day long that, hey, our crime numbers are trending in the right direction, but if people don't feel safe, um that's a problem. We're trying to address that as well.

Thank you so much. Um, uh, let's see. So, um, I think that was all that I needed from me at this point, but there in terms of perception of say, and maybe you could speak to this before, um, anyone else might like to come and join in the party. Um, there's a there's a perception that the city isn't doing anything for the unhoused. Mhm.

Um and and because it's very visible, [clears throat] we see this is is that part and and maybe co Lamb can share too. Uh is the the visibility of the unhoused uh creating helping to create that perception of safety? Uh and and are they really a threat? Uh and and I know that we have a community service team that maybe you could speak to that. But then uh moving into where we are in the areas of our budget where we are investing money into housing into affordable housing into uh emergency housing. Uh I'd like us to speak more to that and and then the perception of that and really the city's responsibility uh of of where we spend our taxpayer money. But um if you could talk about the homeless that'd be great.

Yes. Uh thanks Mr. Yeah, I do believe that um when when people come downtown and there's a homeless population that does create a perception that it might not be safe even though uh statistically um you know we don't have violent crimes committed very often by uh unhouser any more so than any other member of the community but I think it's that perception. So, one of the things that we addressed especially u putting resources into our community service team which is our uh houseless outreach team um and we have a really good staff and we had a sergeant and officer and we increased that. So, we have um two off or three officers and a sergeant and a lieutenant oversees it now. So, we put a lot more resources into it because the big thing is, um, we know a lot of those folks that you see downtown, um, you can't lump homelessness into, you know, when you're talking about unhoused downtown maybe in particular, um, you can't paint everyone with the same brush. Everyone has different needs. And one of the things that we had to do is identify who these people are, build relationships with them, find out what they need. And our community service team has been able to do that because it's cold out now. And you know, [clears throat] we're making sure that there's folks that aren't out here freezing to death on our streets and we're making sure that people are getting into the emergency shelters that we have um that the city's invested in. And so, um again, it's been zero and you haven't heard of, you know, people, you know, I don't want to curse or jinx us here, but you haven't heard of people freezing death in our community because we're out there intentionally engaging with these folks to get them into services. And that's part of why we're out there. Um it's not just about um you know it's not necessarily enforcement although that can be a piece of it because um we also have to make sure that um you know people follow our laws and ordinances but we're also the the main focus is try to get them help and services if needed and to try to get them in shelters. It's too cold. No one should be living out on the street right now. It's too cold for that and um we're trying to get them um but many times they're able to do that because of the relationships they have with our

community service team. they're willing to get help that they normally wouldn't um be willing to get. And I think we've seen a lot of success with that. We've had um some really good success with our finding way home program. I think we've served so far over 70 individuals this year to help them connect with resources um because a lot of people don't they have no ties to Kazoo. They just end up here. What can we do to get them back to their um their support system? So, all that is done through our community service team. They do a phenomenal job and they have responded to and and helped a lot of folks out there. I I really want to give gratitude to your community service team and especially Sergeant Alwan who was the the um original uh person uh that that inspired this this team. And when we say public safety, it's not just all the people. It's it's everybody. Not everybody that's sowed, but it's everyone that's unhoused. We are keeping the unhoused as safe as possible uh with this team.

Yes. Because often times they're the victims of crime, too, right? So, it's it's it it's certainly a part of it. And then thanks for mentioning that because u um Sergeant Elwan is retiring and tomorrow is his last day. So, um it's kind of sad for us, but I'm happy for Sergeant Elwan. But we have a great replacement. Sergeant Fidel Morales is going to be taking over in his role and I know he'll do a great job also.

Congratulations, Sergeant Alwan. Um so, if I don't know if anybody else can speak to the the unhoused. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Thanks, Commissioner H. Um, certainly we've also been working through the notion that there are a number of efforts underway to address housing across the continuum, but how do we get our arms around it? Um, Deputy City Manager David Marquort and our communications team and CPAD are actually putting together a housing web page that is attempting to try to capture everything that we do from payment in le of taxes that you approve from our housing development fund from our tax credit housing um from so on and so on including our unhoused supports. how to put it in one place so that one we can use it to keep track. Um we can look to see where we need to do more but also often as you all are preparing talking points I know that you're having to spend time on your own trying to pull these details together. So I would say we're probably about 75% done from being able to kind of share proof of concept. We'd like to put a little bit more details in there. U we can highlight what's being proposed in the 26 budget or what might be approved depending on when we launch it. Um but that will be an effort to try to more definitively demonstrate all of the ways in which the city of Kazoo is supporting across the housing continuum. With regard to the 26 budget, um quick math, about $2.5 million of the $5 million of FFE being requested is going towards housing related activities. um between the housing development fund, between the emergency shelter, foreclosure prevention, critical code repair, um you'll see that more just under 50% of what's being requested at FFE is to support housing activities. Um there's no question there's always a need for more, but I get very encouraged by the support and the collaboration with other partners in the community and the way people are coming together that I think the work that the city will do will be amplified through the collaboration with our partners.

Thank you for that. Um uh you're talking about our collaboration with the county which actually has a housing village and uh and the community the continuum of care and all the other nonprofits that that are in the community that we work with. So um thank you for that. Um you might be able to answer this co. Uh my last question currently is you know we we did take some money from the the OPED fund the uh the retirement fund. Um, what has the communication with the retirees been like? Have do they know? Have they been a made aware? I'm actually gonna have CFO Vasensei come up because he's done some good outreach on that. So, one second, please.

Yeah. So, related to um the change in our funding for the OPED, um I met individually with the president vice president of our retiree um group called URGE. Um, I also went did a group meeting last Thursday. I went and attended that meeting, presented to them, answered questions. Um, you know, the biggest thing I want to reiterate with that is, you know, we're moving into more of a maintenance phase with that um, retirey healthcare plan. We're not changing any of the benefits. We're still maintaining all those promises that we've made. Um, we've just moved into a place where overfunding it would limit our ability to use those dollars in the future. So, we want to properly fund it.

Yeah. Uh so I just wanted to make sure that the retirees are uh comfortable with the changes that have been made in into this fund. Yes, the ones I spoke to and I did speak to their entire group that came to that meeting. They also post their meeting. Um I believe they post meeting minutes for the group that anyone that wasn't able to attend as well. Um so there they were fully comfortable with it. There were no real um no objections to what we were doing. They understood where we were and where we were trending in the future. Thank you. Commissioner has other commissioners who haven't asked questions yet. Commissioner Prager, I always have questions. Mayor, I know [clears throat] that.

Um, I'm not sure how to do this exactly because I don't want to have to keep like popcorning people come up, but I do have a few questions about from CPED. If someone's here that could speak to those. So, while um Director Mitchell's coming up, thank you. I just first want to say thank you for including HomeShare in the budget. I know that has been something that I have, uh uh tried to make sure to lift up for multiple years, but going back all the way to when uh Vice Mayor Patrice Griffin was on uh commission. That was when we first started to bring that work forward. But also want to really make sure to thank uh Toby Hannah Davies and Martha Huckabe who both are uh big advocates for that locally as well. So, I'm really excited to see where that goes. My question for you is in terms of for funding that um we definitely want to try to set that up for success and part of doing that I think is diversifying the funding uh that can go into that program to make sure that if say if the city were were to find itself unable to fund it in future years after the first three years uh that there's a diversified pool in the community that's potentially helping to support that. I was curious if there's uh any consideration with what our budget amount is for that program in 2026. If there's any interest in uh going to Housing for All or Senior Mill or other county or community partners that are passionate about f funding housing initiatives to see if they want to help contribute to support it in future years.

Um loaded question. Sorry. No [laughter] problem. Your turn to make sure. Yeah, thank you for having us up here um to answer these questions. To my knowledge when I'm talking to staff this week that they're pretty much assessing all those options um and once they get done with the assessment review, they'll be able to make more of a recommendation on the structure of um pretty much what organizations want to participate on, but also what the funding requirements for all that participation would be. And I would imagine for this budgeted amount, it would would restrict those efforts to probably the city of Kazoo. um until there's funding for outside uh areas as well. To my know that's true.

Okay, great. Um the other question I had for you and this might be uh challenging to answer uh it might be something that's kind of a follow-up one. So please excuse me in advance director Mitchell. So um anyone who's followed uh things that have happened in the state recently followed uh cannabis and the uh taxing of that at the state level. I believe that the state is taxing at 24%. which there were a lot of concerns about how that would impact the industry about whether things would go back I guess underground or you know whether um that would impact a lot of local businesses and the uh sharing revenue with local communities. I was curious if if you have any insight or have heard anything in terms of like concerns or projections of how that could impact us locally. Um because that has been um a pretty significant um area of revenue for us since we we um uh legalized cannabis.

Yes. Um you are correct. U we have gotten feedback from the cannabis um industry locally and it will um have an impact on them significantly. Um we're looking at how to maybe reduce some costs that they have locally with us um in our process to assist um but also hopefully getting them to work um more in a collaborative effort with our um cannabis counsel community cannabis um chamber that we created as well to strategize on better ways to work with the state. um the tax was a I want to say surprise but um significant impact um on them locally um um here in Kazoo but also the state of Michigan. Um so it'll be interesting um next year how quoteunquote um funding u [clears throat] reductions will happen for that industry which may close down some of the local businesses here and also across the state of Michigan. M thank you for that. Uh the other question I had there were talked about a little bit about neighborhood capacity building uh funds. So outside of the core neighborhoods and was wondering if um someone be willing to just talk a little bit more about what's envisioned with that uh and how that would would look um moving forward as well.

I may have to invite Mary Anderson up on that one. So here she comes. Anderson. Thank you Director Mitchell as well.

Commissioner Pradle. Um so uh capacity neighborhood capacity building. So as um uh uh uh Rebecca Kick mentioned uh we currently fund uh many of our core neighborhoods, our five core neighborhoods through our general fund. This is a small dollar amount uh that is intended to help us um in a similar way serve uh the other neighborhoods. Remember we have 22 um that are all in different levels of organization. So some we have really no great point of contact to ones that have awesome like longrunning volunteer organizations. And the goal is to bring everybody up to a um a place where we have uh where the neighborhood has a good point of contact so they can reach out to their community uh uh for whether it's events, whether it's there is a um emergency and we need to share information that way. We want all neighborhoods to have some level of organization for communication. And on our end, we want to be able to have that two-way conversation and two-way um uh information sharing with the neighborhoods. So, these funds will help us focus some of our time um outside of our core to lift up those organizations uh create or help create organizations where they don't exist and so forth.

I think that's so cool. I'm really excited, but I think it would be key to try to figure out a way that's uh equitable distribution and figuring out how to do that. Uh I just know that there's a lot of neighborhoods that have interest in doing something more or maybe looking at bringing on a full-time or part-time staff member, but those challenges are a barrier. So, that's uh that's really exciting to see that. The other I think this is the last CPAD question as well is about blight [clears throat] elimination. Really interested and passionate about that. My question for you is uh um DCM kick uh you mentioned that that the goal was to try to fund three to four of those house demos if if things happen. We we know that last year we had a serious arson issue uh where we had far more structures than usual that had been uh destroyed effectively because of of that. And my question would be is so is is that guidance in terms of aiming for the 3 to four based on like a 3 to 5 year trend of what we typically see as a community or is it just kind of a baseline of where we want to start? And then kind of secondarily to that, if we see ourselves in a situation where we have a year like we had last year because of some unforeseen horrible situation like that arson uh issue, how do we make sure that we don't have a dozen homes laying, you know, destroyed around our neighborhoods? So, the additional [clears throat] funding is for those people who do not have fire insurance, do not fall underneath our CDBG uh criteria, and we typically see the three to four homes that do not fit those criteria that then this additional funding is for. But we can typically have someone who already has fire insurance that takes care of the flight elimination typically will fit into our CDBG funding which we also have set aside for demolitions. And then this funding is for those outside of it.

Okay, that's great. Yeah. And we could always look at potentially readjusting if there was a huge influx of people significant. Yes, we would absolutely super excited about that as well. So, thank you for making sure that that's in there as well. Sure. Um I think I'll take a pause for colleagues, but those were some CPAD questions. Thank you everybody. Appreciate it. Other first time questions from commissioners commissioner.

Thank you. I did just want to note for our CFO um on one of my mobile devices I tried to open up one of those four fund sections and 20 minutes later it still doesn't show up. So, I would like to say it isn't accessible for all devices. We can talk more afterwards, so that's totally fine. Um, so my question was about this new building inspections fund. So, I don't know who can come up and speak to that. Um, specifically, uh, it sounds like from previous discussions related to this that it's going to cover all expenses. Does this include also car leasing? because I know more than just that you know that a division in CPED leases cars. So how does that work?

Yes, for that activity specifically it would cover any car leases related to to those employees doing that work. Okay. So all expenses tied to the building inspections division would be co would be expected to be covered by this fund. Correct. That fund is expected to have a surplus in 2025 and then projected forward with the activity that we're seeing um in building permits and um building coming in the next couple years, we expect it to continue to be you know potentially at a surplus or you know break even point going forward.

Okay. So thinking about the major turnover that we've experienced in that division with staff and and we're currently contracting out and paying a lot of money for an electrical inspector. Um the idea is because of this surplus potentially we could hire the right amount of staff to be able to address uh these gaps that we have. My question is what happens because this is based on the market when we don't when we see a decrease in in construction activity is is the thought then is the logic here that we would then lay people off if the fund is then no longer able to maintain covering those positions or do we think that there is no at no point even if it dropped to a certain level that we would need to do that after hiring additional staff. I don't think the intention would never be to lay anyone off. I think it's right sizing the fund between the staff we have and the contracts we have. If anything, we would decrease the use of those contracts before we ever got to the point of having to lay anyone off.

Right. But let's say we get another um another inspector uh because our we're 6 months behind in water heater permits right now. So, we get another person to deal with that capacity. uh we finally stopped contracting out to our electrical and get an electrical inspector, right? That's two FT FTE coming in online because we have the surplus. We're able to maintain that. After that, if we were to if we were able if we saw a decrease in construction activity and we had less money coming in for that fund, um and we got to a point where we said, "Wow, we we took on two, three people as full-time." Um what what would be the discussion there?

Yeah, that would just be, you know, looking at the available fund balance, the projections for upcoming permits, um ensuring [clears throat] that the fund, you know, and the activity is right sized. Um you know, if we had to, we would be looking at not renewing a position as it came open would be the first option in that scenario. Um so if somebody voluntarily leaves, we may not fill that position. Um so really just comes down to like I said between it's looking at your fund balance, it's looking at your contracts. if you have, you know, internal staff are significantly cheaper than contracting out for this activity. We've seen that over the years and so that would be the hope is to maintain internal staff and maintain them in perpetuity.

Okay. Um along the lines of um staffing on page on slide 19 of the presentation, we noted 71 full-time staff, six part-time. Yes. Um, does that include those positions that we have contracted out or those um that we may have provided funding for that aren't necessarily through the city but potentially like the county resilience manager? That does not account for any external positions. It's only internal city staffing positions. Okay. So, for example, we contract out our assessor. Correct. So, is are they not counted in this?

They are not in that number. they're in the other services and contractual line items. Okay. Do you off the top of your head know how many contractual employees we have? I don't um you know it can fluctuate from year to year be um significant number um just depending you know you bring up assessing you know it's a place where we share our assessing services by contracting through a third party. you know, they locally they do Portage, Gailsburg, Battle Creek, and so those same employees travel between all three locations. And so it's kind of hard to exactly quantify that we're, you know, how many people were solely responsible for when we're sharing and cost leveraging, you know, with other communities.

And do we know the total amount of money that is going to these contractual employment positions? Uh, we wouldn't have to pull that data. I wouldn't have that off the top of my head. Okay. Um, out of the four personnel and how we fund our personnel, what is the percentage of general fund that is going towards this 711 full-time and six part-time? Give me one second. Do by chance have that. We're going to try to pull that for you real quick. Um, I will say that, you know, some positions are split between multiple funds as well. Um, so it's probably not going to be a round number. Okay. Okay. But if there's anything else I can get you in the meantime while we try to pull that number for you.

Um well, I had a question around um another staffing. Uh so for solid waste, we're looking at adding adding two laborers. Is that going to be covered uh under the solid waste millage or is that coming from our general fund? That's going to be under the solid waste millage in a separate fund. Okay. Okay, maybe while we're waiting for that answer, other questions, commissioners, at this time, Mr. Prader, I'm checking everybody before I call on you, Chris.

Yeah, thanks. Well, Steve is up here, too. That'd be good because I do have a couple Steve questions. So, one thing I I like to ask you especially because I believe you are a finance and economics uh person uh trained is you know in the year year to come um are there any anticipated trends that you're looking at that you that that that you are particularly paying attention to that could adversely cause hiccups or or things in in our planning if not this year and in future years. Um, if if you had like the top maybe two or three things that kind of I don't want to say keep you up at night, but you know that you think about often or that we should be paying attention to in concert with you, uh, what would you say those are?

Yeah. Um, for the city, it's, you know, it's monitoring the, um, cost of housing. Um, you know, our property taxes are directly related to the increase or decrease in housing values. So, you know, as housing values decrease, we're definitely keeping an eye on that. you know, typically takes, you know, 18 months to two years for that to filter through the full system by the time we see that decrease. Um, you know, looking back at 2008 crisis, the city really hit its peak trouble around 201011, even though that crisis started in 2008. So, we're always tracking housing prices, we're tracking, you know, keep an eye on, you know, new builds, growth, um, sales because with the way that our property taxes are held, if you stay in your home, you, you know, your increase per year is capped at the CPI number, when you sell it, it uncaps. Um, so, especially for larger buildings and sales that may not have turned over in a few decades, those can have a significant um, impact on our future revenues. And then beyond that, we're just tracking our, you know, our different services. um seen the use of those services, different permits. Um keep an eye on, you know, [clears throat] are we keeping up? Are we projecting those things to increase in the future?

I remember uh so this might have been a couple years. Well, this was when it was like peak inflation like 9.2% in I think it was June 2023 maybe when it was the highest level. I remember director Baker when he was doing uh presentations was talking about like how cast iron piping we were trying to buy in bulk because that had gone up like 300% or something wild like that. And I guess in terms of just like looking at the macro level of the city, are there any inflationary pressures or things in particular that you're particularly watching or causing particular strain on us as a as an institution?

Yeah, I think we're always keeping an eye on that. Um you know what I've seen more recently is things have calmed down quite a bit. Um doesn't mean that we don't have areas of struggle. Um you know if you track the cost of different um commodities you know over the last 12 months copper has seen a spike. Um and so when copper spikes that makes those lead services more costly to implement. Um so we're we're constantly you know through our purchasing through our bidding keeping an eye on those things making sure that when we do put bids out that we're seeing within the budget we've allocated. Sometimes it's getting creative by, you know, um, bulk purchases and keeping an inventory on hand here. Other times it may be downsizing a project that we wanted to do more, but now we have to live within the means that we have. Mhm.

In the uh, state budget challenges section, you talked a bit about the uh, revenue sharing loss um, in the uh, public safety trust fund uh, shifts, if you will. And uh I was wondering if you could just kind of talk a little bit more about uh particularly the public safety trust fund. There was that 7 $800,000 and how that shifted and explain that a little bit more of how it's different than it was before and h how that's going to look going forward.

So in the 2025 budget, there was public safety trust fund set up for cities um and townships. Um as they negotiated that was eliminated and they implemented this new public safety revenue sharing component. um they funded it lower than the previous amount, but also they included counties in that which took away a little bit of our funding. Um and that is something else we'll be monitoring going forward because the state has projected to decrease that funding in the future as well. Um they provided onetime funding at 26 that they said do not expect going forward. Oh wow. So we're expecting that to come down um trying to remember the exact number. Yeah. Above 20%. Mhm.

And then on top of that, this new trust or the new revenue sharing component is it does take into account your um your crime statistics. And as you heard our police chief talk earlier, ours are getting better, which means that we have the reverse incentive that the less the less crime we have, the less funding we'll get.

Yeah, we'll have to talk to our uh elected delegation about that one. Um, and then lastly, you mentioned in the 2026 general fund deficit, uh, you mentioned that million dollar deficit anticipated in 2026. Uh, you had explained that that 250,000 was going towards the builder inspection fund shift that's going to happen, but the 750,000 you said that that was that was planned for years. Can you talk a little bit about what that that planning $750,000 impact was?

Absolutely. So, you know, we've had this year on our radar for quite a while. Um this is a year where in 2026 we have two different um bond issuances that mature and finalize. So typically we only have one fall-off per year. This year we have two falloff. So we're going to see a big bump return or reduction in that expense in 2027 which is what gets us back into um balance. And so our two choices at that point are we can have one year where we use a little bit of fund balance or we have one year where we have to cut services to then reimplement the following year. And this is where having that fund balance policy and a little bit of extra in there allows us to smooth this out over the couple years.

Cool. Thank you. I'll pause there. How many people can say their their finance director, their CFO has an economics and finance background? That's pretty pretty sweet. Anyways, thanks. Appreciate it. Thank you, Commissioner P. Other questions. Commissioners? Yes, Vice Mayor. Uh, so earlier I I just want to be certain. uh we talked about uh 14 new positions being created for uh solid waste and again I I don't want to put words in your mouth but I believe you said that that those will be mostly funded by grants. Um so it's 14 positions overall. Um two of them are in solid waste and and that is funded by our solid waste millage.

Okay. Thank you. And then we did have an answer to commissioner Slavy's question. Was it 100? What was it? 463. Okay. It's 463 um in the positions in the general fund of the total just about 65%. Roughly 65%.

Um and then one more when you go to the website and you look at 732 blight removal, it shows uh 2004 0 then 170 170 and 31. Can you explain to me what those numbers mean? Is that a Does that show a true decrease um from last year's budget amended to this year um to address blight? I'm going to have to defer that question um to I don't know Rebecca, do you have that?

We have to research that one for you and get back to you on that one. Thank you so much. Great. Commissioner Slaybe, I have forgot to ask um with the building fund in uh building inspections fund um for any resident to take a look at it online. Where can you find that? That would be under our special uh revenue funds page. Um the there's two special revenue fund pages. That'll be under the first one and it'll actually be I believe the first fund listed there. Okay. Commissioner Hes.

Sure. Um, Steve, you know, Commissioner Pel said something about what keeps you up at night, but what allows me to sleep at night is trust in you and your process. So, I just want to thank you for, you know, really having um your fingers on the pulse of Kalamazoo and and really doing your due diligence and being able to put this whole budget together. So, thank you for that. Uh, I don't think you can answer my question. I need uh CO Lamb, I think. Um so last week uh December 4th [snorts] uh we had our sixth annual shop with a senior program for the uh through with public safety. We partnered with public safety, uh, public safety actually partnered with Milestone Senior Services, with Town and Country Market, with Midtown Fresh, and with Park Street Market, uh, to provide 55, uh, senior citizens in our in our community, uh, $150 worth of groceries um, and a shopping trip and a and a lunch and just feeling special. I think it was a gigantic success and, uh, everyone that shopped uh, just loved it. It was it was an amazing and we've done that now through our commission and through our commission dollars. So, you know where I'm going with this. [clears throat] Um, the commission has a particular fund and if you could speak about that a little bit uh for our our new [snorts] members here and and what we can do with that and I I I I won't say what I want to do in in May or June, but I'll uh I'll save that for our meetings to see if it's it's doable. Um, but can maybe you speak to the the fund and what it's what it has done and and what it can do in the future and

certainly. So, speaking of the city commission initiative funds, there's $100,000 a year allocated to that line item. Um, in certainly there's been a lot of different ways the funds have been used. One of the things I want to stipulate um is that they are general fund dollars and so any use of those funds has to be eligible under our municipal finance regulations. You might recall in 24 we had a great um uh tutorial from uh city attorney Leal just reminding us of the ways in which we want to make sure that those funds are used appropriately for municipal finance. Um in 24 there was support for YW.CA uh for two of their programs. There was some resources to augment communication for water affordability. Um certainly shop with a senior has been a recurring fund a recurring investment. I will say that one of the things we've mentioned with regards to this is we're looking at less of it being an ongoing expenditure and as it relates to shop with a senior um trying to coordinate with public safety to have that program added to their budget uh on an annual basis that would not rely on the CCI city commission initiative funds to proceed.

Thank you Commissioner H. questions. Commissioner Pradle just had a couple questions competition with Commissioner Slayby here. I just had a couple questions for Director Baker if he doesn't mind. Yeah. Can't can't go through a meeting without having a good good director Baker come forward. Director Baker, good evening.

Welcome, sir. Thank you, Mayor, uh, city commissioners, vice mayor. Uh, thank you. Thank you for the, uh, having me up here. Thank you for spending a lot of time uh last week as well helping just kind of answer and work through things. Um I I want to first of all ask this question with recognizing that there's great complexity in terms of how things are funded and what budget lines things show up under, but under the local streets. I know we mentioned that we potentially are seeing a a little influx of funding uh to support our local street efforts. There's a line 450 and it's a routine preventative maintenance and it shows going from a little over $1 million, so a million and uh some change down to 847,000. And I was just curious if uh kind of just what's guiding that decrease and if there's any concerns about being able to to keep up just with that just routine maintenance of roads. So I'm assuming that would be maybe like potholes or uh that sort of thing as well. And then kind of along those lines, there's then line 451 under local streets. That's winter maintenance. But that one went from 187,000 to 711,000. I'm thinking to myself, do you know something about the next winter that we don't know? Um that might be way more complicated than we think. Um so I was just wondering if you can speak to maybe both of those and and what what impacts either of those could have or maybe if there's a reason for both. Um, so not in the budget document currently, but um, just from memory, we're talking about um, 203450 and 203451, correct?

I believe so. Yes. Um, I'm just my notes. [laughter]

Right. So, um, these are operational items um that, you know, kind of the work we do every day. They're not they're not capital focused. Um, so to talk about the winter maintenance aspect of 451. Um, that's a lot of the the work we do for um, salting, snow removal, that sort of thing. Um, any kind of budget increase was could likely be to salt where we're showing salt. Um, could also be FTE. So, there was a FTE increase and we're we're we're um, you know, putting additional FTEEs in there. I think I'd probably have to spend some time with the budget team to look at like a before and after to to get into the exact details. I will tell you from a from a global perspective, um, our budgets and our our work and planning for 26 and future years is going to be more intentional for increased maintenance in local streets. So there's a couple of things and you'll see them in capital as well that we're going to be focusing on um increasing the pavement life cycle. So there's projects um that speak to Paser that was in your presentation. There's also some um maintenance preservation work that's going to happen. There's also increased focus on storm water. So a lot of work on storm water maintenance as well um in in those plans. And then we're, you know, committed every year uh from a winter maintenance perspective. Although year [clears throat] over year over year those numbers might move around a little bit as um our storage of uh salt supplies usually spans more than one year and sometimes we have to replenish that and in how yours um are not. So um I think I'd probably have to get back with you on the specifics of why you're seeing one go up or down. Um

I often like to just look for any major shifts and then you know just gives me a wondering. Uh so those were two that came up. The other one was uh I think it'd be really helpful for people to hear about the solid waste positions that you're creating as well and I know we had I always forget if it's vector or vector that we approved last meeting. Uh and and uh that's related to um uh that capital equipment is related to those positions if I'm not mistaken. And if you could just kind of speak a little bit to why those positions are needed and what they're the critical work that they're supporting uh based on uh expect I think it's expectations from the state in terms of that work um with

Sure. So there's a few things happening. There's um position requests for positions in in streets um and that those positions are going to be performing uh majority of work focused on storm water. That's what you um there was also an equipment purchase, a vacu that's a machine that helps clean storm uh sewers. So those that equipment purchase and those positions, those items go together. Then [snorts] in a separate fund in 226, which is solid waste, there was also a position request for two positions. And so those are different things are happening. The four positions and the vector would be I apologize that the four positions the four positions. Yes.

Okay. Yeah. So that's the four positions and the vector u would be dedicated to storm water basin cleaning. So there's over 13,000 storm water structures in the city of Kazoo. Those are kind of spread out throughout all of our neighborhoods. Uh we have a new initiative with the state of Michigan to clean all of those structures. So clean and inspect. Uh so we're talking about pulling the grate. Uh sticking that big tube from that vector machine into that sump. there's a sump and it varies by size and in location. Um, but sticking that vacuctor nozzle down into there and then cleaning that all it's like vacuuming. Um, it's like cleaning all of your uh um duck work in your home kind of thing. So, we're going to get all the material out of that, inspect that, work order that. Um, and we're going to it's our goal to move through the city in 3 years. So, we plan to start in 2026 in Burke acres and um east side and then move our way west across the city. That would put us in north side in 2027 and then start to move down um into our southern neighborhoods in um 2028. Um so, there's going to be a lot of great work. We're going to be out um doing that work all throughout um the city cleaning those structures and um there's a lot of great things going to happen with it. Once one uh we're going to get some eyes on and really understand any defects or um improvements we need to make and that ties back into the capital program. You see in local streets we've got a storm water capital line item so that we can come back and make repairs uh and upgrade those structures or those storm sewers that need to be repaired. Um, and then also that's cleaning out uh silt, sediment, and debris. Uh, you may remember a few years ago, and this was FF funded. Uh, we cleaned out over 11,000 cubic yards of sediment from cross town pond number one, and then

the, uh, twin culverts, I believe they're 60in diameter culverts that run from, uh, pond uh, number three then to the outlet with Axel Creek. So, um there's a lot of great investment happening in the storm water world and storm water for us for city kazoo is funded as a component of streets. Uh so that's all funded by uh gas taxes that's appropriated down at the city level. Thank you. Thank you. Other questions for Director Baker while he's up here. All right. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Thank you, Commissioner Sbe.

Yeah. So, I understand that we um recently shifted um via consumers energy to solar uh which we would then start to experience savings from that. In what year do we anticipate uh seeing that hit our budget? And then has there been thoughts on how we would leverage those savings and where we might allocate that? Um, I I think about it because, you know, we city staff and the commission and the community worked really hard on getting community sustainability plan developed and then to get a, you know, one full-time position created as a sustainability planner. Um, but over the last few years, really very little has been done to financially support the work that this position has been created to do. um and to ensure that there's effective implementation of that plan. So I'm just wondering how can we find um better sources to fund this sustainability work. And so my thought is through the savings that we will experience from shifting into solar through consumers. Um is that a source that we could potentially leverage for something like that?

So I'll start off on this and I may have to pass it off as we go. Um so our first year for that consumer's contract for the solar starts in 2027.

A majority of the savings for that for that contract will be in our water and wastewater fund. I want to say like 90 95% of the energy saved is in those two funds. Um, and given that those are rateayer funded funds, I don't believe that'd be the ideal place to um, you couldn't fund um, you could fund um, excuse me, you could fund sustainability within those funds a little bit by using some revenues in there. You could not fund general fund or other sustainability projects by leveraging the water and wastewater fund. Anything further? Sorry.

Well, um, and maybe this is then a question for CPAD is, you know, when we start to figure out, uh, as the community continues to ask what are we doing around sustainability, uh, what are we doing to ensure that we are, uh, budgeting in a way to allocate resources towards that type of work. And and and if someone could point out where we might already be doing that in our proposed 2026 budget, that'd be great. Yes. Um, I cannot answer that question. I can get back to you on what that process is with staff. Um, and we could verify um, what the next steps are looking in that area.

I see planner Anderson is coming forward also. Okay. She has something to add.

So, I do want to add that, you know, every year with our special request budget, there's a number of requests that go forward. Um and um our sustainability planner um Justin Gish usually does include some that are related specifically to sustainability projects. They might be a partnership with public services. They might be a partnership with parks and wreck. Not everything gets moved forward. Um so we will continue to understand what the city commission's priorities are um as we look forward to discussing it with you all um at the retreat in February of next year. Um, and then we'll put forth requests that way. Much of what Justin has been able to do to advance the community sustainability plan, he's been able to do with smaller dollar activities or outside grants, um, which he's been very successful in working with our grants department, um, to find dollars to do those types of programs. Um, things like looking internally because that's a lot of what uh, the sustainability planners role does. uh working with Chris Broadband in public services thinking about compost and waste and how we can impact those resources because those are smaller dollar projects right now.

Yeah. I mean since this is just you know also a discussion today. I just would also encourage my fellow commissioners, vice mayor and mayor uh you know many of you were here you know championing the development of a community sustainability plan and a creation of a full-time position. And so I would hope that honestly those those don't go in vain because we're not able to fund the work the actual work that needs to be done. Um and so I would love to see in future budgets uh money clearly allocated uh for this work um and and find some kind of uh sustainable solution for the sustainability work that that you know needs to be done across the community. Um my my other question around uh specific departmental budgets um is no longer for CPED but for 311. And so you know their budget looks like they relatively maintain the same levels of funding yeartoyear. Um we continue to hear from the community that either they don't know 311 exists or have certain concerns around being able to uh connect with them in a very effective and meaningful way. Um, one of the feed, one of the pieces of feedback that I hear again and again is that 311 doesn't really receive a lot of funding to be able to do an awareness campaign or uh, be able to have staff uh, go out to do tableing events, etc. And so has there ever has there been discussion within city manager's office uh within management services um to better understand the needs from the community around engagement um and being able to connect with 311 and how we're allocating resources to be able to effectively address those concerns.

I will take a cut at a start. Um, one of the things that has come up quite a bit with regard to 311 is often feedback of I call I I put in a request and I'm not sure what happens or I don't get the resolution I'm looking for. So much of this year and heading into next year, we're transitioning our customer uh response CRM, customer

relations management tool, CRM acronyms are going to get me. um we're transitioning from uh to a new model to Salesforce and one of the driving forces behind that is we didn't feel like we had the ability to better track inquiry from call in to actual resolution and what what is more important than that. So, um, there certainly has been discussion about increased awareness, but quite frankly, the focus is how do we make sure that the customer experience from call into 311 to hand off to department to resolution, let's make sure we've got that working better so that when we are encouraging people to call, they can have a positive experience. Um, certainly the effort and energy of the 311 team is provide the best customer service possible. What we're finding is challenges in tracking and making sure that there's really good collaboration between 31 and departments. Um, previously I think we have added resources for engagement. If I remember there were some challenges of freeing up staff to be able to do that. So I think that's a conversation that is going to need to happen. But I know the energy right now has been about improving the system, improving the tracking, and then quite honestly that tracking can help yield examples of why we need more resources to support 311. All set prayer. Commissioner Sy,

I have one more question and I'm done. I'm completely done. That's fine with my hollins. We can go as long as you need to. Um, so I may have missed this during the conversations uh at this meeting. What was the number that was confirmed for neighborhood planning?

Is this the 9,000 for the capacity building? Planner Anderson, Commissioner Slayby, there are two numbers. Um, one is neighborhood capacity building, which is, I believe, $6,000, and one is neighborhood planning, which is $9,000. Um, I spoke earlier to Commissioner Pradle's question regarding the capacity building, which is really again lifting up the neighborhoods that we don't currently fund. um uh to get them more organized um and more equipped to handle internal issues and to work with the city. Um neighborhood planning is to set ourselves up to start neighborhood planning work after the master plan is done. Uh master plan won't be done until end of second quarter. Um so neighborhood planning work next year will be a little light. It won't start until sometime in quarter three. Um, and so that money is to help us get started with that process, which is why it's a small dollar amount.

Okay. And is there additional funds from the CPED budget that are going towards neighborhood planning activities? I I think about, you know, previously we gave $50,000 to building blocks to do organizing just in the Douglas neighborhood. And then previous to that, we gave them a 20,000 or $30,000 fund to do the same thing the year prior. And so are we looking at doing some of those similar activities uh in addition to what we've set out for neighborhood planning with those numbers you've provided?

So um the funding that you mentioned was ARPA um the American Rescue Act uh funding um and so yes we did give um we did support Building Blocks in doing their um outreach engagement and um community block work in the West Douglas neighborhood. Um as far as um new monies in 26, the two items are what is what are requested through the through the special request process, the neighborhood planning as well as the capacity building. Um we of course have in our general fund the line item that supports our general fund, our excuse me, our core neighborhoods um and uh supports their work. So that is um within the general fund and we always have a line item for outside contractual services uh in planning that can support oneoff projects. Um it could be working with neighborhoods or it could be you know hiring a consultant to support our you know review and um uh changes to an internal process like the development process. so that those funds are also available um if something comes up in 26 that's needed for neighborhoods.

Yeah. While I see that we're in a transition period with the new master plan, I am very discouraged with these numbers. Um as you may or may not know, we're providing $22,000 to Parks and Rec Youth Council just to do youth council event planning activities. Um we're $7,000 less than that at a $15,000 total between capacity building um and doing neighborhood planning work. Um mailers alone eat that entire budget up if we're looking at doing four to five neighborhoods. So it sounds good that we're doing capacity building, but what can we really accomplish with this little budget in order to be able to effectively get all 22 neighborhoods prepared in time for this IK 2035? What we saw with IK 2022 is the neighborhoods weren't organized at the beginning of that adoption. And so even after 10 years, we still had half of our neighborhoods not organized in a way because they weren't able to be uh you know resourced uh to allow for organizing uh and and understand the the tracks to be able to successfully come together and do stakeholder engagement, etc. And so to me, this is the opposite direction we want to head in at the beginning of a new 10-year master plan to ensure the effectiveness of the work that we want to see produced um with with the great work of all staff, you know, on the ground connecting with these neighborhoods.

Sure, I understand that. Um we are trying to manage um budget availability with the staff capacity and trying to request an appropriate amount of funds that we are able to deploy in a year. We also know that we're going to be spending the first half of 2026 wrapping up the master plan. And so that means all winter we will be out in our neighborhoods doing our neighborhood imagings which is an opportunity for us to engage u make connections um and set us up for that future work. And so that is where most of staff capacity is going to be uh through the first half of um 2026. and we look forward to coming back in 27 with a larger number for neighborhoods um as we get through the master plan and uh you know understand the direction that we want to go.

Thanks. Thank you. All set. Commissioner Hes.

Sure. Uh I think this one is for Director Baker. Come on down. Uh I think it's a simple one. Uh there is a there's a line here for pollution control and and it's um a little bit less than it was last year, but is that our H2S monitors? Could you talk a little bit about what we're doing with pollution control having brought up sustainability and the sustainability plan? And uh then where are we as a as a public services working with our sustainability coordinator um to make sure that that his work is effective as well? Can you talk a little bit about sustainability? Uh just a a follow-up question for clarification. Is is the number code prefix for that a 101 code?

The end is 621 health and welfare. It's under health and welfare under pollution control and it's for $235,000. It's 101. Okay.

Yeah. So that's going to be um environmental consulting work related to uh Cork Street landfill. So, it's actually separate from water and wastewater. So, water and wastewater are all 590 or 591 account codes. Um, and so that odor control work uh that we presented to the city commission during our water and wastewater presentation was about $2.6 million and th those funds are specific to wastewater. Um, and those are going to be in a 590 code. So, this 101 code uh that's for work associated with the Cork Street landfill. Thank you.

Sustainability, what where are we working with uh sustainability planner Justin Gish?

So there's there's a lot of topics there. If you go back to your community sustainability plan uh that was approved by the city commission in 2022 that's available online that has uh many different goals and strategies outlined all throughout the document. Um and so it deals with everything from um dealing with large sources of emissions from a community and from a city operations perspective. Um things like heating your home. All of our homes are uh probably have heat in them or we we hope they have heat in them. Um and those heat sources combust fuel, maybe natural gas, maybe fuel oil, maybe some sort of solid fuel. And so there's goals and strategies for that. There's also the work the city is doing um from a um uh carbon footprint perspective which includes uh fuels that are combusted in the vehicle fleet um a lot of energy usage uh mainly water and wastewater and we've been making a lot of um um advancements in that work. So, just to kind of talk through those real quickly, um water and wastewater are your biggest um sources of energy consumption. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to run the water system and to run the wastewater system. Uh we executed contract with consumers energy to, as Commissioner Sllayy indicated, uh to take all of those energy u usage through consumers energy and transfer that to uh renewable sources. So, that could be wind or solar or hydro. Um but that's all natural sources. So that contract is signed that's in place and that first year that that goes into effect would be 2027. Um and that takes that's a huge chunk of your sustainability of your carbon footprint reduces it just kind of in one fall swoop. Um some other areas to focus

on are your uh your vehicle fleet. So we have a pretty large vehicle fleet in the city. things like uh sedans, um cars and vans all the way up to the big equipment you see plowing your streets. So, starting with the big stuff, the big big stuff, the dump trucks and all the equipment that's out there, all that equipment um we transition over to diesel a biodiesel product a few years ago that started with a pilot. Um that pilot then went to a few phases to prove its uh vocational um ability throughout all the operational deployments that we have including cold weather and then we went and um actually implemented at full scale. So all public services uh equipment now operates on biodiesel and the other thing we've been doing is we've been increasing that blend. So, it started off with a um 11% biodeiesel. That went up to 14% biodeiesel. We're moving now to 17% biodeiesel and next year will cross over into 20% biodeiesel. Um we also have electric vehicles that we're transitioning into. Um we have two electric vehicles in public services, two silver lot Silverados, electric vehicle pickup trucks. Um, we've installed a number of electric vehicle charging locations at our uh Stockbridge and Harrison facilities and uh we now have that charging infrastructure in place. We just completed a um fast charger at Harrison this summer. So, we can go from a a near empty battery state to a full recharge in a matter of about 40 minutes. Um, you know, still it's a little bit longer than gas and go at a fuel pump. Um, but it's much much shorter than like a overnight uh situation. So, we're working with our fleet department um to kind of long-term

manage our um our fleet um uh the enterprise program that we have fleet leasing. Sorry, I was stumbling on fleet leasing, but uh we lease a lot of those vehicles. And so we're looking at when do we take that vehicle back off a lease and then does that make sense to then get an electric vehicle at that time. We're also now that we have our charging system in place and telematics, we're working on some of those numbers. So you've heard you know the cost of EVs are expensive. There's an upfront cost, right? Um but the cost to u maintain them over the life may be a little bit cheaper. So we're analyzing right now those Silverados. We have gasoline powered Silverados. We have diesel powered Silverados. Well, biodeiesel for us. And we have electric powered Silverados. So, with the Telmatics in place, we're now gathering that data. Um, we'll probably won't have anything uh in terms of firm recommendations for 2027. We may we may be ready for that. Um but certainly after that we'll be able to go side by side and provide much more clarity on u the overall cost of of electric vehicles and then you'll start seeing more of those uh come into the the vehicle fleet. U I'll pause there. There's other aspects of the sustainability plan. Um but the carbon footprint is among the bigger pieces of that that we are working on.

Right. Thank you. And I know that when it was presented that when the uh solar project was presented to us that that we really did consider the carbon footprint. And so uh thank you and and I know that you work closely with Justin and and uh and with Chris Broadbent and uh really working on the sustainable the are we going to have composting next year? Is that going to go I know it was a pilot project. Is that going to move over? Do you know?

It's it's still we're not full scale yet on on composting. Um, but there are some there's some things that weren't quite proved out far enough for us to go forward with with changes in the budget. Uh, so the um the foam, we're doing a great job with foam recycling. Uh, there's some, you know, potential capital improvements that we'd like to make in that to be to be able to launch a a bigger, wider program into the future. um that work wasn't fine-tuned or distilled enough to to get into the budget this year, but we'll probably be working on that for uh potential special requests for next year. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Hes. Commissioner Hoffman,

good. Good evening. I have a question. Was any of the electric vehicles or chargers purchased this year? Um so the electric vehicles I believe those were purchased last year. Um the chargers were purchased this year. We had a number of chargers that were um purchased with grant dollars andor local match dollars. So kind of putting that together um in the FY25 budget that were completed this year. I was going to ask you, are you able to take advantage of the elective pay tax credits for those EV chargers? All of it was covered with grants and matching funds. None came out of your budget.

Uh, so the matching funds did come out of our budget and then the grants came in. Um, I think the way the grants worked out is that uh that was kind of a package deal uh together. I know we are in constant communication with Consumers Energy about different rebate programs for uh things like electric vehicle chargers, that sort of thing. And I I know we're, you know, kind of keeping that line those lines of communication open to move forward in any of those programs when when we're ready to do so. I would love to share some information with you later on this week if we have a time about elective pay. Yeah, we we'd be excited to hear more about that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Hoffman. Other questions, Commissioner Pradle? No. Okay. All right. Uh, well, lots of great questions. I really, really appreciate that. I'm going to jump in just with a couple myself here. Uh, we talked a lot about the increase in the Act 51 funding this year. That's cooked into our budget. We're depending on that. I have seen some recent news. I don't know if we've been following that or not, but also heard from the uh Kaza County Road Commission uh members who received a presentation from their uh director there that that there may be timing issues with that. We may not be receiving that increase in this calendar year that we're hoping for. And another thing that was mentioned was this lawsuit which may be uh prohibiting [snorts] this 24% in wholesale uh tax increase which could also maybe hurt that that share. Have you heard anything about that?

Um I've heard a little bit about um some of the timing issues. I guess I'm not aware of us not receiving it during this upcoming year. The timing issues I was aware of were the states on a September year-end fiscal year. We're on a calendar year. I knew that these um some of the new fees weren't going to start till January 1st. So for us, that wouldn't be as much of a timing issue as it may be for somebody not on a calendar fiscal year. Um additionally, in our local and major streets budgets, we're still projecting surpluses at the moment. So, we have some cushion, some leeway that if things don't come to fruition as those early revenue projections indicated, um we're still going to be in a good place with those funds overall.

Okay, great. And another question uh for you, Steve. What is the health of our parking system, uh the parking structures? I know that has been a challenge when we accepted responsibility for those back from uh DDA, correct? A couple years ago. So how how was that uh you know are capital improvement needs you know scheduled out there and and how what's the health of that system then?

Yeah. Um so when we took back that system there was a number of deferred um capital projects that needed to be done just to maintain particularly in the parking ramps. Um, you know, right now we're you know, we um had supplemented in the past with some ARPA dollars to help um believe the parking system during the downturn that happened because of COVID. You know, they had a plan where, hey, we're expecting X number of people to come park downtown. Obviously, during COVID, people worked from home, they stayed home, they didn't come downtown. So, we helped supplement some of those lost revenues. Um, we're currently projecting, you know, a loss of our parking fund of roughly a million dollars. Um, you know, and I know we have deputy um, director Christine Anderson here work working with our outside consultants and our parking system to implement um, you know, more of our upcoming parking strategy which will hopefully help turn that revenues around and get the parking system into a better place overall. Um we're looking at, you know, relatively short leash of trying to get that done over the next two years or so um before we start truly depleting all of our available resources in that fund.

Helpful. I appreciate that. Still something of concern then when it comes to our overall budget is our capability to successfully manage that at least in a revenue neutral sort of a way without uh additional contributions from the general fund then. Correct. Absolutely. It is definitely a concern that we have on the radar.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Steve. Other questions team for this evening. All right. Well, I just want to thank everyone for for all the deep dive questions and work and uh basically being prepared to answer all those questions. Thank you uh city team for being able to do that. Just a reminder that we're going to have uh this official public hearing on the budget which will be at our next regular meeting uh manager Moore December 15th. Another opportunity for feedback to us uh from the general community and for us to ask more questions and then we won't actually be voting on the budget until our first meeting in January. So, it's uh lots of time here yet. I know it's complicated by the holidays. We can't change that. Our fiscal year is the calendar year. So, this is how that works out every single year. Uh, now is our opportunity for commissioner comments. Are there any additional comments that commissioners would like to make for the good of the order this evening? Vice Mayor Duncan, just a a huge thank you to public safety. Um, for those of us that attended the tree lighting, um, Chief Boyison talked about officer presence and officers being in places like on the bikes and I was very shocked to see public safety out on the bikes uh, in the cold. So, a huge shout out to you guys. Thank you for being present uh, downtown. Um I definitely uh heard from a lot of the citizens that there were there was a feeling the perception was that they were safer. Um so you know kudo kudos to our public safety. Thank you.

Thank you vice mayor. Other comments commissioners. So, I'll just follow up on something which has we've had at least for a couple years now, and I don't know if we're going to have to change the strategy on this, but I've been hearing a great deal about what has been occurring to us, which is snow comes before the leaf pickup is finished. And I know what's happening is that leaves are staying on trees longer. We seem to be getting well, snows earlier than it was 20 years ago, but at least re in recent times, we've been getting snow earlier. So now we've got this uh unfortunate situation where we've got leaves uh stacked up rotting here and there maybe getting plowed around a little bit. And so uh there's that. Also, it seems like we're struggling a little bit with the low temps and trying to get some of this snow now ice now slush now back to ice again uh removed on our side streets. And and I don't uh know Director Baker if there's anything particular you want to say about that, but uh it seems like this is maybe going to be more the norm than not going forward. And I don't know if we've been thinking about any strategies to address that, but it's definitely something I've been hearing about uh quite a bit here in this uh last few weeks.

Sure. Certainly. Thank you.

That and thank you for lifting that up. those uh uh challenges are are very well described and and some things that we are we are working with. Um we can't start leaf pickup until mother nature drops leaves and unfortunately um that that is impacted when mother nature then decides to drop snow. So um it's a little bit of a fullcourt press that we've got to to focus on to get those leaves um when they are down. I will say that leaf the leaf program is not done. Uh we are continuing that work. Um and in fact uh we're mobilizing now with a contractor to bring in additional resources to help us um with that work. So we're we're going to continue that work. Um again as as you you stated we're in leaf pickup which it means we're toled the equipment the dump trucks and um many other of the ground support equipment to that leaf program. So that's all the equipment is outfitted with different attachments, that sort of thing. Um, when that snow hit, uh, we had to kind of retool everything and and get back out there. Uh, we also were, uh, challenged with some equipment that, um, breaks down, those things happen. Uh we [snorts] were supported by many great local businesses that on Friday to help get us back up and running, including the Napa stores here in Kazoo, uh that came in and made hydraulic hoses for us to get us up and running again. Um and so a lot of our work kind of behind the scenes was retooling and getting those dump trucks and front blade trucks and things ready uh to be able to to move again. So, um it was a a bit of a challenge to to get us back out on that road again. Um and we're, you know, continuing to work through that. We did receive a significant amount of snow um here over the the Thanksgiving holiday and then um you know into it, including

um Sunday morning. Our crews were in at uh 3:00 a.m. Sunday morning to continue uh this work. We're committed to the work. We're committed to upholding and maintaining that highest standard of level of service that the city of Kazoo expects from us. Um I would just ask for folks to, you know, please be patient with us with the leaves, with the snow. We're committed. We're going to stay with it and we're going to continue uh to focus our efforts on this uh work that mother nature is all thrown at us all right now. So, thank you for that.

Thank you, Director Baker. I appreciate it very much. Seeing no other comments, then uh this will be the end of this meeting. We'll see everybody in a week. I love you, Kelu. We're journed.