County Council - Session - Special Meeting

Okay. I want to welcome everybody to the continuation of our special meeting on the budget hearings. So I think the first thing we'll do is we'll see if you're willing and able. We'll do the Pledge of Allegiance again tonight. I pledge allegiance to the flag of

The United States Of America

and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God,

is invisible, with liberty and justice for all. So

let's see. I think we can do public comment next. So I think we might have some folks who want to make public comment tonight that are present. So come on up and we'll get, we'll have three minutes and just, if you want to state your name.

Sure.

My name is Kyle Dickman and I'm here with the Tufts Ikes and we just wanted to say we're really pleased to see the bike park made it into the budget and we really hope that it stays there.

My name is Bridger Dickman, and I support keeping the bike park in the budget. My name is Tally Dickman, and I support keeping the bike park in the budget.

Okay.

And I'm Terren Dickman. I also support keeping the bike park in the budget and really appreciate that you've taken into consideration the amazing process that brought it to where it is. Thank you.

Okay. Well, you all for being here. Do we have anyone else present in the chambers that not seeing anyone. Mr. Brielle, can you look online and see if there's anyone who wants to make public comment?

If you're online and you'd like to make a public comment, please raise your hand.

Not seeing any chair. Okay, thank you. And we did receive a couple of e comments supporting the bike park as well. So just want to make note of that. So I think now we're ready to engage. But before we start, I think there was something that Ms. Relenton wanted to bring to our attention that she passed out to the council.

Yes. Thank you, chair. I just wanted to say that we, on the yellow sheets in front of you, there were some question quite a few questions on different departments about the professional and contractual services kind of combined line items that included training and some other things. So we just went ahead and thank you, miss Mariano, for breaking it down for every single department so you can see the breakdown of those of that line item. And we also give this information to the clerk, there's also copies at the back of the room. And we're happy to forward it to the media as well. So thank you.

Okay. That'd be great if you could forward it to the media so they can see it too. Okay. So now I think we're ready to resume where we almost got to last night. I So think we have Community Services Department ready to make a presentation. Mr. Steyron.

So thank you, chair and counsel. Go ahead and go to the next slide. We're very excited to be here tonight and talk about accomplishments for this year and our plans for next year. I did wanna take a a quick minute to remind you in the bold. We've tried to link your strategic objectives, your strategic priorities, and then what's in our integrated master plan to show how those are all aligned.

So when you see operational excellence, effective, efficient, reliable services, and improve organizational outreach, You'll see those on all of our slides. So that'll show you how this links back to your overall objectives. Significantly last year for operational excellence, we were were a gold medal finalist for the National Parks and Recreation Association. It's his highest honor. And I have it on very good rumor that we were not that we have attained that status again this year.

So we'll be a finalist. We'll have some more official coming out in the next couple of weeks on that. And then we're working on our new library website that we actually implemented last year. Next slide. So we did several studies last year, and you'll see some of those come through as we talk about the budget.

We have the artificial turf study, the North Mesa recreation master plan, which the bike park consists of. We have the cemetery master plan where we have some allocation for funds this for the proposed budget. Our open space trails and management plan, we're already working on that with the Bio Canyon Trail conversation. So key renovations that we did this year is the East Park Basketball Court and North Mesa Pickleball Court. Every time I see someone that plays pickleball, they they still think those are the greatest things that we've done in this community in the past few years.

That's really, really great. We're still working on our athletic fields. And then we're also doing some work at Ashley Pond improving the sidewalks this year. Upcoming projects as of next week, they're really not coming anymore, but they'll be opening up next week. Our two playgrounds that we just completed at 37th And Pinon. Those are really exciting. I I think we've got some of the youth that we actually went out and talked to a couple of years ago that are actually going to be able to attend the opening at Pinion. So that'll be exciting.

Next slide.

So social services was really busy this year. They do they do so many different things. Just to highlight a couple of them, they worked with the coalition in the community about the weekend help campaign where they collected quite a bit of emergency food and distribution. They continue to do outreach through many of our programs and and integrate it through our events that we do, whether it's the concert series, farmers market, extended hours at the library, and then other community events. Been working hard to advance the comprehensive health plan.

We've got our program specialist on board who's already starting some outreach. And then again, we truly could not do it without so many of our partners. You heard the judge talk about Hawk Hangout last night with the partners that every anyone that has a relationship with the youth in our community participates in that, I think. And that's just really great. We've done some de escalation training.

And then we're also part of the group that's been doing the suicide prevention training, the ABCs that we've been supporting here. Next slide. Just some funky things. Last year at our July 4, we were able to be a part of the Guinness Book World Record for the drone show. The company Sky Elements, did 25 events in a twenty four hour period and got them in a and it was with the total number of drones.

So that was exciting. We've got a little certificate for that. Even with the aquatic center being considered for renovation this year. We're able to include some adult dive in movies, water volleyball, and we were able to extend the leisure lagoon hours. Our triathlon finally surpassed our pre COVID participant, And we added something new at our first downhill gravity car race similar to a soapbox derby.

Next page. So we've worked at enhancing our volunteer program on the parks open space side. They're working behind the scenes to get the trail program that was presented to you up and operational in a in a format that we can use. We continue to try to expand mental health resources through all of our partnerships. We actually thought a little outside the box, and we're now in our second cohort of providing nature based therapy training for our community with so much of our natural resource assets, forest bathing and and forest therapy, has shown some real results in having in helping people, create positive interactions using nature to reduce stress, improve spirituality.

So that's been a big improvement we've done this year. We also held a youth summit and are planning for the older adult summit this year. Next slide, please. We've continued our quest to include to make inclusivity for all. You'll notice that we did a really good job with the ADA part ADA considerations for 37th And Pinion Park.

We renovated the courtyard at the library to make that more accessible for a statue there. We started the Bio Canyon Trailhead in the well, the Mesa Trail is work we're working on that one in the demonstration garden, but we're just getting started. And we're looking to improve our sustainability. The robotic mowers were a huge hit that we've been out at the golf course in North Mesa. We found a little money at the end of the year, and we're gonna be adding some units down at Overlook Park here in the near future.

Next slide. So a few highlights as we're going forward. We wanna continue to implement our integrated master plan, and then we're gonna do the cemetery master plan as well. Part of this is getting the columbariums in place. We've got the San Ildefonso and Grand Canyon playgrounds that are under design right now.

We had a couple of really great meetings at Chimisa and Barranca Elementary's last week to get some youth feedback. You'll see as we look at the CIP later on that we do have funding for the norm some starter funding for the North Mesa Bike Park there. In the golf course, we finished the warranty work. And that project, we opened up the golf course on Thursday for the full 18 holes. And as CDD talked about last night, we're partnering with them on the Trans Rockies mountain bike race.

It's a three city Northern New Mexico event. We know the biggest and best will be up here in Los Alamos. Next slide. So we talked about the cemetery master plan, the columbarium. We have a we have a task order to get those designed.

I wanna give a shout out to our recreation superintendent, Katherine Hudspeth, for working with the community to find an alternate place for people to swim this summer when the pool was down. So we've got the Pinion Park down in White Rock Pool that we're cleaning up and hopefully be ready to go by Memorial Day or maybe a few days earlier. The library is working on their integrated library system with a with a new vendor that was just signed recently, and they're starting the migration now for this project. Next slide. We're looking to expand the outreach of our social our social services program specialists this year.

We continue to work with Public Works on the social services action center. And we've worked real hard to improve the harm reduction efforts, through more overdose response, suicide prevention trainings, expanding our naloxone access. And we've also had conversations with the medical center and our fire department on how can we serve our community better for those that are, in challenging moments. We continue to have success with our Unitus referral program. We've actually added two additional members this year.

Next slide. So this is this is a summary of the professional and contractual services by division. The professional and contractual services, as you see in your handout, covers about 16 different organizational line items. So these are just a summary of some of the contracts and big items in that heading in the budget book. Next slide.

And this is a continuation with our social services and cultural services, which both of these items are actually in your budget book with the breakout of our contracted services for each one of those as part of the budget process. Next slide. So as you can see, overall, through efforts this year, we have a minor reduction of 1%. I think one of the things to note as you as you look at this independently, we recently completed a compensation plan adjustment for our casual employees. So you'll see our casual employees as part of salaries will be higher because we have most of the casual people in that compensation plan really impacted to the positive of all those employees.

With that, I'll stand for any questions.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Theron. Do we have any questions from counsel on presentation or the what's in the budget book? Counsel, we're here.

What is this program, Unite us? I probably had

a briefing out of it. I don't remember.

I'm chair and councilor. Unitas is a it's a single source platform that we use through a lot of our partners that are helping those that are facing challenges. And what it allows us is instead of somebody coming and having to tell stories to get utility assistance, food assistance, housing assistance, wherever they come in the door first, that person, as part of our network, captures all that information. And then from there, there's a single referral that goes out if they say they need these additional services. It goes directly to that provider, and then that provider, it's on them to contact that individual.

So it it helps people not have to tell their trauma story multiple times. We it gives us the referral instead of, well, you need to go see them on Tuesday. You need to go see them on Wednesday. It goes directly to that that individual for services. They make the contact out, and it really helps streamline the process and ensure that they're getting the services that they need. Plus, it provides a a database that we can see how many challenges these people have that we're trying to work through, to get them back to a point in society where they feel comfortable.

Does it include mental health, or is it just, financial assistance for utilities?

It's for a very broad range of issues. It covers mental health. It may cover it covers every potential need that they may have, and it gets documented in there.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Councilor. We have Councilor Huffman.

Pardon me. Thank you, Chair. My first question has to it's on page two forty three, I think. Yeah. Two forty three.

75 k is part of the revised budget for our current fiscal year for tree inventory of park and public spaces. This is on the small capital project spreadsheet. I guess I should have said that first, the CSD small capital projects page. And I was curious if that tree inventory has been completed and those funds expended. And then as a result of doing that inventory, will there be a need for some budget next year or the year after?

Because I've kinda had this thing about some of our dying trees, as some of you know. So I'm just wondering if, okay, we're gonna do this inventory. Now what are we doing with those results, and should we be budgeting to address that?

Thank you, chair and councilor. It's about 85% completed. We lost our arborist just before it was totally completed. The intent is to look at our overall inventory of trees and make sure that we have a good mix of species so that we don't have any issue any issues and and have a good diversity. But that is the next step once we get that completed.

But then what about part b of my question about the need for funds going forward if there's some findings that say we need to address some issues discovered?

Chair and council, right now, we've already come to council for a small amount of about 25,000, maybe in 2425 to do some tree replacement.

Okay.

So if it's more significant, we may have to. But that that's kind of our plan

right Do you feel like that'll be sufficient? And then it pardon me for not knowing offhand. Do we have, funding for FTE for replacement arborist?

Chair and councilor, yes.

Okay. Wonderful. Thank you. Then on the same page, only because I'm curious because I think it's fun, bike maintenance stations is bundled with bear proof trash cans for who knows why. But I've seen bike maintenance stations in other communities, and I think they're fantastic. What is this about? Maybe maybe they're already here, I just haven't seen them.

So chair and councilor, yes, we already have several around the community. There's one in the portico over here at the library. We've got one at peak as well, and we've got one on a trailhead that escapes me right now. But this is to add some additional spaces. So tubular formation that has about a dozen different bike tools that are on the cable. There's a little pump there so you can pump it up, and it's all right there. It's got a little rack where you can hang your bike while you're working on it. But it's been something requested by our trail and open space group and some of our bikers that went around on trail and maybe need a tool that at least have a space to go to.

I love those and and feel bad I didn't know we had them already. So thank you. And then on the capital the CIP budget detail schedule and ten year forecast, this is where I think people are happy to see the North Mesa recreation master plan. And I assume that 500 K is includes the bike park at North Mesa. Is that correct, or is that in a different place?

You'll counselor and chair chair and counselor, you'll see at the bottom, there's actually two lines. There's a North Mesa recreation plan and a North Mesa bike park. Yep.

I highlighted it. You're right.

So both of those funds, based on your approval, would be used to help phase one.

Okay. So then my second part of that question is phase one five hundred ks, is that sufficient? Or if we were able to have a budget option to allocate more funding, could we get the bike part done more expeditiously? Or is there just too many things on the critical path that even if you threw a bunch of money at it, this just doesn't make sense for various reasons?

Chair Reidy, Counselor Haberman, I think we can probably look at that a little bit more when we look at the CIP plan. But it really is just about we would need time to go through a design process and everything else before we're ready to construct. So we were comfortable with this time frame was feasible and then balancing that with our fund balance in the CIP. So that's where we landed. But we cannot certainly, if you wanna exchange some priorities when we look at the whole entire CIP, we can look at that. But we would be looking for trade offs, not just move moving things forward.

Okay. Okay. And then the ice rink flooring and shade structure, 6,300,000 was allocated for the current fiscal year that we're in. Right? That's for the chiller. But then there's I guess where where but it says shades, so it's confusing. It says it says flooring and shade structure, parenthesis, chiller. So I was trying to understand I know the chiller's done. We approved installing a shade structure. And I just I'm curious about the timeline for that and the funding ability for that.

Chair and councilor, I'm gonna phone our friend, mister Martinez, and let him answer that question.

Okay.

Mister chair, councilor Haberman, so that project was bundled altogether. The chiller is now complete, the portion of it. The re the funds that do remain right now are what we project to be sufficient for the replacement of the floor, which is a what we'll call, like, a radiant system type floor configuration and for installing a shade structure. We're currently in the process of assembling a scope of work to issue a design build RFP for that project, so it is in process currently.

Okay. And then I guess we can talk about that further when we go over the CIP as well. Okay. Thanks very much. That's all my questions, chair.

Thank you, councilor Abbott. Any other questions? No? Well, that was my question, but I think so we can have a design built for the shade structure. It seems like we could have a design built for the bike park. Is that correct?

Chair and councilor, is correct. That would be one path forward.

Okay. Because that was the comments we get were to design and build, not just design and then wait and then build. But, okay. So I did want to ask about the social services facilities. That's where the hub is located, correct? So am I it's always hard to make sure I'm looking at the right row. I believe that that's pushed out. Is that correct? Next year. Right?

Chair Reidy, we currently have 950,000 funding that is budget funded in this current budget that will continue for fiscal year and will continue forward into the future years. And then for fiscal year '28, '29, and '30, we have three years of funding. We certainly as we see how the GRT increment come additional increment comes in, we'll have a little more confidence if we can fund that sooner. But the way we looked at this budget model, it did not it was hard to fit in that large of a project. But we're also considering some other hybrid projects or maybe it's a series of different facilities.

So we're also in the process of considering if, you know, we don't know exactly how much funding we'll need depending on what the solution is.

Okay. So in the current budget, there's lease cost per year for the social services offices.

I'm sure that is correct.

But that's something on the order of, what, like $300,000 $400,000 Is that about right? So there's not much of a trade off there. If we had a different facility where they were located, that would only save us that amount of money per year. Is that right?

Chair, ballpark, you're correct. We currently have a three year lease that we just signed with two one year potential extensions depending on the timing of new new facilities being available.

Okay. And so we're spending down the $9.50 potentially this year on a design? Is that the idea?

Chair Reidy, that's correct. We were using that for to do kind of a siting analysis once we identify which sites we want to end the public process around evaluating those sites.

Okay. And then the size of the facility that is earmarked for the total cost over three years is about how many square feet? We have an idea.

I'll look to Mr. Miguel Jimenez because he's been working on it.

Chair Reidy, counselors, what we have as of today is a list of requirements. And we have potential sites. So the actual square footage of the building will have to be determined based on Okay. The site available and our capacity to fund

the the project. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

We we don't have a

set. Yeah. There's no there's no even approximate square footage at this point.

Well, we know that the space that we are currently using for social services is roughly in the order of 14,000 square feet. So Okay. So but that's what we use right now.

Okay. So we'd be looking at potentially something larger if we have more needs. Budget, Lori. Yeah. Budget available. Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Yes. Thank you.

So let's see. So the other thing that's come up lately, I'm glad to see, I think you have in here for the field improvements continuing. Is that correct? So continuing to work on the Yeah. So we yeah.

Yeah. We still have that agreement for those additional fields to be done. Had some planning issues last year. Spiro took longer to be done, so it's still out of commission. They're starting work on it next week. And then we have to finish sodding by Ryan before we can start into the phase two of that agreement.

Okay. And then among the things that are not in here, I don't see anything about turf. Is turf not in here currently?

Chair and and counsel, we we still need to have some more conversations with the school district about the turf. Also, when we were doing our priorities, it seemed like there was a larger community outcry and support for a bike park for that for those fundings. We we knew it was gonna be a tight year. So we made we made our priority based on the community feedback we got, and that's why the bike park's there and not artificial turf. Turf.

Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify that. Ms. Lauren?

Chair Reidy, do want to note that we did put money in, ongoing money, for field maintenance and as well as ADA implementation and parks master plan. So it doesn't mean that there aren't some monies there that we could reallocate or prioritize based on where we wanna go with the future. We we did put in the past, haven't had those kind

of

ongoing routine replacement costs in our capital plan.

Okay. And so I guess also given the comments, you're we're comfortable with the amount of money we have in there for the field renovations? It seems like I ask you the same question every year.

Chair chair and council, we do. We actually if I'll take you back a minute, last year in February, we actually had three phases in our field renovation contract to totally do 11 fields over three years. So last year was our first one in that particular agreement. So we have those other two fields that are, positioned that we just need to to potentially issue a job order, and those could get started. But we're trying to balance keeping our youth and our our other players with a space to play while we take some out and renovate them and try to find those that happy balance between users and needs to and that's why I stretched over a three year period.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. I don't see any other questions. So thank you. So I think we're ready for a tentative motion.

I move that council tentatively approve the proposed budget for the community services department in the amount of 33,000 I'm sorry. That's not right. Dollars 33,543,026. Second?

Okay. So, get back over here with microphone. So, we have a motion by Counselor Neil Clinton and a second by Counselor Herman. Not seeing any discussion, can the clerk please call the roll?

Counselor Roddy?

Yes.

Counselor Rigor?

Yes.

Councilor Hand? Yes. Councilor Cole? Yes. Councilor Haverman? Yes. Councilor Neil Clinton? Yes. Councilor Herman? Yes. Motion passes, seven zero.

Okay, I'll let the record show the motion passes unanimously. So, now we're on to the fire department.

Good evening, chair, members of the council. Thanks for hearing us tonight. Of course, I've met you before. I'm Eric Lutzenberg. I have a partner who's going to be presenting with me, Javier Anderson, who is our administrative services manager.

I'm going to do the first few sort of frame setting pieces, give a general overview of our accomplishments for the past year, and then I will hand it over to Javier to talk about our budgeting process and the nuts and bolts of our budget. So let's talk about first the accomplishments. I'm gonna talk first about an unprinted accomplishment, not in your budget book. It's not up on the screen. Los Alamos Fire Department consists of 176 individuals, and that's 40, at minimum, people who are on at any given point working out of five stations in the training center and the administration.

And doing all kinds of calls in Los Alamos, in White Rock for the labs. That includes fire calls, structure fires, wildland fires, vehicle fires, whatever burns we go to. It includes technical rescue of all sorts. It includes hazardous materials. And of course, it includes emergency medical services, which is the vast number of calls that we do in terms of volume. Those are great people doing great work. And I think our number one accomplishment is the things we do every day. It's not just that response. It's everything that we do to get ready for response. It's everything we do to train our people.

Right now, there are 13 cadets in our academy being trained by our people so they can be responders for a twenty twenty five year plus career here in Los Alamos. We do our own ongoing training. We do public education. We do inspections. We do mitigation. We do code enforcement. Just today, our fire marshal put out the restrictions. We're going to stage one restrictions. We do all the work to figure out when's the right time to start to be safer with the wildland issue. And, of course, that's today, ironically.

But our number one accomplishment is doing that work day in, day out, 20 fourseven in this community and allowing our people to go home safely. So it's not printed, but there's accomplishment number one. Last year, our folks did that well. So the first accomplishment that we have on the board is that there was a transition in leadership. And fire departments are inherently social. We are a social business, a social profession. And any transition of command is a big deal for us. It sort of rocks the system a bit. This year, we sort of went through two. We had Chief Hughes leave, which was a big deal after twelve plus years.

And Wendy Survi came in and she did a great job. She did a very good job of holding down Los Alamos for a year. And over that year, there was a selection process. I'm, of course, happy that I was selected, but it was a pretty in-depth process. And then so we went through another transition. And, with professionalism and grace, Los Alamos Fire Department handled two of these transitions and continued to do this service in a pretty astounding way. So that's accomplishment number one. Accomplishment number two is the accreditation. So there's really, there's sort of multiple groups that are always evaluating how well we do our business. Of course, the most important is our community.

But there's two formal that are constantly evaluating that. One is ISO, Insurance Services Organization. And they give a rating somewhere from 10 to one, one being the best. Los Alamos is a one currently and we've already started doing our reevaluation, which will happen in this year. And we expect that we will once again be a one. But the other is an accreditation which comes from a body called CPSE. And it's a pretty involved process. Our divisions all go in and do an appraisal of the work that they're doing. They say what's going right, what can be done better, and they make a plan to improve that. A peer team comes in.

Last year, the peer team came in and evaluated all of our programs, all of our appraisals, gave us recommendations on what we should do to move into the future. We prepare a report based on those recommendations. And then at the beginning of this year, we went and we did our hearing to get accredited for the sixth time, which puts Los Alamos an incredibly rare company in this nation. So again, quite an accomplishment that happened last year. Slide, please.

The last accomplishment I'll talk about is about wild land. We're talking about that for two reasons. One is that, of course, it is on the minds of most of the people in the community. It's probably the number one thing I've heard both during the selection process and in the community meetings I've had since that the community is concerned about. The second part is we're doing it extraordinarily well. Los Alamos does the wild land thing well, which is good to know. In terms of specific accomplishments, we deployed six times in varying capacities. That's important for a number of reasons. One is because it gives our folks experience. Two is that it's paying things forward.

It is going to communities at their time of need. And that's something that we not only hope folks will do for us, but we actually have experience having received those people multiple times. So it's the pay forward bit that's important. But it's not just operational success that we have. We've done some great mitigation work. We did 40 some acres, which included some work with robotic mastication, which is a really unique thing. It's cool that we were able to do it here in Los Alamos. We expect to do more mitigation in the coming years. It's a significant part of this budget. We do intend to do more robotic mastication.

And in the future we intend to look at some more sort of tech forward ways that we're improving safety, not just in wild land but in other areas as well. So there's the general bit. I'll now turn it over to Javier to give you some specifics about process and the budget itself.

Thanks, chief. So the slide in front of you basically shows our funds. We operate out of four specific funds. The largest what you what they call the fire cooperative agreement fund is fund six six four. What you guys see generally is all rolled up at the next level down, which is what we call our organizational budgets.

And the fire department is part of their accreditation process actually takes that to a level even further. And we actually have program budgets, which all roll up into those specific organizational budgets. That's important to you guys because you guys only see a large summary sheet that's in front of you. And I know there's a lot of variances. A lot of those variances can be attributed to us programming all the way down at the individual program level. And what happens is we move money that meet the organizational needs based on annual program appraisals. That annual program appraisal process and I think whoever's got the slides can go to the next slide. It's just basically showing that we have, again, more program budgets that fall into each one

of those

organizational budgets. Next slide. This is the process that we go through every single year to develop our budget. We actually took a very conscious minded approach to the budget this year. We know that council's guidance and the county manager's guidance was to cut 10%.

We actually identified that 10% and put it on a shelf, so to speak. We were told that we should just program it because it is a contractual obligation as part of the cooperative agreement. So we we still did that. We still went through the exercise, and we actually went through the the entire process of being fiscally responsible and tightening our belt and looked at those areas where we could cut. In it was funny when county manager, Laurent, asked us, what are those things that are on that kind of chopping board?

It's all stuff like supplies that such as first aid supplies that that we can kinda push to the end of the year or life packs that we can kinda push to the end of the year, which were large purchases. It was none none of the stuff that we wanted to push, but nevertheless, we went through that entire exercise. So again, that each program goes through that that exercise of looking at their budget, programming it where they need to, moving money, which is why you see some of those variances. We have a hearing in front of the fire chief, myself, and the deputy chief. And then that, after that, we prepare a budget and appear in front of the county manager.

And then what you have before you is the result of the culmination of that entire exercise. So with our budget highlight, the biggest piece here is the vast majority of our budget personnel and benefits is all programmed as part of the cooperative agreement. The rest of the the what we call indirect or other direct costs are part of our county match, and that is programmed to the same letter of our contractual agreement that we have with the cooperative agreement. I believe with that, the basic use for it is firefighter protective person protective equipment, medical supplies, some of the contractual pieces that we have, our medical director, and I think that's all on the next slide, our professional and contractual services. Big one is software that we use for record keeping and training and development, medical director, pharmacists, medical medical supplies, and then the large one is our administrative office next door.

With that, we'll stand for questions.

Okay. Thank you, Chief Wittenberg and Mr. Anderson. So do counsel have any questions about presentation or the budget book? Counselor Hand?

I just have a comment.

Okay, sure.

I just wanted to thank you. I heard on the news that Los Alamos County helped with the Espanola fire just a few days ago, and thank you for your service helping with that.

Chair, councilor, thank you for that. Yeah. We had multiple crews that helped for three days. We're proud to not only serve our community but help others when needed. Thanks for the comment.

I'll pass it on.

Okay. Thank you, Councillor Hannon. Any other Councillor Cope?

Yeah. I'm curious about the FTEs by division. So emergency medical has three, but within, operations, you have folks that are, medically certified, right? I mean, it's not just three people.

Yeah. Chair, counselor, that's correct. Those are people who are in charge of interactions licensure and training and supplies. All of our operational staff are certified to at least the EMT basic level and to one of three tiers up to paramedic.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay. Any other questions? So you haven't heard me ask this question, but I ask it every year, too. So about wildland fire mitigation. So it's great what we're doing. And I always ask, is there an opportunity to do any more, if there was any more funding? Because I understand the budget constraint, but I think that people might understand if we're spending money to mitigate against fire risk. So I know that's maybe spur of the moment for you, but I just was curious about that and what if there were any cuts to the wild land part of your so no cuts? Okay. So could you use more money, though?

Yeah. Chair, counselors, answer is we could always use more money. Could never mitigate enough. But we're doing a lot of creative things with the money we have. There's no cuts to it. Everybody, we're actually trying to engage more of the operational staff in understanding what mitigation is. Traditionally, in our business, you've been one or the other. We're doing a lot to bring those together. The robotic mastication was huge just because you can expand that at any point before, you know, more dollars being added into the pool. We're taught the mitigated work both on lab.

And then

There are two main community number that are coming up.

Approve the proposed Okay.

Good evening. I'd like to start out by thanking and recognizing the county manager for her continued support through this process. Also, Helen and her team, particularly Tara and Erica. My staff, my command staff, including the deputy chief, Rodriguez and Desiree Miranda, who's sitting behind me, who really did the heavy lifting this year with our budget and who is indispensable to the police department. Principally, the police department contribute the order that I want initiatives for to kinda echo when she gave her presentation, talked about some needs with respect to IPRA.

You know, that that affects us all countywide. I think in the last county manager's report or the one before that, I talked about IPRA specific to the police department over the last fiscal year, and it was over 14,000 records. I think nearly 15,000. And you have to understand a lot of our IPRA involves video, which is very time labor intensive to review and to redact. And so I I echo any any of those initiatives throughout the county that will help us because we were to play in terms of what that to continue to provide that our way through that.

And if you did, as so being accredited, we we were reaccredited for the third time, accepted that earlier in March in Tucson of this year, again, achieving a 100% compliance with our applicable standards. And, again, youth youth engagement. We just in August, we launched our inaugural youth cadet program. And just before this meeting tonight, I, attended their, graduation for that program and provided the, which is very important. This year, according to crime reported police, overall crime fell by 20%, which is significant.

Through the first quarter of this year, it's down again. And then also based on, council support, our newly designed, traffic unit in the '25 issued over 500 citations, including a 122 for speeds exceeding 26 miles an hour. Next slide. Budget slide. You will see an increase in police department budget, but I wanted to point out that we did meet guidance.

The increases you do see are principally salary and benefits, including contractual obligations. We did add a comp time payout and holiday pay issue into this budget, which hasn't hadn't been, I guess, appropriately budgeted in years past. So there was some increase there. And that increase was a grant funding that we received, a thousand of that increase. We had some increases in our IDCs and also the Axon platform that I spoke about earlier.

But with that, I consider our budget certainly sufficient to continue to provide the high level of service that, the community expects. I appreciate all of your support. And with that, I will stand for questions.

Okay. Thank you, Chief Scimbologne. Do we have any questions from counsel or on the presentation of the budget book materials? Thank

you, Chair. Chief, what is the jump of 121%

under materials and supplies?

Are you looking at an overall or are you looking at a specific

It's from fiscal year 'twenty six to 'twenty seven, and it says it's 121%

variance.

It's on page 187

on the department budget there.

What's that? 187C, Materials and Supplies.

Do you know, does there have something?

Sounds like we can

Chair Reidy and Councillor Herman, I can speak to that. That's primarily in our grants funding. So added additional they added additional budget for materials out of grants funding because it will be reimbursed by grants.

Doctor. That's great. Thank you.

Okay. Do we have any other questions? Okay, not seeing any from anybody else. So I know we're going be getting a presentation about transportation kind of safety issues coming up in a couple weeks, three weeks maybe. So can you give us a preview of any of that information? Because you did have the data on the number of citations. Do you have a rough idea as to how many more citations were issued when we had the additional unit working?

Chair Reidy, I did put some of that information in one of the county managers' monthlies this year. But one thing I I wanted to promote those stats, and and they, you know, they were certainly being pressed to be out there and visible and engaged. But I also wanna mention that they do things like, you know, they'll follow we get a lot of complaints from the schools about people passing stop buses.

Mhmm.

In fact, I think it was two two seasons ago, two school years ago, there was not a school day that passed that that we that did that did not get reported to us. So for example, this unit will go out and sit on those or follow those buses and and take enforcement action when that when necessary. Well, that doesn't always show up in the statistics, and there's other things that they do similarly that don't. So I'll be happy to on that on the twelfth or the seventh, whenever that that here that meeting is, I'll be happy to update you with statistics, but I just wanna really emphasize that it it's more than just what ends up on that page. That that unit was has really made a allowed us to make a make a substantial difference in in traffic safety, in my view.

Okay. And so we do get the the weekly crash reports. Yes, sir. And we can see from those which ones are wildlife related or other things that we've heard about. So you'll have that information compiled first too when we have that?

Yes, sir.

Okay. I'll

try to have as much traffic related data as I can. I should have a better understanding of where we're at on the speed camera project by then

Okay.

Which it's also very close, the contract anyway. And, you know, anything else that you really wanted to know, just if you could let us know, we'll make sure we have that for you.

Okay. That'd be great to have that information. Because I guess it is kind of a system thing because you're tech dealing with the enforcement, but there's also the design. Right? So I think we have some places where there's been some road design, you know, things noted. We have the golf course with lots of deer. So whatever information we can have, I think would be great. And then we did get one question. I think I copied you and you got the response about the EOC. So I don't know if we're gonna I know we have a page on the EOC as a project.

So some of the information that was in the response might be worthwhile to have in the on the web page for the EOC, think, just to give some more information as to why we're doing it. So Yes, sir. So I think that would be worthwhile too. So well, that's not strictly related to the budget, but I think I think we do have it as a line item. Right? Yes. Project for this year. Correct?

It's in the top

Yeah. Five of that. It's in the top five, and we have it funded in '27. I'm seeing some heads shaking over there. Okay. I just wanna confirm that. I know we're gonna talk about it a lot later, but I think it's good to talk about some of the bigger ones as we go through the different departments. Okay. Well, I think that sounds like that's all the questions and comments. Sounds like we're ready for a tentative motion.

So Councilor Anderson making a motion. Councilor Han.

Thank you, chair. I move that council tentatively approve the proposed budget for the police department in the amount of $20,113,136.

Second.

Second.

Okay. So we have a motion from councilor Hand, second by councilor Hafeman. Not seeing any discussion, can the clerk please call the roll?

Councilor Hand? Yes. Counselor Reidy?

Yes.

Counselor Cole? Yes. Counselor Neil Clinton? Yes. Counselor Raygore?

Yes.

Councilor Havamand? Yes. Councilor Herman? Yes. Motion passes, seven-zero.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, chief. Let the record show the motion passes unanimously. So I think we're ready now for public works. So we're going to have a lot of different parts of public works that we have several people approaching. Support Mr. Martinez.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good evening, Chair Ide and members of council. I think I know everybody here in the room, but anybody online that may not know me, I'm Eric Martinez. I'm the public works director.

I'm joined here by deputy public works director Keith Wilson, James Varella, our transit manager, Miguel Jimenez, our manager of our capital projects team, and Josh Levings, our management analyst with environmental services. I'm also joined online by the remaining members of our public works management team. So a big shout out to them for helping us prepare this year's budget. So thanks to all of them. I would like to begin with a quick overview of department and how public works plays a role and contributes towards, council's strategic goals and priorities.

I won't go through each item listed, but we'll just point out that the department does support all five goals in various ways that are shown on this slide. As you know, public works is a big department consisting of nine divisions and broken down into two fund categories. We have six divisions classified as general fund, while the airport environmental services and transit divisions are classified as enterprise funds, which generate revenue through either fees and or grants. Next slide. These next few slides highlight the significant accomplishments of each of our nine divisions.

For the sake of time, I'll run quickly through them and highlight a few starting with our administration division. This division includes me, our deputy public works director, mister Wilson, miss Luis Romero, miss Rachel, Barela. Given the size of our department, mister Wilson and I split oversight of the divisions. He oversees airport, fleet, traffic and streets, transit, while I oversee administration, capital projects and facilities, custodial maintenance, engineering, and environmental services. We provide operational leadership to all divisions in the department, support the transportation board, and, of course, implement implementation of council goals.

Next slide. The airport is currently composed of one FTE, our airport manager. The sale and purchase of aviation associated with the fuel farm has been remarkable and supports medical flights and general aviation. Notably, we saw 3,365 takeoffs and landings in f y twenty five, while large community events at the airport have been extremely popular and helped showcase our airport. Next slide.

Capital projects and facilities continues to be one of our busiest divisions based on sheer volume of work and number of projects. The project management side oversees various phases of of a project from inception to completion, which can span several fiscal years. This group manages projects big and small, and on behalf of other departments like community services, community development, fire, police, and sustainability. This group actively man it's is managing over 30 projects, and I'm glad to mention several projects like the golf course improvements, little theater fire suppression system, the ice rink chiller, and the municipal building EV charging stations are some examples of are are are a sample of some projects that have been completed. In f y twenty five, to help improve customer service, our facility maintenance team completed the first phase of implementing a new asset management and work order system that consisted of inventory of our facilities and equipment.

This team receives a high volume of work orders each year, and I'm happy to this new work order system is fully in place to help manage the work ranging from simple issues like bulb and fixture replacement, clogged drains, to preventative maintenance, and more complex repairs of plumbing, electric, HVAC, and structural systems for our 47 county buildings. Next slide. Custo our custodial maintenance team is a model of consistency and excellent customer service by keeping our facilities clean for employee employees and customers alike, keeping Fuller Lodge in tip top shape and managing reservations and setups for about 3,000 events year after year. This past winter was less than ideal for snowfall, but our custodial crews are integral are an integral part of our snow removal team as shown on this slide. Next slide, please.

Our project management team and engineering oversaw the completion of several notable projects, including BP Road, Urban Trail, and the Bathtub Row, Peach, And Nectar Street reconstruction project. In late twenty five, the pedestrian master plan was near completion and subsequently adopted by council in early twenty six FY '26. The team continues to work hard applying for grants and has been successful with obtaining millions of dollars in state and federal grants and is managing a total of $12,000,000 of awarded grants currently. In addition to that, the county was also awarded four and a a 4 and a half million dollar grant grant for f y twenty seven and twenty eight to design and construct improvements to the Canela Del Boy Trail in White Rock. Next slide.

Another consistent performer is our environmental services team with its seven day a week operation and array of waste management and recycling programs for the community. In the '25, augmented curb curbside brush collection services were provided in response to elevated wildfire risk risks by offering additional weekly brush pickups and bulk collection to help residents clear flammable materials. Our team provided an an augmented bulk collection this year again given the the the dry dry conditions. Next slide. Our fleet division is what you may call an internal service, not necessarily public facing as other divisions, but supports all departments across the county by maintaining 675 light duty and heavy duty vehicles and pieces of equipment to ensure vehicles like our transit buses and waste collection vehicles are in good working order in service to the public while also keeping our fuel delivery systems up to date and maintained.

Our inventory of vehicles includes 12 EVs, three hybrids, and two forthcoming EV transit buses that we hope to put into service this fall. Our fleet manager continues to be on the forefront on the for at the forefront with EVs and actively participated on various county initiatives and programs, including the development of the fleet conversion plan, municipal building EV charging station project, Los Alamos Climate Action Plan, and the Atomic City Transit Zurich Mission transition plan to help expand our county fleet EV capabilities. Next slide. Our traffic and street streets team did a fantastic job constructing a new parking lot on the west side of the ice rink, continues to make progress with installing wayfinding signs throughout the county with about 18 signs installed to date, and continues to provide traffic management for various special events. This team also does a great job with snow snow removal and hope next winter snowfall is better than last.

Next slide. Our transit team introduced the ACT MyRide app, which is a great tool to book paratransit and on demand rides. They secured a $50,000 planning service grant to support the zero emission transition plan and have provided special transit service for various events for various events and continue to support Bandelier with shuttle shuttle service with a different model of service that you were updated about recently. Lastly, and I'm happy to report that ACT was recently awarded the 2025 Rural Transit System of the Year by the New Mexico Transit Authority and NMDOT. So kudos to them.

Next slide. So this slide and the following slides summarize some specific differences from last year's budget. We'll start with the airport. With the new fuel form complete and generating revenue, the proposed budget supports a half FTE to help with the extra work required for the fuel farm required for fuel farm operations, maintenance, and regulatory compliance. The budget for disposition is offset through fuel sales revenue With decreases on the nonlabor portion of the budget, the airport budget for FY '27 has an overall decrease compared to FY '26.

Next, the proposed FY twenty seven budget for environmental services reflects expected annual increases in professional and contractual services, particularly for waste and recycling hauling and landfill disposal costs. The good news so far is we're not projecting rate or tipping fee increases at this time, but we'll continue to monitor this given the potential for fuel surcharges. On the last bullet, the proposed budget for transit reflects the federal transit authority grant application process, that was initiated last year through council resolution twenty five twelve that was approved in the middle of last year. The overall budget increase for transit compared to f y twenty six is largely attributed attributed to increases in in inter fund charges. Next slide.

This first bullet notes a $400,000 decrease in equipment replacement expenditures compared to FY '26 and is largely due to heavy equipment replacements made during this fiscal year. So we had some expensive vehicles that we had to replace this year as compared to last or as compared to next. A healthy reserve balance or ending working capital is maintained for emergency losses and inflationary spikes, such as those that may be associated with increases in material and fuel costs. For this coming year, we plan to replace up to four vehicles with EVs. Next, we'll discuss the major facilities maintenance or MFM fund, which supports the maintenance and renovation of county facilities.

An increase was forecasted in in last year in FY twenty six to keep pace with maintenance and replacement of large mechanical HVAC systems based on their service life and the 2022 facility condition assessment. This also reflected this is also reflected in the proposed budget for f y twenty seven amongst other identified needs. Lastly, the proposed budget supports more investment investment in payment preservation as detailed at the newly developed five year pavement preservation program for maintenance of county roads and county parking lots. This will go a long way with supporting the county's overall payment condition index goal, which saw a decline in FY 'twenty five. So something we do not want to see.

In a couple more slides, I will speak a bit more regarding maintenance and the MFM and pavement preservation programs. Next slide. So this slide demonstrates the array of service contracts that each division utilizes to support day to day operations, like pest control, hauling of refuse and various recycling programs, storm water management, the upcoming design and installation of bollards at Ashley Pond, along with maintenance and repair of county facilities and roads. Next slide. And so speaking of maintenance, and I know this slide is hard to read, but the point of including these two table is to highlight a bit of a shift to provide additional investment into maintaining existing assets as noted by the county manager in her presentation yesterday.

We do this to the major facility maintenance and payment preservation programs that I mentioned previously. These schedules are found on pages two forty two and two forty five c of the budget book. I I would also like to mention that the pavement preservation table is a new schedule added to this year's budget to keep us on track with improving our pavement condition goal and is a five year forecast that aligns with our transportation CIP. Next slide. And if you can switch to the updated slide, mister Rael.

So this slide was updated to capture some additional numbers in the CIP row on this table. So I'd just like to mention that the proposed budget for public works continues to support each division's role with maintaining and improving our transportation and facility infrastructure or with providing essential services to the community. I will highlight a few notable deltas compared to last year. So let me draw your attention to the third column from the right showing the percent vary variances either plus or minus between f y twenty six and '27. Most notable is the increase in the MFM fund, a modest increase in traffic and streets, which is attributed to an increase in the pavement preservation fund, both of which I mentioned earlier, and a large decrease under capital under capital improvement projects.

Overall, the public works budget is down 77% as compared to 2026, largely due to CIP. But also thanks to our team with being able to trim non labor budget items without dim diminishing any service. Next slide.

Other one.

We can go to the next slide.

The other one.

There you go. Thank you, mister Rael. This slide shows our FTE count and a few changes consisting of shifting the location of two project manager positions and the addition of a half FTE for the airport as mentioned earlier. Next slide. Looking forward, we realize there is still a lot more to do, such as completing projects like Fire Station 4, Longview Drive realignment, the Community Health Action Center, and Manhattan Project dormitory re renovations, while also advancing sustainability efforts such as such as food waste composting, install and installing more EV charging stations while working to improve services to the community by performing a transit study to further evaluate the feasibility of Saturday service.

Next

slide.

I would like to wrap up my presentation noting that National Public Works Week is in a few weeks with the theme being rooted in service powered by community. We celebrate the work we do is in service to the committee, and this theme is well represented by the Urban Trail Project as this video shows, not only because of the tremendous benefit it provides, but also how it all began through conversations and engagement with the community. Thank you, Mr. Chair and Counsel. That concludes my presentation, and stand for any questions.

Okay. Thank you, Ms. Martinez. Do we have any questions? Sir? Councillor Hin.

Thank you, Chair. Can you please tell me where the NCRTDGRT shows up in this budget? Because I can't find it. I should have asked you earlier. I just started thinking about that. I don't know where it is.

Mister chair, counselor Han, thank you for that question. And give me a second, and I can I can tell you where that is? It shows up in one of our fund statements under transit. And

I'm looking at 191 c. And you know if you look at transit, I'm just thinking that it's rolled up into the numbers there. Is that where it would show up?

Chair chair Reidy, counselors. I would refer to page 82 with the transit Okay.

Let's see here.

Thank you, miss Marino. That's the right page. And so on that table, if you look down a couple lines, you'll see NCRTD regional grant, and that consists of about $1,800,000 that comes from the GRT that NCRTD receives through through the GRT collection, and that's provided to the county. And I'll ask

And if I may

to correct me if I'm wrong.

No. No. If I may, mister chair and Counselor Han, I just want to clarify that from my answer last night when Counselor Rieger asked the same question. So technically, that is not where it's receded. It's passed back through to us. So Mr. Martinez and I had a conversation after, and and and it was my fault for not realizing that that's how that sourcing comes in is I think that is what the intention is is that they use that portion of JRT to fund it back to us in in this arrangement, but it it is it is not directly receded here. We have to give it to them, pass it through to them, then they have to grant it back

to us as

a source. So we're giving them 350,000.

On top of that. Yes. On

top Well, they're they're giving us 350,000, and then through their GRT, we're getting 1,800,000 back to pay for atomic city transit, right? Basically, I mean simply.

Mr. Chair, Councilor Hannon.

We were having a conversation in between discussions last night and I just wanted to clarify that and where it shows up in the document.

I I think you got that mostly correct.

Mostly right.

Okay. I'll

just I'll just try to clarify a little bit.

So the

the 350,000 that we provide to NCRTD, we do that, I think, every year at the beginning of each year.

Right.

And that goes towards helping NCRD NCRTD with grant matches and midday service and that sort

of thing. Right.

So, yes, I think that captures most of it.

Well, I'll ask mister Bravo if

that's Okay. Is that good?

Yeah. That's correct. Chair Reidy and councilor Han. So we give 350,000 a year since 2006. We've given approximately $13,000,000 in in that time period. Currently, we're at $22,031,000 that we received back for regional services that are provided in Los Alamos to meet regional tracks and

services. Right.

And that's this year?

Yes.

Yeah. Yes. Right.

And so the 350,000 is to be part of the umbrella of the NCRTD

Right.

And the GRT that mister Martinez just mentioned.

I I think I understand what's going on here. I I was trying to explain it in between some of our discussions last night, and I just wanted to make sure that we had something concrete in our plan here that shows it.

Chair Ready, Counselor Hands, I just wanted to connect the funding with the sources because there's two different sources. The $350,000 is our county general fund

Mhmm.

That we transfer into our regional fund that then we provide 350. So we budget that out of GRT that we receive into our general fund, and we transfer it to our regional fund. The dollars that come in as a GRT for regional transit that we are a fiscal agent that then goes to the NCRTD, there is a portion of that that comes back to us based on our approved service plan of eligible routes that are that meet the definition of regional that we are providing mostly, I believe, mister Barella, between White Rock and the town site. So the so the costs associated with those routes that meet their definite definition, we then, based on the service plan, get funding, because we have some services that count towards and are eligible for the that that type of regional funding.

Okay. That's even clearer. Thank you.

Yeah, it's because it leaped the county.

Yes.

Okay. Are there more questions? Councillor Cole?

So, we have budgeted about almost 38 FTEs for transit. Where do we stand on vacancies?

Five vacancies here. Councilor Cole, five vacancies currently.

So if we were fully staffed, how many more FTEs do you estimate it would take to run a a maybe in a Friday night from the bars and a Saturday transit?

I'll hand that one off to mister Barrella.

Mister chair and counsel of the call. So that's why we're kinda going into the study to kinda model what it would take to realign all of our services to for late services if possible and even Saturday service. Just estimates, we would need at least three drivers on for Saturday service alone, and that's just an estimate, one supervisor, and a dispatcher. So you're looking at five employees. So that's just our model, but, you know, we're trying to bring some professional lens that that can help us model this house. Thank you.

So five additional employees, but not but they would only be working Friday, Saturday or so, yeah, you'd have to shuffle people around and try and figure out, okay. As long as we're actively looking at it, I'm happy. Not that I need the transportation from the bars.

Good clarification.

But I did have somebody raise that question. And then the food waste composting, where do we stand on that?

Mister chair, councilor Cole, so we're currently working on different fronts with that. We're actively working with EPA to try to receive a grant for food waste composting. We're currently working with NMED to renew our permit for operations of the of the transfer station at ECO to also include or add a portion to provide for an area for food waste composting. And so some of those regulatory hoops that that are in front of us, we're we're waiting to cross through those before we start really jumping deep into actively working through a food waste composting program. We had had since we're leasing the land from DOE at ECO, that required some conversations with them.

And one of their requirements is we is that we keep it in Vessel to avoid any order or other types of issues like that. So we think we can do that. We've looked at costs associated with that. We're prepared to go down that road and have other contingency models in place and that we're looking at just in case, but that's kinda where we stand. I know that's a big iffy answer, but we're we're trying to get our regulatory approvals in order so that we can actually pull the trigger and and actually get some funding for it through EPA if if if we can get over the hump there.

Okay. Thank you.

That's okay. Thank you, councilor Call. Any other questions? Okay. Councilman Clinton.

So hypothetically, if we we don't get the grants, then what's the path forward?

Mister chair, councilor Neil Clinton, what we'd would look at is what we have in ending working capital within the environmental services budget probably as a first stab at at seeing if we can afford that without, blowing our budget. It it it may be doable. I don't wanna get too far ahead, but that would kind of be our first our first look.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, councilor. So I know we hadjust going further into the environmental services. So we had some discussion about waste diversion or other approaches. And those are, I guess, a more regional landfill.

So, I mean, there's, I guess, the carbon associated with trucking it, you know, maybe like 130 miles at some point pretty soon, right? But there's the cost. So are you starting to look at some of that and what the options are? And also just I mean, so I understand, you know, the food waste composting was one good suggestion that we had now a number of years ago discussion and, you know, we're pursuing it, but it seems like it's very slow. Are there any other options that we have that we can think of that would help us with any of the, you know, diverting waste?

I know we had it was great to have the program you mentioned for the brush cleanup. Is that something that we could still, you know, get some more, you know, people to divert materials and support also, you know, the fire safety we want? So you looking at some other things more generally besides just the food waste?

Mister chair, so, yes, food waste is one of them. We're currently trying to wrap up landfill feasibility study with through a partnership with the city of Espanola in Ria Riva County. We're getting close to that to see how feasible it would be to have a closer landfill for that. I know that doesn't answer the the question about waste diversion, but you brought it up. So I wanted just to address that.

And then we're also have been engaged with a west waste to energy company that wants to and I think we had a a presentation on that, you know, sometime recently. But that's another source of where we can kinda divert, you know, and and reduce the the hauling distance of what we take our our waste and recycling. Other programs, I can't think right now right now with brush collection, we actually get a significant amount of brush that we collect. It's it's almost to the point that we're we're find have to find sources to try to outlet the finished product, either compost or wood chips.

Uh-huh.

Right. So the the the participation in our brush program is pretty pretty high.

Yeah. Okay. So I guess, yeah, Friday night. Saturday's good, but I think people have wanted weekend service. So are we looking at that also? I mean, if we're gonna look at I mean, because people that don't have vehicles don't have a vehicle on Sunday either. So

Mister chair, we haven't looked at that model closely. It would require, you know Yeah. You know, staffing at some level to try to do a a brush pickup program during the weekend that's curbside, if you will.

Yeah. I was thinking about transit.

Oh, transit. I'm I'm sorry.

Very operating. You're operating. Yeah.

I know we I got you confused with my light logic. Was jumping ahead on you.

Switching gears on me.

Switching gears to transit, a different division. So, I know people have asked for seven day a week, right? So, just to put that out there, because, yeah, so people would not have vehicles any day of the week. And it was one of the things, I think, brought up by a lot of people. And then people were hoping that the pilot would lead to more opportunities for people that don't have vehicles.

And it's just something that seems like it's good to look at. I'm not sure you have to look at the feasibility. But so what we didn't look at was the large chunk of funding we get, which isn't the majority, but a mass minority of it is the federal funding, right? So between the federal funding and the funding we get for the regional, we get, I think, more than half, right? It's paid for, basically, via grants.

So, if we were to have service, the same kind of service on the weekends, we're not going be getting any more grants, right? I mean, there be more opportunities for grants if there was more service? Is one question. And then, is that about right that we get between the NCRTD funding, the regional and then the federal? Is that more than half?

Thank you, mister chair. I'll I'll let mister Burrilla address that question. I'll I'll address a little bit on the Saturday service, certainly or on the weekend service, Saturday and Sunday. Uh-huh. Certainly, we can have our consultant model that as well as in addition to the to the late night service that councilor Cole brought up. So I think that's relatively easy something easy to do that we can have our our consultant look at. But I'll turn it over to mister Barilla to talk about the federal funding part.

Yeah. Thank you, chair Reidy. So and adding currently, we run till 09:00 at night on weekdays with my ride. On Friday nights, we run during concert service till 10:00. So but we could look at extending that model out later if needed. The funding source, you know, with our current funding that we apply for federal funding, through FTA, we could once this model's out, we could see what it models out for a cost, and we could just increase the amount that we originally asked in our original instead of seeking additional funding. But, yes, we could definitely look at different grants that are out there to help us bring new service in. And, but we would just probably add it to our existing formula funding when we apply each year.

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you.

Okay. You addressed the question about vacancies. But what are the overall vacancies for public works? Mr.

Chair, I believe we have about 15 vacancies in the entire department currently.

Okay. And then since we're talking about we're gonna talk about CIP again. But so I was noticing, Don, the unless I'm misreading this. So we have the traffic, the transportation related line item. So there we have FY 2027 is about $8,000,000 And then I was looking at the other items that you had.

So there are other projects that you're managing, like theso I think that's the other 6,000,000. So one of the bigger projects we haven't talked about yet is the Manhattan Project dorm. Is that right?

Correct.

And then the Betty Yahair renovations.

Right.

So is that the entire funding for the Manhattan Project dorm is funded in multiple years because there's already funding in the current year budget? So between those two items, that is the entire funding, Between '26 and '27?

Mr. Chair, yes, that's correct.

Okay. And then I was noticing, when you were flipping through your slides, was trying to reconcile the different numbers you had. So because the green sheet we had, at least the green sheet I have, maybe other people have a different green sheet. I have a green sheet with a total amount of $62,200,000. I think you had a number that was 64. Is that right? So which so before we have the motion, can so the number that we're actually going to be moving is other number you showed in the slides or

Chair Reidy, that's correct. We had an updated slide tonight and that primarily goes back to when we approved the Fire Station four funding and we had to redo an allocation of the different project timing, particularly better Betty Ehart. We had to switch the current funding from the current year a little bit into the next fiscal year because it worked fine with the timing of the project, and it allowed us to move more in this current year towards the award of the fire station four project. So what we did was we had the total number correct, but for some of the departments, we didn't update the amounts for the capital line items. So we wanted to make sure public works was tonight before you it was correct tonight before you made your motion. The

correct number is $2,000,000 more than this version.

And, mister chair, it's the yellow version of that sheet, one ninety one c two.

Uh-huh. That was the first thing I'd written down. I understand that we're working on improved bike and pedestrian facilities. Also, I guess, things for safety, transportation. So we're going to have the discussion at the work session coming up. So where in the budget would I find funding for those kinds of things?

Mister chair, it depends. For operational things like crosswalks and striping and signs, that would be in our traffic and streets operational budget. If it's a larger project, that's something that we'd have to program somewhere maybe in the CIP. We also have a a fund in our engineering division for transportation studies and and things of that sort. That's how we're funding the Ashley Pond Bollard design and installation.

So we have a couple of of funds to to choose from for that. But it really just depends the level of of of project or improvement that we're looking at.

Okay. Well, I suspect that the public might like to know, like, how we're prioritizing that with funding. So just for future reference, that might be something that, if it's possible, come up with something. And then, I guess, I asked about the Canyon Rim Trail every year or So it sounds like we're actually moving forward soon with, I guess, is it the design? So we're still looking to have to acquire the land to actually build the trail. Is that where we currently sit?

Mister chair, all the easements required that that are required for the project are in place. Design is substantially complete. We're just awaiting to perform a a study for the spotted owl in some of the easement that the DOE owns within the project area, and that's looking to occur happen in in August. So we're waiting for that to conclude, to wrap up the design, and then put the project out to bid. So, hopefully, we'll be out to bid late summer, early fall with and and eventually starting that project.

Next year?

This year.

This

year. Just depending on the season.

So Okay.

If we're into the winter months, they very well may not get started until next year.

Yeah. Well, the owls are not nesting in the winter. So

This August is we would put it out to bid. So the the the owl survey would be this August Yeah. Here in a few months. Yeah. Then we could wrap up, put the project out to bid this year, and potentially have a notice to proceed later this year.

If you do the project in the winter, the owls are not nesting. Just as a just as a piece of information.

Yeah. Okay. So if we have requirements for construction for the OWL, then we would have to take that into account. Yes.

Okay. Okay. I think I have no other questions. So I think we're ready for the tentative motion. And I guess I understand that'll be maybe augmented with a request for options for maybe weekend service.

Weekend and late night.

Some counselors want a late night service in particular.

So, Mr. Chair, if if if you're suggesting modifying the language, could could if if that's the if that's the we would want somebody to make that motion.

Okay.

Thank

you. So is there a counselor that has the language they want to see or to have us discuss? Might actually have to discuss this one. Anyone got a motion?

Councilor Cole? I don't have a I'm just curious why we would add something to this motion we know that they're working on it and it's going to probably be done in six months, give or take, and we'll hear kind of the results at that point. I don't know why we need to tell them they need to do what they're already doing. That's just my feeling on it.

Okay. Happy with just the motion? They're working on it? Okay. So is there a councilor interested in making the tentative motion as stated? You want to do it? Councillor Kaplan? Or did you write your hand? Councilor Okay, I'll do it.

I haven't done one yet tonight. I'm just waiting

Councilor Kahl over here.

Move that Council tentatively approve the proposed budget for the Public Works Department in the amount of $64,000,367.263 well, whatever. So $64,367,263

That's what you get.

Thank you, Councilor Cullen. Okay, do we have a second?

Second.

Okay, second by Councilor Havelman. Okay. So we don't need to have any further discussion. Is that right? Okay. Can the clerk please call the roll?

Councilor Havelman? Yes. Councilor Reitie?

Yes.

Councilor Hand? Yes. Councilor Cull? Yes. Councilor Rigor?

Yes.

Councilor Herman? Yes. Counselor Neil Clinton? Yes. Motion passes. Seven zero.

Okay. Thank you, Gutierrez, and everybody for being here. So let the record show the motion passes unanimously. So we have two more departments. Don't know how long they're gonna take. I know a non department won't take very long. I think we should probably go ahead and do the the Department of Public Utilities, even though it's core date. That's okay? Go ahead and do this one. Finish all finish all the departments. So we have mister Shelton, right, Chilby's manager.

Yeah. Good evening, chair and members of council. So I guess we we're ready. We'll we'll go to the next slide. Just wanted to provide some department highlights.

And last year, we went through an accreditation process with American Public Works Association, and, we got a 100% rating and full compliance in our application. And only DPU as a municipality has this designation in New Mexico and and as a federal agency. So we're the first two to do that accreditation process. We also got two awards through American Public Power Association, our customer satisfaction bronze level, and our excellence in communication award. You'll see a lot of that had to do with our marketing, and you'll see our Blinky logo up in the corner.

And then we had Mila and Mosley go to the youth rally that's sponsored through UAMPS, and that's our membership. And we actually are gonna send two people this year to that program, and and it's been a good program to engage youth about utilities and what they can do is and then they also have some leadership skills. They teach all the students. And after attending, they all get a $500 scholarship that they can take to college or vocational school, whatever career they choose afterwards. So it's a great program through our membership.

You know, we continue to, belong to UAMPs and most of our projects. While the CFPPs still being retired as far as closeout, the main projects we're participating in is geothermal energy. And one project started the pilot drilling, and so we're pretty excited by maybe bringing that technology in the future. And then there's a new program through PNM, and this has to do with our transmission. We we receive our transmission balancing services through PNM.

And a couple of our transmission lines that lead into our community are, you know, obviously, supplied and maintained by PNM. And, they have a program called public safety power shutoff. It's PSPS, and I always mix up, so I have to read it. We're actually doing a, emergency exercise tomorrow, with our emergency management, people about, you know, should should this happen? And if you recall, we had pretty, heavy winds, what, about a week ago.

And, you know, that that's what this concern is if you have brush below transmission lines and heavy winds setting off a fire from active electric lines. Then in other accomplishments in electric distribution, we finished our electric distribution and electrification study, and that identified a good thirty year plan for planning for our community to electrify as we move into more green and sustainable energy options. And I was gonna also mention that we do have a a tree trimming program, and we've been in coordination with the fire department, following up with, they did some work in White Rock with a burn bud. We're following up with some additional tree trimming around lines, so there is coordination. I know that was mentioned earlier.

Our budget's about 165,000 dedicated to tree trimming per year. And, also, we're hopefully getting the electric undergrounding grant with FEMA that will bury four and a half miles of overhead line that runs through the forest service. That's our highest risk item as far as overhead power lines in conflict with large ponderosa pine trees. And then Abby Hayward became a certified electric coach. There's some different programs for energy conservation.

We've been working pretty hard on also implementing the approved ordinance for time of use and demand charges and how to communicate that to the community. So you'll be seeing quite a bit coming up here shortly. The other, obviously, ribbon cutting for the EV chargers, and the utilization of that has improved since they went online the beginning of this year. Other accomplishments in the gas, we renewed the NEMEA agreement, and that provided savings through bulk purchases through through that agreement. It's 37% savings on monthly cost of gas.

And, then we have a survey and different focus groups in preparing, for pathways for zero and natural gas usage, and that report will come out a little later this year. Other accomplishments, and I'm switching the water production, is our bio booster tank received an award. And this is a 800,000 gallon tank that allows us to capture all the treated water from the Los Alamos plant so that we can use it for reclaimed water. Prior, we couldn't capture all the water treated per day because of the time. Wastewater plants typically peak at 10AM.

We need to be filling tanks well before that to be used, you know, early in the morning for irrigation. So there's a lag lag and a lead in in how you deliver reclaim water to the community. So that received an award. And then we did last spring do our reservoir grand opening and actually using that water to irrigate the golf course through this last month. And then in water distribution, big project along State Route 4 was replacing the 16 inch concrete cylinder pipe.

That was 18,000 feet of waterline that we had quite a few leaks and was difficult to repair that type of pipe. So it's been performing excellent and provides reliable water supply to White Rock primarily. And the crew GWS crew through the burn area projects in 2,000 time frame. The hardware just a specification issue with the hardware on the valve bonnets would corrode. And so we found through a series of breaks, and it started up in Kameson near our former county manager's home, it blew out the whole road because the bonnet came loose.

And we found that this was a recurring problem. And we didn't want any of that to obviously happen anytime, but also not in the winter because you can get materials to repair it. So the crew went out and proactively did 72 locations to replace hardware. We still have more to go, primarily along Arizona. And that area is the next phase that we'll be doing projects like that, proactive repair.

Likewise, fire hydrant testing, it was mentioned, the ISO rating. That's a partnership we have with the fire department to do testing of all the hydrants for pressure and flow. And we through that program, we identified 20 hydrants that need to be replaced. Majority have been replaced with the Trinity project. We're gonna have some done with that road improvement and or traffic calming projects.

So we'll stay on top of those replacements. And then we partnered with emergency management and social services for last summer to provide cooling stations around the county and promote that. Hopefully, we don't have as hot summer. Then on wastewater, we had the ribbon cutting for the wharf, which is a White Rock water resource facility. And pub the public has really enjoyed the tours.

We've held four last year. We think we had one already this year. We have three more scheduled. But it's a great way to educate the community on what we do there. Majority of that water is used at the overlook fields.

And at the Los Alamos plant, we finished that filtration system and the water is higher quality to class 1a effluent. And that can allow for us to expand some use or move the use around. If artificial turf fields go in, we can hopefully supply the schools with their irrigation for their turf, like at the middle school. And that should identify the wastewater accomplishments. And then other improvements in our customer care.

We listed out here how many utility bills are processed throughout the year. So, you know, we do all the billing for our gas, water, sewer, electric, and environmental services. So it's an accomplishment to to get that. And people like their bills in different manners, email here quite a bit, but then a lot want a mailed copy and enjoy a paper insert. So we're doing both, and we give people the option.

So and then utility assistance program. This program, we keep monitoring, and our community has done a lot of generous donations to help our customers in need. And I think we're gonna see additional need because the LAHE program with the federal government is gonna reduce the allocation to the state of New Mexico next year. So we'll see some strain there. We're gonna get continue to monitor that.

And other things are Los Alamos Now app. I use it every month to pay my utility bills. So you can actually go on to pay your bill or report an issue. And we're still working to try to promote that and get people using the app. But it's been an enhancement to that.

And I guess you'll see that we have other enhancements that are coming in. This year, we did the REPT program with a little AI person that can channel you to the right part of the county's web page, as well as any utility page. So what I would like next is I'm going to invite Joanne Gentry. This is her first year doing the budget presentation. And I guess we appreciate going towards the end this year.

Last year, Karen retired, and she was leaving before the end of the budget hearing process because we had it over two weeks. But this gives us a little time to prepare because we've been listening to the questions you've been asking, just trying to be ready to maybe answer those in advance and make this hearing go fairly efficiently. So I'm going to invite Joanne up to just go over lightly the summary of our budget.

Good evening, chairwriting and counselors. I just want to mention I do have Richard Valerio here. He's my business operations manager and he's very helpful in helping me get this budget done this year. So right here we have our budget summary. And for fiscal year twenty twenty seven, our proposed budget is $94,688,744 And we are staying steady at a FTE count of one hundred and seven sixty five.

Currently within our department, we have seven vacancies. Some have been there's been promotions, so we have other vacancies, so we're trying to fill those. In '28, our projected budget is $129,185,614 and staying steady with our 107.65 employees. The next page. Okay, so this is very similar.

So we're proposing a 94,700,000 budget to you guys tonight. This is an overall of $14,100,000 lower than our adopted budget in 2026. There has been an increase in labor costs and benefits by 4%, which was based on county guidance of a 1% grade adjustment and up to 3% in performance. And And right now, all of our salaries are projected for non collective bargaining agreement employees. Some major contributions to our decrease in our budget is the cost of purchase power and capital expenditures.

So these are our current rates. In 2027, in the next few months, I'll be presenting to you some new ordinances for our electric rate and I'm sorry, for our gas rate and our water rate. Currently, our electric rate and wastewater rate will run us through 2027. The electric distribution, we have an 8% for '27 starting in July. Gas, I know that number looks really high, twenty seven percent, and we'll go over that when we come through to the gas ordinance.

Water is at, we're looking at 8% for '27 and then the wastewater was previously approved at 7%. So those are all projected in our revenues. In '28, we're projecting 7% for electric, 5% for gas, 8% for water, and 8% for wastewater. This is a typical bill that we present to our board with every budget. I'd like to note that for fiscal year 2018 through '26, we were calculating the gas at 75 75 therms per household.

We recently, when we were doing our revenue projections, within the five years, we've noticed that that 75 therms per household has dropped to about 70 therms per household. So when we calculated FY '27 and '28, we used 70 therms. So prior to that, those calculations stayed the same at 75 therms. I think, so that's next one. So this is our budget option for '27.

And I believe if I'm not, I might be incorrect, but I believe we go through this later on with the budget options with the other ones. Yes. Okay. But I'll talk about this now. So this is a joint utilities and public works through Fairview.

So they would be doing some replacing roadway. And while they're replacing the roadway, we can replace some utility infrastructure. And so this is a revenue transfer, and this is something that it looks like we've been doing since FY20. And so, it's projected at 900,000. So these are our contractual and professional services.

So with electric production, one of the biggest ones, and in the next page you'll see when you look at the professional and contractual services on each of ours, is we do have 22,000,000 in FY27 for vent shaft, which is for AbiQ. And then our purchased power for electric production accounts for about 52% of their contractual services costs. And this is kind of a breakdown for our two hydro plants. And you'll notice there's the vent shaft for FY twenty seven. Most of these are just our regular costs that we have, like Caymus Mountain Electric, septic pumping, our property taxes that we pay.

Next page. Electric distribution. Had mentioned we have tree trimming, SCADA maintenance, uniforms, travel and maintenance. In gas distribution, we did have a decrease in our contractual and professional services from '26 to '27. In water production, we've also seen a decrease in our professional and contractual services between '26 and '27.

In water distribution, some of the increase in our professional and contractual services is due to our capital projects or CIP. And then in wastewater, we're also seeing a decrease in professional and contractual services. As Philo mentioned, this was my first budget season, so we did when we were going through budget prepping, we did go through each kind of line item and expenses for FY '26 and tried to find things to cut back, like that we could cut out or change. So some of those decreases are due to that. And so I'm ready to stand for questions.

Okay, thank you very much. So do we have any questions on presentation or the materials in the budget book from any counselors? Councillor Wrigger?

Thank you, chair. Well, so I was trying to find we had this large payment from our electric provider that pulled out a few years ago. And where is that in all of the fund statements?

Give me one second.

Chair and councilor Rieger, it'll be in our ten year fund statements towards the end of this budget presentation. We list our cash reserves, operating expenses, Oh, jeez. It's gonna be towards the back section of the book. I don't know the page number.

I think this is

Three eighty.

380. 380.

Oh, there's another packet here.

Or or it's also in page 86 if you wanna look at it at a higher level, and it's in your revenues in the electric utilities sub fund. And it is in our f y twenty four actuals. So that would be line settlements when you start with your beginning working capital in f y twenty four.

What page are you on? What page?

Sorry. Page 86. So let's get to 86. And if you if you look at your f y twenty four actual column, it's the first one on your left. If you scroll down to revenues, the large settlement of 58,100,000, that is where it was accounted for. And then it has since been restricted and and put into investments and into cash. And and that's in the fund flows and the schedule of of yeah. The schedule of funds. Thank you. In more detail.

Chair and councilor Don't Rieger see it. Use that investment return for funding our capital improvements in our electric distribution fund. If you'll go through our schedule of funds, we essentially get 2,000,000 a year interest revenues that are directed into the electric distribution capital improvements.

Yeah, no, I can't find what you were talking about. But where is it in should be in the electric fund, right?

It will be in electric Or it

wouldn't be

an expense. So it would be revenue in the electric fund? There's, a $60,000,000 line item. Is that the one you're referring to under in 2024? Correct. Okay. And will that eventually go for the new electric project with the solar panels? Is that the idea?

No. That is a power the Foxtail Flats project is a power purchase agreement. So we actually pay the vendor for the energy that's produced as it's produced. It's not a county owned project. So Yeah.

So the the obligation we have is as they build up the project, we have to buy, like, a 100 megawatts of power from them. Right?

Right. The the ultimate build out of the project's a 170 megawatts of solar Uh-huh. With a 120 megawatt hours of battery energy storage.

Yeah. But but in reality, to provide for the town or if you have a 100 megawatt array, then you need more like a billion watt hours of storage to collect all of that energy, and that would be, like, $500,000,000 in expenses. So how would you what do you do with all that electricity? Is that gonna be used at night through a battery or not?

Right.

Is that another huge what I'm saying is that there should be a huge bill for electric storage if you're putting that system together, or there's a separate bill to buy nighttime electricity. I don't know what what's the plan.

So it's it's gonna be a combination. So with the Foxtail Flats, the project is coupled to have energy storage with the solar generation. And, essentially, it's gonna be used for what we call peak shaving. You know, with the time of use rates that's coming online, it costs a little more to supply energy from five to 11PM at night. That battery will be discharged during that time period Yeah. To supply the community. It does not do all

of

the energy we need. That's why we're pursuing other projects like the geothermal I mentioned earlier. Yeah. But we are the offtakers for the project that we are negotiating with the laboratory with the energy coordination agreement, and it also includes Sandia Kirtland. They're gonna take about 25% of of the load for for their use as well. So what we're trying to do by having other partners is spread out that risk. So, yeah, you know, we're base essentially three off takers right now and maybe a fourth down the road.

But you'll still have, like, a 100 megawatts of power that you have to cast to go somewhere. We anticipate to put in batteries.

Right. We anticipate about 50 megawatts of the solar that we need to find another offtaker for out of the Then what do we do? What do

we if we're not gonna store it ourselves, which would be very expensive, hundreds of millions of dollars, then who's that customer?

That's part of our business plan that we're gonna present to the board of public utilities. It's we have a couple ideas of other partners. One is the city of Farmington is interested in some. Maybe a a few partners.

But in the deficit to our utility program will be hundreds of millions of dollars, right, if we don't find you know, you're there's a customer there for that, but maybe you're gonna run out of them quickly. And then we have to pay for all that electricity. Right? And we don't or we have to pay for storage for it. The question is what's the plan?

Yeah. Where does it go? Right.

Oh, it's complete yet is what you're saying?

It's not completed yet. So I'm happy to invite you to that presentation when we have that later this year.

It seems like the deficit we would run-in this could be hundreds of millions of dollars that would cost us.

I chair and councilor Rieger, that's the purpose of the business plan is to show that we can sell that. We have access of 50 megawatts of solar. We're just looking to for customers that can take that portion. The majority of the project will be utilized between Lantel, Sandia Kirtland, and the county.

So Lantel's agreed to take how many megawatts?

So what we have paired together in our plan, and I don't have the plan for the remaining 50, is to use a 120, megawatts for the solar and battery storage that's coupled together. That will be used between the three of us completely. The additional 50 megawatts of solar could be a combination of other offtakers, private. City of Farmington could be additional needs from the lab or Sandia as well. There there's there's a lot of options for that 50 megawatts of solar.

But if you don't sell it, then that's a vast amount.

Buy it. That's that I understand your point. You're right.

Thought we'd go completely bankrupt.

Right? The risk that we gotta figure off taker out for that. We the the advantage of this contract that council and board entered into is that it's a fixed price for twenty years. So we have it doesn't escalate in cost. So

Mhmm. Mhmm.

As each year goes on, usually, the costs go up. So I think it will be a a valuable resource as we move forward.

Well, if you could store it or sell it or do something with it. But yeah.

Right.

And then within the picture of the of the plan, what do we do for electricity at night?

So we have a you know, battery, we can discharge. There'll be a portion available from battery discharge and then additional power purchases. And that's what we're looking at. The geothermal is to round out that time period.

Yeah. Geothermal from Idaho or Here? Utah. Utah. I think you need your win your night electricity off the grid, won't you? That's where you'll get it. Mhmm. You'll be buying whatever's available. Right?

The grid with a PNN in the state? Our statewide grid system.

Yeah. We'll be paying for that all night, and we might not have a source of money to pay for it. I'm saying, what's the plan? How is it all gonna work out?

Yeah. When it comes to energy resource and presentation, I'd like to invite you to to those meetings, but it's not part of the budgeting process. But if you wanna understand how we're gonna supply energy

Plus an obligation that's enough to kinda bankrupt the county. Right? I mean, that's It's it's not going to.

We have plans for selling that energy.

And then having enough funds from that to pay for our our nighttime use.

Mhmm.

And we're not gonna see any of that because that's you consider that not part of the budget process.

The Foxtail Flats project, you know, your budget tonight is for 2027. Actually, only a small portion of it will be supplied in that fiscal year. It's the majority of it's gonna be the following fiscal year. It's gonna come online a year next summer.

Okay. Well, that's set up for my questions for now. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, councilor Rieger. Do we have any other questions?

Thank you, chair. I wanted to just better understand what you talked about in one of your earlier slides about thedid I hear you say a potential 28% increase in our gas rate being proposed for FY first starting sometime this calendar year or FY '27, like July 1?

Charity, counselor Haberman. Yes. We will be bringing that next month for introduction. It is a 27% increase in our fixed rate, not the variable, because we we have two components to our gas, which is fixed and variable, and then we have our service charge. So to our fixed rate, we are looking at increasing that about 27%, and I I don't have the number.

I'm sorry. I should have brought that with me. And it's what we're trying to do is we've our gas fund is low. Our revenues that we projected for this current fiscal year are gonna be really short. And so we're trying to recover some of those costs because we still have costs that are associated, salaries, benefits, you know

Just the the overhead that we need to kinda keep our baseline

Right. Going.

So we're

trying to kind of bring that up a little bit because the last few years, our revenues for gas have just not hit the target. And what we did with this current fiscal year to kinda get a better idea of where our revenues would hit, we did a five year the previous five year project, like, what we sold and kinda came up with a better number to kinda see where we would hit more and be able to kind of adjust our budget to that amount. But we're still starting out lower than we had anticipated. So that's where this is kinda coming in.

So do I see that? Would would we all be able to see that, like, on your just the gas distribution spreadsheet for FY '27 and '28? In our book, at least, it's page three twenty two. Do you

mean the the Three twenty two. Okay.

Is that where you know, because I do see where revenue is projected to be down from the adopted budget of '26.

Right.

The projected budget for '26 is really down. And maybe that's what you're talking about?

Yes. That's what

And that's down because the average therm usage is closer to that 70 per household, not 75?

That's part of it. There's been less usage, but we've also had a very warm winter.

Less usage.

Usage. This is

for carbon emission and footprint, but to Exactly. Cover your fixed Okay.

So just kind of a little preview. Overall, it would bring our fixed rate from 34¢ to 48¢, which is kinda what we were discussing earlier. And then it would still be a 9% increase to our service fee. So it'd be from $14.25 to $15.53. So the biggest jump would be with our fixed rate, which is covering those fixed costs. And so, like I said, it's it we're proposing 34¢ to 48¢ for that. And then the variable rate is dependent on the cost of gas.

Wait. So now so when you first said it, that use about a dollar increase, then it sounds like it's only about 10¢. Which one is it for the average for the average household? What will the bill

difference be?

Can I hand that right back to you? Thank you. Let me pull. So looking at our typical monthly bill, from '26 to 20 '7, the bill is going from $71.25 to $78.53. Now keep in mind, there's five extra therms in '26. So give or take a couple of dollars there. So it's it's that's where the where the increase is right there is this fixed cost. So it's about, I'd say, about $8.

On average for the average household, average bill payer. Right. This portion of the bill will go up about $8. But and that's coming to that's coming to us as an ordinance introduction next month, I think.

I believe in May. Yes. And then I I think, I'll do the presentation in early June.

And it's already been to BPU, I take it?

It has. Yes. We did an introduction, and then, we also took it back for approval.

Okay. Yes. And then so so our residents are gonna see that. They're gonna see the increase in electric, increase in wastewater

Yes.

For all the things.

Yeah. And and generally, do have

a you're programming some increases in for the subsequent years, but at least in FY 'twenty eight, it won't be as high as this year, at least in the gas category.

Exactly. You're right. Thank you. Yes.

Doctor.

All right. Okay. Well, that helps at least me understand it better. Thank you.

Doctor. You're welcome.

Doctor. Okay. Thank you, Counselor Haberman. Any other questions? Because I did want to so when you're talking about the gas being 70 therms per customer per month, that's average. So wouldn't it be fair to say that most of the gas is used in the winter?

Yes.

So the 70 is really much larger for, what, five months or so, right, with a peak. I mean, it's not even. So so when somebody gets a bill, their their bill is gonna be not, you know, $342. In the winter, it's gonna be much higher. Right?

Correct.

Okay. So I think that's important. And I think the other thing I was looking at is your utility assistance payment. If I was doing the numbers roughly, it looked like was would there be, like, $2,000 per household? Because you had, I think, $24,000 in basics households.

Maybe I didn't do the math right. But that if I take that number, and it's like, that doesn't cover a year of of the current costs. So when people get the utility assessments payments, how are those structured for what can somebody be eligible for? And I do like to always I wonder, is there like a stigma associated with trying to apply for these and, you know, the information somebody has to disclose? So do we know that that's all the people that really would benefit from utility assistance even with the current rates? Do we know much about that in terms of that program?

Yeah, I can explain a little bit more on the utility assistance program. So there's three ways to three options to get utility assistance. We have year round assistance for eligible residents that are 65 years or older or are on social security. So they so they they qualify twelve months out of every year. They just reapply every twelve months.

Our other option is for our lower income residents and it's for six month period for the winter months. And then we also have a one time assistance. So those are for people that maybe lost their job or got decreased hours in their job or received a medical bill that they weren't anticipating. So they can, and that will help up to $350 Okay. And so there's so there's a few options.

They do the 350 up to 350 is is in our rules and regulations. The year round and our winter assistance, we take last year's winter average for that household, and we we calculate it and give them 30%. So we if their bill is a $100 a month, we give them $30 for that winter or for the full twelve months. So it's 30% of their winter usage. Okay. The previous winter usage.

Okay.

And and as far as the stigma, it's all online. We really encourage it. We do have you know, if somebody calls customer care and is unable to pay, we we give this option to them. And it's it's a simple form online that they fill out. The information is handled by my customer service supervisor, and she processes those very quickly.

Okay. But you mentioned LIHEAP. So some customers may qualify for that currently. And then they won't be available.

Right. LawHeap, I believe, is one time a year. But if they get LawHeap, they automatically qualify for our winter assistance. So if they qualify for law heap, all they have to do is give us a law heap letter. We don't need any income or anything like that. That automatically calls qualifies them for winter assistance.

Okay. Well and I appreciate when somebody gets their bill, it includes refuse on it. But that's what they would see the county charging them. So it's good. I mean, so in terms of the bill, they're gonna see that. I don't think we're talking about raising refuse rates.

Well, refuse is not part of our

budgetary I understand, but it's part of somebody's bill. They're going get the bill. They're going to look at it and say, I'm getting a bill for $500 Right? And it's going to include the gas in the wintertime and all the other stuff. So that's what people are going to comment to us about is what their total bill is. I understand your part is that part. We're only raising certain parts of it. But it's good to clarify that I was concerned about that percentage, too.

Just to be clear, the winterthe utility assistance does not the 30 okay. Percent is I just wanna make sure

that everything Doesn't cover the whole bill. And so but some people may wonder about that too.

Yeah.

So I think because I think there's it seems like there's more households than that that might need assistance, and especially if the rates are going up by that much, especially like in the wintertime, they're, you know because it's gonna have to be, you know, the $506,100 dollar bill would be not uncommon, Right? Mean, it depends on what the commodity price is. We had that big issue, what, four years ago. Right? Three years ago now.

So anyway, enough about that. I would just like to make sure that we are sensitive to that. Okay. And I was so appreciate the clarification on the settlement payment. So the settlement payment, that was part of then some discussions with the BPU when we received the funding and that you're going to just basically kind of canutize it for that particular purpose.

So we have that in perpetuity for that as opposed to using it some other way, like, to defray some of these costs we're seeing now. Right? So that was the discussion. Were there other alternatives discussed about, like, not, like, annuitizing it like that?

Chair, there's there the settlement did two things. It funded our reserve requirements that's required in the county charter.

Yeah.

So we got that reserve we met those reserve requirements. The electric fund is the most expensive part of our operation. Right. So but then, you know, we're trying to maintain those reserves so that we can use the interest revenues that we have to invest back into electric distribution system.

So

it's kinda like our cap permanent capital fund that you're gonna see next. Yeah. It it electric doesn't have the grants like we have for water and wastewater. We have almost zero percent zero point zero one five interest on loans. But this is kind of our way to fund some capital in the electric distribution.

Okay. And so I'm just I'm I'm trying to recall because I don't remember, like, actively, like, voting on that. So that was something that the board voted on. Right? And there wasn't a it was a financial policy for the

We did investment.

Yeah. Okay.

I guess I I should ask miss Doudsey because she did the we did the presentation last summer about how we do the investments. So it's part of the county's investment pool.

And, chair Reidy and counselors, we we did a presentation, but it was not formally adopted or accepted by the council. Right. It was just a plan.

Okay. Okay. So, out of curiosity, so what other options did the board look at when you constructed your budget? Were there any other scenarios in terms of rate increases or anything else? I understand the gas fund is in very poor shape.

Chair, we looked at three different options for the gas rate increase. And, you know, it was mentioned earlier by miss Gentry that we didn't sell a lot of gas. Our winter on average is about 10 degrees warmer. We sold 20% less gas. Therefore, we didn't get the revenue for our operation and maintenance, and so we have to catch up.

The board decided to go with a little more aggressive increase upfront so that we could catch up and get to the operational reserve requirements we need within five to six actually, I think it's six years is when we're able to meet start meeting some positive cash flow. We our reserves are not pretty much nonexistent right now for the gas fund.

Okay.

So yeah. Yeah. We had three options for that.

Okay. And that's what we're gonna see soon.

And what we're gonna present is the option that's in the ordinance is the one that the board selected.

Okay. Okay. Any other questions? I think we will have a budget option here as for the transfer. Right? So can we get the tentative motion up? Okay. There a councilor interested in making the motion for utilities? Councilman New Clinton? I

move that council tentatively approve the proposed budget for the Public Utilities Department in the amount of $94,688,744 and the budget option in the amount of $900,000 That's an extra that's a couple of zeros.

Might be an extra zero.

Think it's 900

It's okay.

We're good.

I think we have the right number read. Correct? So I think we're good on the motion.

Second.

Second? Who said the second?

Oh. What?

Okay. Cancel there. It's like I turned away and I couldn't tell who said that. Okay. We have motion by Councillor Newkland, second by Councillor Herrmann. Okay. Seeing no more discussion, can we have a roll call, please?

Counselor Cole? Yes. Counselor Raygorn?

No.

Counselor Hand? Yes. Counselor Haverman?

Yes.

Counselor Herman? Yes. Councilor Neil Clinton? Yes. Councilor Reidy?

Yes.

Motion passes. Six one with Councilor Rieger voting against.